Personalist Politics, Clientelism and Citizenship: Local Elections in El Alto, Bolivia

The article investigates the citizenship practices of urban Aymara in a neighbourhood of El Alto, Bolivia, through an examination of the municipal elections of December 1999. Using ethnographic methods, I focus on the instrumental and affective sides of clientelism, a central feature of Bolivian elections. I argue that clientelism is a part of citizenship practice, a means of engaging with the state in the person of the politician. A majority of the Bolivian population are marginalised from the oligarchic mestizo system of government, as represented by the traditional political parties. However, at local level, and especially during election campaigns, there is more permeability, and this article sees clientelism as a set of strategies through which citizens attempt to make politics, and politicians, more representative and responsive.     

现实社会主义的生存与发展探析

苏东剧变后,全球社会主义运动遭遇重大挫折。中国改革开放20余年的辉煌成就向世界证实,能在现代生存和发展的现实社会主义只能是面向市场的、民主的、世界的社会主义。     

Is Britain Facing a Crisis of Democracy?

This article contributes to the debate in this journal about the state of British democracy. I criticise the tendency to use a ‘demand–supply’ dichotomy in interpreting the strong distrust experienced by institutions and politicians, and especially the idea that all the blame for current problems is to be attributed to the inadequateness of the British political tradition (BPT). By referring to international data on democracy and to recent British trends in both public attitudes and institutional innovations, a more nuanced picture on the state of democracy emerges. I argue that the BPT is not incompatible with incremental changes that have already introduced innovations in the way politics works in Britain today, and that the task of empowering citizens is one of the most delicate aspects in this process of innovation.     

Is governance democratic?

This paper argues that governance can engender undemocratic inequality, exclusion and populism. It does so by analysing the concept of governance, and unearthing three theoretical justifications for it: one libertarian, one radical and one republican. These justifications are in turn refuted by showing how they respectively undermine a process-view of democracy, neglect structural avenues for accountability and encourage elites to wield power.     

Against Global Parliament

Experimentation is often thought to be a key quality of any legitimate democratic system. Employing global parliamentary proposals as a heuristic, this article suggests that top‐down models for global democratization – proffered by liberal cosmopolitans and world government scholars – may create path‐dependencies which foreclose options for experimenting with alternative institutional designs in the future. Drawing upon historical institutionalism, the structure, sequence, and setting of top‐down proposals are outlined to show how experimentation with other forms of democracy may be constrained in problematic ways. Following this assessment, the article suggests that striving for democratic values under a pluralist arrangement of global governance may facilitate incremental institutional development and promote experimentation over time.     

What's the point of voting advice applications? Competing perspectives on democracy and citizenship

Voting advice applications (VAAs) are interactive online tools designed to assist voters by improving the basis on which they decide how to vote. Current VAAs typically aim to do so by matching users' policy-preferences with the positions of parties or candidates. But this ‘matching model’ depends crucially on implicit, contestable presuppositions about the proper functioning of the electoral process and about the forms of competence required for good citizenship—presuppositions associated with the social choice conception of democracy. This paper aims to make those presuppositions explicit and to contrast them with two possible alternative perspectives on VAAs, associated with deliberative and agonistic conceptions of democracy and citizenship.     

我国基于横切分裂的多元协商民主模式——以十八大代表结构为例

近年,国内学界对协商民主模式颇为关注,众多学者对这一模式的起源、定义、发展趋向等方面进行了大量研究,但很少注意到：协商民主模式的有效运作必须以一国内部不同群体之间的横切分裂为基础;这一模式内部包含多元参与;其有效运作必须以一国内部经济、宗教、语言、民族、意识形态等方面的非两极化为前提。协商民主模式的发展必须注意多元参与和运作前提等等。对中国共产党÷八大代表结构变化的分析可以判断出：我国正在完善多元协商模式,而且,这一模式将有效维护我国政治、经济和社会的稳定。     

关于协商民主理论与实践的几个问题

当前,协商民主作为中国特色社会主义民主政治的实现形式之一,已成为深化我国政治体制改革的重要任务。十八大对健全协商民主制度进行了总体规划和部署,协商民主在中国的发展前景,值得我们寄予乐观的期待。中国在长期政治生活中形成了多级政治协商制度,探索出听证会、民主恳谈会等基层民主实践,这些为健全中国特色社会主义协商民主制度提供了具有积极意义的实践经验。同时,党中央多次强调要建立社会协商对话制度,协商民主的协商场域正在不断拓宽。工资集体协商的广泛推行就是协商场域拓宽的一种表现,在这方面,福建泉州的工资集体协商尤其具有代表性。     

民主及其对现代政治的形塑

现代政治的基本形态是民主共和国,它在西方是由民主主义、共和主义、自由主义和代议制等要素相互融合的结果,而民主是其重要基础,对于塑造现代政治形态具有重要作用。民主的本义是人民直接治理国家,但是其所具有的强烈平民色彩使其长期被视为基于人数优势的平民暴政。近现代的资产阶级革命造就了资产阶级的共和国,工人阶级运动造就了民主的复兴,推动了民主要素在资产阶级共和体制中的扩展,民主本身也受到相应的制约,由此形成了民主共和国的基本形态。民主的巨大贡献在于不仅为弱势群体争得得了基本人权,而且为现代政体赢得了广泛的合法性。     

Chinese Dream,a Dream Inluencing the World

正THE International Dialogue on the Chinese Dream concluded in Shanghai on December8,2013.Attended by nearly 100 experts and scholars from 24 countries,the two-day event enacted international and cross-cultural dialogue on the latest research achievements on the Chinese Dream.