Shaking off the neoliberal shackles: “democratic emergence” and the negotiation of democratic knowledge in the Middle East North Africa context

ABSTRACT

There is a general assumption in democracy promotion that liberal democracy is the panacea that will solve all political and economic problems faced by developing countries. Using the concept of “good society” as analytical prism, the analysis shows that while there is a rhetorical agreement as to what the “good society” entails, democracy promotion practices fail to allow for recipients’ inclusion in the negotiation and delivery of the “good society”. Contrasting US and Tunisian discourses on the “good society”, the article argues that democracy promotion practices are underpinned by neoliberal parameters borne out from a reliance on the transition paradigm, which in turn leave little room to democracy promotion recipients to formulate knowledge claims supporting the emergence of alternative conceptions of the “good society”. In contrast, the article opens up a reflective pathway to a negotiated democratic knowledge, which would reside in a paradigmatic change that consists in the abandonment of the transition paradigm in favour of a “democratic emergence” paradigm.     

工业化中后期苏南地区产业升级的路径选择

在工业化的初始阶段,苏南地区主要依靠要素、投资驱动产业升级.进入21世纪以来,这种高投入、高消耗的产业升级路径,使其进一步发展面临巨大的挑战.借鉴日本和韩国等国相关的做法和经验,处于工业化中后期的苏南地区必须以科技创新引领产业升级.其基本路径是:加大科技人才的培养引进力度,突出企业科技创新的主体地位,努力营造科技创新的机制环境,积极推进国际技术的转移与合作,大力促进产业的企业区域集中,加快传统优势产业的高新技术改造.     

振兴东北的逻辑起点——区域制度创新

新制度经济学认为,造成区域经济发展差异的主要因素是制度,制度创新决定技术创新。东北的落后表现在经济上,反映在制度上。在振兴东北的思路上应当具有系统性与逻辑性。振兴东北的最大障碍是人与制度的关系,从社会层面来看是文化上的落后,缺乏创新精神;从社会管理层面来看是政府示范引导不力,自身改革滞后。更新社会观念,加快政府改革是摆脱制度束缚,振兴东北的逻辑起点。     

“天花板现象“与女性领导胜任力的保障、培育与开发

女性参与和组织公共事务管理活动,是妇女参与的最高形式,在当今世界被视为提高妇女地位的重要方面,也是衡量一个国家社会发展和文明进步的标志之一。但是,我国女性在职务晋升中还存在着只能担任低层职务,或者做到一定职位后便再难晋升的"玻璃天花板"现象。本文分析了这一现象的表现、形成根源,并提出了通过提高女性领导胜任力克服"玻璃天花板"现象的对策措施。     

论市场规则建设中政府的作用

市场规则是一个由众多内容构成的整体,能否将市场规则建立起来,直接关系到经济发展的速缓成败。发展中国家要摆脱贫穷落后的面貌,推动经济迅速发展,必须从自身实际出发,采取有意识地建立市场规则的措施,在这一过程中,政府必须发挥重大的关键性的作用。政府可通过立法手段、行政手段和司法手段来推动市场规则建设,促进经济发展。     

Negotiating normative premises in democracy promotion: Venezuela and the Inter-American Democratic Charter

ABSTRACT

This article analyses negotiations on democracy promotion by looking at the case of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. It argues that Venezuela contested the concept of representative democracy during the Charter negotiations, advancing the notion of “participatory and protagonist democracy” and that, even if it was unsuccessful in its demands, the country contributed to deepening the debate on the concept of democracy, on which there is far from worldwide consensus. The article suggests that the main drivers of the negotiation process and the final agreement were domestic political changes in Venezuela, specific features of the negotiations, and the structural position of Venezuela in the field of democracy promotion in the global and regional contexts, which were, at the time, favourable to a compromising attitude to conclusion of the Charter, even if not to the concept of democracy.     

当前国际投资促进机构运行的特征与走势

后金融危机时代,各国为从金融危机中尽快复苏经济普遍加强了投资促进工作,国际投资促进机构运行呈现新特征。通过深入研究新特征,密切关注其走势及采取的积极应对措施。为进一步理顺我国投资促进体制机制、创新投资促进方式、推动扩大内需、提升投资服务质量、提高投资促进效益提供启示,深化我国投资促进工作,提升国际竞争力。     

International democracy promotion and democratization in the Middle East and North Africa

This article offers an overview of the literature on international democracy promotion in relation to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It draws on the criteria of process tracing to evaluate the mechanisms, processes and episodes of democratization associated with international democracy promotion in the region. It finds that the literature lacks a clear account of how international democracy promotion relates to conditions for democratization and could pay greater attention to the role of media in either supporting or counteracting democracy promotion activities which impact democratization processes in the region.     

Administrative reform assistance and democracy promotion: exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s public administration reform principles for the neighbourhood countries

International donors, particularly the European Union (EU), vehemently endorse institution-building and public administration reform (PAR) in their work on democracy support. Still, the linkages between externally sponsored reform and advancement of democratic governance in beneficiary countries constitute a blind spot in our understanding of democratization. This article contributes to examining this relationship by exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s PAR portfolio for the neighbourhood countries. The aim of the article is to focus attention on the PA–democracy interface in the study of democracy promotion by elaborating a conceptual framework for exploring the nature of externally supported administrative reforms and the substantive content of democracy being advanced. By using the OECD/SIGMA’s (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) PAR framework for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries as a case study, this article demonstrates how the EU’s approach to programming PAR accommodates elements from several formats of democratic governance while the conceptualization of the democratic effects of the PAR principles remains vague. The article concludes by highlighting the need for closer examination of the potentials and limits of external PAR strategies in democracy support, and for attuning the EU’s PAR design to its democratic implications.     

What autocracies say (and what citizens hear): proposing four mechanisms of autocratic legitimation

ABSTRACT

Autocratic governments make claims about why they are entitled to rule. Some autocracies are more talkative than others, but all regimes say something about why they deserve power. This article takes seriously these efforts by introducing and interrogating the concept of autocratic legitimation. After engaging in a definitional discussion, it traces the development of autocratic legitimation in modern political science by identifying major turning points, key concepts, and patterns of inquiry over time. Ultimately, this introductory article aims to not only argue that studying autocratic legitimation is important, but also to propose contexts, concepts, and distinctions for doing so productively. To this end, the article proposes four mechanisms of autocratic legitimation that can facilitate comparative analysis: indoctrination, passivity, performance, and democratic-procedural. Finally, the essay briefly introduces the five original articles that comprise the remainder of this special issue on autocratic legitimation. The article identifies avenues for further research and identifies how each article in the issue advances down productive pathways of inquiry.