DEGREES of DEMOCRACY Some Comparative Lessons from India
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Isabel Maria Estrada Local Associationalism and the Path to A
Isabel Maria Estrada Local Associationalism and the path to a Post-National understanding of social relations in Europe. (The role of Civil Society and State in the Project for a Radical Democracy) We will start this paper from the assumption that a new model of society must be set in place - a society of deeper and wider democratic participation for all its members. What distinctive features should that society have? First of all, it should be a society willing to engage itself in a serious process of self-criticism about all its instituted boundaries as practices of exclusion, questioning itself on the moral validity of their existence(1). Such a society therefore would have to be defined as a living space of wide-open and intensive dialogue between all its members, relying on the authentic practice of rights of communication and participation. The idea that everybody has always something to teach and something to learn, having no place for a priori certainties, would be the only unquestioned thought. As a result, all moral positions should have equal opportunities to show themselves to each other, and this would guarantee that all practices of exclusion were fully and equally evaluated in their moral pertinence. And it would certainly be a more sharing and a more inclusive society. More sharing, because the exercise of rights of participation and communication enables us to know each other better, hence enables - by the use of our imagination and memory of previous own experiences - the capacity to understand the pain and desires of other people. More inclusive, because the sentiment of solidarity resulting from those intersubjective experiences allows us to better accept plurality and diversity. -
Investigating Social Capital and Political Action in the Middle East
INVESTIGATING SOCIAL CAPITAL AND POLITICAL ACTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST by AMR ABDEL-WAHAB B.A. Rollins College, 2001 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Political Science in the College of Sciences at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Fall Term 2011 © Amr Abdel-Wahab ii ABSTRACT This study addresses the relationship between social capital and political action in the Middle East. The research uncovers indicators of how social capital correlates with democratic action. Using data from the 2005 World Values Survey, the examination centers on indicators of trust and membership in civic organizations and how they relate to political action in the region. The paper concludes with discussion of how trust-building and reciprocity can be interpreted within the political context of the Middle East, and how the relevance of social capital will be an unavoidable consideration in the transition away from autocracy in the region, especially when considering recent events. iii For Nina. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................ vii INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 1 SOCIAL CAPITAL AND POLITICAL ACTION .................................... 6 Rational Choice Explanations ........................................................................... 8 Psychological Explanations ............................................................................ -
Direct E-Democracy and Political Party Websites: in the United States and Sweden
Rochester Institute of Technology RIT Scholar Works Theses 5-1-2015 Direct E-Democracy and Political Party Websites: In the United States and Sweden Kirk M. Winans Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses Recommended Citation Winans, Kirk M., "Direct E-Democracy and Political Party Websites: In the United States and Sweden" (2015). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by RIT Scholar Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of RIT Scholar Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Running head: E-DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL PARTY WEBSITES Direct E-Democracy and Political Party Websites: In the United States and Sweden by Kirk M. Winans Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Graduation Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Science, Technology and Public Policy Department of Public Policy College of Liberal Arts Rochester Institute of Technology May 1, 2015 E-DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL PARTY WEBSITES Direct E-Democracy and Political Party Websites: In the United States and Sweden A thesis submitted to The Public Policy Department at Rochester Institute of Technology By Kirk M. Winans Under the faculty guidance of Franz Foltz, Ph.D. Submitted by: Kirk M. Winans Signature Date Accepted by: Dr. Franz Foltz Thesis Advisor, Graduate Coordinator Signature Date Associate Professor, Dept. of STS/Public Policy Rochester Institute of Technology Dr. Rudy Pugliese Committee Member Signature Date Professor, School of Communication Rochester Institute of Technology Dr. Ryan Garcia Committee Member Signature Date Assistant Professor, Dept. -
Hong Kong's Pro-Democracy Protests
Protests & Democracy: Hong Kong’s Pro-Democracy Protests Jennifer Yi Advisor: Professor Tsung Chi Politics Senior Comprehensive Project Candidate for Honors consideration April 10, 2015 2 Abstract Protests that occur in the public sphere shed light on the different types of democracy that exist in a region. A protester’s reason for participation demonstrates what type of democracy is missing, while a protest itself demonstrates what type of democracy exists in the region. This Politics Senior Comprehensive Project hypothesizes that the recent pro-democracy protests in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (“Hong Kong”), dubbed the Umbrella Movement, demonstrate an effective democracy due to active citizen engagement within the public sphere. Data is collected through personal interviews of Umbrella Movement participants that demonstrate what type of democracy currently exists in Hong Kong, what type of democracy protesters are looking for, and what type of democracy exists as a result of the recent protests. The interviews show that a true representative and substantive democracy do not exist in Hong Kong as citizens are not provided the democratic rights that define these types of democracy. However, the Umbrella Movement demonstrates an effective democracy in the region as citizens actively engage with one another within the public sphere for the purpose of achieving a representative and substantive democracy in Hong Kong. 3 I. Introduction After spending most of my junior year studying in Hong Kong, I have become very interested in the region and its politics. I am specifically interested in the different types of democracy that exist in Hong Kong as it is a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China (“China”). -
The Political Economy of Agrarian Policies in Kerala: a Study of State Intervention in Agricultural Commodity Markets with Particular Reference to Dairy Markets
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AGRARIAN POLICIES IN KERALA: A STUDY OF STATE INTERVENTION IN AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY MARKETS WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO DAIRY MARKETS VELAYUDHAN RAJAGOPALAN Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Ph D Department Of Government London School O f Economics & Political Science University O f London April 1993 UMI Number: U062852 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Disscrrlation Publishing UMI U062852 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 P ”7 <ü i o ABSTRACT This thesis analyzes the nature of State intervention in agricultural commodity markets in the Indian province of Kerala in the period 1960-80. Attributing the lack of dynamism in the agrarian sector to market imperfections, the Government of Kerala has intervened both directly through departmentally run institutions and indirectly through public sector corporations. The failure of both these institutional devices encouraged the government to adopt marketing co-operatives as the preferred instruments of market intervention. Co-operatives with their decentralised, democratic structures are^ in theory, capable of combining autonomous decision-making capacity with accountability to farmer members. -
Democracy Promotion and Civil Society
Armine Ishkanian Democracy promotion and civil society Book section Original citation: Ishkanian, Armine (2007) Democracy promotion and civil society. In: Albrow, Martin and Glasius, Marlies and Anheier, Helmut K. and Kaldor, Mary, (eds.) Global Civil Society 2007/8 : Communicative Power and Democracy. Global Civil Society - Year Books . SAGE publications Ltd, London, UK, pp. 58-85. ISBN 9781412948005 © 2007 SAGE Publications This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/37038/ Available in LSE Research Online: June 2011 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author’s submitted version of the book section. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. GCS_Democracy_CH4/5/6/7:GCS Part 2_Issues 12/7/07 22:16 Page 2 CHAPTER 4 DEMOCRACY PROMOTION AND CIVIL SOCIETY Of the various strands of democracy promotion, in this chapter I focus on civil society strengthening Armine Ishkanian programmes and ask the following questions. -
Procedural Democracy, the Bulwark of Equal Liberty Author(S): Maria Paula Saffon and Nadia Urbinati Source: Political Theory, Vol
Procedural Democracy, the Bulwark of Equal Liberty Author(s): Maria Paula Saffon and Nadia Urbinati Source: Political Theory, Vol. 41, No. 3 (June 2013), pp. 441-481 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23484433 Accessed: 06-05-2020 03:17 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23484433?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political Theory This content downloaded from 202.41.10.30 on Wed, 06 May 2020 03:17:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Political Theory 41(3) 441-481 Procedural Democracy, © 2013 SAGE Publications Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav the Bulwark of Equal DOI: 10.1177/0090591713476872 Liberty ptx.sagepub.com María Paula Saffon1 and Nadia Urbinati1 Abstract This essay reclaims a political proceduralist vision of democracy as the best normative defense of democracy in contemporary politics.We distinguish this vision from three main approaches that are representative in the current academic debate: the epistemic conception of democracy as a process of truth seeking; the populist defense of democracy as a mobilizing politics that defies procedures; and the classical minimalist or Schumpeterian definition of democracy as a competitive method for selecting leaders. -
Preliminary Pages.Qxd
State Formation and Radical Democracy in India State Formation and Radical Democracy in India analyses one of the most important cases of developmental change in the twentieth century, namely, Kerala in southern India, and asks whether insurgency among the marginalized poor can use formal representative democracy to create better life chances. Going back to pre-independence, colonial India, Manali Desai takes a long historical view of Kerala and compares it with the state of West Bengal, which like Kerala has been ruled by leftists but has not experienced the same degree of success in raising equal access to welfare, literacy and basic subsistence. This comparison brings historical state legacies, as well as the role of left party formation and its mode of insertion in civil society to the fore, raising the question of what kinds of parties can effect the most substantive anti-poverty reforms within a vibrant democracy. This book offers a new, historically based explanation for Kerala’s post- independence political and economic direction, drawing on several comparative cases to formulate a substantive theory as to why Kerala has succeeded in spite of the widespread assumption that the Indian state has largely failed. Drawing conclusions that offer a divergence from the prevalent wisdoms in the field, this book will appeal to a wide audience of historians and political scientists, as well as non-governmental activists, policy-makers, and those interested in Asian politics and history. Manali Desai is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Kent, UK. Asia’s Transformations Edited by Mark Selden Binghamton and Cornell Universities, USA The books in this series explore the political, social, economic and cultural consequences of Asia’s transformations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. -
Marxist Praxis: Communist Experience in Kerala: 1957-2011
MARXIST PRAXIS: COMMUNIST EXPERIENCE IN KERALA: 1957-2011 E.K. SANTHA DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY SIKKIM UNIVERSITY GANGTOK-737102 November 2016 To my Amma & Achan... ACKNOWLEDGEMENT At the outset, let me express my deep gratitude to Dr. Vijay Kumar Thangellapali for his guidance and supervision of my thesis. I acknowledge the help rendered by the staff of various libraries- Archives on Contemporary History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, C. Achutha Menon Study and Research Centre, Appan Thampuran Smaraka Vayanasala, AKG Centre for Research and Studies, and C Unniraja Smaraka Library. I express my gratitude to the staff at The Hindu archives and Vibha in particular for her immense help. I express my gratitude to people – belong to various shades of the Left - who shared their experience that gave me a lot of insights. I also acknowledge my long association with my teachers at Sree Kerala Varma College, Thrissur and my friends there. I express my gratitude to my friends, Deep, Granthana, Kachyo, Manu, Noorbanu, Rajworshi and Samten for sharing their thoughts and for being with me in difficult times. I specially thank Ugen for his kindness and he was always there to help; and Biplove for taking the trouble of going through the draft intensely and giving valuable comments. I thank my friends in the M.A. History (batch 2015-17) and MPhil/PhD scholars at the History Department, S.U for the fun we had together, notwithstanding the generation gap. I express my deep gratitude to my mother P.B. -
The Third Wave in East Asia: Comparative and Dynamic Perspectives
An Asian Barometer Conference on The State of Democratic Governance in Asia Session I. A Historical and Theoretical Overview The Third Wave in East Asia: Comparative and Dynamic Perspectives By Doh Chull Shin University of Missouri The Third Wave in East Asia: Comparative and Dynamic Perspectives* “More than any other region, Asia will determine the global fate of democracy in the next to three decades.” Larry Diamond 2008 “Generalizing the achievement of East Asia for democracy and development promises emancipatory observations and projects hidden by Occidentalism.” Edward Friedman 1995 Asia, the world’s largest continent, is also the most populous continent on Earth. More than 60 percent of the world’s population lives on the mass of land stretching from the Middle East to the South Pacific islands and as many as 60 countries have their homes there. Asia’s cultural contributions include the birth of Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Shintoism, and Daoism, and it is also home to the largest Muslim population in the world. Economically, Asia encompasses countries of great wealth, including Japan and Singapore, and countries of extreme poverty, including Bangladesh and Myanmar. Politically, as well, it covers a startling range of regimes, from the oldest non-Western democracies of India and Japan to the world’s most oppressive regimes of Myanmar and North Korea. All in all, it is hard to overstate the enormous differences among countries in Asia in terms of their natural resources, cultural and religious heritages, socioeconomic development, and political legacies. Indeed, Asia is so large and so diverse that it is difficult to compare all of its countries and identify even a few general patterns of “Asian democratization.” In an attempt to ascertain such patterns, we follow the customary practice of separating the continent into regions and focus on the region known as East Asia, which covers the Northeastern and Southeastern parts of the continent (Croissant 2004; Gomez 2002; World Bank 2005). -
Associational Life Under Authoritarianism: the Saudi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Elections
This is a repository copy of Associational Life under Authoritarianism: The Saudi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Elections. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/92453/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Kraetzschmar, HJ (2016) Associational Life under Authoritarianism: The Saudi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Elections. Journal of Arabian Studies, 5 (2). pp. 184-205. ISSN 2153-4764 https://doi.org/10.1080/21534764.2015.1129723 This is an author produced version of a paper published in Journal of Arabian Studies. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version - refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher’s website. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Associational Life under Authoritarianism: The Saudi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Elections HENDRIK J. KRAETZSCHMAR Abstract: This article is concerned with the dynamics of internal leadership elections in one of Saudi Arabia’s oldest and most prominent network of professional syndicates, the Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCIs). -
After the New Social Democracy Offers a Distinctive Contribution to Political Ideas
fitzpatrick cvr 8/8/03 11:10 AM Page 1 Social democracy has made a political comeback in recent years, After thenewsocialdemocracy especially under the influence of the Third Way. However, not everyone is convinced that this ‘new social democracy’ is the best means of reviving the Left’s social project. This book explains why and offers an alternative approach. Bringing together a range of social and political theories After the After the new new social democracy engages with some of the most important contemporary debates regarding the present direction and future of the Left. Drawing upon egalitarian, feminist and environmental social democracy ideas it proposes that the social democratic tradition can be renewed but only if the dominance of conservative ideas is challenged more effectively. It explores a number of issues with this aim in mind, including justice, the state, democracy, welfare reform, new technologies, future generations and the new genetics. Employing a lively and authoritative style After the new social democracy offers a distinctive contribution to political ideas. It will appeal to all of those interested in politics, philosophy, social policy and social studies. Social welfare for the Tony Fitzpatrick is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Sociology and Social twenty-first century Policy, University of Nottingham. FITZPATRICK TONY FITZPATRICK TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page i After the new social democracy TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page ii For my parents TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page iii After the new social democracy Social welfare for the twenty-first century TONY FITZPATRICK Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave TZPPR 4/25/2005 4:45 PM Page iv Copyright © Tony Fitzpatrick 2003 The right of Tony Fitzpatrick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.