Trend: Again less democracies in the world

While recent events in North Africa could lead one to believe otherwise, the "Freedom in the World 2011" survey, released on 13 January 2011 by Freedom House, an organization that advocates democracy around the world, finds that last year, like the years before, the number of electoral democracies declined further.

According to the press release, "[t]his represents the longest continuous period of decline in the nearly 40-year history of the survey. [...] A total of 25 countries showed significant declines in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains [...], and the number of electoral democracies dropped to 115, far below the 2005 figure of 123. [...] Three countries – the Philippines, Tanzania, and Tonga – achieved electoral democracy status after conducting elections that were regarded as improvements over earlier polls. Declines in Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, and Sri Lanka triggered their removal from the list of electoral democracies."

In an overview essay, "Freedom in the World 2011: The Authoritarian Challenge to Democracy", the author, Arch Puddington, Director of Research at Freedom House, writes: "[T]he world's most powerful authoritarians have acted with aggression and self-assurance, and democratic leaders have responded with equivocation or silence. [...] Among lesser powers, those with energy riches or geostrategic significance demonstrated that acts of antidemocratic contempt will draw no serious rebuke from the democratic world. [...] [I]f the world's democracies fail to unite and speak out in defense of their own values, despots will continue to gain from divide-and-conquer strategies, as Russia's leaders are now doing in their approach to Europe and the United States. [...] The past decade began at a high point for freedom and concluded with freedom under duress."

Details are to be found here:

www.freedomhouse.org/images/File/fiw/FIW_Overview_2011.pdf

CFP: Freedom and Power

"Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory", based out of the Faculty of Humanities, Development and Social Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, is planning an issue on "Freedom and Power".

Call for papers

Description: "Ever since Livy proclaimed that 'freedom is to be in one's own power', if not from a long time before, the relationship between freedom and power has been an enduring concern of political theorists. It has withstood even Berlin's sharp distinctions between seemingly irreconcilable kinds of freedom and the subsequent diversion via debates about 'negative['], 'positive' and 'republican' freedom. With greater historical purview it is possible to see that the fault line between various competing conceptions of freedom is clearest with regard to how social and political theorists conceive of the relationship between freedom and power. While some thinkers have opposed freedom and power, arguing that liberty can only be truly attained free from power and domination (republicans) or in the absence of external impediments imposed by other human beings (liberals), others have identified a close and intriguing link between them, especially in the sphere of politics. A motley crew of radicals, Marxists and conservatives occupy the latter camp, including Livy, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Marx, Nietzsche and Foucault. Moreover, those in the former camp tend to think of freedom in formal and abstract terms, while proponents of the latter eschew this now normal tendency in political philosophy and instead think of freedom in fully substantive, concrete and even materialist terms. (Hobbes is an unusual and unique figure as his account of freedom inspires members of both parties in this debate.)

"Several important questions arise concerning freedom and power: What is freedom?; What is the relationship between freedom and power?; How, if at all, are freedom and domination related?; Is there a categorical or insurmountable conflict between freedom and discipline?; Does freedom depend upon being free from interference or being able to achieve certain desired or desirable goals or ends?; Are these two conditions – freedom from interference and the ability or power to achieve certain ends – related in some sense?; Can we measure freedom, and, if so, how?; What forms or degrees of freedom are possible in modern representative democracies?; How does representation affect freedom?; Is our freedom dependent on the power of our representatives?; How does the degradation of the planetary environment affect our views on freedom?; Given the dire need for self-control and self-discipline, especially regarding levels of consumption in the developed North, is the concept of freedom even still relevant?; Does the concept of freedom need to be reconfigured to accommodate constraint, austerity and self-control? If so, how?; What do the experiences of relatively recently liberated states teach us about freedom?; What is the relationship between freedom and power in the 'Global South'?; How, if at all, does poverty affect freedom?

"The editors of Theoria ask contributors to think about these questions in and of themselves and in the light of the various arguments from any of the proponents of the various conceptions of freedom. These can be written about in term of furthering our understanding of the nature of personal and political freedom within modern representative democracies or in order to develop novel arguments that propose conceptions of freedom for different possible future political organizations and forms of power. While abstract theoretical insights and arguments are welcome, we urge contributors to try and think about freedom and power within and between particular political contexts, especially within the 'Global South', where often freedom is a nascent and precarious achievement, and sometimes only for the lucky few, and between the 'Global South' and the 'Global North', either in relational or comparative terms. Given the changing power relations that exist within and between existing states, there is also much room for utopian thought regarding new forms of freedom in as yet un-experienced contexts of political power and moral conflict."

Submission must be sent in MS Word format to the Managing Editor, Sherran Clarence (University of the Western Cape): sherranclarence@gmail.com

Deadline: 31 August 2011

Article: China model as alternative to democracy

The news portal "The Malaysian Insider" today published an article by its reporter Yow Hong Chieh titled "Dr M promotes China model as alternative to democracy".

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/dr-m-promotes-china-model-as-alternative-to-democracy/

Excerpts: "Former prime minister [of Malaysia] Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today called democracy a 'failed' ideology and held up China's model of authoritarianism as an alternative 'worth studying'. He said China's political model [...] showed that a nation could develop well even in the absence of freedom, liberty and equality [...]. 'If you find good people to run a country, even dictators can make a country develop and develop very well.' [...] The former premier also criticised the very premise of democracy, arguing that no issue could achieve total consensus, leading to an electoral split that will promote poor governance. 'Democracy ... has failed in many countries,' he said. 'It is not the perfect thing it is touted to be. You find that some of these democracies really cannot work. People cannot make up their minds.['] [...] 'We see a lot of democracies where leaders change every two years and the country cannot make any progress at all,' he said. 'Even the countries that have made progress find sometimes that democracies hinder the development of the country, make the country unstable and difficult to develop.'"

Article: What Checks and Balances in a Democratic Dictatorship?

One M. Rafic Soormally, apparently based in London, is credited as the guest author of a blog post titled "What Checks and Balances in a Democratic Dictatorship?", published on 14 October 2010 on the website of the bilingual (French and English) Mauritian daily newspaper "Le Matinal".

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.lematinal.com/blogs/7847-Blog-What-Checks-and-Balances-in-a-Democratic-Dictatorship.html

Excerpts: "Debates are presently raging on what to do with the presidential system imposed on Mauritians. The [...] system of political control is not an invention of democracy, and people are being grossly misled. [...] Majority rule must necessarily command over 50% of the votes but this is hardly the case in any so-called democracy. In practice, a minority almost always rules through a process of 'buying' votes through electoral promises and unspeakable forms of corruption perpetrated by a capitalist system wherein less that 10% of the population owns over 90% of the wealth. Moreover, people are forced to vote for candidates selected by political parties and not by them. Democracy is a most manipulative, infectious and lying political system controlled by powerful lobbies and is a [sic] most war-mongering system the world has ever known through the perpetration of terror, invasions, occupations, land theft, decimation of whole populations and the use of weapons of mass destruction such as Nuclear Bombs (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fallujah), Agent Orange and Napalm (Vietnam), Phosphorous Bombs (Palestine), Cluster and Uranium Bombs and Biological Weapons (Iraq, Afghanistan), and more. [...]

"Adolph Hitler, George Bush, Tony Blair, Benjamin Netanyahu, Nicolas Sarkozy have all been 'democratically' elected but they all act/ed like dictators. [...] In theory, the US Constitution guarantees the Separation of Powers between the three branches of government [...]. In practice, there is overwhelming evidence that all three branches do act in concert as they are dictated by the same powerful lobbies, for example, in decisions to embark on false flag operations, to pass dictatorial laws and make wars, not to mention that the US is still a very racist country built upon the genocide of the Native Americans. The US is still torturing people they kidnapped and transported to Guantanamo Cuba, Diego Garcia Mauritius and elsewhere, and all checks and balances are non-existent. The President effectively has dictatorial powers [...]. The notion of checks and balances has become just another myth in most modern democracies. The strategy is to find ways to dominate the people, and the world. [...] The Mauritian President is a symbol of dictatorship as, like the British Queen, he is above the law too."

Article: Engaging Muslim Communities

Zeyno Baran's article "Engaging Muslim Communities" – an excerpt from a 2009 testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs – was published in "Defining Ideas" (no. 1/March 2010), a quarterly journal of the Stanford-based conservative public policy think tank Hoover Institution.

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/5380

Excerpts: "I have written extensively about the difference between Islam (the religion) and Islamism (the political ideology) and how we need to expose the extremists' cynical exploitation of the religion as a means of convincing the moderate majority of their fellow Muslims that the current conflict is religious in nature – and that the only solution is for Muslims to come together as part of a single nation (umma) following its own legal system (sharia) in pursuit of a new and antidemocratic world order. Why is Islamism a threat to democracy? Because, according to its interpretations, sharia regulates every aspect of an individual's life; moreover, because it is considered God's law, no compromises are possible. The holistic nature of Islamist ideology makes it fundamentally incompatible with the self-criticism and exercise of free will necessary for human beings to form truly liberal and democratic societies. [...]

"The Islamist movement is much stronger today than it was in 2001. And it will continue to get stronger over the next decade until we realize we are faced with a long-term social transformation project designed to make Muslims an angry and fearful people who can then be easily controlled. [...] Throughout the world, liberal democracy is once again being challenged as a political system and, more fundamentally, as an ideology and as a set of beliefs. Whether we like it or not, we are engaged in an ideological struggle – and the United States is losing ground. [...] Faced with authoritarian threats in both religious and secular forms, the United States should not be questioning whether to promote democracy but how to promote it. [...] If not, the United States and its allies will continue to grow weaker as their opponents strengthen.

"In general, the United States looks for short-term successes when a generational commitment is needed (as originally stated by the Bush administration). But because the United States had to demonstrate success quickly, it went for the 'low-hanging fruit' – at points even sounding as doctrinaire about democracy promotion as those who oppose democracy. [...] Since September 11, anti-American movements, groups, and leaders – from Russia to Venezuela – have come together in a shared hostility to the Western liberal system. [...] I believe having President Obama in office will grant the United States only short-term relief. Islamists are working on new narratives and searching for new grievances; their need to undermine the United States and its democratic vision is incredibly strong. [...] Clearly, the United States cannot do this cheaply, especially given how much everyone else is spending on antidemocratic agendas."

Turkish-born Zeyno Baran is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, DC.

Book: Democracy Building and Democracy Erosion

Eberhard Kienle is the editor of a contributed volume on "Democracy Building and Democracy Erosion: Political Change North and South of the Mediterranean" (Saqi Books, October 2009):

www.saqibooks.com/saqi/display.asp?K=9780863566295

Publisher's description: "Favouring transitions to democracy on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean was a key objective of the European Union and its member states when they prepared the Barcelona conference in 1995. But European Neighbourhood policies have failed to promote democracy. While the authors remain sensitive to changes that ultimately may translate into greater participation and respect for civil liberty, they also set out to explain why certain short-term goals of the EU are undermining its democratic principles. However, the crucial question – especially after 9/11 – is whether the erosion of democracy in the North has affected the promotion of democracy in the South. Failure of democracy in the South may well be linked to the erosion of democracy on a global scale."

The book includes chapters such as "Comparative De-Democratisation: Backsliding in the West, Sinking in the South" (Robert Springborn), "Absent Transitions from Authoritarianism in the South or Erosion of Democracy on a Global Scale?" (Eberhard Kienle), "Authoritarian Islands in Pluralist Democracies" (Gilles Massardier), and "Challenges to Established Democracies: The Italian Example" (Marc Lazar).

Eberhard Kienle is Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Article: Democracy Still Matters

Roger Cohen, a London-based "International Herald Tribune" columnist, in an op-ed piece the "New York Times" today published on its website, eloquently paints a picture of the global "anti-democratic tide" that seems at once gradual and unavoidable. The title of the article, "Democracy Still Matters", subsequently cannot but ring untrue.

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/opinion/21iht-edcohen.html

Excerpts: "One mystery of the first decade of the 21st century is the decline of democracy. It's not that nations with democratic systems have dwindled in number but that democracy has lost its luster. It's an idea without a glow. [...] Those who saw something of the blood expended through the 20th century to secure liberal societies must inevitably find democracy's diminished appeal puzzling. But there are reasons. The lingering wars waged partly in democracy's name in Iraq and Afghanistan hurt its reputation [...]. Given the bloody mayhem, it was easy to portray 'democracy' as a fig leaf for the West's bellicose designs and casual hypocrisies. While the democratic West fought, a nondemocratic China grew. It emerged onto the world stage prizing stability, avoiding military adventure and delivering 10 percent annual growth of which Western democracies could only dream. China's 'surge' was domestic. It was unencumbered by the paralyzing debate of democratic process.

"When the West's financial system imploded in 2008, the Chinese response was vigorous. A 'Beijing consensus' gained traction. The borderline between democracy and authoritarianism grew more opaque. The dichotomy between freedom and tyranny suddenly seemed oh-so 20th century. The new authoritarianism of China or Russia was harder to define and therefore harder to confront. 'Regimes like the one in Russia are stabilized by the fact that they have no ideology,' said Ivan Krastev, a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. 'There is really no ideological means to attack them.' They also derive resilience from the fact that their borders are open. 'The middle class is not interested in changing the system because if they don't like it they can fly to London,' Krastev noted. Having grown up in Communist Bulgaria, he believes democracy was oversold in the 1990's. All good things, at the Cold War's end, were shoveled into the democratic basket: prosperity, growth, peace. When democracy stopped delivering in these areas, it suffered. [...]

"Meanwhile technology kicked in with what the author Jonathan Franzen has called its 'trillion little bits of distracting noise.' People, synched with themselves, retreated into private networks and away from the public space – the commons – where democratic politics had been played out. Democracies seemed blocked, as in Belgium, or corrupted, as in Israel, or parodies, as in Italy, or paralyzed, as in the Netherlands. [...] Obama soon found himself caught in the gridlock of the very partisan shrieking he had vowed to overcome. [...] So what? So what if money trumped democracy and stability trumped open societies for hundreds of millions of people? So what if the rule of law or individual freedom was compromised, the press muzzled, and media-controlling presidents thought they could use 'democracy' to rule for life with occasional four-year breaks. So what if people no longer thought their vote would change anything because politics was for sale? Perhaps liberal democracy, along with its Western cradle, had passed its zenith."

As of now, the article seems not to have appeared in print in the "New York Times", though it may be included in a print edition of the "Times"-owned "International Herald Tribune".

Article: The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy

Adrian Pabst, "The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy" ("Telos", 152, fall 2010: pp. 44-67):

http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/2010/152/44

Excerpt: "Is the neo-liberal era since the mid-1970s synonymous with a corporate capture of the state and the passage to 'post-democracy'? And if so, might the failure of neo-liberalism since the onset of the international economic crisis in 2007 and the state-sponsored bailout of global finance presage a return to the primacy of democratic politics over 'free-market' economics commonly associated with the post-World War II period? At the time of this writing, it is premature to analyze the aftermath of the Great Recession (2007-09), which could yet mutate into a twenty-first-century Great Depression. However, the current ..."

Unfortunately, the journal neither provides an abstract nor a more extensive excerpt. I could not access the full text of the article (which was published as part of a themed issue on "Religion and the Critique of Modernity").

Adrian Pabst is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Kent.

Article: Why Democracies Collapse: The Reasons for Democratic Failure and Success

Abraham Diskin, Hanna Diskin, and Reuven Y. Hazan, "Why Democracies Collapse: The Reasons for Democratic Failure and Success" ("International Political Science Review", 26 [3], July 2005: pp. 291-309):

http://ips.sagepub.com/content/26/3/291

Abstract: "Most studies of democratic stability are based within either the socioeconomic or the politico-institutional tradition, but usually not on both. This article combines the two approaches. In all, 11 variables associated with democratic stability are divided into four groups (institutional, societal, mediating, and extraneous) and examined in 30 cases of democratic collapse and 32 cases of stable democracies. Five variables prove to be the most influential on the fate of democracies. When a country scores negatively on four of these five variables it is almost doomed to collapse. Some of the variables prove to be correlated in an opposite way to that which has been suggested in the literature."

Unfortunately, I could not access the full text of the article.

Abraham Diskin is Professor and Reuven Y. Hazan is Associate Professor, both in the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Hanna Diskin, the Director General of Maggie Publishers, Jerusalem, also lectures in that department.

CONF: The end of democracy

A debate on "The end of democracy" will be organized by the Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE), at the Fundación Mapfre, Paseo de Recoletos 23, Madrid, Spain, 22 September 2010

www.fride.org/event/229/debate:-the-end-of-democracy

Description: "How has the financial crisis affected the credibility of democratic values? What is the impact of the increasing weight of other political systems, such as China and Russia's? Are democracy promotion policies still valid? Why does Spain not play a greater role in this area? Why has the number of democracies decreased worldwide during the last decade? These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this debate".

Participants include: Pedro Solbes (former Deputy Vice President and Minister of Economy of Spain); Ana Palacio (former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain and former Senior Vice President of the World Bank); Eduardo Serra (former Minister of Defense of Spain); and Fernando Vallespín (Professor of Political Science, Autonomous University of Madrid). The debate will be led by Richard Youngs, Director General of the Madrid-based "European think tank for global action" FRIDE and Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick.

Attendance is by invitation only.

For further information, please contact Richard Youngs: ryoungs@fride.org

(Update 2 October 2010: Contributions to this event, in Spanish, have been uploaded to the website as audio and video files.)

Article: "Peak oil" may threaten survival of democracy, says German military

On 1 September 2010, the major German weekly news magazine "Der Spiegel" published on its English website an article by business editor Stefan Schultz titled "Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis".

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,715138,00.html

Excerpts: "A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how 'peak oil' might change the global economy. The internal draft document – leaked on the Internet – shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis. The term 'peak oil' is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis [...]. The issue is so politically explosive that it's remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term 'peak oil' at all. [...] The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military. The team of authors [...] warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the 'total collapse of the markets' and of serious political and economic crises.

"The study [...] was not meant for publication. The document is said to be in draft stage and to consist solely of scientific opinion, which has not yet been edited by the Defense Ministry and other government bodies. [...] According to the German report, there is 'some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later.' The Bundeswehr prediction is consistent with those of well-known scientists who assume global oil production has either already passed its peak or will do so this year. [...] 'In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse.' [...] The Bundeswehr study also raises fears for the survival of democracy itself. Parts of the population could perceive the upheaval triggered by peak oil 'as a general systemic crisis.' This would create 'room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government.' Fragmentation of the affected population is likely and could 'in extreme cases lead to open conflict.'" (bold removed)

Trend: Democracy in trouble

The "Washington Post" last week published two articles on the backlash against democracy (promotion). First, on 5 July, an opinion piece titled "Around the world, freedom is in peril" by Fred Hiatt, the paper's Editorial Page Editor.

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/04/AR2010070403849.html

Excerpts: "As America this weekend celebrates the birth of its liberty, in much of the rest of the world freedom and democracy are in retreat. Over the past decade, authoritarian rulers have refined their techniques to stay in power, learning from each other and thinking two steps ahead of democratic forces. [...] They recognized the threat and mobilized, with old-fashioned methods and new. From China to Egypt to Cuba, political challengers were neutralized, as they always had been, by confiscation of property, imprisonment and torture, with the examples of a few chastening the many. The foolish mistakes of one regime – allowing elections before seizing total control of the election machinery, as in Burma in 1990 – were duly noted and not repeated.

"Dictators have learned from each other to stamp out any buds of independent civil society by means of tax laws and supposedly neutral regulation. With China in the lead, they learned not only to neutralize the World Wide Web but to turn it into an effective weapon for propaganda, tracking and repression of their own citizens, and attacks against democratic rivals. Taking advantage of their control of television, they mobilized ideologies of nationalism and anti-terrorism to undermine the rhetoric of freedom. So at decade's end, the correlation of forces, as the Communists used to say, looks bleak. Three assertive powers – China, Russia and Iran – not only resist democratization but actively seek to disseminate their model of authoritarian rule in their spheres of influence."

On 6 July, the paper published an op-ed titled "Democracy in trouble" by columnist Anne Applebaum.

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/07/05/ST2010070503026.html?sid=ST2010070503026

Excerpt: "[D]emocracy is in trouble. By every measure, the world's autocrats have become more entrenched over the past decade. Countries as disparate as Russia, Venezuela and Iran have become adept at using the rhetoric of 'democracy' – along with faked elections, phony political parties, even state-controlled 'civil society' organizations – to deflect pressure for change. But democracy promotion has also been unfairly discredited by the invasion of Iraq, a decision too often remembered as nothing more than a foolish 'war for democracy' that went predictably wrong. [...] Since becoming president, Barack Obama has shied away from the word democracy in foreign contexts – he prefers 'our common security and prosperity' – as if it might be some dangerous Bushism."

Trend: Enemies of democracy have become stronger due to economic crisis, says Aznar

On 27 May 2010, the Geneva-based non-governmental organization UN Watch awarded its first Guardian of Freedom Award to the conservative former Spanish Prime Minister, José Maria Aznar:

www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1286087&ct=8417193

In his acceptance speech, titled "Leadership on the World Stage", Aznar said: "There is a widespread feeling of crisis and confusion in the face of some new and complex phenomena. Old problems have not disappeared and yet new ones are arising. [...] In my view, they are the economic crisis, the threats to global security and the challenges to democracy and human rights worldwide. I firmly believe that the three of them are interconnected and that all of them have in common the fact that liberal democracy is at stake. [...] It should not come as a surprise if the enemies of free and open societies take advantage of this situation. It is not by chance that those who oppose the free-market economy end up criticizing the principles and values that underpin liberal democracy. The authoritarian forces and the enemies of democracy have become stronger in the last year and half. Our current crisis emboldens the enemies of freedom; emboldens those who do not believe in liberty, market economy, democracy or equality [...]. It is also worrisome to see the growing alliance of authoritarian regimes and theocratic tyrannies around the world. We should pay more attention to what is going on in Latin America, where old dictatorships and their new disciples are taking advantage of our weaknesses to advance on their populist and socialist agendas."

Article: Unemployment Linked to Dislike of Democracy

On 2 June, the science news site LiveScience.com published an article titled "Unemployment Linked to Dislike of Democracy" by staff writer Zoë Macintosh.

The article can be read free of charge here:

www.livescience.com/culture/jobless-opinion-democracy-system.html

Excerpts: "Individuals out of a job are more likely to harbor negative opinions about democracy and desire a rogue [sic] leader than their employed counterparts, a new study suggests. Using data from more than 130,000 people from 69 countries, scientists found that having or not having a job is enough to make otherwise similar individuals feel differently about the effectiveness of democratic political systems. [...] The results only showed correlations between these variables, but not cause-and-effect relationships. Joblessness was not linked to one's disapproval of how the country was run or the specific leadership in charge, only to discontent with democracy as a whole. [...] Across the board, those with greater wealth or education held significantly less negative opinions about democracy. [...] The results held even when scientists controlled for reverse causality (with political view causing joblessness) posed by 'political misfits' whose opinions about democracy go against the mainstream."

The article is based on a working paper by Duha Tore Altindag and Naci H. Mocan, published in May 2010 by the American research organization National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Unfortunately, the full text of the working paper is not available without paying:

www.nber.org/papers/w15994

Turkish-born Duha Tore Altindag is a PhD candidate in Economics and Turkish-born Naci H. Mocan is Ourso Distinguished Professor of Economics, both at Louisiana State University.

CFP: Democracy, History, Universality: Beyond the Decline of the West

Sixth General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), University of Iceland, Reykjavik, 25-27 August 2011

Call for panels and papers for a section on "Democracy, History, Universality: Beyond the Decline of the West"

www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/section_details.asp?sectionID=84

Description: "The global debate about the universal significance of democracy represents one of the defining features of our time. Democracy is accepted by nearly everyone as the only legitimate form of government. At the same time, the appeal of the democratic values is weakened both by an ever greater degree of alienation between the population and the democratic institutions in the quintessentially democratic societies of Europe and North America and by the fact that in the more peripheral countries the pro-democracy rhetoric is often cynically used to justify some of the most undemocratic decisions and practices.

"Another crucial dimension of the debate is the increasing recognition that liberal democracy is indeed rooted in the historical experience and cultural particularity of the West. This tension between universalism and particularism has several dimensions. In Europe, it is reflected in the clash between universalist ambitions associated with the European democratic model and the rise of xenophobic politics that strive to redefine Europe in cultural or religious terms. At the same time, accepting the fact that democracy is historically conditioned immediately opens it up to the relativist challenge.

"The western community is often accused of monopolising the power to define what democracy means in political practice, which arguably exposes the Eurocentric nature of democracy promotion undertaken by democratic governments. Political leaders of many nations that explicitly define themselves as non-western now offer their respective political regimes as possible alternative models of democratic development. These claims have to be taken seriously despite their underlying instrumental motives, because what makes them possible in the first place are genuine grassroots concerns about western unilateralism, shared by many people all over the world.

"The panels within this section will be focused around the tension between the supposedly universal value of democracy and its embeddedness in a particular historical experience. The following questions will be discussed, among others: Can we think of truly universal democracy, or must the universal, as some theorists argue, be cleared of any positive predicates? What is happening to the idea of the West as a model democratic community? Does the universal appeal of the European idea give way to xenophobic particularism? What are the consequences of the internal tensions within the West and external challenges to its alleged domination? Can the criticism of democracy as 'too western' pave the way towards truly generic emancipation of humankind?"

Instructions on how to submit proposals for panels and papers are to be found here:

www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/documents/Panel_Chair_Guidelines_and_Deadlines.pdf

Currently, only proposals for panels will be accepted. Proposals for papers can be submitted from 1 November 2010, when a list of the panels accepted for this section will be published on the ECPR website. All proposals are to be submitted online.

Deadline for panel proposals: 1 September 2010

Deadline for paper proposals: 1 February 2011

For further information, please contact the section convenors:
Viatcheslav Morozov (University of Tartu): viacheslav.morozov@ut.ee
Christopher S. Browning (University of Warwick): c.s.browning@warwick.ac.uk
Pertti Joenniemi (Danish Institute for International Studies): pjo@diis.dk

Please note that conference participants may only appear in the academic programme once in any one capacity. That is, they may only chair one section, they may only chair one panel, they may only present one paper, they may only act once as a discussant.

Article: The Abandonment of Democracy Promotion

Tara McKelvey's article "The Abandonment of Democracy Promotion" was published in the contributed volume "New Threats to Freedom", ed. Adam Bellow (Templeton Press, May 2010: pp. 171-80):

www.templetonpress.org/book.asp?book_id=144

Excerpts: "Democracy has been taking some serious knocks in countries around the world. [...] Yet despite the threat to political freedom in Russia, Pakistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, and other countries [...], Americans have begun to show considerably less interest in helping to promote democracy as part of the nation's foreign policy. These trends will reinforce each other in the coming years [...]. Americans have turned away from the principles of democracy promotion largely in response to President George W. Bush's disastrous efforts in this area. It may seem natural to scale back on this aspect of foreign policy after the excessive zeal of the Bush administration. [...]

"President Obama has demonstrated that he is significantly less interested in democracy promotion than his predecessor; moreover, top members of his cabinet share his views. [...] Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have sent a national-security memo to President Obama, urging him to abandon democracy promotion in Afghanistan, and in the president's proposed 2010 foreign operations budget, funding for democracy projects in the Middle East and North Africa has gone down. [...] [S]ome U.S. officials seem almost disdainful of the attempts at building a democratic society [in Afghanistan] that are currently under way."

Tara McKelvey is a Senior Editor at the liberal magazine "The American Prospect" and an Alumni Fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security.

Article: Parochial Universalism, Democracy Jihad and the Orientalist Image of Burma

Michael Aung-Thwin, "Parochial Universalism, Democracy Jihad and the Orientalist Image of Burma: The New Evangelism" ("Pacific Affairs", 74 [4], winter 2001-2002: pp. 483-505):

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3557803

Excerpts: "Throughout history there have been [...] rationalizations of parochial universalism. [...] And now, we have Pax Americana declaring the ideals of democracy and human rights as universal doctrines. In all these cases, it is the conquerors [...] (or those who were in control) who have argued that their parochial values were universal, while the conquered [...] (or those not in charge) [...] have invoked cultural relativism. Universalizing parochial values is thus not a new or unique American strategy, but an established, predictable rationalization of the strong, the ideology of the superpower to validate its hegemony. And although that rationalization today is secular rather than religious, and the goals are this-world oriented rather than the next, nevertheless, the zeal, the righteousness, the imagery, and the vocabulary with which this universalism is proclaimed are uncannily evocative of earlier religious evangelisms.

"In part, the belief that these parochial values of the superpower are indeed universal is 'confirmed' by the victims [...] when they confess their 'sin' of having once worshiped false gods (like Communism) and, in return, receive absolution (and material aid). [...] Does anyone seriously believe that [the Nobel Peace Prize,] this highest badge of honour awarded in the name of peace by the West – a form of secular canonization if you will – could ever be given to someone who did not advocate democracy or human rights, his or her actual contribution to peace notwithstanding? [...] Indeed, the establishment of democracy has become, virtually, a sine qua non for legitimate government per se. It now resembles a jihad, a holy war, backed by aggressive and confrontational rhetoric as well as economic sanctions or support.

"The most recent example can be found in the declaration of the Summit of the Americas in Quebec, which includes a 'democracy clause.' It stipulates that any country that retreats from democracy will be banished from the Summit meeting process (in the case of Cuba, not invited in the first place); thereby restricting the congregation to a holy brethren of nations who have been 'saved.' And those who 'fall from grace' are forbidden to remain in – or in the case of the 'nonbelievers,' enter at all – the Garden of Eden. Thus, not only does the word democracy today evoke images and employ vocabulary of ideological purity, it has also become a kneejerk, convenient, 'catch-all,' 'cure-all,' 'end-all' term for simple solutions to complex political problems. It marks good from evil, the latter usually reserved for the Islamic Middle East and non-Christian 'undeveloped' Asia, and provides a blanket (at least public) rationale for the West's God-given right to interfere in virtually any situation. It is the 'white man's burden' and 'manifest destiny' all over again. [...]

"In countries such as Burma, even instances of commonplace grousing is interpreted within a democratic versus authoritarian framework of analysis by democracy advocates, so that ordinary complaints by ordinary Burmese citizens (say, of annoying, standard bureaucratic snafus, found anywhere) automatically become anti-authoritarian, pro-democracy statements. All this tends to encourage the western public to accept simplistic paradigms, so that complicated events are viewed as struggles between the forces of good (western-style democracy and the free market) and the forces of evil (Third World-style everything else), in which the Burmese situation is easy to 'locate.' [...] That this is not well understood, especially among many of the same expatriate Burmese advocating democracy in Burma, is obvious. Many are cut from the same cloth and are as authoritarian and intolerant of alternative views as those they are denouncing. [...]

"Still, the obsession with propagating democracy amongst the 'political heathen' continues, reminiscent of the zeal and piousness found in the literature of imperialism. Only now, the latter's 'superior' religious and racial ideology (Christianity and the white man) has been replaced by equally 'superior' secular political and social ideology (democracy and human rights). The message may have changed but not the righteous assumptions held by the messenger; that is, neither his belief in his own cultural-intellectual superiority, nor, therefore, its rationale (the claim to universality) is substantively different. [...] Thus, in much the same way missionaries during the late nineteenth century declared that belief in the one and only true God would bring salvation, today's advocates of democracy [...] – the new evangelists – proclaim their doctrine as the one and only true ideology that will save a society from hell-fire and damnation of a worldly kind. [...]

"[D]emocracy jihad's assumption that the electoral process is the sole criterion for determining legitimate authority everywhere is self-fulfilling and tautological in any case. According to this argument, since elections are considered the only valid procedure for determining legitimate authority, only one kind of government will ever be considered legitimate anywhere in this world – a democracy – thereby excluding a priori all other kinds of political systems, their procedures, and the principles on which they rest. [...] Sukarno's 'guided democracy' and Mao's 'democratic centralism' are [...] lamented by the west as a 'corruption' of 'pure' principles, a reaction not dissimilar to the way the 'localization' of Christianity in Asia and Africa was viewed. [...] Democracy [...] is not even an issue for most of the people of Burma most of the time."

Burmese-born Michael Aung-Thwin, a historian by training, is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Trend: Anti-democracy is gaining ground worldwide

The Vatican press agency "Agenzia Fides" released a short news item on 22 April 2010 titled "Violence and anti-democracy are gaining ground, Jesuit Superior General tells Mexico":

www.fides.org/aree/news/newsdet.php?idnews=26518&lan=eng

Excerpt: "Violence and anti-democracy are gaining ground worldwide, warned Jesuit Superior General, the Spaniard Father Adolfo Nicolás Pachón, in visiting Mexico. 'What is growing today is populism, not democracy. Information is manipulated and puts pressure on people so they cannot understand what is really happening with confusing information, including advertising campaigns. Public opinion is manipulated on the situations of a political choice or in order to sell a product or for some kind of promotional campaign.' [sic] [...] Education is 'the great challenge of humanity,' the priest said, and it must be 'open' to an increasingly complex world that requires more and more. He said that most of the 18,500 members of the religious order of the world live in countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, so 'we should look towards the future of society along those lines.'"

Article: The Backlash Against Democracy Promotion

Thomas Carothers, "The Backlash Against Democracy Promotion" ("Foreign Policy", 85 [2], March/April 2006: pp. 55-68):

www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61509/thomas-carothers/the-backlash-against-democracy-promotion

Excerpts: "After two decades of the steady expansion of democracy-building programs around the world, a growing number of governments are starting to crack down on such activities within their borders. [...] They have started expelling or harassing Western NGOs and prohibiting local groups from taking foreign funds – or have started punishing them for doing so. This growing backlash has yet to coalesce into a formal or organized movement. But its proponents are clearly learning from and feeding off of one another. [...] Politicians from China to Zimbabwe have publicly [...] condemned the United States' 'democratic offensive' in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere as self-serving, coercive, and immoral.

"The [...] Chinese Communist Party reportedly mapped out a strategy for resisting U.S. and European efforts to promote color revolutions in China and its neighborhood. [...] Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has driven out Western NGOs and forced the closure of many local groups that get external support, claiming that they are fronts through which Western 'colonial masters' subvert the government. [...] Further North, [...] Prime Minister Meles Zenawi stated on Ethiopian television that 'there is not going to be a [...] color revolution in Ethiopia after the election.' And in Eritrea, the government enacted a new law [...] forbidding local NGOs from engaging in any work other than relief activities and blocking them from receiving external support. [...] In South America, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez regularly blasts U.S. democracy promotion as being part of a [...] campaign to oust him. [...]

"Would Washington countenance the presence, during elections, of foreign organizations – especially ones funded by a powerful, possibly hostile government – that underwrite and help carry out voter-education campaigns, the training of and provision of material aid to political parties, parallel vote counts, and citizen-mobilization efforts? [...] No matter how well democracy promoters make their case, [...] many people in countries on the receiving end of such efforts will not be persuaded of the legitimacy of their efforts. Democracy promoters may believe that poor democratic performance reduces a country's right to invoke its sovereignty to block external intervention. That idea may be gaining currency in established democracies. Yet it is unlikely to command wide support in the developing and post-communist worlds, where sovereignty is jealously guarded by governments of all political stripes."

Thomas Carothers is now Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.

Article: Why Non-Democratic Leaders Have More Children

Dustin Beckett and Gregory D. Hess, "All in the Family: Why Non-Democratic Leaders Have More Children" ("Economics of Governance", 9 [1], January 2008: pp. 65-85):

www.springerlink.com/content/m6k1464v4vm24k67/

Abstract: "Economists have come to learn that politics matters. But survival matters the most to those involved in politics. We provide a theory whereby non-benevolent, non-democratic leaders increase their expected family size to raise the likelihood that a child will be a match at continuing the regime's survival. As a consequence, having a larger family size raises the non-democratic leader's expected rents that they can exploit from the citizenry. In contrast, democratic leaders have a lower desire to appropriate rents from the citizenry, and therefore have a diminished desire to have additional children for these purposes. We construct a data set of the number of children of country leaders as of August 31, 2005. We find that in a sample of 221 country leaders, fully non-democratic leaders have approximately 1.5-2.5 more actual children as compared to if they are fully democratic. This empirical relationship is established controlling for a full array of country specific as well as individual specific variables. Our finding also continues to hold when using alternative measures of family size."

Excerpt: "While the question of 'who governs?' goes to the heart of the difference between democratic and non-democratic rule, 'who governs next?' is no less a distinguishing query. Often, transitions of power in mature democracies take place at regular intervals, where timing and tenure limits are determined in the law. For non-democratic countries, however, transitions are more problematic and irregular, as there are fewer formal mechanisms for a smooth succession of power."

Sounds intriguing, but the article seems deeply flawed. It is badly written and obviously not edited, i.e.: "For non-democratic leaders, [...] performance indicators are not the main criteria for determining the survival duration of non-democratic leaders."; "a new leader decides how much to seek rent from the citizenry".

Also, this is the first study I came across that is based on (two versions of) "Who's Who" and – get this – "[t]he final source for the data is the online encyclopedia [...] Wikipedia". Are they serious?

Finally, what about leaders, democratic or not, of countries that have, during the leader's lifetime, alternated between democracy and non-democracy or experienced increasing or decreasing levels of democracy? The children of a non-democratic leader may have been born when the country was still a democracy. And even non-democratic rule lasts on average only twenty-one years, it is claimed. But (less than) 21-year olds don't usually become heads of government. Even in non-democratic countries (with the possible exception of monarchies), sons or daughters that young are unlikely to succeed a parent. Most leaders will have started a family well before becoming leaders – and most likely before they ever knew that they were going to become leaders. (Only 15% of the leaders studied were "in line" to succeed to their position.) All this may suggest other reasons for family size than the merely economic ones proposed by the authors of this study.

Dustin H. Beckett is a doctoral candidate in Social Science at the California Institute of Technology.

Gregory D. Hess is James G. Boswell Professor of Economics at Claremont McKenna College.