A Few Considerations on Democracy in Africa

Recent moves towards greater political liberalization in Africa, with the widespread introduction of multi-party elections in many states since 1989, do not necessarily constitute evidence of successful democratization. In particular, the focus on elections to the exclusion of other essential features of a properly functioning democracy has vitiated much recent analysis of the 'democratic transition' in Africa. By examining in turn the roots, meaning and limits of democratization in Africa, the author shows that a focus on accountability rather than on democracy per se would be more appropriate.     

Why Indians Vote: Reflections on Rights,Citizenship, and Democracy from a Tamil Nadu Village

This paper contributes to an empirical and theoretical understanding of democracy and political participation in India through an ethnographic study of the meanings attached to voting in rural Tamil Nadu. Based on a study of voting in a rural constituency during the 2009 national elections, the paper explores the variety of motivations that compel people to vote. It explores how voting is informed by popular understandings of rights and duties as citizens, programmatic policies and their local implementation, commitment to caste and party loyalties, and authority of charismatic leaders. The paper explores the roots of the political consciousness and rights awareness that underpin high levels of electoral participation. It suggests that elections form unique moments that allow ordinary people to experience an individual sense of citizenship and of democracy itself while at the same time allowing them to pursue projects of recognition, respect and assertion as members of communities. It is precisely this dual feature that makes voting so enduringly attractive to India's contemporary electorate.     

Russia and China: converging responses to globalization

This article compares the impact of globalization on the political systems and political economy of Russia and China since the beginning of their respective reform periods. Overall, it argues that both should now be viewed within the paradigm of ‘developmental states’. The article first presents some comparative economic statistics on the changes that have taken place. Second, it looks at the converging attitudes of the two regimes towards industrial restructuring and privatization, highlighting the continued role that they both reserve for state direction. This includes an orientation towards national industrial champions. Third, the evolution of policies of both states towards guided democratization are discussed leading to an assessment of the importance of nationalism in their responses to globalization, particularly in the recent doctrine of ‘sovereign democracy’ of Putin's United Russia party. Finally, the article argues that a greater wariness towards western recipes for political and economic development will frame the efforts of both states to construct a more cooperative bilateral relationship.     

Democracy and environment: congruencies and contradictions in southern Africa

Using case studies from Malawi, South Africa, and Mozambique, this paper suggests that there is no necessary relationship between democracy and the environment. In Africa, democratization since the late 1980s has been the source of increased optimism about the environment, particularly as ideas of `participatory' resource management have replaced older top-down conservation models. However, this optimism may be premature. Commonly identified linkages between democracy and environment include increased accountability, development, and participation. In many African countries, however, `democracy' is an empty shell, lacking the political institutions, civil society, and economic and cultural conditions necessary to achieve real democratic competition and accountability. Moreover, the paper illustrates from the case studies that even where the goals of democracy are realized, these can have negative as well as positive environmental consequences. Hence, faith in `democracy'—wherever and in whatever form—to solve Africa's environmental problems may be misplaced. The question that needs to be asked is not whether democracy is good for the environment, but how and when it can be made to work to meet social and environmental objectives. There is room for hope: democratization in Africa has provided a more open arena for political discourse, in which questions can be asked about the specific kinds of political, social, and economic reforms and social institutions that will be needed to make `participatory' community-based resource management successful. The optimistic discourse about democracy and environment in Africa tends to obscure these difficult questions, putting at risk the true promise of democratization.     

Giuseppe Mazzini and the democratic logic of nationalism

ABSTRACT. This article brings the thought of Giuseppe Mazzini back into the field of nationalism studies, from which it has been largely missing for a half century. It suggests the following: that Mazzini is much more modern and secular than he is usually portrayed; and that his commitment to liberal policies while rejecting liberal principles suggests that the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism has been misconceived. Nationalism, to Mazzini, was not an end in itself but a means to an end – government of, by and for the people. The demand for such a government was manifested in three popular demands in nineteenth‐century Europe: in the West as democracy, in the East as national sovereignty (the precondition for democracy) and in both East and West as social democracy. Thus nationalism may be instrumental rather than an end in itself, and it may be attributable not to ethnic groups' natural striving for autonomy but to the pursuit of democracy.     

International Regimes and Democratic Governance: Political Equality and Influence in Global Institutions

Proponents of cosmopolitan democracy rely primarily on institutional design to make their case for the feasibility of democratic governance at this level. Another strategy seems more plausible: proposing a 'non-ideal' theory in Rawls's sense that examines the social forces and conditions currently promoting democracy at the international level. The strongest forces operating now are various transnational associations that help to produce and monitor regime formation and compliance. Such a highly decentralized form of governance suggests that democratization is thereby promoted by a dense network of associations in international civil society, a global public sphere, and responsive political organizations. However much these forces disperse power through the normative principle of equal access to political influence, they could also fall well short of realizing desirable ideals such as free and open deliberation. In order not to devolve into an interest group pluralism, the decentralized strategy requires that a richer democracy be realized through the legal institutionalization of free and equal access to the global public sphere.     

“The Cockroaches of Canada”: French‐Canada,Immigration and Nationalism,Anti‐Catholicism in English‐Canada, 1905–1929

This article examines the central influence of anti‐Catholicism upon English‐Canadian nationalism in the first third of the twentieth century. Anti‐Catholicism provided an existing rhetorical and ideological tradition and framework within which public figures, intellectuals, Protestant church leaders and other Canadians communicated their diverse visions of an ideal Canada. The study of anti‐Catholicism problematises the rigid separation that many scholars have posited between a conservative ethnic nationalism and a progressive civic nationalism. Often times these very civic values were inextricable from a context of Britishness. In addition, anti‐Catholicism was not simply about theological differences between Protestants and Catholics. Instead this theological thread often intersected with the perceived socio‐political problems that Catholics and Catholicism posed. Hostility to Catholicism was not limited only to fraternal organisations such as the Orange Order; indeed the importance of anti‐Catholicism as a component of Canadian nationalism lies in its presence across the political and intellectual spectrum. Catholicism was perceived to inculcate values antithetical to British traditions of freedom and democracy.     

We Need a Loud and Fractious Poor

This article explores the political consequences of four decades of consistent humiliation of the poor by the most authoritative voices in the land, and offers insights into ways that new movements are creating spaces for poor people’s political voices to surface and become relevant again. Our specific concern is the challenge that the current humiliation regime poses to those who seek to revive radical, disruptive and fractious anti-poverty activism and politics. By humiliation regime, we mean a form of political violence that maltreats those classified popularly and politically as “the poor” by treating them as undeserving of citizenship, rights, public goods or resources, and, importantly, that seeks to delegitimate them as political actors. Our article demonstrates the historical importance of authoritative voices in inspiring political unrest involving poor and working people, charts the depoliticising effects of poverty politics and governance since the 1980s, and highlights the new political possibilities that are surfacing now not just to defeat the very dangerous political forms of Trumpism and the new white nationalism but that seek as well to create something that looks like justice, freedom and equality. We insist on the importance of loud and fractious poor people’s politics and call on scholars to direct attention to the incipient political potentialities of poor people today.     

Rentiers and Autocrats, Monarchs and Democrats, State and Society: the Middle East Between Globalization, Human 'Agency', and Europe

The key concerns in work on the politics of the Middle East in the past decade have been economic and political liberalization/democratization (or the absence thereof) and security, both domestic and international, along with a continued focus on the Arab‐Israeli conflict. There has been an increasing recognition that these issues are strongly interrelated. Europe cannot avoid concerns over economic and political stability in the region affecting its own interests. Together with economic reasons for engagement with the region, this has brought about a desire to see economic and political reform take place. The Euro‐Mediter‐ranean Partnership Initiative (EMPI) is one result of this. The background against which these policies, concerns and hopes are evolving is ‘globalization’, both of the discourse of ‘democracy’ and in the growing hold of liberal market economics internationally. Recent research on the politics and political economy of the region, and on EMPI, however, shows that a combination of political‐economic and related political‐cultural factors, along with the Arab‐Israeli conflict, continue to hamper political and economic reform in the Middle East, and that European policy as currently conceived is unlikely to affect this greatly. Yet such recent work also shows that aspects of globalization are changing the environment in which Middle Eastern regimes are having to function, while at the same time offering civil society new tools. Middle Eastern societies do, to varying extents, possess the necessary ‘spaces’ and traditions for human ‘agency’ to escape the constraints of domestic and international ‘structures’ and evolve new political cultures‐including democratic ones. Existing judicial or legislative institutions may acquire volition of their own and reinforce this process. There is nothing in ‘Islam’ that necessarily obstructs such possibilities. And supposedly ’obsolete‘ monarchies might yet be among the most successful types of regime in coping with such change.     

The Pillars of “Mahathir's Islam”: Mahathir Mohamad on Being-Muslim in the Modern World

Unlike his bourgeois economic nationalism or diplomatic posturing on behalf of the developing world, Mahathir Mohamad's encounter with Islam remains a largely understudied aspect of his 22-year rule of Malaysia (1981–2003). There is a marked reluctance to take seriously his pronouncements on Islam and engage with his representations of what being-Muslim should entail in the modern world. This essay takes the view that Islam, in fact, represents a significant component of the former Malaysian prime minister's political repertoire, and that an analysis of what may be described as “Mahathir's Islam” can provide a compelling alternative account of his momentous premiership. It argues that while Mahathir's engagement with Islam was fraught with contradictions and has produced a number of negative consequences that affect Malaysian society as a whole, his discourse also contained the ingredients of what Bellah and Hammond (1980) have famously described as civil religion. Mahathir's public representations of Islam – in particular, his championing of the individually responsible believer and interpretation of the message to the Prophet Muhammad as a this-worldly and pro-active “theology of progress” – can thus provide religious validation to the cosmopolitanism of the street that has helped underwrite the social peace of multi-religious Malaysia.     

Saudi Arabia's Wahhabism and Nationalism: The Evolution of Wataniyya into Qawmiyya

For many scholars, the Arab Spring was actually an Islamic Winter, especially when ISIS rose up in Iraq and Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood won democratic elections in Egypt and took control over the state. But in other unshaken regions in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia and the GCC states, the Arab Spring or the Islamic Winter led to something different, which I will call “rethinking nationalism.” This article asserts that since Saudi Arabia's independence in 1932, the royal family has succeeded in forming Wahhabi nationalism, meaning that despite the fact that all Saudi civilians enjoy Saudi citizenship, only those who ascribe to the Wahhabism creed can be part of the nation in terms of political participation and policy decision‐making. Although some steps in affirmative action have been taken in recent years — also as a Saudi response to the Arab Spring — toward women and the Shi'a minority, these groups or sectors still are not perceived by the royal family as part of the nation, and probably not as equal citizens, for religious reasons that over the years have distinguished between real Saudi nationalist groups and Saudi civilians.     

The Democratization Process and Popular Participation in Africa: Emerging Realities and the Challenges Ahead

Many observers have judged the recent wave of democratization in Africa as an unstoppable process and have overemphasized the role of external factors in inducing this change. This article argues that the quality of change has been fragile and defective in many respects, and draws attention to the susceptibility of the process of democratic transition to reversals. It goes on to underscore the importance of internal forces in bringing about change and in ensuring the sustainability of democracy in Africa. The tasks that lie ahead for civil society in Africa and the role of the international community and political conditionality of aid in this context are then debated.     

Political communication and democratic government

This paper overviews the Australian System of Political Communication in the light of the communications requirements of modern representative democracy. The broad point of departure is that representative democracy requires political communication in both directions between government and people. In addition to the media, the approach takes account of the following channels for ‘political messages’: direct mail, public opinion polls, elections, government inquiries. Five criteria of satisfactory democratic communication are examined. The Australian system of political communication is reviewed in the light of these criteria. Some research findings and other information is included demonstrating the extent of political communication in Australia. An argument is developed to show what conditions need to be satisfied for the criteria of democracy to be met in the contemporary environment.     

Democratization and State Feminism: Gender Politics in Africa and Latin America

This article addresses the link between state feminism and democratization in the global South. The authors use the contrasting cases of Chile and Nigeria to show some of the factors that encourage women to exploit the opportunities presented by transitions to democracy, and link the outcome of state feminism to the strategies and discourses available to women during democratization. Based on evidence from the cases analysed, the authors propose that the strategic options available to women are shaped by at least three factors: (1) the existence of a unified women’s movement capable of making political demands; (2) existing patterns of gender relations, which influence women’s access to arenas of political influence and power; and (3) the content of existing gender ideologies, and whether women can creatively deploy them to further their own interests. State feminism emerged in Chile out of the demands of a broad–based women’s movement in a context of democratic transition that provided feminists with access to political institutions. In Nigeria, attempts at creating state feminism have consistently failed due to a political transition from military to civilian rule that has not provided feminists with access to political arenas of influence, and the absence of a powerful women’s movement.     

Negotiating the Nation: Ethnicity,Nationalism and Nation-Building in Independent Namibia

Abstract. Employing recent anthropological perspectives on ethnicity and nationalism which have not yet been applied to any extent in research on cultural differentiation in Namibia, the article investigates problems and challenges in the process of nation-building in the recently independent state. Ethnicity and nationalism are here seen as socially constructed and ideologically practised phenomena, and the relationship between these ideologies is studied as one of ideological conflict. More particularly, the article investigates the formation, relevance and uses of ethnic identities; the relationship between ethnicity, class and the politics of ethnic nationalism; as well as some techniques, rhetorics and symbols employed in the social construction of nationalism in Namibia. In conclusion, the article argues the importance of making the nation-building project relevant to people not only through the creation of ever more effective and inclusive national symbols, but also through real economic and political reforms.     

Anti‐nationalist nationalism: the paradox of Dutch national identity

Academic research on contemporary Dutch nationalism has mainly focused on its overt, xenophobic and chauvinist manifestations, which have become normalised since the early 2000s. As a result, less radical, more nuanced versions of Dutch nationalism have been overlooked. This article attempts to fill this gap by drawing attention to a peculiar self‐image among Dutch progressive intellectuals we call anti‐nationalist nationalism. Whereas this self‐image has had a long history as banal nationalism, it has come to be employed more explicitly for political positioning in an intensified nationalist climate. By dissecting it into its three constitutive dimensions – constructivism, lightness and essentialism – we show how this image of Dutchness is evoked precisely through the simultaneous rejection of ‘bad’ and enactment of ‘good’ nationalism. More generally, this article provides a nuanced understanding of contemporary Dutch nationalism. It also challenges prevalent assumptions in nationalism studies by showing that post‐modern anti‐nationalism does not exclude but rather constitutes essentialist nationalism.     

Engendering citizenship: gendered spaces of democracy in South Africa

The dramatic political upheavals and transformations that have occurred throughout the world during the 1990s have served to refocus international attention on theories of citizenship and democracy. Feminist theorists have explored alternative notions of radical and substantive democracy, suggesting that extending democratization depends upon the creation of metaphorical and material spaces for women's effective participation. Related to this is a growing interest among political and feminist geographers in the scales and spaces of citizenship. Drawing upon these theoretical contexts, this paper explores how transformations in South Africa present opportunities for reworking understandings of democratization and citizenship. The paper places gender and citizenship in South Africa within international feminist debates, and explores the sequence of events through which gender issues came to prominence in South Africa during the transition to democracy. The ways in which political rights are mediated by informal structures, and the effects of this on women, are analysed. The paper concludes by discussing the ways in which the construction and contestation of citizenship in South Africa might inform broader international feminist debates.     

Compound Democracy and the Control of Corruption: A Cross-Country Investigation

In this article we evaluate the influence of democracy on perceived levels of corruption. We argue that the control of corruption depends on the compensation and accountability of public officials, and on an open and competitive economy. We analyze the influence of democracy, controlling for the influence of other political and economic factors including federalism, economic development, and economic competition. The findings for the importance of economic factors are consistent. The finding in earlier research that federalism increases corruption is not robust. The findings for democracy are influenced importantly by the way that democracy is measured, but we do find that citizens' repetitive participation in competitive elections increases the control of corruption. In doing so, we move beyond the composite indices of democracy in constructing an alternative compound measure of democracy, which we argue is likely to be useful in other research contexts     

Palace Fundamentalism and Liberal Democracy: Oil,Arms and Irrationality

With the end of the Cold War, some students of international affairs have suggested that the next field of conflict will be defined in cultural terms, between West and East, and particularly between liberal democracy and Islam. In this essay, it is argued that constructing a dichotomy between ‘rational’ Western democracy and ‘irrational’ Islam is not only dangerous but hypocritical. Support for the most backward and fanatical forms of Islamic fundamentalism has long been an element in the global geopolitical strategies of Western democracies. The trade in oil and arms has had particularly perverse social and political effects, which must be confronted in order to provide greater opportunities for the development of a modern civil society in the Arab world.     

Democratization, Legitimacy and Political Change in Central Asia

This article examines the concepts of democracy and legitimacy in the context of post-Soviet Central Asia. Its first argument is that democratization projects have lived through hard times in five Central Asian countries despite the failure of the institutional expression of democracy to incorporate the values and structures of these societies. The Soviet legacy of cynicism combined with local conservative political culture obstructs the emergence of democratic values and processes crucial for successful institutional development. If democracy does not provide a basis for political legitimacy, should the conclusion be that the ruling regimes are illegitimate? The article’s second argument is that the current sources of legitimacy stem from the fact that the regimes managed to cope with the initial challenges of post-communist transition with relative success and laid the foundation of the new states. Moreover, the populations do not see viable alternatives to the present order. However, there are new problems, such as mounting social tensions, regionalization and criminalization of politics. These challenges are largely a by-product of developments in the post-independence era. The continuing legitimacy of the regimes will depend on their ability to cope with these new, highly problematic issues.