Multicultural democracy: can it work?

After differentiating multicultural democracy (MD) from other types of democracy (liberal, consociational, ethnic and Herrenvolk), this article explores both the conditions favouring MD and the problems it faces. The main obstacle to MD is the model of the ‘nation–state’, which has been the basis of legitimacy in most liberal democracies since the French Revolution. Multiculturalism has existed in many non–democratic states (such as colonial and traditional empires) and in city–states. A distinction is made between minimal MD (the simple tolerance and legal protection of cultural diversity) and maximal MD (the celebration, encouragement and official support thereof). The article concludes that minimal MD is the more feasible of the two, and that political and social conditions for it are the most favourable in urban environments, especially in city–states.     

Contested spaces of illiberal and authoritarian politics: Human rights and democracy in crisis

The global moral appeal of human rights and democratic governance appears to be in severe crisis. In both the Global North and the South, many countries have witnessed the rise of racist, sexist, and illiberal politicians into the highest positions in the government. As one of Asia's oldest electoral democracies, the Philippines is not an exception in this global pattern of decline in civil liberties and democratic governance. Considering the case of the Philippines, this article addresses the following core question: How and under which conditions do contestations as well as legitimations of the Duterte regime emerge across domestic and transnational spaces? This article examines the transnational and domestic contestations and legitimations of the Duterte regime based on a spatially-oriented analysis of the official results of the 2016 and 2019 elections, while demonstrating the multispatial contestations against and in support of global human rights and liberal democratic norms. While the role of geography and spatialization in the formation of illiberal and authoritarian politics remains underappreciated, this article contributes to the disciplinary fields of political geography, comparative politics, and International Relations. Specifically, the article deploys a spatial approach in understanding the territorially-contingent patterns of contestations and legitimations of liberal democratic politics.     

Creative shifts and directions

The availability and “readiness” of culture as a mode of governmental control makes cultural policy a matter of great importance in any contemporary society. This is true not only in liberal democracies with established arts councils or cultural policies, it is also proactively pursued by a technologically advanced yet illiberal regime like Singapore, eager to position itself as the global “Renaissance City” of the twenty‐first century. What this “renaissance” model entails remains highly cryptic, not least because cultural terms and political markers are often elusive, but also because the very concept of “cultural policy” shifts along with the political and economic tides in Singapore. Drawing on a rarely cited essay by Raymond Williams, this article offers an historical look at cultural policy in Singapore – from its first articulation in 1978 to its present standing under the rubric of “creative industries” (2002). It considers some of the problems encountered and the societal changes made to accommodate Singapore’s new creative direction, all for the sake of ensuring Singapore’s continued economic dynamism. This article contends that cultural policy in Singapore now involves extracting creative energies – and economies – out of each loosely termed “creative worker” by heralding the economic potential of the arts, media, culture and the creative sectors, but concomitantly marking boundaries of political exchange. In this regard, culture in Singapore has become more than ever a site for governmentality and control.     

Social media and counterterrorism strategy

With the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the issue of domestic radicalisation has taken on renewed significance for Western democracies. In particular, attention has been drawn to the potency of ISIS engagement on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Several governments have emphasised the importance of online programs aimed at undermining ISIS recruitment, including the use of state-run accounts on a variety of social media platforms to respond directly to ISIS messaging. This article assesses the viability of online counter-radicalisation by examining the effectiveness of similar programs at the US State Department over the last decade. The article argues that governments attempting to counter online radicalisation of their domestic populations must take seriously the significant shortcomings of these State Department programs. The most relevant issue in this regard is the recurring problem of credibility, when the authenticity of government information is undercut by the realities of foreign policy practice, and existing perceptions of hypocrisy and duplicity are reinforced in target audiences.     

A gendered media analysis of the prime ministerial ascension of Gillard and Turnbull: he’s ‘taken back the reins’ and she’s ‘a backstabbing’ murderer

In contemporary Australian politics, challenges to the Prime Ministerial role have become more common. Australia saw five Prime Ministers from 2010 to 2015 including Australia’s first ever woman Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. A stark contrast is evident in media portrayals of Gillard and her male counterparts, apparent most recently in the response to Malcolm Turnbull’s ascension to the Prime Ministership. A range of evidence has been produced, in disciplines including political science and media studies, suggesting the existence of systemic gender bias in the mainstream media in English-speaking democracies. This article is the first to compare the media portrayals of Gillard and Turnbull’s respective ascensions to leadership, which it does drawing on Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity and using a content and discourse analysis. It contributes further evidence of gender bias in the coverage of political leaders.     

How do western democracies cope with the challenge of societal diversity?

In the modern era, the grand forces of modernism, liberalism and nationalism have opposed and minimized societal diversity in Western states. The Civil Rights Movement in the USA and the flow of millions of unassimilable immigrants, mostly Muslims, to Europe opened Western societies to cultural diversity. But liberal multiculturalism in the West consists mainly of endorsement of subcultures, non‐discrimination and inclusion. It falls short of instituting consociational components like cultural autonomy and power‐sharing. Fear and unease in the West increasingly give priority to majority over minority rights. While all Western democracies object to societal diversity, they differ in the way they handle it: liberal democracies deny it, consociational democracies institutionalize it and ethnic democracies partially allow and partially subordinate it. These three different strategies are evident in the way representative cases of Western democracies, namely the USA, Switzerland and Estonia, respectively, cope with societal diversity.     

Free speech,toleration and equal respect: the Bolt affair in context

It is a rare moment when free speech becomes a potent political issue within the Australian polity. But the Andrew Bolt affair, the Abbott government's subsequent move to repeal §18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), and its ultimate abandonment of this reform, is one of those moments. This article seeks to place these political events in a broader political and philosophical context, investigating how the conflicts and tensions to which these events gave rise can be understood in terms of competing perspectives within a wider liberal tradition, producing rival imperatives centred on free speech and equal respect. The differing priorities which these competing liberal perspectives placed on free speech and equal respect give rise to two very different conceptions of toleration, and its application within liberal democracies.     

Security journalism and ‘the mainstream’ in Britain since 7/7: translating terror but inciting violence?

News reporting of terrorism, in the form of security journalism, faces a set of challenges to the functions it serves as a result of both its own practices and the changing practices of news consumers. Security journalism performs some predictable functions, namely the regular delivery of representations of terrorist threats to a presumed national (and international) audience through coverage of Al‐Qaeda leaders’ speeches, bomb attempts, criminal trials, and ‘radical’ protests in Britain, among others. Security journalism offers a consistent repackaging of jihadist media productions from one context and language to another. For example, in reducing jihadist texts to short clips of an angry gesticulating man security journalism is prohibiting public understanding of their persuasive potential by cutting any political, religious or sensual appeals. This article presents original data from interviews with British Muslims familiar with jihadist materials that suggest mainstream media reporting may contribute to radicalization in ways not sufficiently appreciated by journalists, policy‐makers and the public. Interviewees report that any news depicting Muslim suffering activates and reinforces frustrations and grievances, whether the source is a mainstream media outlet or Al‐Qaeda's media wing. Mainstream media may unintentionally contribute to a more enduring but diffused resentment a priori to the existence of jihadist media; as one participant says, ‘I am already convinced’.     

The political economy of the print media and the decline of corporate investigative journalism in Australia

Newspapers in developed economies are experiencing declining advertising and circulation revenues, closures and cutbacks. Investigative journalism's normative role has been described as scrutinising concentrated power sources in liberal democracies. This article examines investigative reporting by the Australian print media that has exposed corporate wrong-doing from affluent times to the current era of newspapers' financial hardship. Applying two content analyses, the article examines business investigative journalism from selected newspapers and specific categories of the peer-reviewed Walkley Awards. The socialist tradition identifies corporate power above other groups in society, and this article finds in accordance with political-economic theories that mainstream newspapers have become conspicuously absent in their investigative role in detecting and exposing corporate transgressions. I conclude that this failure was most notable prior to and during the Global Financial Crisis, and this has implications for the exercise, and scrutiny, of corporate power in Australia.

发达国家的报纸遭遇了广告和发行的滑坡,还有倒闭和削减。调查性新闻的规范角色被描述为自由民主体制内的监督力量。本文考察了澳大利亚印刷媒体从丰裕时代一直到如今报纸财政艰难岁月,对公司过失所做的调查报道。本文使用了内容分析,从选择的报纸和同行评审的Walkley奖的特定类别对商业调查做了研究。社会主义传统认定公司的权力高于社会其他群体,本文同意政治经济学理论,指出主流报纸在履行揭露公司违法不端的调查职责时,是明显缺席的。笔者的结论是,在全球金融危机之前及之中,这种缺席是再明显不过了。这个结论对于公司力量的运动和监督,或许有参考意义。     

A Critical Note on ‘The Rise of Illiberal Democracy’

Almost a decade ago, Fareed Zakaria published an article claiming that ‘illiberal democracies’, i.e., countries combining the presence of free and fair elections with the absence of constitutional liberalism, were on the rise in the present; and were beckoning as a new species of democracy in the future. In this research note, I revisit and reassess Zakaria's claim. On the basis of a simple conceptual critique – that it is logically necessary to treat the two components of liberal democracy as different attributes, conceptually independent of each other – I reach an equally simple empirical conclusion: illiberal democracies were not really on the rise in the 1990s and they have decreased rapidly in the 2000s. The latter finding even comes out using Zakaria's own, arguably flawed, conceptualization.     

Reluctant liars? Public debates on propaganda and democracy in twentieth-century Britain (ca. 1914–1950)

The place of propaganda in a democratic society has been discussed long before the age of fake news, as the heated debate on this issue that took place in the UK and other democracies from around 1914 to 1950 clearly shows. Drawing upon a variety of published and archival sources, the article examines the changing views of British political elites, intellectuals, publicity experts and the public on the proper role of government in the public sphere, while discussing their influence on government policies and exploring the light they shed on British—and, more broadly, liberal democratic—culture and identity.     

The Politics of Reconstructing National Identity: A Corporatist Approach

In both liberal democracies like Australia and Canada and autocracies like Singapore, the state has stepped in to try to manage ethnic claims that had hitherto been marginalised or suppressed. Once the concept of corporatism is rescued from its recent economic-focused excursion, it provides a framework within which to examine new state strategies for managing ethnicity, and the resultant politics of national identity. The states have sought to license or create ethnic institutions as channels for ethnic interest articulation, for ethnic elite cooptation, and for the funding and political control of ethnic assertions. The corporatist strategies for ethnic management imply also attempts by the states to unify the disaggregated polyethnic societies by seeking new myths of organic national unity. The attempts to manage ethnic politics within these new institutional and ideological parameters generate tensions which exacerbate rather than ameliorate the decline in state authority.     

But will they fight and will they die?

Behind the international political planning and rhetoric of future alliances and force design lie the very practical questions about who will volunteer for armed forces in the liberal democracies and whether or not they will display the expected traditional virtues. We know so little about the motivation of present servicemen and women, let alone of those we expect to join in the future. Military identity, however, has hitherto reflected national identity, which has assisted with unit cohesion, particularly among those who take the greatest personal risks. The author of this article assumes that within a generation there is a strong likelihood of mixed-nationality and multi-identity armed forces down to and within the smallest 'unit' of military power, the ten-man infantry section. There is another danger: these 'specialists' may develop the characteristics of mercenaries or militarists with extreme tendencies. The possibility of escalation from humanitarian intervention to intense military conflict is always present, even if the mission is one that starts off as benign. The credibility of military action and future effectiveness of force structures currently being planned are by no means assured. Missions that in theory should succeed may in practice fail spectacularly.     

The Rise of Vo¨lkisch-Nationalism and the Decline of German Liberalism: A Comparison of Liberal Political Cultures in Schleswig-Holstein and Silesia 1912-1924

Historians have tended to focus on political economic and political organisational factors in order to explain the rise of liberalism in the nineteenth century and the decline of liberalism in the twentieth. But these factors tell only part of the story, particularly in the German case. For the precipitous decline of German liberalism after 1890 cannot be understood without examining the rise of Austro-German völkisch (ethnic) nationalism in the same period. Comparing Germany's two most liberal regions, Schleswig-Holstein and Silesia, this article argues that liberalism became increasingly dependent for its political survival on an accomodation with ethnic nationalism. It is hoped that such a comparison will lead to a reexamination of the conventional ways in which German liberal success and failure are understood, and a re-evaluation of what it meant to be a liberal in Germany and Europe during the first third of the twentieth century.     

Between Disagreement and Consensus: Unravelling the Democratic Paradox

The idea of a rational consensus has become an increasingly controversial dimension of recent democratic theory as radical democratic theorists have challenged the ways in which liberal democracies deal with political disagreement and contestation. As a result, several theorists within the liberal tradition have attempted to incorporate models of dissent in their democratic arguments but this paper contends that they tend to result in forms of majoritarianism or proceduralism which reflect the original limitations that inspired the radical democratic critique. A more useful approach is one that recognises that contestation is inherent to democratic politics and understands that the paradox of democracy is the need to embrace the impossibility of establishing rational consensus in democratic practice.     

Generating a voice among ‘media monsters’: hybrid media practices of Taiwan’s Anti-Media Monopoly Movement

This article assesses how social movement actors strategically use a hybrid mix of social and traditional media to organise political actions in an attempt to influence media and public agendas. Using the case study of the Anti-Media Monopoly Movement in Taiwan, it investigates how the activists’ use of social and mainstream media contributed towards their collective action and mediated visibility. We argue that the effectiveness of social media activism is augmented by the activists’ engagement in protest actions and tactics catering to news media logics. Through their hybrid media practices, the activists were able to mobilise local and overseas groups into forms of collective and connective action and amplify the impact of protests.     

Media literacy: the UK’s undead cultural policy

This article examines media literacy in the UK: a policy that emerged within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the late 1990s, was adopted by the New Labour administration, and enshrined in the Communications Act 2003. That legislation gave the new media regulator, Ofcom, a duty to ‘promote’ media literacy, although it left the term undefined. The article describes how Ofcom managed this regulatory duty. It argues that over time, media literacy was progressively reduced in scope, focusing on two policy priorities related to the growth of the internet. In the process, media literacy’s broader educative purpose, so clearly articulated in much of the early policy rhetoric, was effectively marginalized. From the Coalition government onwards, the promotion of media literacy was reduced further to a matter of market research. Today, if not altogether dead, the policy is governed by entirely different priorities to those imagined at its birth.     

The mediatisation of war in a transforming global media landscape

Before the rise of digital new media technology in 2002, ‘old’ media at its heart displayed a fundamental division between sender and receiver, a division which for a long time had structurally, materially and politically conditioned the nature of the relationship between ‘old’ media and war. Within the recently emerging digital new media technology, however, this age-old separation between sender and receiver has been eroded. Thus, alongside traditional media platforms, an entirely new form of media technology has arisen. This development has transformed the hitherto multipolar nature of the old media landscape and has led to a heteropolar global media landscape, in which the relationship between media and war has been altered. By exploring how digital new media poles are forming and old media poles are evolving, this article examines how this seismic shift in the global media landscape requires a redefinition of the understanding of the nature of the relationship between media and conflict today.     

也谈建国初期私营传媒消亡的原因

从1949年到1952年底,我国新闻业初步完成了转型,形成了集中统一的宏观体系格局,为社会主义建设的全面展开做好了准备。在这一新体系建立的同时,私营传媒迅速消亡,但经营不善并不是私营传媒消亡的主要原因,私营传媒的消亡是由其所有制性质、活动特征以及意识形态属性决定的,是上层建筑适应经济基础的表现。此外,党和国家集中统一的新闻业体系的迅速建立也使私营传媒失去了存在的价值和空间。     

Metrics,models and the meaning of media ownership

Concentrated media ownership has become an increasingly salient issue in the context of global demands for social justice and democracy. This article calls for cultural policy analysts to highlight issues of media ownership and maps out three approaches to ownership that are designed to provide a more holistic account of the problems and potential solutions. Attention is first paid to ‘metrics’ and the gathering of quantitative data; next, to the generation of normative models of media ownership; and then, to an ideological perspective on ownership that locates it in relation to systems of thought and action that privilege particular ways of thinking about and ordering the world. By arguing for a renewed focus on ownership that is based on the integration of all three perspectives into a more holistic methodology, the article aims to provide scholars with a conceptual and a strategic framework for understanding and intervening in ongoing debates about the dynamics of contemporary cultural industries.