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Political Democracy (political + democracy)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences66%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting33%

Selected Abstracts

The Indian Movement and Political Democracy in Ecuador

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2007
Leon Zamosc
ABSTRACT This article examines the implications of the Ecuadorian Indian movement for democratic politics. During the 1990s, the movement successfully fostered indigenous and popular participation in public life, influenced government policies, and became a contender in power struggles. But in the institutional domain, the participatory breakthrough had mixed effects. While the movement fulfilled functions of interest representation and control of state power, its involvement in a coup attempt demonstrated that its political socialization had not nurtured a sense of commitment to democracy. The evidence is discussed by reference to the proposition that civil society actors may or may not contribute to democracy. The article argues that the study of the democratic spinoffs of civil activism requires a context-specific approach that considers the particularistic orientations of civil associations and pays attention to their definition of means and ends, the institutional responses evoked by their initiatives, and the unintended consequences of their actions. [source]

Does Political Democracy Enhance Human Development in Developing Countries?

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2006
A Cross-National Analysis
Despite the considerable progress of human development (HD) in developing countries (DCs) during recent decades, vast differences still remain among such countries. The question thus arises of why these divergences persist. This cross-national study uses a larger sample of DCs to offer necessary testing of the impact of democracy on HD. This study adopts new measures of democracy featuring majority rule and political contention to estimate their correlation with three physical well-being indicators as well as with three school enrollment indicators. After controlling for several macro-level political and economic characteristics (state revenue and economic growth), the regression modeling for recent data from the 1980s and 1990s showed that democracies indeed achieved higher levels on the HD indicators used here. However, democracy was not a powerful predictor of changes in HD scores during the analysis period. Neither central government health or educational spending significantly altered HD. The conclusions offer a plausible explanation of why democracy in DCs failed to sustain its momentum in improving HD. [source]

Agency in the Discursive Condition

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2001
Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth
This article claims that postmodernity necessarily, and perhaps opportunely, undermines the bases upon which political democracy traditionally has rested; and that therefore some significant work must be done in order to redefine, restore, or otherwise reconfigure democratic values and institutions for a changed cultural condition. This situation presents the opportunity to explore the new options, positive openings, and discursive opportunities that postmodernity presents for political practice; for this the problem of agency provides a focal issue. The practices of postmodernity, taken together, represent substantial challenges, not just to this or that cherished habit, but to modernity itself and all its corollaries, including its inventions of objectivity, of "the individual" (miserable treasure), and of all the related values (project, capital, consensus and, above all, neutrality) which still underwrite so much of what we do as citizens, consumers, and professionals not to mention as more private persons, parents, and partners. Fortunately, postmodernity does not demolish all our most cherished beliefs, values, and practices; but it does require recognition of how those beliefs, values, and practices actually function and of what alternatives they suppress. [source]

The future of political campaigning: the American example

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2003
Dick Morris
Abstract The Internet will provide a way to force direct democracy to the fore, replacing many of the prerogatives now reserved for representative democracy. This is especially true in Europe where the continental integration of the economy has not been matched by integrated political democracy. Lobbying in the UK will become less relevant as the EU comes to predominate. Lobbying in the future will have to be directed downward , to mobilise the public , rather than upward, attempting to influence the Parliament. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications. [source]

Liberation regimes and land reform in Africa.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2007
Land politics transcending enmity in South Africa
Abstract Truthfulness, the norm of science, is etymologically related to trust. Both concepts are related to ,tree', as a symbol for grounded knowledge, for differentiation (the tree of knowledge), for uprightness and reliability (Searle, 1995). Truthfulness generates trust. Trust generates community. The land politics and trust project in South Africa (Askvik and Bak, 2005) investigated how trust relations intervened within and between government institutions engaged in redistribution and management of land. It enquired into trust relations between the land state and stakeholders in land. It assessed how the new ANC-controlled state intervened into the relation between market-oriented urban industry and subsistence-oriented livelihoods on communal land. Could that intervention explain the slow pace of land redistribution? The field work was done in the Northern and the Western Cape provinces. A hypothesis is that unconditional personal trust across institutional boundaries is a condition for post-colonial, post-liberation community building. In 2001, aspects of political democracy were in place. Trust relations between government institutions and to stakeholders in land varied, but were limited. Trusted mediators between the institutions, across cultures, were few and far apart. Subsistence-oriented livelihoods on communal land were there to be transformed to commercial farming. The three-step Government strategy, growth in the urban economy, commercialisation of rural subsistence production and rural welfare from the urban surplus, augmented separation, disbelief and distrust. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

A Critical Assessment of the Theoretical and Empirical Research on German Works Councils

BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2002
Carola M. Frege
The article reviews the existing English- and German-speaking literature on the German works council. Three major research topics are discussed: the ontology and typologies of works councils; their current practice and transformation; and their economic outcomes. Although much research has been conducted on the internal functioning of the works council,management relationship, it is clear that we still know little about the determinants of different workplace relations and their outcomes. The article concludes by advocating a reviving research interest in the link between codetermination and political democracy. [source]