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Due to their special nature, the economic-social rights (ESRs) – compared to civil-political rights (CPRs) – entail distinct legislative methodology. This is still a nascent area of knowledge globally. ESRs are increasingly pivotal in the trending populist governments. Also, there is growing practical clarity on the paradigm of indivisibility and interdependence of ESRs and CPRs. However, unlike CPRs, the ESRs continue to be seen as resource-contingent, and therefore not amenable to legislative regulation but to 'progressive realization' through policies. This article foremost contests that, and instead asserts that ESRs too are legalisable and even justiciable, though differently from CPRs. It illustrates this from a lapsed national health bill of the Indian government, drafted and steered by the author. The matrix comprising the right to health and an Indian legislative initiative is used: the right to health as a particularly complex ESR; and India as a representative democracy with rising influence of privatisation and a declining legislature. Secondly, this experience demonstrates that ESRs need alternative concepts, techniques and practices of legislating. The unfolding nature of ESRs and their deep political-economic entrenchment require nimble and intricate negotiations among competing stakeholders. This makes the ESR laws evolving non-linear processes more than finished end-products. Also, process heaviness makes their legislation necessarily complicated and slow. Thirdly, the case study shows, legislating on ESRs invokes a qualitatively different understanding of democracy. Since ESRs essentially involve multiple interest groups and the larger regulatory framework comprising both the legislature and the executive, they implicate innate democratic values. In the contemporary de-democratisation context, their long-drawn legislative process – even a disingenuous one, initiated only for legitimacy – could counter-intuitively bolster deliberative democracy. For all three reasons, the process itself – besides the enacted law, the product – deserves recognition as an underexamined critical success-indicator of legislative methodology, especially for ESRs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poland is a case of a state in which the role of legislative bodies in the political system has been gradually reduced at the various levels – national, regional, and local. Recently, this process has been related to executive aggrandisement observed in Poland, but the roots of this phenomenon can be traced back to the political transformation of this country observed after 1989. At the national level, the deteriorating legislative role of parliament manifests itself in four general processes: (1) The executive power treats the Sejm (lower chamber) as a subordinate institution. This involves formally introducing laws forced by the government in the form of proposals written by members of parliament (MPs) (as a way to shorten the legislative process and limit public consultations required by law); (2) Speeding up of parliamentary works – the Sejm is treated as a voting machine and not as a forum where debates and discussion take place; (3) Public consultations are superficial and the regulatory assessment impact is minimal; (4) The influence of the opposition on legislative processes is reduced to almost zero. Similar processes can be observed at the regional and local levels. The subnational legislative bodies are often under the control of executives. Instances of voting with no or limited discussions (favouring the governing majority) can be sometimes observed during the sessions of local and regional councils. This paper analyses the weakening of the legislative function in Poland at different levels, using a qualitative approach and data from desk research, media analysis, in-depth individual interviews and focus group interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and why does legacy news media move from protecting to undermining democracy? Several studies argue that journalism can facilitate and shape democratic backsliding. However, evidence is scarce and, to some extent, limited to the content analysis of news outputs and editorials. The causal mechanisms of an anti-democratic role for the press and how it is operationalised into specific processes of news production remain largely misunderstood. Using 36 semi-structured qualitative interviews and three case studies, this paper analyses journalistic practices and role perceptions in Brazil within a period of constant decline in the quality of democracy (2016-2021). The results show that labour precarity is a crucial driver in journalistic practices capable of damaging democracy, which challenges previous assumptions that media capture is mostly influenced by the political economy of news organisations. This research also indicates that journalists are not homogeneously dominated by the interests of elites and can engage with them on their own terms to advance personal agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the anti-gender movement in Central and Eastern Europe, as a part of the global phenomenon. Based on both the subject literature and the author's own research, it points out its anti-democratic character and its role in de-democratizing change in the region. Although the main features and strategies of the movement are common on the global or European levels, its developments in the CEE region are unique: the state policies incorporate the political agenda of the anti-gender movement or even the actors of the anti-gender movement effectively affect the state policies. As the main actors apply the strategy of staying behind the curtain and steering from the backseat, the main research problem lies in revealing their role, which is why the most successful analyses result from combining local research with the international exchange of findings and comparative analysis. The anti-gender movement in the CEE region has succeeded in two main fields: anti- abortion and anti-LGBT+ policies, and these two fields are taken into account in the paper, while the others are only mentioned. State homophobia is associated with Putin's Russia, especially after February 24, 2022, it is also typical for several countries of the CE region, including European Union member states. Strict anti-abortion law has been developed in Poland, which is why author's research focuses on this aspect. The case study analysis of Ordo Iuris, the Polish flagship of the local anti-gender movement, offers a significant example of a local level of the anti gender network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A considerable and growing body of literature has engaged in a critical reading of the nature and substance of shifts in not only the business practices, but the conditions for the very raison d'ėtre or telic identifiability of universities under current strategic political arrangements. Moving beyond the practices of academic economy in the business of higher education that reduce the intellectual worker to academic labourer enduring multiple forms of alienation, the paper considers what kind of critical setting there may be for reimagining the university in non-nostalgic ways. While the paper takes its cues pre-eminently from the Australian Higher Education Provider sector, it draws on the overlapping political theorising particularly from the N. American critics Wendy Brown and Henry Giroux. From their critiques of neoliberalism, the paper argues that asking what universities are for does not fare well when higher education institutions are subjected to neoliberal rationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The administrative systems of universities attest to a shift towards more managerial forms of leadership. This article outlines how strategic management was introduced in Finland in the 2000s and how this led to a significant de-democratisation of the university organisations, despite academic communities' resistance and explicit preference for democratic self-governance. The article illustrates how strategic management informed the reconceptualization of Finnish higher education in legislation (nationally), to de-democratise and to structurally reform the HE field, and in practice (locally), to drive through desired administrative reconfigurations. This anti-democratic transformation is embodied in a new institutional model: foundation universities, which have been presented as the flagships of Finnish higher education policy, are also vehicles of de-democratisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theorizes the nature of neoliberal social policy, making three substantial contributions. First, processes of "economization" are identified as a central characteristic of neoliberalism: economization constitutes a "bridge" between Foucauldian and (neo-)Marxist accounts of neoliberalism – two perspectives that are in many respects hardly reconcilable – because extending the economic logic to non-economic areas (neoliberalism as a governmental rationality) also potentially increases the profit-making opportunities in previously uncommodified domains (neoliberalism as a capitalist project). Second, the paper links economization processes not only to projects of austerity and welfare retrenchment but also to the more generous "social investment" agenda. Third, the paper highlights the central paradox of neoliberal social policy, whereby higher degrees of economization are associated with more generous social policy: more "social" versions of neoliberalism are those that ironically downplay the social logic, transforming social policies into economic investments. The paper also discusses the problems related to economization in terms of de-democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although middle powers are expected to behave as supporters of international organisations, cooperation, and as promoters of norms and ethics, as well as providers of international public goods, they are not immune to current global 'de-democratisation' processes. The authoritarian turn challenges the patterns of behaviour of middle powers. This article discusses the changes of middlepowermanship engagement by presenting an analysis of middle powers' foreign policy and their narratives thereof. We analyse whether and how middle powers experiencing democracy backsliding have changed their language of political communication and contribution to international relations. We argue that the redefinitions of middle powers' foreign policy remain in line with their broadly understood foreign policy culture, that is that a middle power embedded within consensus-oriented domestic political context is less likely to change its foreign policy than a middle power embedded within conflict-oriented domestic political context. The argument is substantiated by an analysis of political behaviour of Indonesia, representing the former, and Brazil, representing the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper considers how the re-framing of regulation, in ways that have allowed an inter-penetration of private sector mentalities and actors with state regulators, have combined in the UK to produce both a de-democratisation and the erosion of social protection. It does so through an exploration of the enforcement of law designed to regulate business. In particular, I examine enforcement and regulatory policy at Local Authority level under the guise of the Better Regulation initiative and, then, conditions of austerity. These contexts have produced the opportunities for reframed – that is, specifically, marketised – forms of regulation which prioritise the interests of business over social protection. The paper also argues that they have been crucial in producing conditions whereby the fire at Grenfell Tower must be partly understood – conditions of de-democratisation and the decline of social protection.

Scholarly debate in the last decade intensively stresses the de-consolidation and dedemocratisation of (some) political regimes in East-Central Europe, above all the Hungarian and Polish cases are reflected. Next to other aspects, such debate emphasized the confusion regarding the typology of regimes that objectively respect the basic democratic pre-conditions but tend to limit the liberal democracy or even transform into the "less-thanfully- democratic" regime. The aim ouf our article is firstly to reflect the contemporary debate about the regimes located within the "grey zone of regimes", i.e. between the ideal types of liberal democracy and authoritarian regime. We specifically stress the hybridization of regimes within the theoretical framework and search for typology of "hybrid" regimes. Secondly, we apply the concept of "hybrid" regimes on the Hungarian case, understanding this regime as role model case in East-Central Europe. The analysis of the Hunagarian case is placed into the broader theoretical debate about de-democratisation and de-consolidation of democracy in East-Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the practices deployed to de-democratise elements of the Irish planning system. It does so through scrutinizing the processes by which a new streamlined planning procedure for large scale residential developments was institutionalized. The paper investigates how a development lobby group successfully prompted the institutionalization of this streamlined procedure by momentarily capturing the policy formulation agenda surrounding a housing crisis. It demonstrates how this was achieved by defining problems regarding the democratic character of the planning system and accruing agency through solution specification and resonance with the ideologies and rationalities of pertinent political and senior civil servant decision makers. The paper undertakes this analysis by situating a discourse analytical approach within the Multiple Streams Framework. In doing so, the paper provides an original contribution to academic scholarship through novelty of theoretical application on a disquieting aspect of neoliberalism in a planning context that as yet has received limited attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a large segment of the urban poor in Kampala, Uganda, street vending has long served as a key livelihood strategy in the absence of formal employment opportunities and a public social safety net. This article explores the effects of de-democratisation on the rights of street vendors in Kampala, describing how changes to local government institutions and processes have forced vendors to adopt new strategies to assert their rights in an environment of closed political space. It argues that for street vendors in the city, economic and social rights are fundamentally rooted in political rights. As de-democratisation has robbed them of their political rights, it has also robbed them of their ability to assert their right to engage in their economic activities, leaving them increasingly vulnerable and marginalised. Barring a fundamental change in the city’s political landscape, the hardships that vendors face appear to have no end in sight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2006 and 2017, the political power in the Republic of Macedonia was predominantly held by the Christiandemocratic party VMRO-DPMNE. Its increasing opposition to gender and sexual equality manifested, inter alia, in the imposition of an antidiscrimination law, which did not explicitly recognise sexual orientation as a ground of discrimination, the replacement of the rather liberal abortion law with a restrictive one, and the two attempts to constitutionally define marriage as a heterosexual union. Building upon earlier inquiries into the development of the LGBT movement in Macedonia and the introduction of the new abortion law, I examine here the discourse which the ruling coalitions used to justify the removal of the term 'sexual orientation' from the antidiscrimination law, and the need for a constitutional definition of marriage. I explore further how the authorities pushed their conservative agenda by undermining democracy through infringement of the official legislative procedures and suppression of dissent. In closing, I underline the retrograde impact of de-democratisation on the already and the yet to be attained progressive legislation and practices in the realm of gender and sexual equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception of Turkey as a model of attractive country in the region has started to change in the recent years. In the first decade of the JDP rule Turkey was seen as an emerging power with its strong economy, improving democracy and inspiring foreign policy. However, the developments since the Arab Uprisings in the neighbourhood, Gezi movement at home, end of the Kurdish peace process, as well as coup attempt and subsequent de-democratisation harmed the soft power of Turkey. This study argues that the JDP’s understanding of democracy and democratisation has been full of flaws from the very beginning of its rule. The Turkish example shows that countries can experience subsequent processes of de-democratisation and de-democratisation if governing parties did not endogenise the basic norms of democracy. Therefore, it is argued that the reverse wave of de-democratisation characterises Turkey more than the “selective” processes of democratisation. It is also argued that JDP elite via its discourse has been constructing the West as the ‘Other’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the complex and continuously evolving processes of de-democratisation evident in urban planning practice in Sydney between 2011 and 2017. New South Wales' successive rounds of planning reform, establishment of a metropolitan commission, and amalgamation of local governments over that period have aimed to reduce local democratic participation in planning decisions, but they have had uneven success. I argue that while New South Wales' efforts to streamline development and de-democratise planning have evolved considerably in response to multiple forms of opposition, the success of the neoliberal project is still uncertain. The insights this story offers add complexity to theorists' claims about the inevitability of depoliticisation and the end of meaningful democratic engagement. The story also offers insights about how power is created, lost, and regained in particular local circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an ethnographic analysis of shifts in the political economy of one key district in Afghanistan, in order to analyse the links between elections and shifting constellations of power at the local level. Drawing on field research before and after the elections of 2009, 2010 and 2014, it suggests that elections have enabled a small group of the ruling elite to further solidify its grasp on local political and economic resources. The resources and opportunities generated by elections have been used by political elites in order to strengthen patronage networks and consolidate local hierarchies. This outcome, essentially the obverse of the proclaimed objectives of promoting democracy through electoral processes, raises questions about the assumed relationship between elections and democratisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]