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The article presents a call for papers for the meeting titled "Annual Allied Social Sciences Association Meetings" to be held on January 4-6, 2008 at New Orleans, Louisiana with a theme about inequality, democracy, and the economy. The Association for Social Economics members and nonmembers are encouraged to submit proposals for the New Orleans ASE program. The papers can be send by email of 300 words or less by May 1, 2007 to John Davis of University of Amsterdam and Marquette University. Guide questions are also included.

This critique examines some of the negative impacts of economic liberalism on the field of public administration. It suggests that public administration must rediscover democratic ethos and offers public deliberation and deliberative democracy as potential tools with which to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we focus on an important specific issue which has not received serious attention in the scholarly literature on euthanasia, namely, that of the coercive imposition (by way of sanction-backed regulations) of the practice of voluntary active euthanasia (in particular) on faith-based, aged-care organizations. In Section 1 we outline the relevant conceptual background drawing on existing literature. In Section 2, we consider two conflicting ethical standpoints on voluntary active euthanasia. In Section 3 we outline the nature and extent of the push to impose the practice of voluntary active euthanasia on Catholic-run aged-care organizations. In Section 4 we argue that the argument for coercively imposing the practice of voluntary active euthanasia on faith-based, aged-care organizations, is not well-made, especially in the context of liberal democracies committed to pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of referenda taking place in established democracies has been increasing, but oftentimes the use of referenda is controversial. This paper utilises two New Zealand national probability mail surveys collected before (2015; n = 901) and after (2016; n = 1350) the controversial flag change referendums initiated by Prime Minister John Key. We found that support for referenda increased from 54.5% in 2015 to 70.7% in 2016. We examined how demographics, party vote, political attitudes, and support for changing the flag related to change in support for referenda Younger age groups and those with moderate levels of education had larger increases in support for referenda. We did not find any evidence of 'loser effects' as National voters and flag change supporters were just as likely to increase in support for referenda as other voters and those opposing change, respectively. In summary, the results of this paper show that despite controversy, referenda have become more popular, especially among certain groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political theorists have been framing the problems of unfreedom and domination at work as inconsistent with the requirements of political democracy, undermining the democratic potential of the workplace and inducing psychological and status harm. Although these are important insights, political theorists are often unwilling to frame the hierarchical workplace as an issue of distributive justice. This paper, by bringing in the empirical literature on work autonomy, offers a framework to explicate the relationship between freedom at work and the distribution of essential goods at paid work. Through such framework, the paper argues that procedural and substantive freedom at work are essential to the fair distribution of the goods of work. By examining the empirical literature, the paper further argues that there exists a polarization of the goods of work between high-skilled and low-skilled labor, and the polarization offers a pro-tanto justification of workplace democracy for the least advantaged workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to assess changes in the perception of the state by students in the context of research concerning social capital. The paper studies whether the knowledge and the social competences gained during the three years of study are reflected in the perception of the state by young people. The paper uses the results of a survey analysis conducted at the universities in Poland and Lithuania. The theoretical part of the article presents chosen issues concerning social capital in relation to the state. The article presents conclusions regarding the assessment of changes in the perception of the state by young people in Poland and Lithuania in the context of democracy, social participation, trust and social norms. This research enables us to make a comparison of the results between the two countries and from two research periods and is an original contribution to the discussion about the role of the young generation in society. The results of the research indicate that the knowledge and the social competencies acquired during three years of study in most cases were not reflected in the change of perception of the state by Polish and Lithuanian young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars generally agree that regionalization and regionalism are different phenomena; however, unresolved arguments remain as to whether there is a causal relationship between the two. In particular, whether or not regionalization promotes regionalism is a subject of debate. This paper aims to comprehensively clarify and explain the relationship between regionalization as embodied in trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) and regionalism as characterized by preferential trade agreements (PTAs) using event history analyses of East Asian economic data from 1985 to 2018. The paper concludes that although a positive and significant relationship exists between FDI and some types of PTAs, trade has no relationship with the latter. This conclusion challenges extant literature, which has argued that an increase in PTAs in East Asia (the outcome of regionalism) is the consequence of economic interdependence (regionalization). Moreover, these findings indicate that political factors such as territorial disputes and joint democracy negatively affect certain types of PTAs. This result is contrary to the conventional wisdom that predicts increased cooperation and lower tariffs between democracies and therefore suggests further investigations of the determinants of PTAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional view of democracy is that people vote to signal what they want, thereby selecting the policymakers they believe are most appropriate. Political disenchantment and fits of socio-political anger, however, clash with this view. The paper deals with this inconsistency by discussing the relation between policy and the polity. It begins by contending that neoliberalism generated not only dramatic economic and social consequences but also a general lack of confidence in the polity. Drawing on insights from Adolph Lowe, it argues that neoliberal policies have not only structured economies in a "pro-market" fashion. They have also led people to internalize the rules of the neoliberal game on the grounds that "There Is No Alternative". Consequently, they created the consensus they needed to persist. On more theoretical grounds, policy is presented here not as a mere consequence of electoral conviction but as a means of persuasion. This suggests that policymakers are advantaged in shaping people's views of the economy and of society. Policymakers, however, include not only governments but also intermediate agencies: charities and other organizations. There is scope for these agencies to pursue alternative goals and advance views of the world that differ from the status quo [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy is an essential aspect in national-level governance to safeguard human rights and provide equal distribution of wealth among citizens that are also expected to bolster more rapid economic growth. However, the extant literatures show mixed result in providing evidence of how democracy will impact economic growth. In this paper, we, therefore, empirically examine the impact of democracy on economic growth and income inequality at the regional level by studying provinces in Indonesia. A panel data estimation is employed with 335 province-year observations to test our empirical model covering 34 provinces. We find that overall democracy is a detrimental factor to regional economic growth as higher level of democracy needs substantial cost to finance. However, our study reveals that democracy help reduce inequality across provinces as it may open up the possibilities to get more education for marginalized people which then implies for higher income for those people. Several policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To assess the merits and demerits of the content of Culp's educational programme, the paper does three things: First, it discusses whether Culp's defence against conceivable objections manages to effectively dispel the charge of cosmopolitan arrogance. Second, it spells out one implication of epistemic modesty, which Culp considers a core competence to be imparted by citizenship education. Third, it reflects upon the tricky task of motivating individuals to comply with the demands of justice. Taken together, the paper argues that Culp's case is impressively strong but nevertheless tends to suffer from a rationalist constriction. It does not leave sufficient room for tradition in private life and public reasoning. This rationalist constriction is problematic from a normative philosophical, and especially a practice-oriented viewpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a list of recent publications on e-government. Broadly defined for the purposes of this bibliography, e-government is the use of information and communication technologies by government. The growing body of literature on the subject is reflective of its growing practice. This collection of articles, papers, and books numbers over 150, with the majority appearing in the last five years. Some of the articles include: "Wired Government: Information Technology, External Public Organizations, and Cyberdemocracy," by J.H. Alexander and J.W. Grubbs, "Virtual Deliberation: Knowledge From Online Interaction Versus Ordinary Discussion," by J. Barabas, and "Three Scenarios for the Future of Technology and Strong Democracy," by B. Barber.

Autocratic control of civil society, including academia, can be extended to democratic societies and institutions in ways that pose threats to liberal-democratic values, such as academic freedom, for example through mechanisms and practices that lead to academic self-censorship. Engaging critically with the literature on 'sharp power' and 'authoritarian influencing' addressing this phenomenon, this paper argues that democratic actors who, without sharing the repressive goals of autocracies, contribute to their success in settings of international collaboration and exchange can become structurally complicit with such wrongs. Recognizing the risk of complicity is a necessary first step towards addressing the political responsibilities resulting from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses why on the one hand William Edmundson thinks that market socialism is superior to property-owning democracy, while on the other hand Alan Thomas thinks that an egalitarian version of property-owning democracy is superior to market socialism. For the purpose of this discussion, the concepts of property-owning democracy and market socialism are systematized and it is argued that those concepts, as understood by Rawls, do not exhaust the list of possible alternatives to capitalism and state socialism. Economic democracy, understood as mandatory workplace democracy, will be introduced as a middle ground, somewhat closer to market socialism than property-owning democracy. Against this background, it is argued that questions of transition and stability are important for deciding between these regimes and the importance of two realistic constraints in making this choice, namely egoism of powerful agents and path-dependency in institutional design, is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political theorists are familiar with the proposition that social capital in the form of trust, membership in voluntary organizations, and community engagement, is conducive to democracy. Corroborating empirical evidence exists but it is patchy and inconclusive because it is usually based on aggregate, often country-level data or isolated case studies, and the identified relationship is associative rather than causal. In this paper, I use some of the most recent large-scale micro-level datasets to establish that the relationship between social capital and democracy is indeed strong and causal as predicted by theory. I find that citizens who have more trust in others, attend community meetings, and belong to voluntary organizations tend to prefer democracy to any other kind of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major premise of this paper is that social and individual well-being depends significantly on people's capacity to learn and unlearn in communication with each other. This paper builds on social economic traditions that see communication and conversation as evolutionary generative and adaptive mechanisms through which individual and social learning occurs. Drawing on educational psychology and organizational behavior scholarship, five dynamic processes of conversational learning are introduced with the contention that they can help social economists understand at a micro level more deeply and more concretely how learning happens in the give-and-take of conversation. The paper explores the role of the state, organizations, and communities in fostering individual freedom and dignity, human rights, and economic democracy and concludes that the investment of value in people and their capability for purposeful action as social economic stakeholders can be enhanced through conversation as learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Capability Approach (henceforth CA) views poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon that is not only characterised by lows levels of achievement in the various dimensions but also by a restricted opportunity to choose among different ways of life. The CA thus puts a lot of emphasis on (limited) freedom of choice as a crucial aspect of poverty. If poverty is seen in this way there are two ways to improve the situation of the poor: by broadening the set of opportunities open to them or by strengthening their ability to choose. The paper concentrates on the latter. Although the CA discusses several possibilities for strengthening the ability to choose it does not explicitly consider the role of enhancing the capability of choosing as a means of poverty alleviation. The paper summarizes which circumstances are seen in the CA as suitable for strengthening freedom of choice. Namely, the paper discusses the market as an institution that trains the ability to choose, democracy as a political institution that is based on freedom of choice and participatory methods as an attempt to build explicitly on freedom of choice of the participants. Two shortcomings in the theoretical conceptualization of freedom of choice in the CA are identified by discussing these institutions and circumstances: first, the interplay between social structures and individual agency is not modelled in much detail within the CA. Second, the CA does not provide an explicitly temporal model of agency. The paper takes a closer look at these shortcomings from a sociological perspective since the questions they raise are core questions of sociology. The problems are intertwined. In order to tackle the problem of social embedding in the CA one needs to introduce time and processes as well. Sociological approaches show how social structures evolve from the interaction of individuals. The paper gives an example of how sociological concepts of this interaction can be used for drawing a model of social work for strengthening the agency of the poor. The paper proceeds as follows: first the view of poverty as capability deprivation is presented. The second section gives an overview of the areas in which the CA discusses the strengthening of individual choice: the market, democracy and participatory projects. The third section elaborates on the shortcomings of the CA identified in the preceding section from a sociological perspective and introduces a concept of social work developed in a similar theoretical context. The conclusion summarizes the lessons and outlines further lines of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Citizenship, nationalism, human rights and democracy are four terms and concepts that are inextricably linked. In Kuwait, the status of citizen is based on nationality, gender and age, with women, children, naturalised citizens, expatriates and bidoon (stateless people) denied many freedoms, rights and services. Citizenship is defined by some, feeling and practice. In Kuwait, the denial or limitation of the first makes the latter two all but impossible. Purpose: In this paper, I discuss the tensions between citizenship, nationalism, human rights and democracy within the Kuwaiti context and then explore how these are mirrored in the tangling of terms within the Kuwaiti national curriculum. Particular attention is paid to the Constitution and Human Rights (CHR) module, which introduced a form of national democratic citizenship education to the secondary curriculum (grades 10, 11 and 12) for the first time in 2006 but was then rescinded to grade 12 only by the 2009-2010 academic year. Students' perceptions of the concepts and their learning will form an important part of the analysis. Methodology: The student voices come from student research workshops carried out as part of a case study of a Kuwaiti government school. These workshops were carried out in the spring terms of 2009 and 2010 with grades 10, 11 and 12 classes; a total of approximately 180 students were involved. In small groups, students were asked to reflect on posters on what they learned in school about citizenship, human rights and democracy. Their responses were translated, coded and categorised by theme. The grade 11 posters were selected for this paper, as they provide a contrast between the 2009 students, who took the CHR module, and the 2010 students, who did not. Quotes that were selected forinclusion in this paper were those that had themes echoed by several other students. Conclusions: The CHR module shifted the focus from education for national citizenship to education for democratic national citizenship, as reflected in the contrasting student responses in 2009 and 2010. However, the module also inadvertently brought to the surface the inconsistencies and tensions between several of the concepts it was meant to educate about. This caused students to develop criticality, and, alongside their learning on human rights and politics, wasa potentially strong trigger for change from below. Its swift withdrawal fromthe curriculum, however, shifted the focus of citizenship education back tonationalism and patriotism. It also rendered students less equipped to effect change - a result that the more sceptical may believe was intended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper clarifies the usage of Albert Hirschman's categories of market behaviour as of exit and voice in debates about workplace democracy by taking seriously his critique of the neoclassical analysis of competition. Pro-market liberals are generally hostile to the idea of workplace democracy and tend to favour top-down hierarchies as a way of organising labour. This hostility is generally inspired by the neoclassical analysis of exploitation and efficiency, which leads them to defend distributions achieved through exit-based competitive equilibria. Following Hirschman, I propose to consider a hypothetical alternative: a democratic equilibrium, reached through the use of voice. I show that it would present the same appealing characteristics than its competitive counterpart while also accounting for the non-ideal conditions in which markets operate. Support for free markets should entail support for workplace democracy minimally understood as a strengthening of voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the International Panel on Social Progress and expounds key ideas from its first report, Rethinking Society for the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2018). It emphasizes the importance of three dimensions of progress on which serious challenges need to be addressed: equity, freedom and sustainability. Addressing these challenges primarily requires reforming power and governance structures in the economy, society, and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I defend the view that the democratic legitimacy of refugee admission policies requires the democratic inclusion of asylum seekers. I argue that this includes not only granting them formal participation rights, but also ensuring that they have a sufficient level of participatory capabilities to exercise these rights. This leads to the specific problem of asylum seekers with vulnerable minority backgrounds. Their participatory capabilities may be hindered by social injustice stemming from their state of origin which the receiving state, one might argue, has no duty to redress. Redressing inequalities that stem from social injustice in other states may be thought of as being beyond the limits of refuge, and therefore unreasonable to demand from receiving states. I propose a defence of what I call the Inclusion Thesis against this objection based on the idea that the democratic inclusion of asylum seekers is necessary for making sure that they can enjoy their basic right to have a say. Receiving states do not generally have a duty to rectify unjust inequalities among asylum seekers that stem from their states of origin. However, when this is necessary for making sure that they can enjoy their basic rights, they may be required to do so. Therefore, since receiving states have a duty to ensure that asylum seekers with vulnerable minority backgrounds can enjoy their basic right to have a say, they also have a duty to make sure that their participatory capabilities are equalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Cold War, the suspension of state sovereignty as a means of encouraging democracy has become a common policy instrument for hegemonic state actors. Deploying discourses of democratization, such interventions have promoted a singular narrative of state building, combining neo-liberal economic norms with a vocabulary of democratic participation. Drawing on the central comparison between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iraq, this paper argues that such technical narrations of intervention depoliticize both the planning and execution of democratization initiatives. This argument is made at two levels of analysis. At the policy level, the geopolitical contexts of intervention in Bosnia and Iraq are used to illustrate the normative nature of declarations of state competence. At the agency level, I examine processes of democratic reconstruction following conflict. In the cases of both Bosnia and Iraq, international administrations have equated the development of civil society with 'democratization.' Using detailed empirical evidence from Brcko District, Bosnia, the paper explores how these surrogate state agencies have used legal instruments to shape the conduct and institutions of civil society. Consequently, the examples of Bosnia and Iraq highlight the fraught moral and political questions prompted by contemporary practices of state building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the Zeitgeist of resistance in the present moment—the age of empire? This paper examines key contemporary interventions that invoke international norms to temper and rein in intervention and occupation. Even as they signal dissent, the paper concludes that these interventions turn away from the historical, deny ideological conflict and fail a counter-hegemonic politics. They return to an ahistorical domain of international law and humanist ethics that stands outside time and is blind to that privilege. This is a stance that may contribute to the production of legitimacy for empire, even as it seeks to curb its excesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role played by the public sphere in demanding the transformation of the police in line with the nascent democratic principles in Mozambican society. It examines the state-centric promotion of good governance through enhancing the technical quality of decision-making in the police and focuses in particular on the role of the public sphere and popular culture in transforming the institution of the police. The paper examines newspaper stories about the police and shows how these are interpretative cultural forms that are widely disseminated as part of dynamic social intercourse. Thus the primary data for this study are the created and expressive materials about the police that the new media in Mozambique disseminates in its fight against anti-democratic practices in the police. Stories written about the police, being genuinely popular and socially and aesthetically significant, may be understood as part of the domain of popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the research on social studies curriculum's influence on the social, moral and political attitudes of youth. It is argued that it is difficult to make a case for the social or educational significance of these findings given their small magnitude. Four alternative interpretations of this genre of research are presented. It is concluded that the social studies profession should focus primarily on the achievement of cognitive goals and that further research into curricular effectiveness without longitudinal data is of limited value. As an alternative to curricular effectiveness research, it is proposed that descriptions of the workings of exemplary programs become a major research priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes conceptual structures for research and instruction in critical thinking. The paper is comprised of three interrelated parts. The opening pages describe alternative definitions of critical thinking. A modification of the definitions used by B. Othanel Smith and Robert Ennis is offered in which critical thinking is defined as the "evaluation of evidence or argument based on acceptable standards for the purpose of accepting or rejecting statements." The second part of the paper examines two critical thinking paradigms--a "mental" and a "logical" paradigm, and implications of each are set forth. Empirical evidence for the construct validity of the mental paradigm is examined, and is generally found lacking. Finally, arguments for accepting the logical paradigm are set forth. The third part of the paper makes use of the logical paradigm as a basis for generating research problems. These are organized into four groups (1) philosophical/conceptual, (2) empirical/descriptive, (3) content analytic and (4) empirical/experimental problems. It is the purpose of this third section to provide a set of research problems, interrelated by virtue of their focus upon critical thinkng, on which a cumulative body of knowledge concerning critical thinking can be built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores what South African township youth presented as significant elements in their identity shaping. The youth participants were invited to take photographs and engage in reflective writing to explain the significance of what they had photographed. The theoretical framework is post modern and post apartheid views of identity, where language is the medium for expressing experiences, feelings and identity. We used a methodological framework of participatory research, in which participants engage in the process of research actively by reflecting on the lives of their own or their communities. Thirteen previously disadvantaged Grade 11 students took photos every day for a week. After which the students selected their most significant photos to write their narratives. This paper focuses on the texts that the students wrote to explain their photographs. The students' photos and texts showed that democracy, family, present context and culture, have most influence on young people's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2007, when Mexico City decriminalized abortion during the first trimester, a debate has been taking place regarding abortion and the right to conscientious objection (CO). Many people argue that, since the provision of abortions (or "legal terminations of pregnancy" as they are called under Mexico City's law) is now a statutory duty of healthcare personnel there can be no place for "conscientious objection." Others claim that, even if such an objection were to be allowed, it should not be seen as a right, since talk about a right to CO may lead to a slippery slope where we may end up recognizing a right to disobey the law. In this paper, I argue that there is a right to CO and that this may be justified through the notions of autonomy and integrity, which a liberal democracy should respect. However, it cannot be an absolute right, and in the case of abortion, it conflicts with women's reproductive rights. Therefore, CO should be carefully regulated so that it does not obstruct the exercise of women's reproductive rights. Regulation should address questions about who is entitled to object, how such objection should take place, and what can legitimately be objected to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the potential impact of social entrepreneurship, and especially microfinance, on development in Africa. Social entrepreneurship could play an important role in development. However, social entrepreneurship has limited potential for structural transformation and poverty alleviation, which calls into question the recent prioritization of social entrepreneurship. Furthermore, social entrepreneurship can undermine support for state-led development and democratic reforms that are the preconditions necessary for structural transformation and long-term, large-scale development. Thus, social entrepreneurship is best seen as a useful microeconomic strategy that can contribute to development in small ways, but that cannot possibly replace a democratic developmental state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the economics of electoral democracy, an almost entirely neglected subject. Running for office necessitates resources. But students of democracy have had almost nothing to say about how much money should be spent by candidates or where that money should come from. As a result, there is a gaping void in the theory of democracy. Joseph A. Schumpeter used a market analogy in his discussion of the electoral process, but even he did not discuss how electoral campaigns are to be paid for. In fact, the few citizens who largely fund campaigns for office in the United States purchase non-rivalrous influence. They obtain the ability to shape the policies that affect all citizens. In this way, political equality is undermined. The paper concludes that achieving a more representative political system can best be attained by treating political campaigns as a public good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul Dale Bush analyzed the conditions under which "progressive" institutional change is likely to occur. After 60 years of failed development policies, Africa is in desperate need of such change. However, the IMF and World Bank continue to support corrupt dictatorships and retard the forces of progressive institutional change. This paper outlines the case for a new policy approach that emphasizes democracy, accountability and economic flexibility as crucial ingredients to create the conditions for progressive institutional change in Africa. The paper develops policy recommendations emphasizing political conditionality and economic unconditionality to lay the foundations for a developmental state in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Cold War, much has been made about the crises that recurrently characterize the transatlantic relationship. Since the attacks of September 11th and the war in Iraq, such a crisis, according to many, has developed into a fully-fledged rift, which is beyond repair. The different views and policies of the US and EU in the Middle East are usually held as a paradigmatic example of the differences that exist between the two actors. The paper challenges this assumption and argues that the transatlantic rift, once the rhetoric is set aside, is not as deep as many suggest. In fact, through an in-depth analysis of how the democracy-promotion policies on the EU and the US are implemented, the paper shows that they are attempting to achieve similar objectives, under similar constraints and suffer from similar contradictions and shortcomings. The paper investigates such policies in the context of Tunisia, a country which, at least theoretically, should be moving forward towards democracy given the pro-democracy environment in which it operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for an approach to researching citizenship and democracy that begins not from normative convictions but from everyday experiences in particular social, cultural and historical contexts. The paper starts with a consideration of the ways in which the terms 'democracy' and 'citizenship' have been used in the discourses and approaches taken within mainstream studies of citizenship and democracy, drawing attention to some of the conceptual blind spots that arise. We call for more attention to be paid to contextual understandings of the politics of everyday life, and to locating state, ngo and donor rhetorics and programmes promoting 'active citizenship' and 'participatory governance' within that politics. It is this kind of understanding, we suggest, that, by revealing the limits of the normativities embedded in these discourses, can provide a more substantive basis for rethinking citizenship from the perspectives of citizens themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the development of democracy in Korea since the transition from authoritarianism in 1987, and its implications for critical analyses of Third World democratisation. Accounts of 'low intensity democracy' or 'polyarchy' have noted Third World democratisation for its constrained and elite-centred nature, and as an outcome of US foreign policy, which has sought to demobilise restive popular movements and extend the reach of global capital. However, the Korean general elections of 2004 saw the historic entry of the explicitly socialist Korean Democratic Labour Party (kdlp) into the National Assembly. A re-examination of post-authoritarian politics in fact shows a process of continuous contestation that belies the claims made by the polyarchy literature. Formal democratisation has by its very nature allowed for a counter-movement to be mobilised. The paper also examines the relationship between the kdlp and the mass labour union movement and argues that, while democracy has provided opportunities for participation by previously marginalised social forces, concomitant neoliberal restructuring has limited the development of the mass movements from which such political projects draw their strength. Thus, inquiry into the implications of democratisation for a progressive challenge to neoliberal capitalism must also extend beyond 'politics' to mass movements in the socioeconomic sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In parts of the developing world the fundamental requisite of democracy - stateness - is in recession. This paper engages the literature on failed states with regard to the implications for global democratic diffusion. The heart of the paper summarises and analyses the four main frameworks for assessing and responding to failed states. The status quo framework regards failed states as sick patients that can be revived. This state revival framework has a mixed track record, however, and many critics. The 'shared sovereignty' framework advocates quasi-permanent intervention in the most difficult cases of state failure. A third approach argues for the recognition of de facto sovereignty and the restructuring of de jure international boundaries when necessary. A fourth framework insists on a historically grounded analysis of modern statehood as a failed global project. The article's final section surveys the stateness - democracy nexus in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizenship education in established democracies is challenged by declining youth participation in democracy. Youth disenchantment and disengagement in democracy is primarily evident in formal political behaviour, especially through voting, declining membership of political parties, assisting at elections, contacting politicians, and the like. If citizenship education is to play a major role in addressing these concerns it will need to review the impact it is making on young people in schools. This paper reviews a major national project on youth participation in democracy in Australia set in the context of a national citizenship education programme. The Youth Electoral Study found that citizenship education in Australian schools has at best been marginally successful and substantially more is required to raise levels of democratic engagement. The paper explores many opportunities available to education systems and schools to address these issues through reconceptualising aspects of the formal and the informal curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analytical nucleus of this paper is formed through a consideration of some primary aspects of the interconnections between a resurgent imperialism and a contested terrain of democratic politics. There are three sections: in the first part an exploratory examination of significant elements of the contemporary literature on imperialism is developed. This includes a discussion of the relationality of imperial power, the differentiation of imperiality from imperialism and the neglected importance of the agents of imperialist power. The second section attempts to tease out some of the specificities of the USA as an imperial democracy set within a broad context of North – South relations. This leads into a final discussion of the geopolitics of democratisation. The paper is an exploratory treatment of certain features of an extensive conceptual and political terrain formed by the intersections between imperialism and democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the public role of mainline churches in post-apartheid South Africa and their interaction with the political discourse. The action of churches in the public sphere in the 1990s has been commonly defined as ‘critical solidarity’ and their voice was of support and alignment with the African National Congress ( anc ) position in the process of nation building. Through an analysis of political and religious discourse this paper aims to demonstrate that it is possible to identify a shift in the churches' action in the past five years, passing from a position of alignment and non-confrontation with the government to a situation of disengagement and critical opposition. This reshaped relationship highlights the internal and external difficulties of the anc in shifting from liberation to democracy. This is underscored by the generation of rhetoric and myth that preclude critical spaces, asserting the inalienable right of the anc to produce all political discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a study of letter writing amongst migrant workers on the Witwatersrand before World War II. It moves from a consideration of the paradoxical character of literacy amongst migrant mineworkers to a discussion about the history of privacy in South Africa. The paper suggests that both the field of popular culture and the politics of democracy can be better understood by paying attention to the particular forms of letter correspondence that have developed in 20th century South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many states use a classificatory approach to foreign policy: they put other states into particular categories and structure their engagement and relations partly as a result. There is one prominent modern international political theory – Rawls’ Law of Peoples – that seems to adopt this approach as an account of justified state behaviour. But should we expect this type of theory ultimately to prove attractive, justified and philosophically distinct compared to more instrumentalist rivals? This paper explores the challenges generic to any such account, not merely those relating to Rawls’ specific version, and surveys possible responses and their shortcomings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dewey was perhaps the foremost theorist and advocate of participatory democracy as an ethical ideal based on a belief and faith in human experience as a general theory of education that would generate the requisite aims and methods for what he called ‘organized intelligence’ and what we might call today ‘collective intelligence’ – that is, as he says, ‘faith in democracy is all one with faith in experience and education’. In this paper we revisit Dewey’sDemocracy and Education. An introduction to the philosophy of education(1916/2001) in order to evaluate the growth and development of democracy against the decline of social democracy in the West. We identify the three turns which separate democracy of Dewey’s times and democracy of today – the global, the ecological, and the digital turn – and relate them to changing notions of citizenship. We analyse complex interplay between the turns, and show that they cannot be understood and / or analysed in separation. While the identified turns have indeed significantly changed circumstances in which Dewey produced his understanding of democracy, we conclude that his work still carries a lot of value and call for its reinvention in and for the age of digital reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I sustain that the discourse of economics has become one of the most substantial contributors to the erosion of the democratic ideal. The first argument used in this case against economics concerns its attempt to be considered a neo-naturalistic science; the second, the fact that economics considers democracy contradictory to the expression of its scientific rationality and; the third, the fact that economics crowds out people from decision-making processes by pushing them into the hands of experts. Because partisan political programmes have essentially become economic programmes, economics should contribute to substantive democracy. In order to do so, an alternative discourse to mainstream economics must be proposed. An economics favourable to substantive democracy should, thereby, be political rather than naturalistic, pluralist rather than monist and, instead of crowding out people from decisions processes, should aim at the co-production of economic knowledge with those concerned by the outcome of economic decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critique of sustainable development and Agenda 21 from a variety of standpoints. Agenda 21-forged in the Rio de Janiero 'Earth Summit' in 1992-was shaped largely by Northern elites (governments in close association with large transnational corporations). Much of the environmental movement was co-opted into this process and remains profoundly weakened by its continued involvement. Agenda 21 sells a vision of global ecology which defines the major problems of the Earth in Northern elite and scientific terms (global warming, population growth, species extinction) while largely ignoring the key environmental issues as defined by the majority of the people, both in the North and the South .1 Agenda 21 has also been successful in selling a concept of sustainable development which continues to promote the Enlightenment goals of progress through economic growth and industrialisation at all costs. But it is worse than this: it also advances the globalisation of radical libertarian market systems, along with US style 'apolitical' pluralist systems of democracy. The paper concludes with the point that both sustainable development and Agenda 21 need to be rejected out of hand by environmentalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses governance, democracy and economic adjustment in India. The first part of the paper will focus on the evolution of the role of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from an international lending institution to a supervisor and facilitator of good governance. The second part of the paper explores the relationship between democracy and economic development in India and illustrates how the World Bank and the IMF have performed a consultative and supervisory role in overseeing the implementation of structural adjustment and stabilization in India during the 1990s. It will also show that a more overtly disciplinary role has been exercised by the World Bank in environmental and resettlement policy, and in trade and intellectual property by the U.S. government and the World Trade Organization

It has become a platitude in the academic marketplace that the world has recently become more democratic. Yet the world is also increasingly divided between rich and poor. Of the more than 30 countries that have seen some sort of transition away from authoritarianism since 1974, 29 had a 1976 per capita GNP under $3,000 (p 62). That is, what has been called a global democratic revolution has taken place primarily in developing countries still badly afflicted by poverty and inequality. The purpose of this paper is to explore some recent attempts to theorise about the relationship between economic underdevelopment and democracy, and how democracy can be consolidated, in the developing world. The paper divides recent writings into three types and discusses each in turn: neo-modernisation theory, economistic approaches, and analyses of civil society. It then briefly discusses the problems of consolidating democracy in north-east Brazil, the largest region of poverty in the western hemisphere, in light of the previous theoretical discussion. The conclusion offers an overall assessment of the theoretical approaches and a summary of the problem underdevelopment poses for democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks back at the cares of the sociologist Karl Mannherm, who died 50 years ago. It considers how far Mannheim's work remains relevant and discusses what lessons it may still have to offer Quoting Sir Fred Clarke as saying that educational theory and education policy that took no account of changes in the wider social order would be not only blind but positively harmful, the paper suggests that a similar case applies today. It therefore remains essential that Mannheim's legacy is preserved and that the sociological imagination is exercised in relation to contemporary education policy and education research . In the light of Mannheim's own shift from diagnosing the crisis to prescribing the remedies, the paper also reflects on how far it is legitimate for sociologist of education to make such a more. Finally, the paper consider how Mannheim's notion of planning for democracy might be superseded by more genuinely democratic forms of education policy-making in the aftermath of current neo-liberal policies of deregulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much debate exists over the role teachers should assume in the discussion of controversial issues. This paper presents and critiques four perspectives on that debate. The perspectives are characterized as exclusive neutrality, exclusive partiality, neutral impartiality and committed impartiality. Synthesizing research and scholarship from a number of fields, the paper proposes committed impartiality as the most defensible teacher role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 30 years, scholarship has produced countless books, essays, and articles on populism by investigating it from various perspectives and angles. This article seeks to contribute to this ongoing debate by offering a political-philosophical reconstruction of populism to define such a phenomenon from a multilateral perspective. The essay will proceed as follows: The first section will investigate populism from a purely political-philosophical position, while the second will discuss the constitutional effects of such a phenomenon, to define it mainly as a form of anti-liberal and anti-judicial redefinition of democracy. Moreover, the first section will expose the dichotomy between the so-called left- and right-forms of the populist model and the populist threat to democracy, where the second will address populist constitutionalism and its antithetic relation to liberal constitutionalism.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideologically committed to the neoclassical notion of "market discipline," the neoliberal regime is argued to promote principles of ethno-cultural neutrality and to create a level-playing field for all individuals regardless of race, class, gender, or other marker of minority status. However, in practice, neoliberal policies have increased the incidence of economic marginalization among lower and middle socio-economic classes in Europe, and have contributed to growing tensions between cultural majorities and ethnic minority groups. While similar sentiments associated with the rise of nationalism in nineteenth century Europe clearly predate the neoliberal era, in this paper I argue that neoliberal policies, backed by European Union institutions, have created material conditions which have exposed and widened structural incompatibilities between the notions of state and nation. Since the 1990s, these incompatibilities have legitimized the resurgence of radical nationalist sentiment within European nation-states, creating a favorable terrain for the populist rise of far-right factions. In lieu of promoting ethno-cultural neutrality, neoliberal policies have weakened liberal and social principles of inclusion, and have eroded welfare state provisioning systems in European democracies. They have fueled what Thorstein Veblen (1923, 28) referred to as "unreasoning habits of national conceit, fear, hate, contempt, and servility." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines tensions in implementing human rights education (HRE) in schools in Kurdistan-Iraq, both for teachers and for policy-makers, juggling nation-building and its application through schooling and child rights. We draw on documentary sources and fieldwork in two governorates, including classroom observations and interviews with education professionals. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child confirms the right to HRE, including learning to live together, stressing gender equity. In practice, rights operate in tension and may be denied in societal contexts where conservative, patriarchal values prevail. We report on teachers' attempts to reconcile tensions while facing limited resources. HRE is often perceived as low-status and taught without adequate consideration of everyday rights denials. Nevertheless, HRE is fundamental to democratic development and social justice and can equip citizens with skills and attitudes for a cosmopolitan worldview and peaceful development. Potentially, HRE can contribute to learners' self-empowerment and gender equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]