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This article contributes to the literature on democracy in Africa, using the concept of 'corruption tolerance' to understand the citizenry's support for democracy. Using data from rounds 3 and 7 of the Afrobarometer in eighteen and thirty-four African countries, respectively, the study contends that those who are used to solving problems through corruption believe they are effective within the current system and that strengthening democratic institutions can shut down the channels through which corrupt people pursue their interests. Therefore, people's tolerance for corruption is expected to decrease their support for democracy. Empirical models consistently confirm this expectation, highlighting the role of 'corruption tolerance' in explaining African citizens' lack of support for democracy and democratization. This sheds light on the perspective of African studies. KEYWORDS: Afrobarometer; corruption; corruption tolerance; democracy; public opinion, INTRODUCTION Corruption is defined as the abuse of public office for personal benefit. (1) It has been cited in the literature as one of the main obstructions to the proper [...]

Since its inception, public deliberation has been largely seen as an effective tool of inclusion and transformation within democratic politics. However, this article argues that public deliberation is not necessarily inclusive and transformative. These aspirations can only be achieved if certain conditions are met. The qualitative analyses drawn upon in this public deliberation study included virtual and face-to-face conversations between participants (N = 70) about opinions on eating together. The article examines factors that can impede food system transformation initiatives. This can be particularly problematic in low- and middle-income countries because corruptibility can reduce the stringency of food system transformation policy. This study was conducted with participants from the Dutch cities of Almere and Amsterdam. The article argues that public deliberation can be truly transformative when (1) it is institutionally sanctioned, and (2) participants in the deliberation are given more time to make their arguments and reconsider these arguments in light of what others have to say., Author(s): Harrison Esam Awuh [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) https://ror.org/04pp8hn57, grid.5477.1, 0000 0001 2034 6234, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University, , Princetonlaan 8 A, 3584 CS, Utrecht, [...]

I narrate a historical sociology of extension work undertaken at Queen's University, McMaster University, and the University of Toronto from the late 1800s through the early 1960s. University administrators positioned extension work as dedicated to the democratization of higher education. However, a critical analysis of archival data reveals that the rise and fall of extension reflected these universities' material interests and organizational goals relating to public relations, government relations, and enrollment growth. Further, extension programs at these universities were primarily oriented to providing alternative credential pathways to those seeking professional status as schoolteachers, accountants, bankers, and business managers. Indeed, extension leaders demonstrated substantial agency in the professionalization of these fields. Contributing to the historical sociology of higher education and the professions, I argue that the extension era in Ontario resulted in partial democratization of higher education whilst helping to construct mechanisms of social closure rooted in credentialism and professionalization. Dans cet article, je raconte une sociologie historique des programmes de vulgarisation entrepris a l'Universite Queen's, a l'Universite McMaster et a l'Universite de Toronto de la fin des annees 1800 jusqu'au debut des annees 1960. Les administrateurs des universites ont presente le travail de vulgarisation comme etant dedie a la democratisation de l'enseignement superieur. Cependant, une analyse critique des donnees d'archives revele que l'essor et le declin de la vulgarisation refletent les interets materiels et les objectifs organisationnels de ces universites en matiere de relations publiques, de relations avec le gouvernement et d'augmentation des inscriptions. En outre, les programmes de vulgarisation de ces universites etaient principalement axes sur la delivrance de diplomes alternatifs a ceux qui cherchaient a obtenir un statut professionnel en tant qu'enseignants, comptables, banquiers et chefs d'entreprise. En effet, les responsables de la vulgarisation ont joue un role important dans la professionnalisation de ces domaines. Contribuant a la sociologie historique de l'enseignement superieur et des professions, je soutiens que l'ere de l'extension en Ontario a entraine une democratisation partielle de l'enseignement superieur tout en aidant a construire des mecanismes de fermeture sociale enracines dans le credentisme et la professionnalisation., INTRODUCTION The university extension movement was an important chapter in the social history of Canada. From 1920 through 1960, far more Canadians participated in university extension programs than enrolled as [...]

Introduction 1094 I, Politics and Prosecutors: A Brief History 1096 A. A Bipartisan Space 1096 B. Reactive Prosecutors 1099 II. The Current (and Future?) Politics of Prosecution: Rising Partisanship and [...], Prosecution in the United States has long been political. But the nature of prosecutorial politics is changing. Once bipartisan and largely reactive, the politics of prosecution is more partisan and proactive, in ways that both reflect and amplify larger cleavages in American society. This Essay considers the upsides and downsides of this development. On the one hand, political contestation over prosecution democratizes criminal enforcement, stimulates public thinking and debate about the role and purpose of criminal law, and promotes local political agency. On the other, it risks falling prey to the same pitfalls that have impoverished American political life generally in recent decades: societal division, decline in reasoned assessment, difficulties forging sustainable compromise, and erosion of trust in institutions. The Essay concludes with some thoughts on how to maximize the upsides and minimize the downsides in this new era of partisan prosecutorial politics.

Abstract This article examines how violence against citizens affects their political attitudes and behavior in the long run, and how those effects vary over time. We construct and analyze a [...]

This article studies how independent theater in 1970s Spain challenges the hegemonic narrative of the Spanish transition to democracy as a negotiated and nonconfrontational process. Focusing on four case studies of highly successful plays, it argues that theater offered a space for dissent and for debating the process of democratization. Using archival material and oral sources, it proposes to study what Kate Elswit calls 'archives of watching' from testimonies of actors and audience members in order to problematize the memories of the performances. Moreover, examples of non-textual theater studied in this article cast new light on the debates about democracy and participation in the Spanish transition to democracy. Keywords: Spanish Transition; Spanish theater; democratization; Spain; performance, Forty years after the reinstitution of democracy in Spain, political discourse often resorts to the transition to democracy as the ethos of contemporary Spain. Politicians from parties that steered democratization [...]

Youth in Peru are inspiring the world., 'They have killed him, they have killed him with a bullet in the heart,' cried the mother of Inti Sotelo, one of the young men who lost his life in [...]

Abstract South Korea and Taiwan have developed very different sets of election campaign regulations. While both countries had highly restrictive campaign rules during the authoritarian era, they have diverged since [...]

In this paper, we study how political parties react to democratic transitions. We find that the structure of legislators' social networks plays a critical role in shaping their political interactions during the transition period, and consequently, the post-transition party systems that emerge. We focus on the Korean case, where the incumbent authoritarian party merged with one of its pro-democracy opponents to create a powerful and enduring conservative party under democratic rule. Using a novel individual-level dataset on all legislative members during the transition, we find that the merger was facilitated by dense social networks linking members of the merged parties, which I increased trust across the parties and reduced the difficulty of a merger. Conversely, we find that the paucity of ties linking pro-democracy parties hindered their long-term cooperation, despite their shared ideologies and policy goals. The study complements existing theories by providing a network-based explanation for the weakly institutionalized political party system that has characterized Korean politics since democratization. Keywords party formation, social networks, democratic transition, authoritarian successor party, South Korea, How do political parties respond to a democratic transition? More specifically, how do former authoritarian parties survive through democratic transitions, when countries implement competitive elections and abolish institutional advantages that [...]

Abstract. Access to finance is arguably one of the most critical challenges in starting a new business. In this study, we examine how the difficulty of obtaining bank loans based [...]

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION: OUTSOURCING TO DEMOCRATIZE 438 II. THE USES OF LANGUAGE USE 442 A. Quotation, Relevance, and Reliability 444 B. Linguistics and Democracy 451 1. Speech Communities [...], Judges interpreting statutes sometimes seem eager to outsource the work. They quote ordinary speakers to define a statutory term, point to how an audience understands it, or pin it down with interpretive canons. But sometimes conduct that appears to diminish someone's power instead sneakily enhances it. So it is with these forms of interpretive outsourcing. Each seems to constrain judges' authority by handing the reins to someone else, giving interpretation a democratized veneer. But in fact, each funnels power right back to the judge. These outsourcing approaches show a disconnect between the questions judges pose and the methods they use to seek answers. That disconnect allows judges to avoid normative and empirical decisions that are central to interpretation. Rather than taking a stand on which community's speech matters in a democracy, judges pick quotations they like or use empirical techniques like corpus linguistics without acknowledging the underlying choices they entail. Rather than identifying whom statutes address and considering their attitudes, judges speak for an audience to whom they do not listen. Rather than articulating what purposes canons serve, judges choose a rule that appeals. Outsourcing seems to alleviate countermajoritarian difficulties by democratizing interpretation and yielding interpretive certainty. But our common law adjudication system empowers judges to maintain indeterminacy, creating moments of provisional closure always subject to reinterpretation. Rather than evaluating how well judges resist the authority our system gives them, we should ask how well they justify the way they wield it. Really democratizing interpretation involves both considering methods to yield answers to judges' questions and recognizing any method's limitations. It also means acknowledging that interpretation remains presumptively open to contestation. Such openness and humility is implicit in the requirement of judicial reason-giving, and it democratizes interpretation more than outsourcing can.

Since regaining its independence in 2002, nation-building has been the focus of much scholarly research on Timor-Leste. National identity construction is a crucial aspect of this process, yet the ways in which this identity is officially represented has been largely overlooked. This article takes the national flag of Timor-Leste as a case study to explore the ways in which a historic East Timorese national identity has been symbolically constructed and visually embodied. By considering the potency of flags in an East Timorese cultural context, and by analysing the origins of Timor-Leste's flag alongside that of the political party Fretilin (Frente Revoluciondria do Timor-Leste Independente), it becomes clear that post-independence re-imaginings of its symbolism have rendered it a powerful national symbol in the contemporary nation-state., The recent nature of Timor-Leste's internationally recognised nationhood has prompted much discussion of the construction and consolidation of an official, independent national identity, as part of the ongoing nation-building project. [...]

There were large differences in the responses of Arab dictators to the Arab Spring protests. To understand these differences, I present a stylized model of how a dictator responds to mass protests for democratization in a polarized country with two ethnic or religious groups. In this model, the dictator's response crucially depends on oil revenues and his affiliation to either the majority or the minority group. I document that the model's predictions are consistent with the observed differences in the Arab dictators' responses. Hence, ethnic politics and religious divides may play an important role in political transitions and regime changes. (JEL D72, D74), I. INTRODUCTION The Arab Spring started with protests and demonstrations in Tunisia in December 2010, and spread across North Africa and the Middle East. Most dictators initially responded with a [...]

The 1980s and 1990s did not just generate excitement about the 'third wave' of democratization in Africa, but also the notion that a 'new-breed' of leaders had emerged. One such considered leader, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda, gained domestic and international acclaim as a visionary and pragmatic reformer. Upon attaining power in 1986, he claimed he was the bearer of popular democratic governance and was introducing a fundamental change to Ugandan politics. This article illustrates how Museveni's initial governance efforts generated positive democratic changes and high hopes for sustainable democratic success, and then elucidates how despite those efforts, he never intended to entrench democracy and constitutional rule. The analysis presented shows that from the inception of his rule, the changes he initiated--be they the so-called no-party democracy and ban on political pluralism, the removal of presidential term limits, or the removal of the presidential age limit--only entrenched and legitimized his power. By revisiting and shifting the historical narrative, this paper lends clarity to Uganda's current political context, illustrating how President Museveni, rather than consolidating democracy, skillfully replaced a more primitive and violent form of authoritarianism with a more efficient, and sustainable form. Keywords: Uganda, democratic governance, authoritarianism, elections, 'new-breed of African leaders', 'third wave of African democratization,' return of African authoritarianism., On September 27, 2017, Ugandans witnessed one of the more disturbing events in the country's recent history. In images seen around the world, men dressed in suits and ties (1) [...]

What role did the US play in one of the latest waves of democratization--the Central and Eastern European wave of electoral breakthroughs in the late 1990s and early 2000s? Did the US orchestrate it? Many in the region and even in the US assume that the US meddles in elections, often promoting regime change under the guise of electoral or (more broadly) democracy assistance. This study argues, however, that the US did not choreograph these revolutions. Instead, the US provided financial and technical assistance that supported various constituencies for reform and, importantly, brokered the diffusion of the 'electoral-breakthrough' model. If in the early period of the wave's eruption, the US helped put the model together, in the later period, the US broadened the scope and increased the speed of the diffusion process. The paper looks at the US role in the wave of Central and Eastern European electoral breakthroughs to add to the literatures on comparative democratization and diffusion, theorizing the overlooked role of brokers in diffusion waves., In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a wave of electoral breakthroughs (1) swept through some of the Central and Eastern European countries occupying the gray zone between democracy and [...]

This paper adopts Charles Tilly's political process model of democratization. We focus on one aspect of that model: coalitions. We draw on publicly available archival data from turnout figures, contentious politics and party politics in the former Soviet Union (FSU) to map out coalitions that move those polities toward and away from democracy. This cartographic approach to charting trajectories reveals greater variation than the democracy-dictatorship dichotomy and its variations ('hybrid regimes'). One conclusion we draw from mapping changes in coalitions is that the contraction of the polity in some FSU countries is a response to the growth of factionalized parties and personalized tyrannies., Trajectories of Post-Socialist Polities: The Big Picture, Explanations, and Coalitions The democratization experiences of countries from the former Soviet Union pose an analytical riddle: Why is there such variation in [...]

International institutions, including the transnational advocacy network for labor and workers' issues, can influence labor institutions during transitions to and from democracy. Through rhetorical and material support, these institutions can shape labor's relationship to the state. This article addresses the activities of 'global labor' in the recent transitions in Tunisia and Egypt, arguing that divergent strategies shaped incentives, expectations, and outcomes among workers and labor unions in each country. KEYWORDS: labor, unions, democratization., HOW CAN INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AFFECT DOMESTIC LABOR MOVEments in transitioning regimes? An understudied area of international influence is the network of organizations focused on labor and worker issues. How and [...]

In one of his articles on the requirements of large-scale democracy and political institutions, Robert A. Dahl warns students of political science by stating, 'in ordinary language, we use the [...]

What lessons from Latin America's democratization would be helpful in shedding light on the Arab Spring? The authors ran statistical tests on Latin American countries to determine which factors from [...]

ABSTRACT The Ennahda Movement, foundations were laid in Tunisia at the beginning of the 1970s by Rached Ghannouchi and his friends, has continued its existence as an Islamic movement for [...]

The present article looks at the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) through the lenses of policy analysis in order to assess the processes through which its stated goal to 'support and foster stability, security and prosperity in the countries closest to its borders' are transposed into practice and produce an impact on its neighbours. It proceeds from the assumption that due to the embeddedness of this policy in the enlargement policy it overstrains the institutional framework set up for this policy and leads to mixed results in its evaluation. If the focus of the entire neighbourhood policy has been recalibrated several times from its inception, its modus operandi suffered only limited alterations. This paved the way to an excessive bureaucratization of the entire policy, which impacted directly on EU's capacity to attain its core objectives. Keywords: European Neighbourhood Policy, external governance, democratization, bureaucratization, The European Neighbourhood Policy was conceived in the context of the 2004 enlargement when the qualms about the 'absorption capacity' of the European Union started to fuel fears with regard [...]

The electoral process can be considered as one basic component of a democracy and for this reason one way to evaluate the progress of a democratisation project is by looking at the development of this civic practice in terms of both quantity (voter turnout) and quality (voters' preferences). Focusing on the former, specifically the impact of political alienation on electoral participation as voter turnout this article will look at the challenges to democratisation posed by electoral politics. From the case of electoral participation in the Philippines, I ask the question: What is the relationship between political alienation and voter turnout in the context of the latter enjoying relatively high and sustained rates? Through a synthesis between the notions of political spectatorship, habitual voting and the learning approach towards analysing voter behaviour, I argue that electoral participation is a disempowered mode of participation resulting from the interdependence of sustained spectatorship and habitual voting. Keywords: democratisation, electoral participation, habitual voting, political alienation, Ranciere, Spectatorship, voter turnout, Political Alienation and Democratisation in the Philippines The electoral process can be considered as a basic component of a democracy or, specifically, as a source of legitimacy for government authority [...]

Democratization processes in most developing countries like Tanzania generate concern as to the extent to which they promote public accountability at the grassroots. Although there have been various interventions to improve governance at the national and grassroots level, little is known about citizens' ability to hold accountable their village government resulting from such interventions. This article argues that despite the democratization process that started in 1992 in Tanzania, citizens at the grassroots are still structurally and politically disempowered to hold their village government accountable. This is due to poor legal provisions and regulations guiding the functioning of village government and a poor information flow between village government and citizens, the low level of civic competency, and the poor participation of citizens in the decision-making process. This article draws draw on data that was collected in 2010 from the Kagera region utilizing interviews, questionnaires, observation, and documentary review. The sample size of the study was 120 respondents., Introduction Tanzania has embarked on democratization since 1992 following the adoption of multiparty politics with the aim of improving governance at all levels. Constitutional amendments in 1992 led to the [...]