The International Crisis Group (ICG), a non-governmental organization that surprisingly receives most of its funding from governments (54%, according to its own website), on 6 July 2010 released a report titled "Indonesia: The Dark Side of Jama'ah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT)" (Asia Briefing no. 107).
The full text of the report can be read free of charge here:
www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-east-asia/indonesia/B107-Indonesia%20The%20Dark%20Side%20of%20Jamaah%20Ansharut%20Tauhid%20JAT.ashx
Excerpts: "Jama'ah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT), led by Indonesia's best-known radical [Muslim] cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, has been an enigma since its founding in 2008. An ostensibly aboveground organisation, it has embraced individuals with known ties to fugitive extremists. It has welcomed many members of the militant Jema'ah Islamiyah (JI) but clashed with the JI leadership over strategy and tactics. It preaches jihad against Islam's enemies but insists it stays within the law – though it rejects man-made laws as illegitimate. [...] It recruits through mass rallies and smaller religious instruction sessions in which Ba'asyir and other JAT figures fulminate against democracy, advocate full application of Islamic law, and preach a militant interpretation of jihad. [...]
"The [...] challenge for Indonesia is to manage the aspirations of the thousands who join JAT rallies for its public message: that democracy is antithetical to Islam, that only an Islamic state can uphold the faith, and that Islamic law must be the source of all justice. [...] Islamic teachings, according to JAT, are the absolute, most modern and most scientific truth and will be so until the end of time. Anyone who believes otherwise is a deviant, including followers of secularism, pluralism, liberalism and all other ideologies under their banners such as nationalism, communism, socialism and democracy. [...] For their own good now and in the hereafter, Muslims are required to live under a caliphate that applies Islamic law."
15 July 2010
Trend: Democracy in trouble
The "Washington Post" last week published two articles on the backlash against democracy (promotion). First, on 5 July, an opinion piece titled "Around the world, freedom is in peril" by Fred Hiatt, the paper's Editorial Page Editor.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/04/AR2010070403849.html
Excerpts: "As America this weekend celebrates the birth of its liberty, in much of the rest of the world freedom and democracy are in retreat. Over the past decade, authoritarian rulers have refined their techniques to stay in power, learning from each other and thinking two steps ahead of democratic forces. [...] They recognized the threat and mobilized, with old-fashioned methods and new. From China to Egypt to Cuba, political challengers were neutralized, as they always had been, by confiscation of property, imprisonment and torture, with the examples of a few chastening the many. The foolish mistakes of one regime – allowing elections before seizing total control of the election machinery, as in Burma in 1990 – were duly noted and not repeated.
"Dictators have learned from each other to stamp out any buds of independent civil society by means of tax laws and supposedly neutral regulation. With China in the lead, they learned not only to neutralize the World Wide Web but to turn it into an effective weapon for propaganda, tracking and repression of their own citizens, and attacks against democratic rivals. Taking advantage of their control of television, they mobilized ideologies of nationalism and anti-terrorism to undermine the rhetoric of freedom. So at decade's end, the correlation of forces, as the Communists used to say, looks bleak. Three assertive powers – China, Russia and Iran – not only resist democratization but actively seek to disseminate their model of authoritarian rule in their spheres of influence."
On 6 July, the paper published an op-ed titled "Democracy in trouble" by columnist Anne Applebaum.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/07/05/ST2010070503026.html?sid=ST2010070503026
Excerpt: "[D]emocracy is in trouble. By every measure, the world's autocrats have become more entrenched over the past decade. Countries as disparate as Russia, Venezuela and Iran have become adept at using the rhetoric of 'democracy' – along with faked elections, phony political parties, even state-controlled 'civil society' organizations – to deflect pressure for change. But democracy promotion has also been unfairly discredited by the invasion of Iraq, a decision too often remembered as nothing more than a foolish 'war for democracy' that went predictably wrong. [...] Since becoming president, Barack Obama has shied away from the word democracy in foreign contexts – he prefers 'our common security and prosperity' – as if it might be some dangerous Bushism."
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/04/AR2010070403849.html
Excerpts: "As America this weekend celebrates the birth of its liberty, in much of the rest of the world freedom and democracy are in retreat. Over the past decade, authoritarian rulers have refined their techniques to stay in power, learning from each other and thinking two steps ahead of democratic forces. [...] They recognized the threat and mobilized, with old-fashioned methods and new. From China to Egypt to Cuba, political challengers were neutralized, as they always had been, by confiscation of property, imprisonment and torture, with the examples of a few chastening the many. The foolish mistakes of one regime – allowing elections before seizing total control of the election machinery, as in Burma in 1990 – were duly noted and not repeated.
"Dictators have learned from each other to stamp out any buds of independent civil society by means of tax laws and supposedly neutral regulation. With China in the lead, they learned not only to neutralize the World Wide Web but to turn it into an effective weapon for propaganda, tracking and repression of their own citizens, and attacks against democratic rivals. Taking advantage of their control of television, they mobilized ideologies of nationalism and anti-terrorism to undermine the rhetoric of freedom. So at decade's end, the correlation of forces, as the Communists used to say, looks bleak. Three assertive powers – China, Russia and Iran – not only resist democratization but actively seek to disseminate their model of authoritarian rule in their spheres of influence."
On 6 July, the paper published an op-ed titled "Democracy in trouble" by columnist Anne Applebaum.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/07/05/ST2010070503026.html?sid=ST2010070503026
Excerpt: "[D]emocracy is in trouble. By every measure, the world's autocrats have become more entrenched over the past decade. Countries as disparate as Russia, Venezuela and Iran have become adept at using the rhetoric of 'democracy' – along with faked elections, phony political parties, even state-controlled 'civil society' organizations – to deflect pressure for change. But democracy promotion has also been unfairly discredited by the invasion of Iraq, a decision too often remembered as nothing more than a foolish 'war for democracy' that went predictably wrong. [...] Since becoming president, Barack Obama has shied away from the word democracy in foreign contexts – he prefers 'our common security and prosperity' – as if it might be some dangerous Bushism."
09 July 2010
Article: DIY Science, Democracy, and Dogma
Patrick Lin's article "DIY Science, Democracy, and Dogma" was published on 6 July on the website of the "technoprogressive" US-based Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET).
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/lin20100706/
Excerpts: "Ordinary citizens today have access to much greater destructive power than ever before, and this may force the evolution of democracy, which has turned somewhat into dogma. [...] [D]emocracy and its attendant values of education, information freedom, and progress are what enable DIY [Do-It-Yourself] science. In this way, democracy has become a threat to itself. To explain, let me rewind to about one month ago. I was a speaker at the Humanity+ Summit at Harvard [...]. The conference theme was 'Rise of the Citizen-Scientist.' I've always had mixed feelings about this issue: [...] is DIY science wise in this day and age? [...] Today, the individual wields much power, enough to change government itself as well as to open an unprecedented world of hurt on fellow citizens, whether with malicious computer hacking or fertilizer-based bombs or anthrax-laced letters or any number of other ways. At the same time, we accept that democracy is a risky venture [...]. The average citizen, with a shrinking attention span, continues to cast the most important votes with incomplete or just plain misinformed knowledge. This risk – of irresponsible power among the masses – is the double edged blade of democracy.
"But today, it is still a traitorous offense in many circles to question the limits of freedom and individual rights [...]. Democracy has become dogma, a mantra of sorts – and God help you if you criticize those values. (You fascist! Terrorist!) [...] But, granting that democracy is better than all other forms of government today (Plato and Marx would still disagree), is it the best form of government possible? Can we do better? Are we allowed to ask these questions? Let me put it this way: If individuals had the power to destroy cities and societies – and we may have that soon, if we don't already – would a democracy even work? [...] Information wants to be free, and it may take new regulation – or a non-democratic regime – to rein them in [...]. A bioattack spawned from a DIY lab, as one scenario, could cause such murder and panic that it destabilizes society, imploding democratic controls from within. We should know by now that no organization is too big to fail. [...] I worry that the furious pace of technology and information is on a collision course with democracy and freedom. It is an act of faith to believe that democracy will always work, no matter the scale of the society or the state of science – no one really knows."
Patrick Lin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/lin20100706/
Excerpts: "Ordinary citizens today have access to much greater destructive power than ever before, and this may force the evolution of democracy, which has turned somewhat into dogma. [...] [D]emocracy and its attendant values of education, information freedom, and progress are what enable DIY [Do-It-Yourself] science. In this way, democracy has become a threat to itself. To explain, let me rewind to about one month ago. I was a speaker at the Humanity+ Summit at Harvard [...]. The conference theme was 'Rise of the Citizen-Scientist.' I've always had mixed feelings about this issue: [...] is DIY science wise in this day and age? [...] Today, the individual wields much power, enough to change government itself as well as to open an unprecedented world of hurt on fellow citizens, whether with malicious computer hacking or fertilizer-based bombs or anthrax-laced letters or any number of other ways. At the same time, we accept that democracy is a risky venture [...]. The average citizen, with a shrinking attention span, continues to cast the most important votes with incomplete or just plain misinformed knowledge. This risk – of irresponsible power among the masses – is the double edged blade of democracy.
"But today, it is still a traitorous offense in many circles to question the limits of freedom and individual rights [...]. Democracy has become dogma, a mantra of sorts – and God help you if you criticize those values. (You fascist! Terrorist!) [...] But, granting that democracy is better than all other forms of government today (Plato and Marx would still disagree), is it the best form of government possible? Can we do better? Are we allowed to ask these questions? Let me put it this way: If individuals had the power to destroy cities and societies – and we may have that soon, if we don't already – would a democracy even work? [...] Information wants to be free, and it may take new regulation – or a non-democratic regime – to rein them in [...]. A bioattack spawned from a DIY lab, as one scenario, could cause such murder and panic that it destabilizes society, imploding democratic controls from within. We should know by now that no organization is too big to fail. [...] I worry that the furious pace of technology and information is on a collision course with democracy and freedom. It is an act of faith to believe that democracy will always work, no matter the scale of the society or the state of science – no one really knows."
Patrick Lin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
06 July 2010
Article: Democracy Undermined: Constitutional Subterfuge in Latin America
Forrest D. Colburn and Alberto Trejos are the authors of the article "Democracy Undermined: Constitutional Subterfuge in Latin America", published in the latest issue of the quarterly US magazine "Dissent" (57 [3], summer 2010: pp. 11-5):
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dissent/summary/v057/57.3.colburn.html
Abstract: "Although democracy is being questioned and even battered throughout Latin America, what is happening in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia is qualitatively different. It is more than a 'ratcheting up' of the assault on democracy; it is a deliberate, well-designed project to deconstruct democracy and substitute something else in its place, poorly defined as that may be. What is new here – and completely unanticipated by the legions of academics who wrote in the 1980s and 1990s about the 'transition' to democracy – is the use of democracy to dismantle democracy. These projects pose a political and moral dilemma: how do you oppose political change that has been approved by a majority, sanctified by elections? Especially in poor countries with marked income and wealth disparities, which frequently overlap with race, how do you in good faith oppose the political projects of those who not only speak in the name of the oppressed, but who have the electoral support of the oppressed?"
Excerpt: "Early in the morning of June 28, 2009, the president of Honduras, Manuel 'Mel' Zelaya, was rousted out of his bed by soldiers and sent out of the country in his pajamas. It was an old-fashioned coup d'état, evoking, seemingly, a bygone era. The coup d'état seemed out of place because democracy has taken hold everywhere in Latin America except Cuba. In principle, now, elections are the only sanctioned route to the presidency; and, in principle again, presidents leave office after completing their term – only then, but definitely then. What was novel, in fact, about the ouster of Zelaya was the fear that prompted it – what can be called 'constitutional subterfuge.' The military in Honduras acted in a clumsy way to avert a very real threat to democracy – Zelaya's move to call an unprecedented special election to remove a term limit on the presidency – in that country and elsewhere in the region."
Unfortunately, I can't access the full text of this article.
Forrest D. Colburn is a Professor in the Department of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York.
Alberto Trejos is Professor of Economics at INCAE Business School, Costa Rica, where he previously served as Minister of Foreign Trade.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dissent/summary/v057/57.3.colburn.html
Abstract: "Although democracy is being questioned and even battered throughout Latin America, what is happening in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia is qualitatively different. It is more than a 'ratcheting up' of the assault on democracy; it is a deliberate, well-designed project to deconstruct democracy and substitute something else in its place, poorly defined as that may be. What is new here – and completely unanticipated by the legions of academics who wrote in the 1980s and 1990s about the 'transition' to democracy – is the use of democracy to dismantle democracy. These projects pose a political and moral dilemma: how do you oppose political change that has been approved by a majority, sanctified by elections? Especially in poor countries with marked income and wealth disparities, which frequently overlap with race, how do you in good faith oppose the political projects of those who not only speak in the name of the oppressed, but who have the electoral support of the oppressed?"
Excerpt: "Early in the morning of June 28, 2009, the president of Honduras, Manuel 'Mel' Zelaya, was rousted out of his bed by soldiers and sent out of the country in his pajamas. It was an old-fashioned coup d'état, evoking, seemingly, a bygone era. The coup d'état seemed out of place because democracy has taken hold everywhere in Latin America except Cuba. In principle, now, elections are the only sanctioned route to the presidency; and, in principle again, presidents leave office after completing their term – only then, but definitely then. What was novel, in fact, about the ouster of Zelaya was the fear that prompted it – what can be called 'constitutional subterfuge.' The military in Honduras acted in a clumsy way to avert a very real threat to democracy – Zelaya's move to call an unprecedented special election to remove a term limit on the presidency – in that country and elsewhere in the region."
Unfortunately, I can't access the full text of this article.
Forrest D. Colburn is a Professor in the Department of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York.
Alberto Trejos is Professor of Economics at INCAE Business School, Costa Rica, where he previously served as Minister of Foreign Trade.
05 July 2010
Article: Australian Muslims told to shun democracy
The newspaper "The Australian" today published on its website an article by its senior writer Sally Neighbour (an investigative journalist and book author specializing in Islamic extremism and terrorism), titled "Muslims told to shun democracy", which reports on a conference taking place in Sydney yesterday on the topic of "The Struggle for Islam in the West".
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/muslims-told-to-shun-democracy/story-e6frg6nf-1225887770169
Excerpts: "Leaders of the global Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir have called on Australian Muslims to join the struggle for a transnational Islamic state. British Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Burhan Hanif told participants [...] that democracy is 'haram' (forbidden) for Muslims, whose political engagement should be be based purely on Islamic law. 'We must adhere to Islam and Islam alone,' Mr Hanif told about 500 participants attending the convention [...]. 'We should not be conned or succumb to the disingenuous and flawed narrative that the only way to engage politically is through the secular democratic process. [...]' He said democracy was incompatible with Islam because the Koran insisted Allah was the sole lawmaker, and Muslim political involvement could not be based on 'secular and erroneous concepts such as democracy and freedom'. His view was echoed by an Australian HT official, Wassim Dourehi, who told the conference Muslims should not support 'any kafir (non-believer) political party', because humans have no right to make laws.
"Mr Dourehi also urged Muslims to spurn the concept of moderate Islam promoted by governments in the West, including in 'this godforsaken country' of Australia. 'We need to reject this [...] perversion that seeks to wipe away the political aspects of Islam [...] and challenge the proponents of this aberration of Islam.' [...] HT is outlawed in much of the Middle East but operates legally in more than 40 countries, campaigning for the establishment of a caliphate (Islamic state) modelled on the empire founded by the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century. [...] Another British HT member, Salim Atchia, told the conference the West was attempting to 'beat the Muslims into submission' through intimidation and demonisation and by falsely portraying the aspiration for an Islamic state as dangerous and backward. Mr Dourehi said Muslims in the West must be at the vanguard of the push for a caliphate, which would govern all Muslim majority countries and lands that were previously under Islamic rule, such as Spain and The Philippines." (bold removed)
I can't figure out whether the article also appeared in print.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/muslims-told-to-shun-democracy/story-e6frg6nf-1225887770169
Excerpts: "Leaders of the global Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir have called on Australian Muslims to join the struggle for a transnational Islamic state. British Hizb ut-Tahrir leader Burhan Hanif told participants [...] that democracy is 'haram' (forbidden) for Muslims, whose political engagement should be be based purely on Islamic law. 'We must adhere to Islam and Islam alone,' Mr Hanif told about 500 participants attending the convention [...]. 'We should not be conned or succumb to the disingenuous and flawed narrative that the only way to engage politically is through the secular democratic process. [...]' He said democracy was incompatible with Islam because the Koran insisted Allah was the sole lawmaker, and Muslim political involvement could not be based on 'secular and erroneous concepts such as democracy and freedom'. His view was echoed by an Australian HT official, Wassim Dourehi, who told the conference Muslims should not support 'any kafir (non-believer) political party', because humans have no right to make laws.
"Mr Dourehi also urged Muslims to spurn the concept of moderate Islam promoted by governments in the West, including in 'this godforsaken country' of Australia. 'We need to reject this [...] perversion that seeks to wipe away the political aspects of Islam [...] and challenge the proponents of this aberration of Islam.' [...] HT is outlawed in much of the Middle East but operates legally in more than 40 countries, campaigning for the establishment of a caliphate (Islamic state) modelled on the empire founded by the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century. [...] Another British HT member, Salim Atchia, told the conference the West was attempting to 'beat the Muslims into submission' through intimidation and demonisation and by falsely portraying the aspiration for an Islamic state as dangerous and backward. Mr Dourehi said Muslims in the West must be at the vanguard of the push for a caliphate, which would govern all Muslim majority countries and lands that were previously under Islamic rule, such as Spain and The Philippines." (bold removed)
I can't figure out whether the article also appeared in print.
04 July 2010
Journal "Theory & Event" special issue questioning democracy
The journal "Theory & Event" just published a special issue carrying a symposium of papers, first presented at a roundtable at last year's annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), under the heading "We Are All Democrats Now" (13 [2], 2010):
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/toc/tae.13.2.html
The journal's editors, Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) and Davide Panagia (Trent University), write in their introduction to this issue: "Wendy Brown guest edits our symposium, 'We are All Democrats Now.' From ancient Greece to contemporary Israel, from a deep aspiration worth saving to a barrier demanding its own overcoming, democracy appears in these discussions not only as being in question but also as a concept in need of being questioned."
The following articles are included:
Wendy Brown (Berkeley), "Editor's Introduction We are all democrats now ..." (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "Democracy today experiences historically unparalleled global popularity, including among political theorists. Yet, in practice, democracy has never been more conceptually footloose, substantively thin or semiotically manipulated for undemocratic domestic and foreign exploits. What accounts for this schism? And what are the specific difficulties for democracy in a world contoured by civilizational conflict, eroding nation-state sovereignty, settler colonialism by 'democracies,' unprecedentedly large mergers of state and capital, ascending neoliberal rationality, and invasions and occupations conducted in the name of democratization? [...] [G]iven the disrepair and misuse into which it has fallen, ought democracy to be abandoned for other visions and practices of popular justice and shared power? The contributors to this symposium [...] approach democracy cautiously, curiously, even skeptically, [...] and query the cultural, social, economic, political and even intellectual conditions that would nurture or erode it."
Wendy Brown (Berkeley), "We Are All Democrats Now ..." (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "Perhaps democracy's current popularity depends on the openness and even vacuity of its meaning and practice – an empty signifier to which any and all can attach their dreams and hopes. Or perhaps capitalism, modern democracy's non-identical birth twin and always the more robust and wily of the two, has finally reduced democracy to a 'brand,' that late modern twist on commodity fetishism which wholly severs a product's saleable image from its content. Or perhaps, in the joke on Whiggish history wherein the twenty-first century features godheads warring with an intensity presumed vanquished by modernity, democracy has emerged as a new world religion – not a specific form of political power and culture but an alter before which the West and its admirers worship and the divine purpose through which Western imperial crusades are shaped and legitimated. Democracy is not only exalted across the globe today but across the political spectrum. Along with post-Cold War regime changers, former Soviet subjects still reveling in entrepreneurial bliss, apostles of neoliberalism, and never-say-die liberals, we of the EuroAtlantic Left are also mesmerized [...]."
John R. Wallach (Hunter College/CUNY), "None of Us is a Democrat Now" (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "The title of the panel, 'We are all democrats now ...,' is self-subverting: it notes a common political belief, and it subjects it to questioning. 'People may say it's so, but that can't be the case: so what’s going on?' It's both curious and provocative. It is curious, because one of the sources of the panel is Sheldon Wolin's most recent book, [...] in which he argues that democracy has been hollowed out by the forces of capitalism, bureaucracy, and state-power to become a one-dimensional political form that is connivingly, ultimately, anti-democratic. Wolin would say that there are strikingly few democrats now. [...] Dutifully provoked, I have chosen to signal my remarks by negating the panel's title, affirming that 'none of us is a democrat now.'"
Neve Gordon (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), "Democracy and Colonialism" (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "I contend that colonialism has served as a crucial component in the historical processes through which modern democracies were created and sustained. Focusing on the production of 'the people' – namely, those who are acknowledged as citizens and consequently have been granted the right to participate in political decisions – I maintain that colonialism has been deployed by democracy as a force that unifies, limits, and stabilizes the people within the metropole by employing violent forms of exclusion."
Antonio Y. Vázquez-Arroyo (University of Minnesota), "Democracy Today: Four Maxims" (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "Worldwide, the summer of 2009 was a throwback. The world witnessed Manuel Zelaya getting ousted in Honduras – in what seemed an anachronism in the post-cold war era – by a coup d'état, with a mild reproach by the United States. [...] Coeval with this, an election, the minimal marker of democracy, was blatantly stolen in Iran, with Ayatollahs in tow, to the temporary outrage of the west; of course, the same west that scolded the Afghan elites was silent about the fact that [...] US drones killed 60 people in Pakistan, including women and children. [...] And this is without dwelling on the collusion of western democracies with on-going anti-democratic practices that their very ordinariness and dreariness render invisible, such as the apartheid occupation in Israel that effectively keeps the Palestinian population at the threshold of a humanitarian catastrophe [...]."
Anne Norton (University of Pennsylvania), "Democracy and the Divine" (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "There are few democrats now, fewer still, I suspect, in the academy. Philosophers we might have trusted have fled from the defense of democracy. Derrida's late work exiled democracy to an uncertain, always deferred future. Democracy could be found only in the company of the rioting shebab of the banlieux, who were, those rogues, that canaille, too 'close to democracy.' Their society was suspect. Democracy had to be saved from these, the poor and disenfranchised, who were closest to it. Derrida's project should be familiar to us, since it has been seen often enough. His advice followed the example set by the Turkish, Argentine Chilean and Pakistani militaries: to save democracy from itself by taking up arms against the democrats. Derrida was hardly alone in this. The democratic politics of Muslims in Europe and the Middle East have been opposed by philosophers from Rawls to Zizek; few questions have so united this intellectually diverse assembly."
I wasn't able to access the full text of any of the longer articles. The full text of Brown's short introduction can be read free of charge.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/toc/tae.13.2.html
The journal's editors, Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) and Davide Panagia (Trent University), write in their introduction to this issue: "Wendy Brown guest edits our symposium, 'We are All Democrats Now.' From ancient Greece to contemporary Israel, from a deep aspiration worth saving to a barrier demanding its own overcoming, democracy appears in these discussions not only as being in question but also as a concept in need of being questioned."
The following articles are included:
Wendy Brown (Berkeley), "Editor's Introduction We are all democrats now ..." (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "Democracy today experiences historically unparalleled global popularity, including among political theorists. Yet, in practice, democracy has never been more conceptually footloose, substantively thin or semiotically manipulated for undemocratic domestic and foreign exploits. What accounts for this schism? And what are the specific difficulties for democracy in a world contoured by civilizational conflict, eroding nation-state sovereignty, settler colonialism by 'democracies,' unprecedentedly large mergers of state and capital, ascending neoliberal rationality, and invasions and occupations conducted in the name of democratization? [...] [G]iven the disrepair and misuse into which it has fallen, ought democracy to be abandoned for other visions and practices of popular justice and shared power? The contributors to this symposium [...] approach democracy cautiously, curiously, even skeptically, [...] and query the cultural, social, economic, political and even intellectual conditions that would nurture or erode it."
Wendy Brown (Berkeley), "We Are All Democrats Now ..." (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "Perhaps democracy's current popularity depends on the openness and even vacuity of its meaning and practice – an empty signifier to which any and all can attach their dreams and hopes. Or perhaps capitalism, modern democracy's non-identical birth twin and always the more robust and wily of the two, has finally reduced democracy to a 'brand,' that late modern twist on commodity fetishism which wholly severs a product's saleable image from its content. Or perhaps, in the joke on Whiggish history wherein the twenty-first century features godheads warring with an intensity presumed vanquished by modernity, democracy has emerged as a new world religion – not a specific form of political power and culture but an alter before which the West and its admirers worship and the divine purpose through which Western imperial crusades are shaped and legitimated. Democracy is not only exalted across the globe today but across the political spectrum. Along with post-Cold War regime changers, former Soviet subjects still reveling in entrepreneurial bliss, apostles of neoliberalism, and never-say-die liberals, we of the EuroAtlantic Left are also mesmerized [...]."
John R. Wallach (Hunter College/CUNY), "None of Us is a Democrat Now" (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "The title of the panel, 'We are all democrats now ...,' is self-subverting: it notes a common political belief, and it subjects it to questioning. 'People may say it's so, but that can't be the case: so what’s going on?' It's both curious and provocative. It is curious, because one of the sources of the panel is Sheldon Wolin's most recent book, [...] in which he argues that democracy has been hollowed out by the forces of capitalism, bureaucracy, and state-power to become a one-dimensional political form that is connivingly, ultimately, anti-democratic. Wolin would say that there are strikingly few democrats now. [...] Dutifully provoked, I have chosen to signal my remarks by negating the panel's title, affirming that 'none of us is a democrat now.'"
Neve Gordon (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), "Democracy and Colonialism" (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "I contend that colonialism has served as a crucial component in the historical processes through which modern democracies were created and sustained. Focusing on the production of 'the people' – namely, those who are acknowledged as citizens and consequently have been granted the right to participate in political decisions – I maintain that colonialism has been deployed by democracy as a force that unifies, limits, and stabilizes the people within the metropole by employing violent forms of exclusion."
Antonio Y. Vázquez-Arroyo (University of Minnesota), "Democracy Today: Four Maxims" (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "Worldwide, the summer of 2009 was a throwback. The world witnessed Manuel Zelaya getting ousted in Honduras – in what seemed an anachronism in the post-cold war era – by a coup d'état, with a mild reproach by the United States. [...] Coeval with this, an election, the minimal marker of democracy, was blatantly stolen in Iran, with Ayatollahs in tow, to the temporary outrage of the west; of course, the same west that scolded the Afghan elites was silent about the fact that [...] US drones killed 60 people in Pakistan, including women and children. [...] And this is without dwelling on the collusion of western democracies with on-going anti-democratic practices that their very ordinariness and dreariness render invisible, such as the apartheid occupation in Israel that effectively keeps the Palestinian population at the threshold of a humanitarian catastrophe [...]."
Anne Norton (University of Pennsylvania), "Democracy and the Divine" (page numbers not given).
Excerpt: "There are few democrats now, fewer still, I suspect, in the academy. Philosophers we might have trusted have fled from the defense of democracy. Derrida's late work exiled democracy to an uncertain, always deferred future. Democracy could be found only in the company of the rioting shebab of the banlieux, who were, those rogues, that canaille, too 'close to democracy.' Their society was suspect. Democracy had to be saved from these, the poor and disenfranchised, who were closest to it. Derrida's project should be familiar to us, since it has been seen often enough. His advice followed the example set by the Turkish, Argentine Chilean and Pakistani militaries: to save democracy from itself by taking up arms against the democrats. Derrida was hardly alone in this. The democratic politics of Muslims in Europe and the Middle East have been opposed by philosophers from Rawls to Zizek; few questions have so united this intellectually diverse assembly."
I wasn't able to access the full text of any of the longer articles. The full text of Brown's short introduction can be read free of charge.
03 July 2010
Trend: Africa's Failing Democracies
The American magazine "Newsweek" yesterday published on its website a short article by Ethiopia-based journalist Jason McLure, titled "Africa's Failing Democracies".
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.newsweek.com/2010/07/02/africa-s-failing-democracies.html
Excerpts: "When [H]uman [R]ights Watch criticized the results of Ethiopia's May elections, in which the ruling coalition 'won' an improbable 545 out of 547 seats, leaders in Addis Ababa didn't ignore the influential NGO. Instead, they paid tens of thousands of demonstrators to gather in the capital and denounce the report. Ethiopia's political shenanigans are emblematic of a growing trend away from democracy in Africa. The swing includes not only pariah states like Eritrea and Sudan, but also U.S. allies like Rwanda, where President Paul Kagame is up for reelection and seems set to duplicate the improbable 95 percent victory he posted seven years ago. [...] In Gabon and Togo, the deaths of long-serving autocrats have meant elections in which power was smoothly transferred – to their sons, that is. Mauritania, Guinea, Madagascar, and Niger have all suffered coups in the past two years.
"Freedom House, a nonprofit that tracks democratic trends, dropped three African countries from its list of 'electoral democracies' last year, and reported declines in political freedom in 10 others. [...] Why the backsliding? It's partly thanks to the rise of China, which provides cheap loans and investment to resource-rich countries while asking no hard questions about human rights, thus strengthening the hold of authoritarian governments. The West is to blame, too. The Obama administration and its European allies have turned a blind eye to autocratic trends in places like Uganda, Burundi, and Ethiopia because of those countries' role in battling Islamists. [...] 'If this is their representation of democracy and human rights, they shouldn't talk about it anymore,' says Hailu Shawel, an Ethiopian opposition leader. 'They should shut up.'"
I can't figure out whether the article also appeared in print.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.newsweek.com/2010/07/02/africa-s-failing-democracies.html
Excerpts: "When [H]uman [R]ights Watch criticized the results of Ethiopia's May elections, in which the ruling coalition 'won' an improbable 545 out of 547 seats, leaders in Addis Ababa didn't ignore the influential NGO. Instead, they paid tens of thousands of demonstrators to gather in the capital and denounce the report. Ethiopia's political shenanigans are emblematic of a growing trend away from democracy in Africa. The swing includes not only pariah states like Eritrea and Sudan, but also U.S. allies like Rwanda, where President Paul Kagame is up for reelection and seems set to duplicate the improbable 95 percent victory he posted seven years ago. [...] In Gabon and Togo, the deaths of long-serving autocrats have meant elections in which power was smoothly transferred – to their sons, that is. Mauritania, Guinea, Madagascar, and Niger have all suffered coups in the past two years.
"Freedom House, a nonprofit that tracks democratic trends, dropped three African countries from its list of 'electoral democracies' last year, and reported declines in political freedom in 10 others. [...] Why the backsliding? It's partly thanks to the rise of China, which provides cheap loans and investment to resource-rich countries while asking no hard questions about human rights, thus strengthening the hold of authoritarian governments. The West is to blame, too. The Obama administration and its European allies have turned a blind eye to autocratic trends in places like Uganda, Burundi, and Ethiopia because of those countries' role in battling Islamists. [...] 'If this is their representation of democracy and human rights, they shouldn't talk about it anymore,' says Hailu Shawel, an Ethiopian opposition leader. 'They should shut up.'"
I can't figure out whether the article also appeared in print.
30 June 2010
Trend: Democracy declines in former Soviet Union and new EU states
Freedom House, a US organization advocating democracy around the world, and Freedom House Europe, its regional hub based in Hungary, yesterday released their "Nations in Transit 2010" report:
www.freedomhouse.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=321
From the press release: "In a sign of broad, cross-regional pressures on democratic development, countries throughout the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe suffered declines in their democratic institutions [...]. The democracy scores for 14 of the 29 countries examined in Nations in Transit worsened in 2009 compared with the previous year. In the former Soviet Union, six countries saw an erosion in their overall score. Six new European Union member states also experienced declines, with two countries in the Balkans accounting for the remainder. By contrast, only five countries covered by the survey registered improvements. The findings in this year's edition cap a decade in which all of the countries in the former Soviet Union save one suffered declines in democratic accountability. Russia experienced the single largest overall deterioration during this 10-year period. [...]
"At the close of the decade, and 20 years after the end of the Cold War, nearly 80 percent of residents of the former Soviet Union – some 221 million people – still live under entrenched authoritarian regimes [...]. Amid pressures that included economic recession and rising nationalism, a number of new EU member states suffered declines. Slovakia experienced the sharpest downturn, with its scores falling in five of seven categories. Hungary's ratings fell in three categories [...]. Over the past five years, eight of the ten new EU states have undergone declines in their overall democracy scores."
www.freedomhouse.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=321
From the press release: "In a sign of broad, cross-regional pressures on democratic development, countries throughout the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe suffered declines in their democratic institutions [...]. The democracy scores for 14 of the 29 countries examined in Nations in Transit worsened in 2009 compared with the previous year. In the former Soviet Union, six countries saw an erosion in their overall score. Six new European Union member states also experienced declines, with two countries in the Balkans accounting for the remainder. By contrast, only five countries covered by the survey registered improvements. The findings in this year's edition cap a decade in which all of the countries in the former Soviet Union save one suffered declines in democratic accountability. Russia experienced the single largest overall deterioration during this 10-year period. [...]
"At the close of the decade, and 20 years after the end of the Cold War, nearly 80 percent of residents of the former Soviet Union – some 221 million people – still live under entrenched authoritarian regimes [...]. Amid pressures that included economic recession and rising nationalism, a number of new EU member states suffered declines. Slovakia experienced the sharpest downturn, with its scores falling in five of seven categories. Hungary's ratings fell in three categories [...]. Over the past five years, eight of the ten new EU states have undergone declines in their overall democracy scores."
29 June 2010
CFP: Breakdowns of Democracy Revisited
12th Mediterranean Research Meeting of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (EUI), Florence and Montecatini Terme, Italy, 6-9 April 2011
Call for papers for Workshop 7: "Breakdowns of Democracy Revisited: Transitions from Liberal-Democratic to Authoritarian Regimes around the Mediterranean Littoral"
www.eui.eu/DepartmentsAndCentres/RobertSchumanCentre/Research/InternationalTransnationalRelations/MediterraneanProgramme/MRM/MRM2011/Index.aspx
From the workshop description: "Studies of democratization have matured greatly over the last two decades [...]. Nevertheless, early expectations that new democracies would survive and flourish have run up against significant cases in which political reform has quickly stalled out or regressed to liberalized authoritarian rule. This development has opened the door to systematic investigations of the circumstances under which initial liberalization programs have failed to gain momentum, most notably in Tunisia and Jordan. Such studies raise the crucial question of whether democratization can be assumed to move in only one direction. History suggests that liberal democracies on occasion collapse and get replaced by highly illiberal regimes. Classic cases of democratic breakdown include Italy in the early 1920s and Germany a decade later.
"Less fully investigated are parallel instances of democratic collapse in Spain, Greece and Turkey. Completely ignored are countries whose brief liberal-democratic eras have been overlooked by political scientists and historians. A number of important examples of the transition away from liberal democracy can be found in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa region]. Among these stand Egypt, Syria, Iraq and perhaps even Libya, not to mention the aborted transition to illiberal governance in Lebanon of the late 1950s. Focused comparisons between well-studied episodes of the breakdown of liberal political orders along the northern shores of the Mediterranean and largely overlooked instances to the south and east are certain to enhance our understanding of the causal factors and processes that lead democracies to be supplanted by authoritarian regimes.
"Scholarship on the topic has lain virtually dormant since the late 1970s. [...] This workshop proposes not only to bring a wide range of additional, long-overlooked cases into the literature on democratic collapse but also to begin the crucial task of formulating well-structured comparisons across different empirical examples. Contributions which focus on countries that have so far been ignored in the academic literature, particularly ones situated in the MENA region, will be expected to make reference to analyses of better-studied examples. Given the peculiarities of the German model, the organizers anticipate that the experience of Italy during the first two decades of the twentieth century is likely to prove particularly thought-provoking, and would therefore welcome proposals from specialists in Italian history and politics. Contributions intended primarily to advance the theory of liberal-democratic breakdown are certainly encouraged, but will be expected to rest on a firm empirical foundation.
"Liberal experiments in the MENA during the 1920s and 1930s are routinely dismissed as too imperfect to be included in discussions of the structure, workings and transformation of democratic governance. The workshop organizers firmly reject such dismissiveness toward the variety of party-based, electoral systems that one finds throughout the Arab world in the decades before the wave of military-led revolutions washed across the region. Instead, they hope that detailed explorations of the liberal-democratic moment in the MENA, unbiased by what E.P. Thompson might call 'the enormous condescension of posterity,' will offer new insight into the dynamics of politics in this part of the world, while at the same time reinvigoring conceptual debates about the dynamics of democratization on the basis of evidence drawn from all shores of the Mediterranean."
Please find detailed instructions on how to submit a paper proposal for this workshop on the conference website (see particularly full call for papers and online form). The procedures and requirements are uncommonly stringent.
Deadline: 15 July 2010
Only for workshop-related questions, contact directly the workshop directors, Fred Lawson (Mills College, California): lawson@mills.edu
and Abdelwahab Shaker (Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt): abdelwahab.shaker@bibalex.org
Call for papers for Workshop 7: "Breakdowns of Democracy Revisited: Transitions from Liberal-Democratic to Authoritarian Regimes around the Mediterranean Littoral"
www.eui.eu/DepartmentsAndCentres/RobertSchumanCentre/Research/InternationalTransnationalRelations/MediterraneanProgramme/MRM/MRM2011/Index.aspx
From the workshop description: "Studies of democratization have matured greatly over the last two decades [...]. Nevertheless, early expectations that new democracies would survive and flourish have run up against significant cases in which political reform has quickly stalled out or regressed to liberalized authoritarian rule. This development has opened the door to systematic investigations of the circumstances under which initial liberalization programs have failed to gain momentum, most notably in Tunisia and Jordan. Such studies raise the crucial question of whether democratization can be assumed to move in only one direction. History suggests that liberal democracies on occasion collapse and get replaced by highly illiberal regimes. Classic cases of democratic breakdown include Italy in the early 1920s and Germany a decade later.
"Less fully investigated are parallel instances of democratic collapse in Spain, Greece and Turkey. Completely ignored are countries whose brief liberal-democratic eras have been overlooked by political scientists and historians. A number of important examples of the transition away from liberal democracy can be found in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa region]. Among these stand Egypt, Syria, Iraq and perhaps even Libya, not to mention the aborted transition to illiberal governance in Lebanon of the late 1950s. Focused comparisons between well-studied episodes of the breakdown of liberal political orders along the northern shores of the Mediterranean and largely overlooked instances to the south and east are certain to enhance our understanding of the causal factors and processes that lead democracies to be supplanted by authoritarian regimes.
"Scholarship on the topic has lain virtually dormant since the late 1970s. [...] This workshop proposes not only to bring a wide range of additional, long-overlooked cases into the literature on democratic collapse but also to begin the crucial task of formulating well-structured comparisons across different empirical examples. Contributions which focus on countries that have so far been ignored in the academic literature, particularly ones situated in the MENA region, will be expected to make reference to analyses of better-studied examples. Given the peculiarities of the German model, the organizers anticipate that the experience of Italy during the first two decades of the twentieth century is likely to prove particularly thought-provoking, and would therefore welcome proposals from specialists in Italian history and politics. Contributions intended primarily to advance the theory of liberal-democratic breakdown are certainly encouraged, but will be expected to rest on a firm empirical foundation.
"Liberal experiments in the MENA during the 1920s and 1930s are routinely dismissed as too imperfect to be included in discussions of the structure, workings and transformation of democratic governance. The workshop organizers firmly reject such dismissiveness toward the variety of party-based, electoral systems that one finds throughout the Arab world in the decades before the wave of military-led revolutions washed across the region. Instead, they hope that detailed explorations of the liberal-democratic moment in the MENA, unbiased by what E.P. Thompson might call 'the enormous condescension of posterity,' will offer new insight into the dynamics of politics in this part of the world, while at the same time reinvigoring conceptual debates about the dynamics of democratization on the basis of evidence drawn from all shores of the Mediterranean."
Please find detailed instructions on how to submit a paper proposal for this workshop on the conference website (see particularly full call for papers and online form). The procedures and requirements are uncommonly stringent.
Deadline: 15 July 2010
Only for workshop-related questions, contact directly the workshop directors, Fred Lawson (Mills College, California): lawson@mills.edu
and Abdelwahab Shaker (Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt): abdelwahab.shaker@bibalex.org
27 June 2010
Article: China: Our Internet is Free Enough
On 16 June 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's "Technology Review" published on its website an article titled "China: Our Internet is Free Enough", written by Chief Correspondent David Talbot.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.technologyreview.com/web/25592/?a=f
Excerpts: "China, with the most Internet users of any country in the world, has issued its first government whitepaper declaring an overall Internet strategy – one that advocates Internet growth while implicitly defending censorship policies amid global concern over online repression and China-based cyber espionage. 'I think this whitepaper is a statement that the Chinese Communist Party intends to stay in power, and also intends to expand Internet access, and be on the cutting edge of Internet innovation, and that there isn't any contradiction in any of those things,' says Rebecca MacKinnon, a China Internet expert who is a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. [...]
"[T]he Beijing whitepaper makes a bold assertion: 'Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet.' Left unstated is that Chinese Internet companies are under government pressure to self-censor, and do so very effectively on a slate of banned topics, including advocacy of democracy [...]. 'Frankly, I think China is Exhibit A for how authoritarianism will survive the Internet age,' MacKinnon says. 'I think Americans have this assumption that nondemocratic regimes can't survive the Internet, and I think that's naïve. The Chinese Communist Party fully intends to survive in the Internet age and has a strategy for doing so. So far, it's working.'"
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.technologyreview.com/web/25592/?a=f
Excerpts: "China, with the most Internet users of any country in the world, has issued its first government whitepaper declaring an overall Internet strategy – one that advocates Internet growth while implicitly defending censorship policies amid global concern over online repression and China-based cyber espionage. 'I think this whitepaper is a statement that the Chinese Communist Party intends to stay in power, and also intends to expand Internet access, and be on the cutting edge of Internet innovation, and that there isn't any contradiction in any of those things,' says Rebecca MacKinnon, a China Internet expert who is a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. [...]
"[T]he Beijing whitepaper makes a bold assertion: 'Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet.' Left unstated is that Chinese Internet companies are under government pressure to self-censor, and do so very effectively on a slate of banned topics, including advocacy of democracy [...]. 'Frankly, I think China is Exhibit A for how authoritarianism will survive the Internet age,' MacKinnon says. 'I think Americans have this assumption that nondemocratic regimes can't survive the Internet, and I think that's naïve. The Chinese Communist Party fully intends to survive in the Internet age and has a strategy for doing so. So far, it's working.'"
26 June 2010
Book: Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China
Anne-Marie Brady, "Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007):
www.rowmanlittlefield.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0742540588
Publisher's description: "China's government is no longer a Stalinist-Maoist dictatorship, yet it does not seem to be moving significantly closer to democracy as it is understood in Western terms. After a period of self-imposed exclusion, Chinese society is in the process of a massive transformation in the name of economic progress and integration into the world economy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is seeking to maintain its rule over China indefinitely, creating yet another 'new' China. Propaganda and thought work play a key role in this strategy. In this important book, noted China scholar Anne-Marie Brady answers some intriguing questions about China's contemporary propaganda system. Why have propaganda and thought work strengthened their hold in China in recent years? How has the CCP government strengthened its power since 1989 when so many analysts predicted otherwise? How does the CCP maintain its monopoly on political power while dismantling the socialist system? How can the government maintain popular support in China when the uniting force of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology is spent and discredited? What has taken the place of communist ideology? Examining propaganda and thought work in the current period offers readers a unique understanding of how the CCP will address real and perceived threats to stability and its continued hold on power. This innovative book is a must-read for everyone interested in China's growing role in the world community."
Reviews: "Anne-Marie Brady has written a timely book about the Chinese media. She has done much to demystify an understudied topic. [...] Brady's work deserves much admiration." (Ashley Esarey, "The China Journal")
"[T]he surface diversity of the Chinese media hides the guiding hand of a high-level Party office in Beijing called the Central Propaganda Department, which works its will across the whole spectrum of activities in media, education, entertainment – [...] what Brady calls a campaign of mass distraction." ("New Republic")
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=uj-1sxeO99kC&printsec=frontcover
Anne-Marie Brady is Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Canterbury.
www.rowmanlittlefield.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0742540588
Publisher's description: "China's government is no longer a Stalinist-Maoist dictatorship, yet it does not seem to be moving significantly closer to democracy as it is understood in Western terms. After a period of self-imposed exclusion, Chinese society is in the process of a massive transformation in the name of economic progress and integration into the world economy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is seeking to maintain its rule over China indefinitely, creating yet another 'new' China. Propaganda and thought work play a key role in this strategy. In this important book, noted China scholar Anne-Marie Brady answers some intriguing questions about China's contemporary propaganda system. Why have propaganda and thought work strengthened their hold in China in recent years? How has the CCP government strengthened its power since 1989 when so many analysts predicted otherwise? How does the CCP maintain its monopoly on political power while dismantling the socialist system? How can the government maintain popular support in China when the uniting force of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology is spent and discredited? What has taken the place of communist ideology? Examining propaganda and thought work in the current period offers readers a unique understanding of how the CCP will address real and perceived threats to stability and its continued hold on power. This innovative book is a must-read for everyone interested in China's growing role in the world community."
Reviews: "Anne-Marie Brady has written a timely book about the Chinese media. She has done much to demystify an understudied topic. [...] Brady's work deserves much admiration." (Ashley Esarey, "The China Journal")
"[T]he surface diversity of the Chinese media hides the guiding hand of a high-level Party office in Beijing called the Central Propaganda Department, which works its will across the whole spectrum of activities in media, education, entertainment – [...] what Brady calls a campaign of mass distraction." ("New Republic")
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=uj-1sxeO99kC&printsec=frontcover
Anne-Marie Brady is Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Canterbury.
24 June 2010
Article: Somali rebel leader urges fight against democracy
Reuters Africa today posted an article online, written by its own Hussein Ali Noor, under the title "Somali rebel leader urges fight against democracy".
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE65N0TX20100624?sp=true
Excerpts: "Islamist al Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane has urged Somalis to reject 'the Devil's principles' of democracy, just several days ahead of elections in the breakaway Somaliland region. 'The reality is that democracy is something Allah made unlawful, and someone else cannot make it lawful,' the reclusive leader, also known as Sheik Mukhtar Abdirahman [or Abu Zubeyr], said. [...] Abu Zubeyr urged Muslims in an audio recording on the Internet to move away from areas that tried to build democracy. [...] 'If people fight ... till everyone is killed, that is much easier than legalising the devil's principles such as constitutions or making a ruler who governs against Allah's laws,' he said. Abu Zubeyr did not mention Somaliland specifically, but analysts said the timing of the message showed that it was intended to frighten people away from polling stations. [...] Somaliland police have arrested dozens of men linked to al Shabaab rebels in the last two weeks [...]."
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE65N0TX20100624?sp=true
Excerpts: "Islamist al Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane has urged Somalis to reject 'the Devil's principles' of democracy, just several days ahead of elections in the breakaway Somaliland region. 'The reality is that democracy is something Allah made unlawful, and someone else cannot make it lawful,' the reclusive leader, also known as Sheik Mukhtar Abdirahman [or Abu Zubeyr], said. [...] Abu Zubeyr urged Muslims in an audio recording on the Internet to move away from areas that tried to build democracy. [...] 'If people fight ... till everyone is killed, that is much easier than legalising the devil's principles such as constitutions or making a ruler who governs against Allah's laws,' he said. Abu Zubeyr did not mention Somaliland specifically, but analysts said the timing of the message showed that it was intended to frighten people away from polling stations. [...] Somaliland police have arrested dozens of men linked to al Shabaab rebels in the last two weeks [...]."
22 June 2010
Article: Turkey, from Ally to Enemy
Michael Rubin's article "Turkey, from Ally to Enemy" will be published in the July/August 2010 issue of the neoconservative American-Jewish monthly magazine "Commentary". The article has already been put up online.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/turkey--from-ally-to-enemy-15464
Excerpts: "Turkey has changed. Gone, and gone permanently, is secular Turkey, a unique Muslim country that straddled East and West and that even maintained a cooperative relationship with Israel. Today Turkey is an Islamic republic whose government saw fit to facilitate the May 31 flotilla raid on Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey is now more aligned to Iran than to the democracies of Europe. [...] The story of Turkey's Islamic revolution is illuminating. It is the story of a charismatic leader with a methodical plan to unravel a system, a politician cynically using democracy to pursue autocracy [...]. For Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is a dream come true. For the next generation of American presidents, diplomats, and generals, it is a disaster. [...]
"Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Republic of Turkey and [...] charged the army with defending the state from those who would use Islam to subvert democracy. [...] Erdogan's strategy was multi-tiered. He endorsed the dream of Turkey's secular elite to enter the European Union but only to rally European diplomats to dilute the role of the Turkish military as guardians of the constitution. [...] His ideological constituents had no interest in Europe, and Erdogan himself is intolerant of European liberalism and secularism. [...] He sought to revolutionize education, dominate the judiciary, take over the police, and control the media. Erdogan worked to achieve not short-term gains on hot-button issues like the headscarf but rather a long-term cultural revolution that, when complete, would render past battles moot. [...]
"The real coup against democracy, however, came on July 14, 2008, when a Turkish prosecutor indicted 86 Turkish figures – retired military officers, prominent journalists, professors, unionists, civil-society activists [...] – on charges of plotting a coup to restore secular government. [...] The indictments had a chilling effect across society. Turks may not like where Erdogan is taking Turkey, but they now understand that even peaceful dissent will have a price. [...] Nor can liberal Turks rely on the Turkish military to save them. Bashed from the religious right and the progressive left, the Turkish military is a shadow of its former self. [...] A decade ago, Turks saw themselves in a camp with the United States, Western Europe, and Israel; today Turkish self-identity places the country firmly in a camp led by Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Hamas. Turkey may be a NATO member, but polls nevertheless show it to be the world's most anti-American country [...].
"Many diplomats and journalists inserted into this situation their own disdain for any military, let alone Turkey's, and embraced a facile dichotomy in which Islamism and democracy represented one pole, while the military, secularism, and fascism represented the other. Hence, they saw the AKP [Erdogan's Justice and Development Party] as democratic reformers, while the military became defenders of an anti-democratic order. Certainly, the healthiest democracies have no room for the military in domestic politics, but by cheering the AKP as it unraveled the military's role in upholding the constitution without simultaneously constructing another check on unconstitutional behavior, the European Union and Western diplomats paved the way for Erdogan's soft dictatorship. [...] As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan quipped, 'Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.' Perhaps, in hindsight, the West's mistake was to ignore the danger of Erdogan's ascendance into the driver's seat."
Michael Rubin is a Senior Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Civil-Military Relations and a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/turkey--from-ally-to-enemy-15464
Excerpts: "Turkey has changed. Gone, and gone permanently, is secular Turkey, a unique Muslim country that straddled East and West and that even maintained a cooperative relationship with Israel. Today Turkey is an Islamic republic whose government saw fit to facilitate the May 31 flotilla raid on Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey is now more aligned to Iran than to the democracies of Europe. [...] The story of Turkey's Islamic revolution is illuminating. It is the story of a charismatic leader with a methodical plan to unravel a system, a politician cynically using democracy to pursue autocracy [...]. For Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is a dream come true. For the next generation of American presidents, diplomats, and generals, it is a disaster. [...]
"Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Republic of Turkey and [...] charged the army with defending the state from those who would use Islam to subvert democracy. [...] Erdogan's strategy was multi-tiered. He endorsed the dream of Turkey's secular elite to enter the European Union but only to rally European diplomats to dilute the role of the Turkish military as guardians of the constitution. [...] His ideological constituents had no interest in Europe, and Erdogan himself is intolerant of European liberalism and secularism. [...] He sought to revolutionize education, dominate the judiciary, take over the police, and control the media. Erdogan worked to achieve not short-term gains on hot-button issues like the headscarf but rather a long-term cultural revolution that, when complete, would render past battles moot. [...]
"The real coup against democracy, however, came on July 14, 2008, when a Turkish prosecutor indicted 86 Turkish figures – retired military officers, prominent journalists, professors, unionists, civil-society activists [...] – on charges of plotting a coup to restore secular government. [...] The indictments had a chilling effect across society. Turks may not like where Erdogan is taking Turkey, but they now understand that even peaceful dissent will have a price. [...] Nor can liberal Turks rely on the Turkish military to save them. Bashed from the religious right and the progressive left, the Turkish military is a shadow of its former self. [...] A decade ago, Turks saw themselves in a camp with the United States, Western Europe, and Israel; today Turkish self-identity places the country firmly in a camp led by Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Hamas. Turkey may be a NATO member, but polls nevertheless show it to be the world's most anti-American country [...].
"Many diplomats and journalists inserted into this situation their own disdain for any military, let alone Turkey's, and embraced a facile dichotomy in which Islamism and democracy represented one pole, while the military, secularism, and fascism represented the other. Hence, they saw the AKP [Erdogan's Justice and Development Party] as democratic reformers, while the military became defenders of an anti-democratic order. Certainly, the healthiest democracies have no room for the military in domestic politics, but by cheering the AKP as it unraveled the military's role in upholding the constitution without simultaneously constructing another check on unconstitutional behavior, the European Union and Western diplomats paved the way for Erdogan's soft dictatorship. [...] As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan quipped, 'Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.' Perhaps, in hindsight, the West's mistake was to ignore the danger of Erdogan's ascendance into the driver's seat."
Michael Rubin is a Senior Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Civil-Military Relations and a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
19 June 2010
Journal "Internationale Politik" on "The False Glamour of Dictatorship" (in German)
The May/June 2010 issue of the German foreign policy journal "Internationale Politik" ("International Politics"), published by the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), is dedicated to the theme "Der falsche Glanz der Diktatur" ("The False Glamour of Dictatorship"; my translation).
Those able to read German can find a table of contents and some articles accessible free of charge here:
www.internationalepolitik.de/ip/archiv/jahrgang-2010/der-falsche-glanz-der-diktatur-/
This journal special issue has been reviewed in English, on 15 June 2010, in an unsigned article titled "A Bit of Dictatorship" on the "Information on German Foreign Policy" website, a news and opinion site "compiled by a group of independent journalists and social scientists".
The full text of the review article can be read free of charge here:
www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56352?PHPSESSID=po88qd8mvp3i3bs9epn923v2q7
Excerpts: "Foreign policy specialists from Berlin's establishment are discussing possible advantages of dictatorial forms of government. According to the current issue of a leading German foreign policy review, some observers see the West as being currently in a 'state of democratic fatigue with an erosion of democratic institutions.' Simultaneously there are 'diverse discussions of dictatorial powers and measures' even if usually in terms of a temporary dictatorship. They see as the primary question, whether 'beyond the system of rule of law, legitimacy reserves can be tapped' to 'rejuvenate the system (– democracy –) that has grown old' [...], a terminology used in the 1930s by the key Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt[,] to justify the annulment of the [Weimar] democratic constitution. [...] [S]ome business representatives are in no way adverse to authoritarian measures and are questioning whether 'the constitutional state can still hold its own' in the competition of systems against China and Russia. [...] [A] 'spreading discomfort with democracy' provides 'a certain seductiveness for a flirt with dictatorships.'"
Those able to read German can find a table of contents and some articles accessible free of charge here:
www.internationalepolitik.de/ip/archiv/jahrgang-2010/der-falsche-glanz-der-diktatur-/
This journal special issue has been reviewed in English, on 15 June 2010, in an unsigned article titled "A Bit of Dictatorship" on the "Information on German Foreign Policy" website, a news and opinion site "compiled by a group of independent journalists and social scientists".
The full text of the review article can be read free of charge here:
www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56352?PHPSESSID=po88qd8mvp3i3bs9epn923v2q7
Excerpts: "Foreign policy specialists from Berlin's establishment are discussing possible advantages of dictatorial forms of government. According to the current issue of a leading German foreign policy review, some observers see the West as being currently in a 'state of democratic fatigue with an erosion of democratic institutions.' Simultaneously there are 'diverse discussions of dictatorial powers and measures' even if usually in terms of a temporary dictatorship. They see as the primary question, whether 'beyond the system of rule of law, legitimacy reserves can be tapped' to 'rejuvenate the system (– democracy –) that has grown old' [...], a terminology used in the 1930s by the key Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt[,] to justify the annulment of the [Weimar] democratic constitution. [...] [S]ome business representatives are in no way adverse to authoritarian measures and are questioning whether 'the constitutional state can still hold its own' in the competition of systems against China and Russia. [...] [A] 'spreading discomfort with democracy' provides 'a certain seductiveness for a flirt with dictatorships.'"
15 June 2010
Article: "Democracy could disappear" in Greece, Spain, and Portugal, warns Barroso
The UK newspaper "Daily Mail" yesterday published an article online, by its political correspondent Jason Groves, titled "Nightmare vision for Europe as EU chief warns 'democracy could disappear' in Greece, Spain and Portugal".
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1286480/EU-chief-warns-democracy-disappear-Greece-Spain-Portugal.html
Excerpts: "Democracy could 'collapse' in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned. In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jos[é] Manuel Barroso set out an 'apocalyptic' vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money. [...] John Monks, former head of the TUC [UK Trades Union Congress], said he had been 'shocked' by the severity of the warning from Mr Barroso, who is a former prime minister of Portugal. Mr Monks, now head of the European TUC, said: '[...] [H]is message was blunt: "Look, if they do not carry out these austerity packages, these countries could virtually disappear in the way that we know them as democracies. They've got no choice, this is it." [...]'
"Greece, Spain and Portugal, which only became democracies in the 1970s, are all facing dire problems with their public finances. All three countries have a history of military coups. [...] Mr Barroso's warning lays bare the concern at the highest level in Brussels that the economic crisis could lead to the collapse of not only the beleaguered euro, but the EU itself, along with a string of fragile democracies. [...] Mr Monks yesterday warned that the new austerity measures themselves could take the continent 'back to the 1930s'. In an interview with the Brussels-based magazine EU Observer he said: 'This is extremely dangerous. This is 1931, we're heading back to the 1930s, with the Great Depression and we ended up with militarist dictatorship. I'm not saying we're there yet, but it's potentially very serious, not just economically, but politically as well.'"
I can't figure out whether the article appeared in print today.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1286480/EU-chief-warns-democracy-disappear-Greece-Spain-Portugal.html
Excerpts: "Democracy could 'collapse' in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned. In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jos[é] Manuel Barroso set out an 'apocalyptic' vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money. [...] John Monks, former head of the TUC [UK Trades Union Congress], said he had been 'shocked' by the severity of the warning from Mr Barroso, who is a former prime minister of Portugal. Mr Monks, now head of the European TUC, said: '[...] [H]is message was blunt: "Look, if they do not carry out these austerity packages, these countries could virtually disappear in the way that we know them as democracies. They've got no choice, this is it." [...]'
"Greece, Spain and Portugal, which only became democracies in the 1970s, are all facing dire problems with their public finances. All three countries have a history of military coups. [...] Mr Barroso's warning lays bare the concern at the highest level in Brussels that the economic crisis could lead to the collapse of not only the beleaguered euro, but the EU itself, along with a string of fragile democracies. [...] Mr Monks yesterday warned that the new austerity measures themselves could take the continent 'back to the 1930s'. In an interview with the Brussels-based magazine EU Observer he said: 'This is extremely dangerous. This is 1931, we're heading back to the 1930s, with the Great Depression and we ended up with militarist dictatorship. I'm not saying we're there yet, but it's potentially very serious, not just economically, but politically as well.'"
I can't figure out whether the article appeared in print today.
14 June 2010
Booklet: Should Christians Vote?
Christians against democracy: David C. Pack is the author of the booklet "Should Christians Vote?", published in 2008 by the North America-based Restored Church of God, which operates a worldwide online ministry.
The booklet is available free of charge here:
www.thercg.org/books/scv.pdf
Excerpts: "You may have supposed that the governments of modern nations generally reflect God's way. This is almost everyone's assumption. Yet, while God does, in fact, establish and remove nations, this is not His world! [...] Christ would not vote, because He understands the origin of the governments of this world and who is behind them. [...] This world, with its ways and systems, is controlled by the devil! [...] Not only does Satan govern the kingdoms of this world, through his power and influence, but he also does it in an undivided, unified fashion with the aid of hundreds of millions [...] of demons. [...] Together they deceive, confuse and exert far-reaching influence over all the governments and activities on earth. [...]
"Christians never participate in the governments of this world [...]. It is not God's purpose that the 'better' people win. God determines the winners in advance. In the end, the 'will of the people' has no power or effect, because God is in charge of the outcome of elections. [...] For instance, what if true Christians are actively voting in Europe as the final beast of Revelation 17 arises? This great military, political, religious power is prophesied to come soon – and is already rising! By voting, Christians would literally be participating in establishing the final world-dominating counterfeit government foretold to deceive the world and fight Christ at His Return! [...]
"The practices of favoritism, endless debates and arguments, bribes, lust for power, corruption, lying and deceit, scandals and cover-ups, greed, exploitation, aggression, intense and relentless accusation, inefficiency, vanity, decisions based on polls, voter apathy, strife and back-stabbing are just some of the fruits of democracy [...]! Democratic politics are shot full of division and disagreement, over nearly every issue that any society might face. [...] Study the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and you will not find a single instance where an election was used to select a leader. Nowhere in the Bible can you find people electing leaders – and the Bible is the pattern that Christians are supposed to follow in all matters. [...] God's Word neither authorizes nor reflects any kind of pattern of voting. [...]
"Christ understood the corrupting nature of self-exaltation! He sees through the guise of phony 'concern' for the people whose votes these 'leaders' must get and/or retain to be in office. [...] To participate in a system in which men exalt themselves, in the seeking of high office, is to endorse – to validate – to agree with – a corrupt system, with terrible fruit, emphasizing vanity and pride. Democracy is completely opposite to what God expects of all people when He commands them to humble themselves! [...] Christians participating in the governments of Satan's world, through voting, [...] is far more serious than most realize. It is disloyalty – a form of spiritual fornication and spiritual treason – to the government of God and His complete authority over a Christian's life."
David C. Pack is Pastor General of the Restored Church of God, with headquarters in Wadsworth, Ohio, USA.
The booklet is available free of charge here:
www.thercg.org/books/scv.pdf
Excerpts: "You may have supposed that the governments of modern nations generally reflect God's way. This is almost everyone's assumption. Yet, while God does, in fact, establish and remove nations, this is not His world! [...] Christ would not vote, because He understands the origin of the governments of this world and who is behind them. [...] This world, with its ways and systems, is controlled by the devil! [...] Not only does Satan govern the kingdoms of this world, through his power and influence, but he also does it in an undivided, unified fashion with the aid of hundreds of millions [...] of demons. [...] Together they deceive, confuse and exert far-reaching influence over all the governments and activities on earth. [...]
"Christians never participate in the governments of this world [...]. It is not God's purpose that the 'better' people win. God determines the winners in advance. In the end, the 'will of the people' has no power or effect, because God is in charge of the outcome of elections. [...] For instance, what if true Christians are actively voting in Europe as the final beast of Revelation 17 arises? This great military, political, religious power is prophesied to come soon – and is already rising! By voting, Christians would literally be participating in establishing the final world-dominating counterfeit government foretold to deceive the world and fight Christ at His Return! [...]
"The practices of favoritism, endless debates and arguments, bribes, lust for power, corruption, lying and deceit, scandals and cover-ups, greed, exploitation, aggression, intense and relentless accusation, inefficiency, vanity, decisions based on polls, voter apathy, strife and back-stabbing are just some of the fruits of democracy [...]! Democratic politics are shot full of division and disagreement, over nearly every issue that any society might face. [...] Study the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and you will not find a single instance where an election was used to select a leader. Nowhere in the Bible can you find people electing leaders – and the Bible is the pattern that Christians are supposed to follow in all matters. [...] God's Word neither authorizes nor reflects any kind of pattern of voting. [...]
"Christ understood the corrupting nature of self-exaltation! He sees through the guise of phony 'concern' for the people whose votes these 'leaders' must get and/or retain to be in office. [...] To participate in a system in which men exalt themselves, in the seeking of high office, is to endorse – to validate – to agree with – a corrupt system, with terrible fruit, emphasizing vanity and pride. Democracy is completely opposite to what God expects of all people when He commands them to humble themselves! [...] Christians participating in the governments of Satan's world, through voting, [...] is far more serious than most realize. It is disloyalty – a form of spiritual fornication and spiritual treason – to the government of God and His complete authority over a Christian's life."
David C. Pack is Pastor General of the Restored Church of God, with headquarters in Wadsworth, Ohio, USA.
13 June 2010
Article: Israeli Post-Democracy: Origins and Prospects
Keith Kahn-Harris and Joel Schalit are the authors of an article titled "Israeli Post-Democracy: Origins and Prospects", published on 10 June 2010 on the pro-democracy news and opinion website openDemocracy.net.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.opendemocracy.net/keith-kahn-harris-joel-schalit/israeli-post-democracy-origins-and-prospects
Excerpts: "'The middle east's only democracy'. [...] This profound sense of itself as a democracy, which by that token makes the country an exception in the region, is woven into Israelis' self-perception. This makes it all the more painful for many Israelis to feel obliged to lament that the country's political character is now seriously threatened and that its democratic political institutions and culture are in effect under siege. It is even harder for them to confront the reality that as the repressive nature of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories is increasingly exposed to the light, Israel's government has begun to treat sections of its own Jewish citizenry as it does Palestinians. True, the project of settling the West Bank (and until the withdrawal of 2005, Gaza) has always carried dangers for Israeli democracy within the 'green line' that demarcated Israel proper from the territories it conquered in 1967. The central conceits of the settlement project [...] rely on the false supposition that Israeli democracy could avoid being undermined by a fundamentally non-democratic project imposed on its closest neighbours. [...]
"Alarm about the corrosive effects of colonial occupation on Israel has long been expressed by intellectuals, radicals and jeremiahs (such as the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz); but its spread can be measured in the way that even establishment political figures (such as Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert most recently) have publicly stated that without disengagement from Palestinian territory, Israel cannot remain a democracy. [...] [A] rightist [government] coalition led by Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud [...] seeks to hold onto the maximum possible number of West Bank settlements and contains figures with explicitly anti-democratic instincts. [...] These developments in themselves do not suggest that Israel inside the green line will, any time soon, dispense with elections or become a dictatorship. However, there is a real possibility that this Israel may drift into a kind of 'post-democracy' (in Colin Crouch's term): imposing restrictions on civil rights and the rights of minorities, the media and NGOs, in a way that erodes the checks and balances on the Israeli state. Israel would become a different kind of polity, one that in key respects might resemble Vladimir Putin's Russia or (at best) Silvio Berlusconi's Italy. [...]
"Even if Israel did fully withdraw to the green line, the 'post-democratic' tendencies that have been set in motion cannot now easily be stalled. The reason is in part because the tendencies pushing Israel towards post-democracy are connected to more than the settlement project; they are also the product of possibilities that have long been inherent within Zionism. [...] Zionism, in important ways comparable to other nationalisms even if the details differ, sought to create a national Hebrew culture forged out of the disparate Jewish diaspora, and to erect a state for Jews. [...] The strength of Israeli civil society has provided a powerful bulwark against the ever-present possibility that Israel would devolve into openly racist authoritarianism. In the post-democratic era, this bulwark is being eroded. Zionism is being reduced to a retrograde 'statism' that seeks only to build state power, and is suspicious of any counterweights. [...] Israel's political horizons were in historical terms always more limited than they once appeared, but [...] it has taken the rise of anti-democratic forces to national leadership for everyone, including Israelis, to figure this out."
Keith Kahn-Harris is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Israeli-American Joel Schalit is a book author and editor based in Berlin, Germany.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.opendemocracy.net/keith-kahn-harris-joel-schalit/israeli-post-democracy-origins-and-prospects
Excerpts: "'The middle east's only democracy'. [...] This profound sense of itself as a democracy, which by that token makes the country an exception in the region, is woven into Israelis' self-perception. This makes it all the more painful for many Israelis to feel obliged to lament that the country's political character is now seriously threatened and that its democratic political institutions and culture are in effect under siege. It is even harder for them to confront the reality that as the repressive nature of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories is increasingly exposed to the light, Israel's government has begun to treat sections of its own Jewish citizenry as it does Palestinians. True, the project of settling the West Bank (and until the withdrawal of 2005, Gaza) has always carried dangers for Israeli democracy within the 'green line' that demarcated Israel proper from the territories it conquered in 1967. The central conceits of the settlement project [...] rely on the false supposition that Israeli democracy could avoid being undermined by a fundamentally non-democratic project imposed on its closest neighbours. [...]
"Alarm about the corrosive effects of colonial occupation on Israel has long been expressed by intellectuals, radicals and jeremiahs (such as the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz); but its spread can be measured in the way that even establishment political figures (such as Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert most recently) have publicly stated that without disengagement from Palestinian territory, Israel cannot remain a democracy. [...] [A] rightist [government] coalition led by Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud [...] seeks to hold onto the maximum possible number of West Bank settlements and contains figures with explicitly anti-democratic instincts. [...] These developments in themselves do not suggest that Israel inside the green line will, any time soon, dispense with elections or become a dictatorship. However, there is a real possibility that this Israel may drift into a kind of 'post-democracy' (in Colin Crouch's term): imposing restrictions on civil rights and the rights of minorities, the media and NGOs, in a way that erodes the checks and balances on the Israeli state. Israel would become a different kind of polity, one that in key respects might resemble Vladimir Putin's Russia or (at best) Silvio Berlusconi's Italy. [...]
"Even if Israel did fully withdraw to the green line, the 'post-democratic' tendencies that have been set in motion cannot now easily be stalled. The reason is in part because the tendencies pushing Israel towards post-democracy are connected to more than the settlement project; they are also the product of possibilities that have long been inherent within Zionism. [...] Zionism, in important ways comparable to other nationalisms even if the details differ, sought to create a national Hebrew culture forged out of the disparate Jewish diaspora, and to erect a state for Jews. [...] The strength of Israeli civil society has provided a powerful bulwark against the ever-present possibility that Israel would devolve into openly racist authoritarianism. In the post-democratic era, this bulwark is being eroded. Zionism is being reduced to a retrograde 'statism' that seeks only to build state power, and is suspicious of any counterweights. [...] Israel's political horizons were in historical terms always more limited than they once appeared, but [...] it has taken the rise of anti-democratic forces to national leadership for everyone, including Israelis, to figure this out."
Keith Kahn-Harris is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Israeli-American Joel Schalit is a book author and editor based in Berlin, Germany.
10 June 2010
CONF: American Political Science Association annual meeting 2010
106th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Washington, DC, USA, 2-5 September 2010
http://apsanet.org/content_65547.cfm?navID=193
The programme of this year's APSA meeting features a panel on "Democratic Ethics in a Post-Democratic World", organized by APSA's "Normative Political Theory" section (2 September, 4.15 pm). The participants are Stephen Macedo (Princeton), Melissa A. Orlie (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Nancy L. Rosenblum (Harvard), and Ian Shapiro (Yale).
Also of interest, but unfortunately scheduled at the same time: The panel "Women, Authoritarianism, and Conflict", organized by APSA's "Comparative Politics" section and "Comparative Politics of Developing Countries" division, includes a paper by Dara Kay Cohen (University of Minnesota) and Amelia Hoover Green (Yale), "Are Non-Democracies Better for Women in Wartime? Regime Type, Sexual Violence, and Conflict" (2 September, 4.15 pm).
Further information and the full programme are to be found on APSA's website.
http://apsanet.org/content_65547.cfm?navID=193
The programme of this year's APSA meeting features a panel on "Democratic Ethics in a Post-Democratic World", organized by APSA's "Normative Political Theory" section (2 September, 4.15 pm). The participants are Stephen Macedo (Princeton), Melissa A. Orlie (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Nancy L. Rosenblum (Harvard), and Ian Shapiro (Yale).
Also of interest, but unfortunately scheduled at the same time: The panel "Women, Authoritarianism, and Conflict", organized by APSA's "Comparative Politics" section and "Comparative Politics of Developing Countries" division, includes a paper by Dara Kay Cohen (University of Minnesota) and Amelia Hoover Green (Yale), "Are Non-Democracies Better for Women in Wartime? Regime Type, Sexual Violence, and Conflict" (2 September, 4.15 pm).
Further information and the full programme are to be found on APSA's website.
09 June 2010
Book: Freedom of Speech and Incitement Against Democracy
The (expensive) contributed volume "Freedom of Speech and Incitement Against Democracy" was edited by David Kretzmer and Francine Kershman Hazan and is based on papers presented at a 1996 conference organized by the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Kluwer Law International, 2000):
www.springer.com/law/international/book/978-90-411-1341-2
Back cover description: "While the protection of political speech is essential to the preservation of a democratic legal order, events of political violence and assassinations highlight the need to rethink questions relating to the boundaries of free speech in a democratic society. To what extent should democratic countries committed to freedom of speech limit those forms of extreme speech that may be considered as incitement to violence? This is a question that has long divided academics and activists alike. It has become even more relevant today, with the recent rise of extreme right-wing parties in various European democracies. In this book, leading scholars of constitutional law, human rights and criminal law, from various countries with divergent philosophies on freedom of speech, address the question of whether we can, and should, regulate speech in order to protect democracy and, if so, how."
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=vayFsNouXEAC&printsec=frontcover
David Kretzmer is now Louis Marshall Professor Emeritus of Environmental Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Francine Kershman Hazan was, at the time of publication, Executive Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights. She appears now to hold another administrative position at the Hebrew University.
www.springer.com/law/international/book/978-90-411-1341-2
Back cover description: "While the protection of political speech is essential to the preservation of a democratic legal order, events of political violence and assassinations highlight the need to rethink questions relating to the boundaries of free speech in a democratic society. To what extent should democratic countries committed to freedom of speech limit those forms of extreme speech that may be considered as incitement to violence? This is a question that has long divided academics and activists alike. It has become even more relevant today, with the recent rise of extreme right-wing parties in various European democracies. In this book, leading scholars of constitutional law, human rights and criminal law, from various countries with divergent philosophies on freedom of speech, address the question of whether we can, and should, regulate speech in order to protect democracy and, if so, how."
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=vayFsNouXEAC&printsec=frontcover
David Kretzmer is now Louis Marshall Professor Emeritus of Environmental Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Francine Kershman Hazan was, at the time of publication, Executive Director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights. She appears now to hold another administrative position at the Hebrew University.
07 June 2010
Transcript: Condemnation of the Democratic Process, Voting, and the Islamic Stances on these Issues
"Condemnation of the Democratic Process, Voting, and the Islāmic Stances on these Issues" is the English translation of the transcript of an undated, but fairly recent Arabic audio recording of Shaykh Abū Qatādah 'Umar Ibn Mahmūd Abū 'Umar Al-Filastīnī (also: Abu Qatada [al-Filastini], Abū-Omar, or Omar Mahmoud [Mohammed] Othman/Uthman), the Jordanian-born presumed former spiritual leader of al-Qaeda in Europe currently imprisoned in the United Kingdom, being interviewed by At-Tibyān Publications, an online organization accused of spreading terrorist propaganda in the West.
The transcript can be downloaded free of charge here:
www.archive.org/details/CondemnationOfTheDemocraticProcessVotingAndTheIslamicStancesOn_865
Excerpts: "[E]lections are [...] an ideology [....] The meaning of an election is that I am satisfied with this one (individual) as a representative for me in expressing my will in declaring something to be Halāl [permitted] or Harām [forbidden], here in the legislation. And this, as it is clear, is in opposition to [...] the will of the Muslim who says 'I render myself obedient to Allāh [...]'. In other words, I do not accept anyone, in this issue, the legislation, I do not accept a legislator except Allāh. I do not accept as a ruler over me, (and) a ruler, not in the meaning of ruling in the meaning of implementation, but a ruler in the meaning of the right to issue commands, except Allāh. [...] But for, for you to vote for this one to be a god for you, then this is another issue, as you see, it differs with complete difference [...], because if you chose him as a ruler for you then you would have disbelieved."
Another, related At-Tibyān Publications title: "The Doubts Regarding the Ruling of Democracy In Islām" is a booklet whose author(s)
remain(s) anonymous, dated June 2004.
The booklet is (as of now) available free of charge here:
http://muslimsagainstvoting.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/the_doubts_regarding_the_ruling_of_democracy_in_islam.pdf
Excerpts: "Democracy [...] is a system, which is at odds with the very essence of Allāh's exclusive right of legislation and as such it steps outside the mere disobedience of Allāh into the realm of Shirk [idolatry], in that it seeks to elevate mankind to the level of the Legislator (i.e. Allāh). [...] And because the people are the ones who select the laws, by means of their representatives, these laws are based upon what the people wish and they are in accordance with the desires of the majority, rather than what Allāh has revealed. [...] And for this reason, Allāh, the Most High, referred to any person or system that does not rule by what Allāh has revealed, as a 'Tāghūt' (i.e. false deity) [...]. And if we conclude that these Members of Parliament commit Shirk and Kufr [disbelief] by legislating laws besides Allāh, then what would be said about the people who elect them for this job, knowing that this candidate will be engaging in the formation of man-made laws on behalf of the people who elect him?"
Two harmless texts.
The transcript can be downloaded free of charge here:
www.archive.org/details/CondemnationOfTheDemocraticProcessVotingAndTheIslamicStancesOn_865
Excerpts: "[E]lections are [...] an ideology [....] The meaning of an election is that I am satisfied with this one (individual) as a representative for me in expressing my will in declaring something to be Halāl [permitted] or Harām [forbidden], here in the legislation. And this, as it is clear, is in opposition to [...] the will of the Muslim who says 'I render myself obedient to Allāh [...]'. In other words, I do not accept anyone, in this issue, the legislation, I do not accept a legislator except Allāh. I do not accept as a ruler over me, (and) a ruler, not in the meaning of ruling in the meaning of implementation, but a ruler in the meaning of the right to issue commands, except Allāh. [...] But for, for you to vote for this one to be a god for you, then this is another issue, as you see, it differs with complete difference [...], because if you chose him as a ruler for you then you would have disbelieved."
Another, related At-Tibyān Publications title: "The Doubts Regarding the Ruling of Democracy In Islām" is a booklet whose author(s)
remain(s) anonymous, dated June 2004.
The booklet is (as of now) available free of charge here:
http://muslimsagainstvoting.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/the_doubts_regarding_the_ruling_of_democracy_in_islam.pdf
Excerpts: "Democracy [...] is a system, which is at odds with the very essence of Allāh's exclusive right of legislation and as such it steps outside the mere disobedience of Allāh into the realm of Shirk [idolatry], in that it seeks to elevate mankind to the level of the Legislator (i.e. Allāh). [...] And because the people are the ones who select the laws, by means of their representatives, these laws are based upon what the people wish and they are in accordance with the desires of the majority, rather than what Allāh has revealed. [...] And for this reason, Allāh, the Most High, referred to any person or system that does not rule by what Allāh has revealed, as a 'Tāghūt' (i.e. false deity) [...]. And if we conclude that these Members of Parliament commit Shirk and Kufr [disbelief] by legislating laws besides Allāh, then what would be said about the people who elect them for this job, knowing that this candidate will be engaging in the formation of man-made laws on behalf of the people who elect him?"
Two harmless texts.
06 June 2010
Trend: Enemies of democracy have become stronger due to economic crisis, says Aznar
On 27 May 2010, the Geneva-based non-governmental organization UN Watch awarded its first Guardian of Freedom Award to the conservative former Spanish Prime Minister, José Maria Aznar:
www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1286087&ct=8417193
In his acceptance speech, titled "Leadership on the World Stage", Aznar said: "There is a widespread feeling of crisis and confusion in the face of some new and complex phenomena. Old problems have not disappeared and yet new ones are arising. [...] In my view, they are the economic crisis, the threats to global security and the challenges to democracy and human rights worldwide. I firmly believe that the three of them are interconnected and that all of them have in common the fact that liberal democracy is at stake. [...] It should not come as a surprise if the enemies of free and open societies take advantage of this situation. It is not by chance that those who oppose the free-market economy end up criticizing the principles and values that underpin liberal democracy. The authoritarian forces and the enemies of democracy have become stronger in the last year and half. Our current crisis emboldens the enemies of freedom; emboldens those who do not believe in liberty, market economy, democracy or equality [...]. It is also worrisome to see the growing alliance of authoritarian regimes and theocratic tyrannies around the world. We should pay more attention to what is going on in Latin America, where old dictatorships and their new disciples are taking advantage of our weaknesses to advance on their populist and socialist agendas."
www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1286087&ct=8417193
In his acceptance speech, titled "Leadership on the World Stage", Aznar said: "There is a widespread feeling of crisis and confusion in the face of some new and complex phenomena. Old problems have not disappeared and yet new ones are arising. [...] In my view, they are the economic crisis, the threats to global security and the challenges to democracy and human rights worldwide. I firmly believe that the three of them are interconnected and that all of them have in common the fact that liberal democracy is at stake. [...] It should not come as a surprise if the enemies of free and open societies take advantage of this situation. It is not by chance that those who oppose the free-market economy end up criticizing the principles and values that underpin liberal democracy. The authoritarian forces and the enemies of democracy have become stronger in the last year and half. Our current crisis emboldens the enemies of freedom; emboldens those who do not believe in liberty, market economy, democracy or equality [...]. It is also worrisome to see the growing alliance of authoritarian regimes and theocratic tyrannies around the world. We should pay more attention to what is going on in Latin America, where old dictatorships and their new disciples are taking advantage of our weaknesses to advance on their populist and socialist agendas."
05 June 2010
Article: Celebrating eleven years of democradura
Abba Gana Shettima's op-ed article "Celebrating eleven years of democradura" was published on 4 June in the Nigerian national daily newspaper "Daily Trust".
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.news.dailytrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19931:celebrating-eleven-years-of-democradura&catid=49:opinion&Itemid=200
Excerpts: "A year after Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, The Economist [...] narrated, in murky details, the tribulations confronting Africa. These range from natural disasters to the social plague of 'tribalism', and the failure of democracy and leadership, all combining to produce 'shell states'. According to the magazine, 'Democracy does not have much to offer Africa. Democracies are no more stable than dictatorships ... The African ruler finds himself trapped. He wants power and control; but the outside world makes demands about democracy, human rights and good governance [...]'. What the Economist did not contemplate was that Africa, or at least some parts of Africa, such as Nigeria could have the scientific ingenuity to clone their own breed of democracy. Nigeria, 'the giant of Africa' is leading the way in this social and political revolution of the 21st century. The trade mark of the Made in Nigeria Democracy is first and foremost the negation of the very principle of democracy. [...]
"In Nigerian democracy, elections are secondary, if at all important. Elections are conducted simply to mask the political thievery with a moral garment. Since 1999, Nigerian elections at all levels have been a sham. [...] Perhaps, the root of all the election malpractice in the country can be traced to the influence of money in the whole electoral process. Beginning from the level of party primaries to the actual elections, money is the magic that buys and shifts alliances. In Nigeria's cash and carry democracy, everybody has a price – ranging from the electoral officials and security agents to highly placed party delegates and desperate blue-collar political activists and passive voters on the streets. [...] [I]t is deceptive and futile to talk about enforcing due process in the award of contracts and the general conduct of government business when the leaders did not emerge through a due electoral process. How can leaders who emerged through rigging of elections become accountable to the people?
"Nigerian politicians keep telling us that it is all part of the painful 'learning process', and that the nation must endure to 'foster its nascent democracy', as if the country is a perpetual democratic toddler. [...] Now, because the leaders are not accountable to the people, the type of democracy they have succeeded in enforcing on the nation in the last eleven years comes close to what some scholars called democradura or 'hard democracy' – a very hard one for that matter, and habitually gruesome to the core. [...] Even as hundreds of thousands of poor people continue to languish and die in droves, the profligate political class keep stealing and hoarding the resources of the nation like some army of rapacious ants. [...] Do our politicians think that they can continue to subvert democracy to serve their personal interests, and keep hoping that the institution can be maintained? This democracy, the Nigerian democracy, this democradura appears to take so much pleasure in inflicting sufferings on its people. [...] This is why we should not celebrate the so-called 'democracy day', never again [...]."
Abba Gana Shettima is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.news.dailytrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19931:celebrating-eleven-years-of-democradura&catid=49:opinion&Itemid=200
Excerpts: "A year after Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, The Economist [...] narrated, in murky details, the tribulations confronting Africa. These range from natural disasters to the social plague of 'tribalism', and the failure of democracy and leadership, all combining to produce 'shell states'. According to the magazine, 'Democracy does not have much to offer Africa. Democracies are no more stable than dictatorships ... The African ruler finds himself trapped. He wants power and control; but the outside world makes demands about democracy, human rights and good governance [...]'. What the Economist did not contemplate was that Africa, or at least some parts of Africa, such as Nigeria could have the scientific ingenuity to clone their own breed of democracy. Nigeria, 'the giant of Africa' is leading the way in this social and political revolution of the 21st century. The trade mark of the Made in Nigeria Democracy is first and foremost the negation of the very principle of democracy. [...]
"In Nigerian democracy, elections are secondary, if at all important. Elections are conducted simply to mask the political thievery with a moral garment. Since 1999, Nigerian elections at all levels have been a sham. [...] Perhaps, the root of all the election malpractice in the country can be traced to the influence of money in the whole electoral process. Beginning from the level of party primaries to the actual elections, money is the magic that buys and shifts alliances. In Nigeria's cash and carry democracy, everybody has a price – ranging from the electoral officials and security agents to highly placed party delegates and desperate blue-collar political activists and passive voters on the streets. [...] [I]t is deceptive and futile to talk about enforcing due process in the award of contracts and the general conduct of government business when the leaders did not emerge through a due electoral process. How can leaders who emerged through rigging of elections become accountable to the people?
"Nigerian politicians keep telling us that it is all part of the painful 'learning process', and that the nation must endure to 'foster its nascent democracy', as if the country is a perpetual democratic toddler. [...] Now, because the leaders are not accountable to the people, the type of democracy they have succeeded in enforcing on the nation in the last eleven years comes close to what some scholars called democradura or 'hard democracy' – a very hard one for that matter, and habitually gruesome to the core. [...] Even as hundreds of thousands of poor people continue to languish and die in droves, the profligate political class keep stealing and hoarding the resources of the nation like some army of rapacious ants. [...] Do our politicians think that they can continue to subvert democracy to serve their personal interests, and keep hoping that the institution can be maintained? This democracy, the Nigerian democracy, this democradura appears to take so much pleasure in inflicting sufferings on its people. [...] This is why we should not celebrate the so-called 'democracy day', never again [...]."
Abba Gana Shettima is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria.
04 June 2010
Article: Unemployment Linked to Dislike of Democracy
On 2 June, the science news site LiveScience.com published an article titled "Unemployment Linked to Dislike of Democracy" by staff writer Zoë Macintosh.
The article can be read free of charge here:
www.livescience.com/culture/jobless-opinion-democracy-system.html
Excerpts: "Individuals out of a job are more likely to harbor negative opinions about democracy and desire a rogue [sic] leader than their employed counterparts, a new study suggests. Using data from more than 130,000 people from 69 countries, scientists found that having or not having a job is enough to make otherwise similar individuals feel differently about the effectiveness of democratic political systems. [...] The results only showed correlations between these variables, but not cause-and-effect relationships. Joblessness was not linked to one's disapproval of how the country was run or the specific leadership in charge, only to discontent with democracy as a whole. [...] Across the board, those with greater wealth or education held significantly less negative opinions about democracy. [...] The results held even when scientists controlled for reverse causality (with political view causing joblessness) posed by 'political misfits' whose opinions about democracy go against the mainstream."
The article is based on a working paper by Duha Tore Altindag and Naci H. Mocan, published in May 2010 by the American research organization National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Unfortunately, the full text of the working paper is not available without paying:
www.nber.org/papers/w15994
Turkish-born Duha Tore Altindag is a PhD candidate in Economics and Turkish-born Naci H. Mocan is Ourso Distinguished Professor of Economics, both at Louisiana State University.
The article can be read free of charge here:
www.livescience.com/culture/jobless-opinion-democracy-system.html
Excerpts: "Individuals out of a job are more likely to harbor negative opinions about democracy and desire a rogue [sic] leader than their employed counterparts, a new study suggests. Using data from more than 130,000 people from 69 countries, scientists found that having or not having a job is enough to make otherwise similar individuals feel differently about the effectiveness of democratic political systems. [...] The results only showed correlations between these variables, but not cause-and-effect relationships. Joblessness was not linked to one's disapproval of how the country was run or the specific leadership in charge, only to discontent with democracy as a whole. [...] Across the board, those with greater wealth or education held significantly less negative opinions about democracy. [...] The results held even when scientists controlled for reverse causality (with political view causing joblessness) posed by 'political misfits' whose opinions about democracy go against the mainstream."
The article is based on a working paper by Duha Tore Altindag and Naci H. Mocan, published in May 2010 by the American research organization National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Unfortunately, the full text of the working paper is not available without paying:
www.nber.org/papers/w15994
Turkish-born Duha Tore Altindag is a PhD candidate in Economics and Turkish-born Naci H. Mocan is Ourso Distinguished Professor of Economics, both at Louisiana State University.
03 June 2010
CFP: Democracy, History, Universality: Beyond the Decline of the West
Sixth General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), University of Iceland, Reykjavik, 25-27 August 2011
Call for panels and papers for a section on "Democracy, History, Universality: Beyond the Decline of the West"
www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/section_details.asp?sectionID=84
Description: "The global debate about the universal significance of democracy represents one of the defining features of our time. Democracy is accepted by nearly everyone as the only legitimate form of government. At the same time, the appeal of the democratic values is weakened both by an ever greater degree of alienation between the population and the democratic institutions in the quintessentially democratic societies of Europe and North America and by the fact that in the more peripheral countries the pro-democracy rhetoric is often cynically used to justify some of the most undemocratic decisions and practices.
"Another crucial dimension of the debate is the increasing recognition that liberal democracy is indeed rooted in the historical experience and cultural particularity of the West. This tension between universalism and particularism has several dimensions. In Europe, it is reflected in the clash between universalist ambitions associated with the European democratic model and the rise of xenophobic politics that strive to redefine Europe in cultural or religious terms. At the same time, accepting the fact that democracy is historically conditioned immediately opens it up to the relativist challenge.
"The western community is often accused of monopolising the power to define what democracy means in political practice, which arguably exposes the Eurocentric nature of democracy promotion undertaken by democratic governments. Political leaders of many nations that explicitly define themselves as non-western now offer their respective political regimes as possible alternative models of democratic development. These claims have to be taken seriously despite their underlying instrumental motives, because what makes them possible in the first place are genuine grassroots concerns about western unilateralism, shared by many people all over the world.
"The panels within this section will be focused around the tension between the supposedly universal value of democracy and its embeddedness in a particular historical experience. The following questions will be discussed, among others: Can we think of truly universal democracy, or must the universal, as some theorists argue, be cleared of any positive predicates? What is happening to the idea of the West as a model democratic community? Does the universal appeal of the European idea give way to xenophobic particularism? What are the consequences of the internal tensions within the West and external challenges to its alleged domination? Can the criticism of democracy as 'too western' pave the way towards truly generic emancipation of humankind?"
Instructions on how to submit proposals for panels and papers are to be found here:
www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/documents/Panel_Chair_Guidelines_and_Deadlines.pdf
Currently, only proposals for panels will be accepted. Proposals for papers can be submitted from 1 November 2010, when a list of the panels accepted for this section will be published on the ECPR website. All proposals are to be submitted online.
Deadline for panel proposals: 1 September 2010
Deadline for paper proposals: 1 February 2011
For further information, please contact the section convenors:
Viatcheslav Morozov (University of Tartu): viacheslav.morozov@ut.ee
Christopher S. Browning (University of Warwick): c.s.browning@warwick.ac.uk
Pertti Joenniemi (Danish Institute for International Studies): pjo@diis.dk
Please note that conference participants may only appear in the academic programme once in any one capacity. That is, they may only chair one section, they may only chair one panel, they may only present one paper, they may only act once as a discussant.
Call for panels and papers for a section on "Democracy, History, Universality: Beyond the Decline of the West"
www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/section_details.asp?sectionID=84
Description: "The global debate about the universal significance of democracy represents one of the defining features of our time. Democracy is accepted by nearly everyone as the only legitimate form of government. At the same time, the appeal of the democratic values is weakened both by an ever greater degree of alienation between the population and the democratic institutions in the quintessentially democratic societies of Europe and North America and by the fact that in the more peripheral countries the pro-democracy rhetoric is often cynically used to justify some of the most undemocratic decisions and practices.
"Another crucial dimension of the debate is the increasing recognition that liberal democracy is indeed rooted in the historical experience and cultural particularity of the West. This tension between universalism and particularism has several dimensions. In Europe, it is reflected in the clash between universalist ambitions associated with the European democratic model and the rise of xenophobic politics that strive to redefine Europe in cultural or religious terms. At the same time, accepting the fact that democracy is historically conditioned immediately opens it up to the relativist challenge.
"The western community is often accused of monopolising the power to define what democracy means in political practice, which arguably exposes the Eurocentric nature of democracy promotion undertaken by democratic governments. Political leaders of many nations that explicitly define themselves as non-western now offer their respective political regimes as possible alternative models of democratic development. These claims have to be taken seriously despite their underlying instrumental motives, because what makes them possible in the first place are genuine grassroots concerns about western unilateralism, shared by many people all over the world.
"The panels within this section will be focused around the tension between the supposedly universal value of democracy and its embeddedness in a particular historical experience. The following questions will be discussed, among others: Can we think of truly universal democracy, or must the universal, as some theorists argue, be cleared of any positive predicates? What is happening to the idea of the West as a model democratic community? Does the universal appeal of the European idea give way to xenophobic particularism? What are the consequences of the internal tensions within the West and external challenges to its alleged domination? Can the criticism of democracy as 'too western' pave the way towards truly generic emancipation of humankind?"
Instructions on how to submit proposals for panels and papers are to be found here:
www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/documents/Panel_Chair_Guidelines_and_Deadlines.pdf
Currently, only proposals for panels will be accepted. Proposals for papers can be submitted from 1 November 2010, when a list of the panels accepted for this section will be published on the ECPR website. All proposals are to be submitted online.
Deadline for panel proposals: 1 September 2010
Deadline for paper proposals: 1 February 2011
For further information, please contact the section convenors:
Viatcheslav Morozov (University of Tartu): viacheslav.morozov@ut.ee
Christopher S. Browning (University of Warwick): c.s.browning@warwick.ac.uk
Pertti Joenniemi (Danish Institute for International Studies): pjo@diis.dk
Please note that conference participants may only appear in the academic programme once in any one capacity. That is, they may only chair one section, they may only chair one panel, they may only present one paper, they may only act once as a discussant.
02 June 2010
Article: The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles
"The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles" is an article by Mark Ames that was published today on the independent news site AlterNet.org.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.alternet.org/story/147058/the_really_creepy_people_behind_the_libertarian-inspired_billionaire_sea_castles/
Excerpts: "The super-wealthy are already building their first floating castle, a billion-dollar-plus luxury liner that offers permanent multimillion-dollar housing with the best protection of all: moats made of oceans, keeping the land-based Americans they've plundered at a safe distance. The first such floating castle has been christened the 'Utopia' – the South Korean firm Samsung has been contracted to build the $1.1 billion ship, due to be launched in 2013. Already orders are coming in to buy one of the Utopia's 200 or so mansions for sale – which range in price from about $4 million for the smallest condos to over $26 million for 6,600 square-foot 'estates.' The largest mansion is a whopping 40,000 square feet, and sells for $160 million. [...] The floating castle is a longtime dream of libertarian oligarchs – a place where they can live their lives in peace free from the teeming masses of starving losers and indebted parasites and their tax demands.
"Since they've grown so rich off of America, they have enough spare change to fund projects like the Seasteading Institute, run by Milton Friedman's grandson, Patri Friedman, and financed by the bizarre right-wing PayPal founder, Peter Thiel. [...] Both Thiel and Milton Friedman's grandson see democracy as the enemy – last year, Thiel wrote 'I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible' at about the same time that Milton Friedman's grandson proclaimed, 'Democracy is not the answer.' Both published their anti-democracy proclamations in the same billionaire-Koch-family-funded outlet, Cato Unbound, one of the oldest billionaire-fed libertarian welfare dispensaries. Friedman's answer for Thiel's democracy problem is to build offshore libertarian pod-fortresses where the libertarian way rules."
Whatever one may think of libertarian billionaires or seasteading, this article is a prime example of smear journalism posing as "investigative".
Mark Ames is an American journalist and book author, long based in Russia.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.alternet.org/story/147058/the_really_creepy_people_behind_the_libertarian-inspired_billionaire_sea_castles/
Excerpts: "The super-wealthy are already building their first floating castle, a billion-dollar-plus luxury liner that offers permanent multimillion-dollar housing with the best protection of all: moats made of oceans, keeping the land-based Americans they've plundered at a safe distance. The first such floating castle has been christened the 'Utopia' – the South Korean firm Samsung has been contracted to build the $1.1 billion ship, due to be launched in 2013. Already orders are coming in to buy one of the Utopia's 200 or so mansions for sale – which range in price from about $4 million for the smallest condos to over $26 million for 6,600 square-foot 'estates.' The largest mansion is a whopping 40,000 square feet, and sells for $160 million. [...] The floating castle is a longtime dream of libertarian oligarchs – a place where they can live their lives in peace free from the teeming masses of starving losers and indebted parasites and their tax demands.
"Since they've grown so rich off of America, they have enough spare change to fund projects like the Seasteading Institute, run by Milton Friedman's grandson, Patri Friedman, and financed by the bizarre right-wing PayPal founder, Peter Thiel. [...] Both Thiel and Milton Friedman's grandson see democracy as the enemy – last year, Thiel wrote 'I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible' at about the same time that Milton Friedman's grandson proclaimed, 'Democracy is not the answer.' Both published their anti-democracy proclamations in the same billionaire-Koch-family-funded outlet, Cato Unbound, one of the oldest billionaire-fed libertarian welfare dispensaries. Friedman's answer for Thiel's democracy problem is to build offshore libertarian pod-fortresses where the libertarian way rules."
Whatever one may think of libertarian billionaires or seasteading, this article is a prime example of smear journalism posing as "investigative".
Mark Ames is an American journalist and book author, long based in Russia.
31 May 2010
Book: Organized Crime and the Challenge to Democracy
The contributed volume "Organized Crime and the Challenge to Democracy" was edited by Felia Allum and Renate Siebert (Routledge, 2003):
www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415467278/
Publisher's description: "This innovative book investigates the paradoxical situation whereby organized crime groups, authoritarian in nature and anti-democratic in practice, perform at their best in democratic countries. It uses examples from the United States, Japan, Russia, South America, France, Italy and the European Union."
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=BUQLjF9ks_cC&printsec=frontcover
Felia Allum is a Lecturer in Italian Politics and History at the University of Bath.
German-born Renate Siebert is Professor of Sociology at the University of Calabria, Italy.
www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415467278/
Publisher's description: "This innovative book investigates the paradoxical situation whereby organized crime groups, authoritarian in nature and anti-democratic in practice, perform at their best in democratic countries. It uses examples from the United States, Japan, Russia, South America, France, Italy and the European Union."
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=BUQLjF9ks_cC&printsec=frontcover
Felia Allum is a Lecturer in Italian Politics and History at the University of Bath.
German-born Renate Siebert is Professor of Sociology at the University of Calabria, Italy.
30 May 2010
Article: Jamaica's Bloody Democracy
Orlando Patterson's op-ed article "Jamaica's Bloody Democracy" appeared in today's "New York Times".
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30patterson.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1275246029-vntRFyWcAi/EOR3a8ai/Iw
Excerpts: "The violence tearing apart Jamaica, a democratic state, raises serious questions not only about its government's capacity to provide basic security but, more broadly and disturbingly, the link between violence and democracy itself. The specific causes of the turmoil are well known. For decades political leaders have used armed local gangs to mobilize voters in their constituencies; the gangs are rewarded with the spoils of power, in particular housing and employment contracts they can dole out. Opposition leaders counter with their own gangs, resulting in chronic violence during election seasons. These gangs eventually moved into international drug trafficking, with their leaders, called 'dons,' becoming ever more powerful. The tables turned quite some time ago, with the politicians becoming dependent on the dons for their survival. [...]
"Yet Jamaica, to its credit, has by global standards achieved a robust democracy. [...] Freedom House has continuously categorized the island as a 'free' country. [...] It may or may not be true that democracies do not wage war with each other, but a growing number of analysts have concluded that, domestically, democracies are in fact more prone to violence than authoritarian states, measured by incidence of civil wars, communal conflict and homicide. There are many obvious examples of this: India has far more street crime than China; the countries of the former Soviet Union are more violent now than they were under Communism; the streets of South Africa became more dangerous after apartheid was dismantled; Brazil was safer before 1985 under its military rule."
Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30patterson.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1275246029-vntRFyWcAi/EOR3a8ai/Iw
Excerpts: "The violence tearing apart Jamaica, a democratic state, raises serious questions not only about its government's capacity to provide basic security but, more broadly and disturbingly, the link between violence and democracy itself. The specific causes of the turmoil are well known. For decades political leaders have used armed local gangs to mobilize voters in their constituencies; the gangs are rewarded with the spoils of power, in particular housing and employment contracts they can dole out. Opposition leaders counter with their own gangs, resulting in chronic violence during election seasons. These gangs eventually moved into international drug trafficking, with their leaders, called 'dons,' becoming ever more powerful. The tables turned quite some time ago, with the politicians becoming dependent on the dons for their survival. [...]
"Yet Jamaica, to its credit, has by global standards achieved a robust democracy. [...] Freedom House has continuously categorized the island as a 'free' country. [...] It may or may not be true that democracies do not wage war with each other, but a growing number of analysts have concluded that, domestically, democracies are in fact more prone to violence than authoritarian states, measured by incidence of civil wars, communal conflict and homicide. There are many obvious examples of this: India has far more street crime than China; the countries of the former Soviet Union are more violent now than they were under Communism; the streets of South Africa became more dangerous after apartheid was dismantled; Brazil was safer before 1985 under its military rule."
Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard.
28 May 2010
Article: The Abandonment of Democracy Promotion
Tara McKelvey's article "The Abandonment of Democracy Promotion" was published in the contributed volume "New Threats to Freedom", ed. Adam Bellow (Templeton Press, May 2010):
www.templetonpress.org/book.asp?book_id=144
Excerpts: "Democracy has been taking some serious knocks in countries around the world. [...] Yet despite the threat to political freedom in Russia, Pakistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, and other countries [...], Americans have begun to show considerably less interest in helping to promote democracy as part of the nation's foreign policy. These trends will reinforce each other in the coming years [...]. Americans have turned away from the principles of democracy promotion largely in response to President George W. Bush's disastrous efforts in this area. It may seem natural to scale back on this aspect of foreign policy after the excessive zeal of the Bush administration. [...]
"President Obama has demonstrated that he is significantly less interested in democracy promotion than his predecessor; moreover, top members of his cabinet share his views. [...] Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have sent a national-security memo to President Obama, urging him to abandon democracy promotion in Afghanistan, and in the president's proposed 2010 foreign operations budget, funding for democracy projects in the Middle East and North Africa has gone down. [...] [S]ome U.S. officials seem almost disdainful of the attempts at building a democratic society [in Afghanistan] that are currently under way."
Tara McKelvey is a Senior Editor at the liberal magazine "The American Prospect" and an Alumni Fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security.
www.templetonpress.org/book.asp?book_id=144
Excerpts: "Democracy has been taking some serious knocks in countries around the world. [...] Yet despite the threat to political freedom in Russia, Pakistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, and other countries [...], Americans have begun to show considerably less interest in helping to promote democracy as part of the nation's foreign policy. These trends will reinforce each other in the coming years [...]. Americans have turned away from the principles of democracy promotion largely in response to President George W. Bush's disastrous efforts in this area. It may seem natural to scale back on this aspect of foreign policy after the excessive zeal of the Bush administration. [...]
"President Obama has demonstrated that he is significantly less interested in democracy promotion than his predecessor; moreover, top members of his cabinet share his views. [...] Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have sent a national-security memo to President Obama, urging him to abandon democracy promotion in Afghanistan, and in the president's proposed 2010 foreign operations budget, funding for democracy projects in the Middle East and North Africa has gone down. [...] [S]ome U.S. officials seem almost disdainful of the attempts at building a democratic society [in Afghanistan] that are currently under way."
Tara McKelvey is a Senior Editor at the liberal magazine "The American Prospect" and an Alumni Fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security.
27 May 2010
Audio: Doomed by Democracy?
BBC Radio 4 on 24 May 2010 broadcast an "Analysis" programme dedicated to the discussion among environmentalists that democracy may have to be "suspended" in order to fight climate change.
The audio is available free of charge here:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sfwtc
The full text of the programme transcript can be read here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/24_05_10.txt
Excerpts: "[Halina] WARD [Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development]: We don't have to be driven by what 50% plus 1 of the population wants to say that we represent a majority view. [Presenter Justin] ROWLATT: And this is Gordon Brown's former special advisor on climate change. [Michael] JACOBS: I don't think it's right to call something anti-democratic if it has the consent of the public even if you couldn't say that they were actively in favour of it. [... Mayer] HILLMAN [Senior Fellow Emeritus, Policy Studies Institute]: [...] There's no way that the public are going to willingly say 'I will forego flying'. The fact is that we've got to live on such a low use of fossil fuels for our daily activities. Therefore it's got to be required of them and if they don't go along with it, then we are – I fear – heading for absolute disaster. We are on a trajectory towards rendering the planet steadily uninhabitable. [...] ROWLATT: Establishing a kind authoritarian regime to impose restrictions on people's lifestyle – does sound like fascism doesn't it? HILLMAN: Well it's interesting you should use that noun because I've often observed that in 1939 had there been a referendum as to whether we go to war with Nazi Germany – the majority would have said 'No way' we had a horrific first war – we're not going to go through that again – there are times in history when democracy has to be set aside because of our wider obligation. [...]
"WARD: There are some environmentalists in particular who [...] feel that democracy is hampering progress. But those tend to be very privately expressed thoughts along the lines of China's easier to deal with [in] the intergovernmental arena perhaps because it's not a democracy. Thank goodness for that. And there's another group of activist civil society groups who I think see that democracy presents a huge challenge [...]. ROWLATT: Mayer Hillman [...] now believes the choice is between democracy and the survival of the human species. HILLMAN: [...] Democracy allows people the freedom not to be obliged to do things that we know we must do, so how can one possibly say yes but the principle of democracy must prevail over and above protection of the global environment from excessive burning of fossil fuels? Given the choice, I would sadly – very, very sadly – say that the condition of the planet in the future for future generations is more important than the retention of democratic principles. JACOBS: [...] Am I confident that democratic systems will deal with the issue of climate change? No. [...] ROWLATT: [...] The most pessimistic environmentalists suggesting suspending democracy are likely to remain a minority, not least because there is no obvious alternative. But what seems certain is that the challenge of tackling climate change will test democratic institutions as never before."
The audio is available free of charge here:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sfwtc
The full text of the programme transcript can be read here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/24_05_10.txt
Excerpts: "[Halina] WARD [Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development]: We don't have to be driven by what 50% plus 1 of the population wants to say that we represent a majority view. [Presenter Justin] ROWLATT: And this is Gordon Brown's former special advisor on climate change. [Michael] JACOBS: I don't think it's right to call something anti-democratic if it has the consent of the public even if you couldn't say that they were actively in favour of it. [... Mayer] HILLMAN [Senior Fellow Emeritus, Policy Studies Institute]: [...] There's no way that the public are going to willingly say 'I will forego flying'. The fact is that we've got to live on such a low use of fossil fuels for our daily activities. Therefore it's got to be required of them and if they don't go along with it, then we are – I fear – heading for absolute disaster. We are on a trajectory towards rendering the planet steadily uninhabitable. [...] ROWLATT: Establishing a kind authoritarian regime to impose restrictions on people's lifestyle – does sound like fascism doesn't it? HILLMAN: Well it's interesting you should use that noun because I've often observed that in 1939 had there been a referendum as to whether we go to war with Nazi Germany – the majority would have said 'No way' we had a horrific first war – we're not going to go through that again – there are times in history when democracy has to be set aside because of our wider obligation. [...]
"WARD: There are some environmentalists in particular who [...] feel that democracy is hampering progress. But those tend to be very privately expressed thoughts along the lines of China's easier to deal with [in] the intergovernmental arena perhaps because it's not a democracy. Thank goodness for that. And there's another group of activist civil society groups who I think see that democracy presents a huge challenge [...]. ROWLATT: Mayer Hillman [...] now believes the choice is between democracy and the survival of the human species. HILLMAN: [...] Democracy allows people the freedom not to be obliged to do things that we know we must do, so how can one possibly say yes but the principle of democracy must prevail over and above protection of the global environment from excessive burning of fossil fuels? Given the choice, I would sadly – very, very sadly – say that the condition of the planet in the future for future generations is more important than the retention of democratic principles. JACOBS: [...] Am I confident that democratic systems will deal with the issue of climate change? No. [...] ROWLATT: [...] The most pessimistic environmentalists suggesting suspending democracy are likely to remain a minority, not least because there is no obvious alternative. But what seems certain is that the challenge of tackling climate change will test democratic institutions as never before."
25 May 2010
Book: Maoism: A Critique from the Left
Just published: Prasenjit Bose is the editor of the contributed volume "Maoism: A Critique from the Left" (LeftWord Books, May 2010):
www.leftword.com/bookdetails.php?BkId=279&type=PB
Publisher's description: "What is 'Maoism'? What are its roots, and who are the forces waging a war in its name? The Indian Prime Minister characterizes them as our gravest internal security threat. The Maoists, on the other hand, claim they are the only revolutionary force in India today. The debate in India seems polarized between the hardline advocates of a military response to leftwing extremism on the one hand, and those who sympathize with the Maoists on the other. There is need, however, to look at the roots and origins of left sectarianism and critique it from a Marxist standpoint. In articulating a Left critique of 'Maoism', this book adds a crucial dimension to the ongoing debate in India. [...] P.M.S. Grewal makes a detailed, careful critique of the Indian Maoists' history, their programme and praxis. Nilotpal Basu unravels 'Maoism' as an anti-thesis of Mao Zedong thought. Vijay Prashad takes a critical look at the international experience of left extremism, especially in Latin America."
From the introduction: "Following independence, alongside the emergence of the Communist party as a major opposition force to the ruling Congress party within the parliamentary democratic set up, ideological debates also intensified within the Left on the road to revolution in India. [...] The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [...] arrived at a programmatic understanding that the [...] revolution, directed against the big bourgeoisie, landlordism and imperialism, is to be achieved by combining parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles. This overall understanding, however, was questioned by a small section, which considered participation in the parliamentary democratic process – just as the left sectarians did during Lenin's time – to be revisionist and non-revolutionary in principle. [...] Nilotpal Basu's essay [...] makes a robust critique of the anti-democratic practices of the Maoists and their hypocritical sympathizers. He also argues that Maoists can be effectively dealt with, not by means of imposing bans or security measures alone, but by ensuring their political isolation and addressing the developmental needs of the tribal areas where the Maoists operate."
Prasenjit Bose is Convenor of the Research Unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
www.leftword.com/bookdetails.php?BkId=279&type=PB
Publisher's description: "What is 'Maoism'? What are its roots, and who are the forces waging a war in its name? The Indian Prime Minister characterizes them as our gravest internal security threat. The Maoists, on the other hand, claim they are the only revolutionary force in India today. The debate in India seems polarized between the hardline advocates of a military response to leftwing extremism on the one hand, and those who sympathize with the Maoists on the other. There is need, however, to look at the roots and origins of left sectarianism and critique it from a Marxist standpoint. In articulating a Left critique of 'Maoism', this book adds a crucial dimension to the ongoing debate in India. [...] P.M.S. Grewal makes a detailed, careful critique of the Indian Maoists' history, their programme and praxis. Nilotpal Basu unravels 'Maoism' as an anti-thesis of Mao Zedong thought. Vijay Prashad takes a critical look at the international experience of left extremism, especially in Latin America."
From the introduction: "Following independence, alongside the emergence of the Communist party as a major opposition force to the ruling Congress party within the parliamentary democratic set up, ideological debates also intensified within the Left on the road to revolution in India. [...] The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [...] arrived at a programmatic understanding that the [...] revolution, directed against the big bourgeoisie, landlordism and imperialism, is to be achieved by combining parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles. This overall understanding, however, was questioned by a small section, which considered participation in the parliamentary democratic process – just as the left sectarians did during Lenin's time – to be revisionist and non-revolutionary in principle. [...] Nilotpal Basu's essay [...] makes a robust critique of the anti-democratic practices of the Maoists and their hypocritical sympathizers. He also argues that Maoists can be effectively dealt with, not by means of imposing bans or security measures alone, but by ensuring their political isolation and addressing the developmental needs of the tribal areas where the Maoists operate."
Prasenjit Bose is Convenor of the Research Unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
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