International Aid and Democracy Promotion investigates the link between foreign aid and the promotion of democracy, using theory, statistical tests, and illustrative case studies. This book challenges the field of development to recognize that democracy promotion is unlike other development goals. With a goal like economic development, the interests of the recipient and the donor coincide; whereas, with democratization, authoritarian recipients have strong reasons to oppose what donors seek. The different motivations of donors and recipients must be considered if democracy aid is to be effective. The author examines how donors exercise their leverage over aid recipients, and, more importantly, why, using selectorate theory to understand the incentives of both aid donors and recipients. International Aid and Democracy Promotion will be of great interest to academics and students of development and democratization, as well as policy makers with authority over foreign aid allocation. "The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003050438, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Open Access for this book is generously supported by the Ashoka University.

This book examines women's political communication in Africa, capturing previously unheard women's voices, and presenting detailed information on overlooked communication strategies and forms of power relations employed by African women and women of African descent. By examining the disputes, accomplishments and/or setbacks experienced by women in political spaces, it underscores feminist intersections of political communication in Africa. It also explores the glamor, humor, harmony and tact that women as state and non-state actors have contributed to Africa's political landscape through the realities of female soft power. The book addresses issues concerning how and why women do and should participate in politics; at what level they have employed political communication strategies; and which types. It also questions ideas and ideals that have guided or continue to guide feminist political communication in Africa's growing democracy. Lastly, it highlights African women's conscious approach and rejuvenated interest in developing their communication skills and strategies given their vital role in state-building.

Harnessing a cultural sociological approach to explore transformations in key social spheres in post-1989 Poland, Chmielewska-Szlajfer illuminates shifts in religiosity, sympathy towards others, and civic activity in post-Communist Poland in the light of Western influence over elements of Polish life. Reshaping Poland's Community after Communism focuses on three major cases, largely ignored in Polish scholarship: (1) a hugely popular, faux-baroque Catholic shrine, which illustrates new strategies adopted by the Polish Catholic Church to attract believers; (2) Woodstock Station, a widely known free charity music festival, demonstrating new practices of sympathy towards strangers; and (3) the emergence of national internet pro-voting campaigns and small-town watchdog websites, which uncover changes in practical uses of civic engagement. In exploring grass-roots, everyday negotiations of religiosity, charity, and civic engagement in contemporary Poland, Chmielewska-Szlajfer demonstrates how a country's cultural changes can suggest wider, dramatic democratic transformation.

Three unprecedented large-scale democratic experiments have recently taken place. Citizen assemblies on electoral reform were conducted in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Ontario. Groups of randomly selected ordinary citizens were asked to independently design the next electoral system. In each case, the participants spent almost an entire year learning about electoral systems, consulting the public, deliberating, debating, and ultimately deciding what specific institution should be adopted. When Citizens Decide uses these unique cases to examine claims about citizens' capacity for democratic deliberation and active engagement in policy-making. It offers empirical insight into numerous debates and provides answers to a series of key questions: 1) Are ordinary citizens able to decide about a complex issue? Are their decisions reasonable? 2) Who takes part in such proceedings? Are they dominated by people dissatisfied by the status quo? 3) Do some citizens play a more prominent role than others? Are decisions driven by the most vocal or most informed members? 4) Did the participants decide by themselves? Were they influenced by staff, political parties, interest groups, or the public hearings? 5) Does participation in a deliberative process foster citizenship? Did participants become more trusting, tolerant, open-minded, civic-minded, interested in politics, and active in politics? 6) How do the other political actors react? Can the electorate accept policy proposals made by a group of ordinary citizens? The analyses rely upon various types of evidence about both the inner workings of the assemblies and the reactions toward them outside: multi-wave panel surveys of assembly members, content analysis of newspaper coverage, and public opinion survey data. The lessons drawn from this research are relevant to those interested in political participation, public opinion, deliberation, public policy, and democracy. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr. The Comparative Politics Series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.

Citizen participation is a central component of democratic governance. As participatory schemes have grown in number and gained in social legitimacy over recent years, the research community has analyzed the virtues of participatory policies from several points of view, but usually giving focus to the most successful and well-known grass-roots cases. This book examines a wider range of participatory interventions that have been created or legitimized by central governments, providing original exploration of institutional democratic participatory mechanisms. Looking at a huge variety of subnational examples across Italy, Spain and France, the book interrogates the rich findings of a substantial research project. The authors use quantitative and qualitative methods to compare why these cases of participatory mechanisms have emerged, how they function, and what cultural impact they ve achieved. This allows highly original insights into why participatory mechanisms work in some places, but not others, and the sorts of choices that organizers of participatory processes have to consider when creating such policies."

This book presents a new democratic theory of election reform, using the tradition of political realism to interrogate and synthesize findings from global elections research and voting theory. In a world of democratic deficits and uncivil societies, political researchers and reformers should prioritize creating smarter ballots before smarter voters. Many democracies' electoral systems impose a dilemma of disempowerment which traps voters between the twin dangers of vote-splitting and "lesser evil" choices, restricting individual expression while degrading systemic accountability. The application of innovative conceptual tools to comparative empirical analysis and previous experimental results reveals that ballot structure is crucial, but often overlooked, in sustaining this dilemma. Multi-mark ballot structures can resolve the dilemma of disempowerment by allowing voters to rank or grade multiple parties or candidates per contest, thereby furnishing democratic citizens with a broader array of options, finer tools of expression, and stronger powers of accountability. Innovative proposals for ranking and grading ballots in both multi-winner and single-winner contests, including referendums, are offered to provoke further experimentation and reform-a process that may help the cause of democratic elections' relevance and survival.

This volume describes and analyzes the proliferation of new mechanisms for participation in Latin American democracies and considers the relationship between direct participation and the consolidation of representative institutions based on traditional electoral conceptions of democracy. Encompassing case studies of Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela, the book draws on original fieldwork to assess how institutions operate in practice, thus illuminating the conditions under which direct participation enhances broader aims of democratic participation. In so doing, it conveys fresh perspectives on the quality of democracy in Latin America today and about future prospects for deepening democratic citizenship.

The return to public assemblies and direct democratic methods in the wave of the global "squares movements" since 2011 has rejuvenated interest in forms of council organisation and action. The European council movements, which developed in the immediate post-First World War era, were the most impressive of a number of attempts to develop workers' councils throughout the twentieth century. However, in spite of the recent challenges to liberal democracy, the question of council democracy has so far been neglected within democratic theory. This book seeks to interrogate contemporary democratic institutions from the perspective of the resources that can be drawn from a revival and re-evaluation of the forgotten ideal of council democracy. This collection brings together democratic theorists, socialists and labour historians on the question of the relevance of council democracy for contemporary democratic practices. Historical reflection on the councils opens our political imagination to an expanded scope of the possibilities for political transformation by drawing from debates and events at an important historical juncture before the dominance of current forms of liberal democracy. It offers a critical perspective on the limits of current democratic regimes for enabling widespread political participation and holding elites accountable. This timely read provides students and scholars with innovative analyses of the councils on the 100th anniversary of their development. It offers new analytic frameworks for conceptualising the relationship between politics and the economy and contributes to emerging debates within political theory on workplace, economic and council democracy.

2017 marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, a work acknowledged as one of the most insightful books written in the twentieth century. It retains a contemporary quality, and still invites criticisms, new interpretations, and extensions and across disciplines. This book, in addition to re-examining Schumpeter's seminal work and undertaking a twenty-first-century update of its main themes, brings together leading social scientists to provide contemporary amendments, extensions - or eventually refutations - of key elements of Schumpeter's vision and thesis. Issues covered include a new take on creative destruction, the contours of a theory of innovative enterprise, finance and financialisation, a critique of the secular stagnation thesis, Schumpeter's contributions to a theory of the entrepreneurial state, his conception of socialism and its current relevance for understanding the 'China model' as well as a rekindling of his democracy thesis for our times. Bringing together leading international contributors, this book provides fresh perspectives on ideas that continue to be hugely relevant to contemporary social sciences and a guide for understanding the current tensions among capitalism, the state and democracy. These chapters will be of interest to economists, social scientists and anyone with an interest in modern capitalism.

In Colonial America, democracy was centered in provincial assemblies and based on the collection of neighbors whose freehold ownership made them permanent stakeholders in the community. The removal of the property qualification for voting in the United States occurred over three-quarters of a century and was among the more important events in the history of democratization, functioning to shift voting from a corporate privilege toward a human right. Moving beyond the standard histories of property standard histories of property qualification removal, Justin Moeller and Ronald F. King adopt the theories and methods of social science to discover underlying patterns and regularities, attempting a more systematic understanding of subject. While no historical event has a single cause, party consolidation and party competition provided a necessary mechanism, making background factors politically relevant. No change in franchise rules could occur without the explicit consent of incumbent politicians, always sensitive to the anticipated impact. Moeller and King argue that political parties acted strategically, accepting or rejecting removal of the property qualification as a means of advancing their electoral position. The authors identify four different variants of the strategic calculation variable, significantly helping to explain both the temporal differences across states and the pattern of contestation with each state individually.

For a long time, Orthodox Christianity was regarded as a religious tradition that was incompatible with democracy. This book challenges this incompatibility thesis, offering an innovative and fresh theoretical framework for dealing with the issue of Orthodoxy and democracy. This book focuses on the political behaviour of Orthodox Christian Churches in the democratization processes from a comparative perspective, and shows that different Orthodox Churches acted differently in the democratization processes in Greece, Serbia and Russia. The fundamental question that arises is - why? By focusing on institutions, rather than on political theology, this book answers this question from a comparative perspective. By studying the historical, cultural, and political roles of the Orthodox Christian Church in these three countries, the author examines whether it is logical to presume that the Church played a significant role in the democratization process. This book will be of great interest to academics and students globally who teach, study, and research in the emerging field of religion and democracy.

What role should (non-normative) facts such as people's confined generosity and scarcity of resources play in the normative theorising of political philosophers? The chapters in this book investigate different aspects of this broad question. Political philosophers are often silent on questions of what types of facts are relevant, if any, for normative theory, and what methodological assumptions about agency and behaviour need to be made, if any such assumptions are necessary. However, due to recent debates among and between idealists, non-idealists and realists in political theory, the issue about the relation between facts and norms in political philosophy/theory is beginning to attract greater attention from political theorists/philosophers. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Condorcet (1743–1794) was the last of the great eighteenth-century French philosophes and one of the most fervent américanistes of his time. A friend of Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine and a member of the American Philosophical Society, he was well informed and enthusiastic about the American Revolution. Condorcet’s writings on the American Revolution, the Federal Constitution, and the new political culture emerging in the United States constitute milestones in the history of French political thought and of French attitudes toward the United States. These remarkable texts, however, have not been available in modern editions or translations. This book presents first or new translations of all of Condorcet’s major writings on the United States, including an essay on the impact of the American Revolution on Europe; a commentary on the Federal Constitution, the first such commentary to be published in the Old World; and his Eulogy of Franklin, in which Condorcet paints a vivid picture of his recently deceased friend as the archetype of the new American man: self-made, practical, talented but modest, tolerant and free of prejudice—the embodiment of reason, common sense, and the liberal values of the Enlightenment.

Deliberative democracy is an embattled political project. It is accused of political naivete for it only talks about power without taking power. Others, meanwhile, take issue with deliberative democracy's dominance in the field of democratic theory and practice. An industry of consultants, facilitators, and experts of deliberative forums has grown over the past decades, suggesting that the field has benefited from a broken political system. This book is inspired by these accusations. It argues that deliberative democracy's tense relationship with power is not a pathology but constitutive of deliberative practice. Deliberative democracy gains relevance when it navigates complex relations of power in modern societies, learns from its mistakes, remains epistemically humble but not politically meek. These arguments are situated in three facets of deliberative democracy-norms, forums, and systems-and concludes by applying these ideas to three of the most pressing issues in contemporary times-post-truth politics, populism, and illiberalism.

In the past 20 years, a wave of right-wing populist movements has swept over Europe, changing the face of European politics. The Netherlands has been one of the more iconic countries to partake in this shift. Known internationally as an emblem of progressivism and tolerance, the country soon became a frontrunner in the revival of nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment. This is the first study to offer an extensive engagement with the ideas behind the Dutch swing to the right. The emergence of Dutch populism, this book shows, formed an integral part of a broader conservative tendency, identified as the Dutch New Right. In the US and the UK, the term New Right has been used to describe conservative backlash movements that arose in opposition to the progressive movements of the 1960s. The Dutch swing to the right, this book argues, formed a belated iteration of the New Right backlash that occurred overseas. This text will be essential reading for students and scholars in the fields of European Studies and Political Science, and Dutch politics and society more specifically.

The book provides an in-depth discussion of democratic theory questions in relation to refugee law. The work introduces readers to the evolution of refugee law and its core issues today, as well as central lines in the debate about democracy and migration. Bringing together these fields, the book links theoretical considerations and legal analysis. Based on its specific understanding of the refugee concept, it offers a reconstruction of refugee law as constantly confronted with the question of how to secure rights to those who have no voice in the democratic process. In this reconstruction, the book highlights, on the one hand, the need to look beyond the legal regulations for understanding the challenges and gaps in refugee protection. It is also the structural lack of political voice, the book argues, which shapes the refugee's situation. On the other hand, the book opposes a view of law as mere expression of power and points out the dynamics within the law which reflect endeavors towards mitigating exclusion. The book will be essential reading for academics and researchers working in the areas of migration and refugee law, legal theory and political theory.

We the People: Social Protest Movements and the Shaping of American Democracy uses a historical and a contemporary focus to demonstrate the integral role that social protest movements play in challenging social and structural inequality along the intersecting axis of identity politics, socioeconomic status and ability, and why social protest movements should matter to social workers. The book examines how social protest movements influence progressive social policy and elucidates the social conditions that give rise to protest, how protest creates social movements, and the functions and goals of social protest movements. By exploring various theoretical perspectives, it brings both a historical and a contemporary lens to the examination of social protest movements and elucidates the critical role that social protest movements play in American democracy. With a discussion of emerging trends and the future of social protest movements, We the People explains and offers strategies for both students and social workers to develop the skills to think critically and take part in social protest movements as policy practitioners.

We the People: Social Protest Movements and the Shaping of American Democracy uses a historical and a contemporary focus to demonstrate the integral role that social protest movements play in challenging social and structural inequality along the intersecting axis of identity politics, socioeconomic status and ability, and why social protest movements should matter to social workers. The book examines how social protest movements influence progressive social policy and elucidates the social conditions that give rise to protest, how protest creates social movements, and the functions and goals of social protest movements. By exploring various theoretical perspectives, it brings both a historical and a contemporary lens to the examination of social protest movements and elucidates the critical role that social protest movements play in American democracy. With a discussion of emerging trends and the future of social protest movements, We the People explains and offers strategies for both students and social workers to develop the skills to think critically and take part in social protest movements as policy practitioners.

Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression discusses the de-democratization process underway in contemporary Brazil. The relative political stability that characterized domestic politics in the 2000s ended with the sudden emergence of a series of massive protests in 2013, followed by the controversial impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. In this new, more conservative period in Brazilian politics, a series of institutional reforms deepened the distance between citizens and representatives. Brazil's current political crisis cannot be understood without reference to the continual growth of right-wing and ultra-right discourse, on the one hand, and to the neoliberal ideology that pervades the minds of large parts of the Brazilian elite, on the other. Twenty experts on Brazil across different fields discuss the ongoing political turmoil in the light of distinct problems: geopolitics, gender, religion, media, indigenous populations, right-wing strategies, and new forms of coup, among others. Updated analyses enriched with historical perspective help to illuminate the intricate issues that will determine the country's fate in years to come. Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression will interest students and scholars of Brazilian Politics and History, Latin America, and the broader field of democracy studies.

'The world's greatest public intellectual' Observer The essential guide to Chomsky and his brilliant ideas on the global state of affairs An extraordinary collection of Chomsky's speeches and his interviews with David Barsamian, edited by Arthur Naiman. With exceptional clarity and power of argument, Noam Chomsky lays bare as no one else can the realities of contemporary geopolitics. Including classic essays such as: * What Uncle Sam Really Wants: A dissection of US foreign policy * The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many: Examining the new global economy, food and the roots of racism * Secrets, Lies and Democracy: The CIA's actions in relation to religious fundamentalism, global inequality and the coming eco-catastrophe * The Common Good: unmissable writing on equality, freedom and the media ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 'One of the finest minds of the twentieth century' The New Yorker 'A rebel without a pause' Bono 'One of the greatest, most radical public thinkers of our time. When the sun sets on the American empire, as it will, as it must, Noam Chomsky's work will survive' Arundhati Roy

Democratic politics depend on citizen participation, trust and support. While this support in democratic institutions and political elites is declining, public and scholarly discourse frequently suggests counteracting the challenge by strengthening the role of experts in political decision-making, yet such reform proposals convey a paternalistic threat that contravenes fundamental democratic principles. Proposing an alternative, 'radical proceduralist' understanding of democratic legitimacy and institutional reform, Radical Proceduralism argues that there is no such thing as 'political truth' or 'correctness' that could justify experts wielding political power. Rather, the only criterion for democratic legitimacy is the fair and equal inclusion of all affected citizens. Radical Proceduralism bridges the gap between political philosophy and practical institutional experimentation asking us to bring citizens back in and to engage them in a dialogue about 'the rules of the democratic game' and proposing institutional devices that figure as 'conversation starters' and facilitate such dialogues.

This book provides a detailed analysis of the dimensions and dynamics of the role of international aid in the reform and capacity development of public service in post-communist Albania. It challenges the technocratic, results-based management frameworks used by aid organizations and reports of official donors operating in the country context, and offers a qualitative and critical assessment of the role of aid in administrative reform and capacity building. Secondly, the book highlights the specificity of the national politico-administrative context and its ability to modify the process of policy transfer from aid organizations to the Albanian bureaucracy. In doing so, it illustrates the domestic challenges in the transfer process towards policy learning and makes a valuable contribution to the debate over the (voluntary vs. coercive) administrative reform in Southeast Europe in relation to the politics of EU accession.

This book offers transdisciplinary scholarship which challenges the agendas of and markers around traditional social scientific fields. It builds on the belief that the study of major issues in the global cultural and political economies benefit from a perspective that rejects the limitations imposed by established boundaries, whether disciplinary, conceptual, symbolic or material. Established and early career academics explore and embrace contemporary political sociology following the 'global' and 'cultural' turns of recent decades. Categories such as state, civil society, family, migration, citizenship and identity are interrogated and sometimes found to be ill-suited to the task of analyzing global complexities. The limits of global theory, the challenges of global citizenship, and the relationship between globalisation and situated and mobile subjects and objects are all referenced in this book. The book will be of interest to scholars of International Relations, Political Science, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Theory, Geography, Area studies and European studies.

This book challenges the idea that the Rule of Law is still a universal European value given its relatively rapid deterioration in Hungary and Poland, and the apparent inability of the European institutions to adequately address the illiberalization of these Member States. The book begins from the general presumption that the Rule of Law, since its emergence, has been a universal European value, a political ideal and legal conception. It also acknowledges that the EU has been struggling in the area of value enforcement, even if the necessary mechanisms are available and, given an innovative outlook and more political commitment, could be successfully used. The authors appreciate the different approaches toward the Rule of Law, both as a concept and as a measurable indicator, and while addressing the core question of the volume, widely rely on them. Ultimately, the book provides a snapshot of how the Rule of Law ideal has been dismantled and offers a theory of the Rule of Law in illiberal constitutionalism. It discusses why voters keep illiberal populist leaders in power when they are undeniably acting contrary to the Rule of Law ideal. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers engaged with the foundational questions of constitutionalism. The structure and nature of the subject matter covered ensure that the book will be a useful addition for comparative and national constitutional law classes. It will also appeal to legal practitioners wondering about the boundaries of the Rule of Law.

Disinformation has recently become a salient issue, not just for researchers but for the media, politicians, and the general public as well. Changing circumstances are a challenge for system and societal resilience; disinformation is also a challenge for governments, civil society, and individuals. Thus, this book focuses on the post-truth era and the online environment, which has changed both the ways and forms in which disinformation is presented and spread. The volume is dedicated to the complex processes of understanding the mechanisms and effects of online propaganda and disinformation, its detection and reactions to it in the European context. It focuses on questions and dilemmas from political science, security studies, IT, and law disciplines with the aim to protect society and build resilience against online propaganda and disinformation in the post-truth era.