New perspectives on Iran's relationship to democracy Can Islamic societies embrace democracy? In Democracy in Modern Iran, Ali Mirsepassi maintains that it is possible, demonstrating that Islam is not inherently hostile to the idea of democracy. Rather, he provides new perspective on how such a political and social transformation could take place, arguing that the key to understanding the integration of Islam and democracy lies in concrete social institutions rather than pre-conceived ideas, the every day experiences rather than abstract theories. Mirsepassi, an Iranian native, provides a rare inside look into the country, offering a deep understanding of how Islamic countries like Iran and Iraq can and will embrace democracy. Democracy in Modern Iran challenges readers to think about Islam and democracy critically and in a far more nuanced way than is done in black-and-white dichotomies of Islam vs. Democracy, or Iran vs. the West. This essential volume contributes important insights to current discussions, creating a more complex conception of modernity in the Eastern world and, with it, Mirsepassi offers to a broad Western audience a more accurate, less cliched vision of Iran's political reality.

This edited collection provides a comparative treatment of democratic development in the Caribbean. Caribbean nations with British, French, Hispanic, Dutch, and American political traditions are examined. The volume pulls together common themes that illuminate the character of the post-colonial state in both its authoritarian and democratic forms. It examines the nature of and reasons for the survival of competitive parliamentary institutions on the one hand, and reasons for state decay and malfunction on the other. This volume will be of particular interest to scholars and policy makers involved with comparative politics, Latin American and Caribbean studies, and sociology.

This bold venture into political theory and comparative politics combines traditional concerns about democracy with modern analytical methods. It asks how contemporary democracies work, an essential stage in asking how they can be justified. An answer to both questions is found in the idea of the median mandate. The voter in the middle - the voice of the majority - empowers the centre party in parliament to translate his or her preferences into public policy. The median mandate provides a unified theory of democracy - pluralist, consensus, majoritarian, liberal, and populist - by replacing each qualified 'vision' with an integrated account of how representative institutions work. The unified theory is put to the test with comprehensive cross-national evidence covering 21 democracies from 1950 through to 1995. This exciting book will be of interest to specialists and general readers alike, representing as it does a reaffirmation of traditional democratic practice in an uncertain and threatening world. Comparative Politics is a series for students and teachers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. The General Editors are Max Kaase, Professor of Political Science, Vice President and Dean, School of Humanities and Social Science, International University, Bremen, Germany; and Kenneth Newton, Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Southampton. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of public opinion patterns among Muslims, particularly in the Arab world. On the basis of data from the World Values Survey, the Arab Barometer Project and the Arab Opinion Index, it compares the dynamics of Muslim opinion structures with global publics and arrives at social scientific predictions of value changes in the region. Using country factor scores from a variety of surveys, it also develops composite indices of support for democracy and a liberal society on a global level and in the Muslim world, and analyzes a multivariate model of opinion structures in the Arab world, based on over 40 variables from 12 countries in the Arab League and covering 67% of the total population of the Arab countries. While being optimistic about the general, long-term trend towards democracy and the resilience of Arab and Muslim civil society to Islamism, the book also highlights anti-Semitic trends in the region and discusses them in the larger context of xenophobia in traditional societies. In light of the current global confrontation with radical Islamism, this book provides vital material for policy planners, academics and think tanks alike.

Lumumba-Kasongo examines those forces that contributed to the fate of multiparty democracy in Africa. The forces include the state, political parties, ethnicity, nationalism, religion, underdevelopment, and the global market.

Multipartyism in Africa is not necessarily democratic. However, the processes toward multipartyism can produce democratic discourses if they can be transformed by popular and social movements. As the author points out, almost all social classes have demanded some form of democracy. Yet the sociological meanings and teleological perspectives of those forms of democracy depend on an individual or group's economic and educational status. The dynamics of the global context, as reflected in the adoption of the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and the stability programs of the International Monetary Fund, are likely to produce non-democratic conditions in Africa. Lumumba-Kasongo challenges the existing paradigms on democracy and development, so the book is of considerable interest to scholars and policy makers involved with African politics and socio-economic development.

This volume, first published in 1984, discusses the viability of applying the 'Mediterranean model' to three countries that were transitioning to democracy, - Spain, Greece and Portugal - combining both comparative and national case-study approaches. In particular, Spain, Greece and Portugal offer comparable examples of the problems of establishing new democratic systems within relatively unstable and economically less developed environments. This title applies different theories of regime transition to the countries in question. This volume will be of interest to students of politics.

Recent years have seen contestations of democracy all around the globe. Democracy is challenged as a political as well as a normative term, and as a form of governance. Against the background of neoliberal transformation, populist mobilization, and xenophobic exclusion, but also of radical and emancipatory democratic projects, this collection offers a variety of critical and challenging perspectives on the condition of democracy in the 21st Century. The volumes provide theoretical and empirical enquiries into the meaning and practice of liberal democracy, the erosion of democratic institutions, and the consequences for citizenship and everyday lives. With a pronounced focus on national and transnational politics and processes, as well as postcolonial and settler-colonial contexts, individual contributions scrutinize the role of democratic societies, ideals, and ideologies of liberal democracy within global power geometries. By employing the multiple meanings of The Condition of Democracy, the collection addresses the preconditions of democratic rule, the state this form of governance is in, and the changing ways in which citizens can (still) act as the sovereign in liberal democratic societies. The books offer both challenging theoretical perspectives and rigorous empirical findings of how to conceive of democracy in our times, which will appeal to academics and students in social and political science, economics and international relations amongst other fields. The focus on developments in the Middle East and North Africa will furthermore be of great usefulness to academics and the wider public interested in the repercussions of western democracy promotion as well as in contemporary struggles for democratization 'from below'.

This book explores how new governments and societies deal with a legacy of past repression, in Portugal, Spain, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Germany after reunification, as well as Russia, the Southern Cone of Latin America and Central America, as well as South Africa. It looks at official truth commissions, trials and amnesties and purges and unofficial social initiatives to deal with the past. The book also assesses the significance of forms of reckoning with the past for a process of democratic deepening as well as the importance of international actors in shaping policies to deal with past legacies in some of the countries examined.

For the first time in a single volume, the growing field of network analysis is systematically explored and assessed in terms of its ability to throw light on individual behaviour, social movements and political processes.

Democracy, Agency, and the State aims to contribute to a comparatively informed theory of democracy. Professor O'Donnell begins by arguing that conceptions of 'the state' and 'democracy', and their respective defining features, significantly influence each other. Using an approach that is both historical and analytical, he traces this relationship through the idea of legally sanctioned and backed agency which grounds democratic citizenship. From this standpoint he explores several aspects of the democratic regime and of the state, distinguishing four constitutive dimensions (bureaucracy, legality, focus of collective identity, and filter). He goes on to examine the role played by the idea of 'the nation' or 'the people', and the ways in which the state represents itself to different sections of society, especially in countries marred by deep inequality and pervasive poverty.
Drawing on the examples of democratic and non-democratic regime, he discusses the dialogical spaces congenial to democracy, as well as examining the options that may or may not enable agency, and the complex comparative and ethical issues raised by the intersection of agency with globalization and legal pluralism.Throughout these discussions several comparative vistas are opened, especially but not exclusively toward Latin America. The book concludes by offering a justification of democracy, even of the flawed democracies that nowadays abound.
Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford University.

Transcending the widespread concerns about deteriorating moral values in American society, this collection focuses on the common values of American society. Through the perspectives of philosophers, historians, political scientists, theologians, anthropologists, economists, and scientists, this book examines American social values and discusses how they are applied in current areas of public interest.

American democratic ideals are not simply rooted in the conventional structural and institutional elements of a democracy, such as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. American democracy, in fact, could not survive without a strong basis of social values that support community, tolerance, and cooperation. Since social values form the common bonds of society, and may not be supported by individual members, they are determined through a complex cultural, legal, and political process, as one of the contributors points out.

The contributors to this book were assembled from a variety of disciplines and professions to examine social values and analyze their application in specific areas of current controversy. Through the perspectives of philosophy, anthropology, history, economics, political science, biomedical ethics, and religion, these discussions cover not only disciplinary perspectives but cover topics such as the environment, intergenerational interaction, social welfare policies, gender, and genetic engineering.

This book addresses the challenge of reforming defense and military policy-making in newly democratized nations. By tracing the development of civil-military relations in various new democracies from a comparative perspective, it links two bodies of scholarship that thus far have remained largely separate: the study of emerging (or failed) civilian control over armed forces on the one hand; and work on the roots and causes of military effectiveness to guarantee the protection and security of citizens on the other. The empirical and theoretical findings presented here will appeal to scholars of civil-military relations, democratization and security issues, as well as to defense policy-makers.

Democracy is in crisis. Is there still time to save it? Democracies face external threat from aggressive authoritarian states. Internally, citizens have grown increasingly distrustful of politicians and more cynical about national and global governance institutions. The time is ripe for democracy to renew itself. This text offers a state-of-the art overview of democratic innovations today, moving beyond cries of the 'death' or 'end' of democracy to instead offer a range of practical solutions for how to save it and restore faith in democratic practice. 'Old' democratic power, represented by existing structures, is being challenged. 'New' power involves collaboration and rapid feedback loops, as well as increased citizen participation. The future of democracy, the authors demonstrate, will be about findings ways of melding 'old' and 'new' power practices. Offering a broad and accessible survey of what different forms of democracy and democratic innovations look like today, and how they can develop in future, Saving Democracy shows us the potential for transformation across the entire democratic process. Avoiding a reductive focus on simply getting citizens more involved in decision-making, this book uniquely argues for the importance of refining and monitoring how democratic decisions are made and followed through.

This study established an intellectual profile of Albert Gallatin through his vision of government's role in a democratic republic and the republic's role in the community of nations. Only through a comprehensive analysis of Gallatin's political and diplomatic activities can the student of history learn to see his actions as expressions of clearly formulated principles. Gallatin was much more involved in the shaping of administrative policy than has been recognized. Moreover, he followed his unique Gallatinian approach to domestic policy as well as international diplomacy, always in pursuit of one paramount objective: the preservation of individual liberty within the context of a republic.

This work deals with the political transition in Spain from authoritarianism to democracy and its impact on business. It addresses the fundamental questions of how business was affected by the transition and how business, in turn, influenced the course of democratization, through collective action, and how it influenced the marketplace through the aggregate of individual business decisions. The work has a strong empirical base. Data was collected from the chief executive officers of 260 Spanish companies and the managing directors of over one hundred affiliates of the top-ranked business association, the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (the "CEOE"). The work is particularly timely in light of the transitions occurring in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Unlike many earlier political transitions to more open systems, in Latin America and Southern Europe, the dynamics of economic change concurrent with political change is getting much greater attention in the East European transitions. The East European systems are attempting simultaneous political transitions with movement from command to market economies. Some East Europeans have studied the Spanish experience to garner lessons for their own efforts.

This book throws new light on the way in which the Internet impacts on democracy. Based on Jurgen Habermas' discourse-theoretical reconstruction of democracy, it examines one of the world's largest, most diverse but also most unequal democracies, Brazil, in terms of the broad social and legal effects the internet has had. Focusing on the Brazilian constitutional evolution, the book examines how the Internet might impact on the legitimacy of a democratic order and if, and how, it might yield opportunities for democratic empowerment. The book also assesses the ways in which law, as an institution and a system, reacts to the changes and challenges brought about by the Internet: the ways in which law may retain its strength as an integrative force, avoiding a 'virtual' legitimacy crisis.

From small-scale experiments, deliberative mini-publics have recently taken a constitutional turn in Europe. Iceland and Ireland have turned to deliberative democracy to reform their constitutions. Estonia, Luxembourg and Romania have also experienced constitutional process in a deliberative mode. In Belgium the G1000, a citizen-led initiative of deliberative democracy, has fostered a wider societal debate about the role and place of citizens in the country's democracy. At the same time, European institutions have introduced different forms of deliberative democracy as a way to connect citizens back in. These empirical cases are emblematic of a possibly constitutional turn in deliberative democracy in Europe. The purpose of this book is to critically assess these developments, bringing together academics involved in the designing of these new forms of constitutional deliberative democracy with the theorists who propagated the ideas and evaluated democratic standards.

Native scholars offer clearly written coverage of the relationship between post-Soviet and Asian political parties and democracy in their nations. Political Parties and Democracy: Volume III: Post-Soviet and Asian Political Parties is the third volume in this five-volume set. It offers clearly written, up-to-date coverage of post-Soviet and Asian political parties from the unique perspective of distinguished indigenous scholars who have lived the truths they tell and, thus, write with unique breadth, depth, and scope. Presented in two parts, this volume overviews post-Soviet parties, then discusses the realities on the ground in Georgia, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. Likewise, the book offers an introduction to Asian political parties, followed by chapters on China, India, Japan, Malaysia, and South Korea. Throughout, contributors explore the relationship between political parties and democracy (or democratization) in their respective nations, providing necessary historical, socioeconomic, and institutional context, and clarifying the balance of power among parties—and between them and competing agencies of power—today.

This is the first full-length presentation of a republican alternative to the liberal and communitarian theories that have dominated political philosophy in recent years. The latest addition to the acclaimed Oxford Political Theory series, Pettit's eloquent and compelling account opens with an examination of the traditional republican conception of freedom as non-domination, contrasting this with established negative and positive views of liberty.
The first part of the book traces the rise and decline of this conception, displays its many attractions, and makes a case for why it should still be regarded as a central political ideal. The second part of the book looks at what the implementation of the ideal would require with regard to substantive policy-making, constitutional and democratic design, regulatory control and the relation between state and civil society. Prominent in this account is a novel concept of democracy, under which government is exposed to systematic contestation, and a vision of state-societal relations founded upon civility and trust.
Pettit's powerful and insightful new work offers not only a unified, theoretical overview of the many strands of republican ideas, but also a new and sophisticated perspective on studies in related fields including the history of ideas, jurisprudence, and criminology.

Today Iran is once again in the headlines. Reputed to be developing nuclear weapons, the future of Iraq's next-door neighbor is a matter of grave concern both for the stability of the region and for the safety of the global community. President George W. Bush labeled it part of the "Axis of Evil," and rails against the country's authoritarian leadership. Yet as Bush trumpets the spread of democracy throughout the Middle East, few note that Iran has one of the longest-running experiences with democracy in the region.
In this book, Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr look at the political history of Iran in the modern era, and offer an in-depth analysis of the prospects for democracy to flourish there. After having produced the only successful Islamist challenge to the state, a revolution, and an Islamic Republic, Iran is now poised to produce a genuine and indigenous democratic movement in the Muslim world. Democracy in Iran is neither a sudden development nor a western import, Gheissari and Nasr argue. The concept of democracy in Iran today may appear to be a reaction to authoritarianism, but it is an old idea with a complex history, one that is tightly interwoven with the main forces that have shaped Iranian society and politics, institutions, identities, and interests. Indeed, the demand for democracy first surfaced in Iran a century ago at the end of the Qajar period, and helped produce Iran's surprisingly liberal first constitution in 1906. Gheissari and Nasr seek to understand why democracy failed to grow roots and lost ground to an autocratic Iranian state. Why was democracy absent from the ideological debates of the 1960s and 1970s? Most important, why has it now become a powerfulsocial, political, and intellectual force? How have modernization, social change, economic growth, and the experience of the revolution converged to make this possible?
Gheissari and Nasr trace the fortunes of the democratic ideal from the inchoate demands for rule of law and constitutionalism of a century ago to today's calls for individual rights and civil liberties. In the process they provide not just a fresh look at Iran's politics but also a new understanding of the way in which democracy can develop in a Muslim country.

Throughout World War II, Detroit's automobile manufacturers accounted for one-fifth of the dollar value of the nation's total war production, and this amazing output from ""the arsenal of democracy"" directly contributed to the allied victory. In fact, automobile makers achieved such production miracles that many of their methods were adopted by other defence industries, particularly the aircraft industry. In Arsenal of Democracy: The American Automobile Industry in World War II, award-winning historian Charles K. Hyde details the industry's transition to a wartime production powerhouse and some of its notable achievements along the way. Hyde examines several innovative cooperative relationships that developed between the executive branch of the federal government, U.S. military services, automobile industry leaders, auto industry suppliers, and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union, which set up the industry to achieve production miracles. He goes on to examine the struggles and achievements of individual automakers during the war years in producing items like aircraft engines, aircraft components, and complete aircraft; tanks and other armoured vehicles; jeeps, trucks, and amphibians; guns, shells, and bullets of all types; and a wide range of other weapons and war goods ranging from search lights to submarine nets and gyroscopes. Hyde also considers the important role played by previously underused workers-namely African Americans and women-in the war effort and their experiences on the line. Arsenal of Democracy includes an analysis of wartime production nationally, on the automotive industry level, by individual automakers, and at the single plant level. For this thorough history, Hyde has consulted previously overlooked records collected by the Automobile Manufacturers Association that are now housed in the National Automotive History Collection of the Detroit Public Library. Automotive historians, World War II scholars, and American history buffs will welcome the compelling look at wartime industry in Arsenal of Democracy.

The Indonesian province of Timor-Leste made international news when it decided to break away from Indonesia in 1999. The decision sparked deadly rampages by pro-integrationist militias, violence that only abated when the UN sent a force to maintain peace and help ease the way to actual independence. This book details the political history of Timor-Leste, both preceding and following the declaration of independence, and it uses the events, consequences, and lessons of that period to help us understand what to expect for similar experiments in democracy building elsewhere in the world.

This review examines the literature on procedural justice and the fair trial over the past two decades in the People's Republic of China. Part 1 gives a wide-angle view of the key political events and developments that have shaped the experience of procedural justice and the fair trial in contemporary China. It provides a storyline that explains the political environment in which these concepts have developed over time. Part 2 examines how scholars understand the legal structures of the criminal process in relation to China's political culture. Part 3 presents scholarly views on three enduring problems relating to the fair trial: a presumption of innocence, interrogational torture, and the role of lawyers in the criminal trial process. Procedural justice is a particularly pertinent issue today in China, because Xi Jinping's yifa zhiguo (governing the nation in accordance with the law) governance platform seeks to embed a greater appreciation for procedural justice in criminal justice decision-making, to correct a politico-legal tradition overwhelmingly focused on substantive justice. Overall, the literature reviewed in this article points to the serious limitations in overcoming the politico-legal barriers to justice reforms that remain intact in the system, despite nearly four decades of constant reform.