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Information has been omnipresent and all-powerful for almost two centuries, and now possesses sophisticated and invasive means of imposing itself and creating opinion. It was crucial in the Enlightenment and in the preparation of the French Revolution by the intellectual and bourgeois elites. Its characteristic is to be the opposite of intangible truths, to be moving, malleable and adaptable. It is the new replacing the old. It is bracketed by history, because it ignores tradition and no longer needs the past. The creation of opinion in the 18th century introduced a concept of freedom that in fact conceals totalitarianism. People are told what to think. Information is a weapon against all forms of personal reflection and inner life. It imposes itself and imposes, making it impossible to distance oneself. It even kills the democracy it boasts about.

The international business press has been a powerful and influential voice in modern societies and, as its formative years took place during the Cold War, a closer look at the ideologies that were promoted in this part of the press is of interest. Until the 1970s, Farmand was the only Norwegian business magazine of any size and standing. Trygve J. B. Hoff, Farmand’s editor from 1935, was part of the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS), a neoliberal intellectual collective established in 1947 with participants such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. This article is a study of the ideas that Hoff promoted, particularly in Farmand, from the 1940s to the 1970s.

This article presents one way of changing the participatory culture of training teachers – the Critical Integrative Teacher Education (CITE) programme now being implemented at Jyväskylä University. For the last ten years the Finnish school system has been the centre of considerable international attention because of its success in PISA. The Finnish school, however, has two faces. In the shadow of those good learning outcomes there lurks a democratic deficit in school and a lack of school wellbeing amongst children. This article examines the nature of the Finnish school and teacher education from the perspective of democracy. If participatory culture in Finnish schools is restricted, then the same also applies to teacher education. The long tradition of education as well as the radical school democracy experiment in the early 1970s resulted in the neutralization of teacher education and the removal of politics and politicality. This led to a teacher education with the emphasis on didactics and psychology but with a social viewpoint conspicuous by its absence. Even though the system offers opportunities to implement even radically different training methods, there is little that is done differently.

This paper is a reply to Elisabeth Korn and Jens Schröter’s essay “On a Potential Paradox of Public Service Media” which is part of tripleC’s special issue “Critical Perspectives on Digital Capitalism: Theories and Praxis”. My reflections focus on the notion of filtering, the relationship between broadcasting and the Internet; the relationship of media, technology, and society; and questions of (digital) democracy. On the one hand, there is a number of points where I agree with Korn and Schröter. On the other hand, their reflections also raised questions that I point out and that are not answered in their paper.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2023 8(2), 809-851 | Article | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. – II. Democracy as a value of EU Law. – II.1. The development of the value of democracy in the European Union – II.2. The value of democracy in art. 2 TEU and the Copenhagen criteria – III. The value of democracy beyond art. 2 TEU. – III.1. Right to vote and to stand as a candidate – III.2. Art. 10 TEU – III.3. Art. 21 TEU – III.4. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU – IV. Enforcing Democracy Beyond Art. 7 TEU. – IV.1. Problematising art. 7 – IV.2. Centralised enforcement – IV.3. Decentralised enforcement – V. Conclusion. | (Abstract) This Article analyses several ways in which democracy as a core value of the European Union can be enforced against member States violating democratic principles. Following the crisis of democratic backsliding in several Member States, no legal action has been taken on the basis of a breach of democracy or democratic principles. A possible explanation is that violations of art. 2 TEU are subject to a specific enforcement procedure (laid down in art. 7 TEU), which is notoriously hard to trigger. Furthermore, since art. 2 TEU refers to abstract values, it is frequently asserted that values such as “democracy” cannot be legally enforced. This Article, however, claims that the value of democracy has a sufficiently clear core legal meaning in EU law to be legally enforceable. Secondly, this Article claims that EU law includes numerous other centralized (at EU level) and decentralized (at Member State level) enforcement mechanisms beyond art. 7 TEU that can be used to enforce democratic principles. The current absence of enforcement action against such Member States, therefore, is largely a political choice instead of a legal requirement.

The events leading to the 1994 general elections marked a major turning point in the history of South Africa. The new dispensation saw the introduction of new legislation that would see traditional leaders ‘losing’ their powers to the newly established local government structures. The government’s White Paper on Local Government 1998 offered a new vision of a post-apartheid society, embodied in the concept of developmental local government. As a result, territories previously controlled by the traditional leaders would be divided into municipalities, each governed by an elected municipal council. This paper uses a combination of archival sources such as newspapers, minutes of the committee meetings and other written documentary and oral sources drawn from in-depth interviews with local leaders, traditional leaders, and local people from the area. It argues that the incorporation of remote traditional areas under the jurisdiction of traditional leaders in the newly formed municipalities threatened the powers of traditional leaders and complicated the jobs of newly elected councillors, as they were expected to go through izinduna for any project to be successfully launched. This was the case mainly in instances where a local traditional leader and a councillor belong to different political parties.

The purpose of the study is to analyse the jurisprudence of the right to life and dignity as fundamentally protected rights in a South African perspective since the dawn of democracy and Constitution of 1996 hereafter referred to as the Constitution. This paper argues that South Africa as a state in applying the Bill of Rights and the Constitution might have encroached or applied laws that may have compromised justice in so far as the impact from the decisions of the courts are concerned. This paper will therefore examine how the courts have interpreted the law and the protection of the non derogable rights of life and dignity post constitutional democracy. The democratic government has a duty to reverse apartheid policies that stemmed from colonial laws. Apartheid laws segregated people and rights were clustered, and selectively applied along racial lines with a tiny majority of European-Africans as sole beneficiaries of rights while the African majority wallow in rightlessness. The authors will examine how the state interprets these fundamental principles of the constitution since the dawn of democracy. The authors hope that the arguments presented in this paper would assist in understanding the moral justification of the decisions in human rights cases in South Africa as the courts battle their way into the realisation of especially non derogable rights as set out in the Bill of Rights.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the papers presented in this volume cover a very wide, even extensive range of topics. This is of course logical, given the multi-disciplinary nature of this scientifical project. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to present no less than eight papers devoted to new results and ideas in fields as diverse as psychology, philosophy, political science and law, dealing with matters such as electoral behavior, globalization, the concept of democracy, the role of experts or the relevance of thinkers such as Plato and Hobbes for the current discussion on the EU constitution. DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1837316

This paper applies John Locke’s political philosophy to analyze the 2018 Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, highlighting the harms of spreading misinformation in the digital sphere. Locke’s Two Treatises of Government serves as a theoretical lens to explore how social media sites represent a facade of an impartial third party, when in reality they inflict harm upon the user by violating their liberty, and subsequently natural law as a whole. Using the Facebook-CambridgeAnalytica data scandal as a case study, this essay argues that social media sites knowingly allow the spread of misinformation, which ultimately harms users in realms that extend beyond the digital. This paper urges users to be aware of social media sites’ complacency in spreading misinformation and of the threats that misinformation poses to social and political life. The paper urges users of social media sites to play an active role in shaping digital spheres into spaces that can used to craft positive change in social and political life.

The year 2023 in Israel started with illiberal constitutional change efforts by the new right-wing government and concluded with a brutal attack by Hamas terrorists and the subsequent war. Both occurrences galvanized two massive surges of civil society activism. The first was a mass protest that impeded the government's undemocratic legislation. The second was a large-scale mobilization to support a variety of populations affected by the war, providing services and goods that supplanted the failed governmental crisis response. Using a Serving Elite perspective and elaborating on this concept in the Israeli context, the paper analyzes the organizations that transitioned overnight from protest to service delivery. While these are two known roles played by civil society in general, such a transition from protest to support within the same organization is unusual, if at all existent. The paper analyses nineteen (19) in-depth interviews with leaders of 10 prominent organizations active in the protest and the aid phases. It explores their participants, forms of organizing, activities, ideologies, and interconnections, particularly emphasizing the transition. Thematic analysis of the interviews revealed the emergence of a new Serving Elite in the making, liberal in orientation, and developed during the crises. This perspective provides an opportunity to highlight processes deeply embedded in Israel's social, political, and cultural landscapes, changing elites and power relations, and Israel's culture of entrepreneurship. It also provides a framework for analyses of serving elites in other countries.

Abstract This paper is built upon one question: can the natural world be recognised as a ‘member’ of a legal community? By exploring the nature of legal personhood, this paper revisits the concept of environmental personhood. This paper uses the naturalistic approach to ground legal philosophical analysis in empirical realities and gain a deeper understanding of the natural world. This paper argues that legal personhood is an institutional fact influenced by moral ideas configured based on how humans organise organize value. The concept of ‘environmental personhood’ is built upon the idea that the natural world possesses inherent rights that must be protected similarly to human rights. This paper finds that, although the ecocentric approach to environmental personhood must be rejected, it can be salvaged. By reformulating environmental personhood based on artificial personhood, this paper opens up opportunities for the concept to be maintained. It aims to ground a theoretical foundation for further constitutional law research, specifically regarding how the constitution should frame the natural world’s ideal position within the state. Abstrak Penelitian ini didasarkan pada satu pertanyaan: dapatkah lingkungan dimasukkan sebagai anggota komunitas hukum? Dengan menelusuri konsep subjek hukum, penelitian ini meninjau kembali konsep lingkungan sebagai subjek hukum. Artikel ini menggunakan pendataan filsafat hukum naturalistik guna mendasarkan analisis filsafat hukum pada realitas empiris dan mampu menangkap pemahaman lebih dalam mengenai realitas alam. Artikel ini menemukan bahwa subjek hukum merupakan fakta institusional yang dibentuk oleh gagasan moral, yang dikonfigurasikan berdasarkan cara manusia mengorganisasikan nilai. Konsep lingkungan sebagai subjek hukum didasarkan pada gagasan bahwa alam memiliki hak inheren yang harus dilindungi. Artikel ini juga menemukan bahwa, meski pendekatan ekosentris dalam konstruksi lingkungan sebagai subjek hukum inkoheren dan mesti ditolak, konsep tersebut mungkin masih dapat diselamatkan. Penelitian ini diharapkan dapat menyediakan fondasi teoritis untuk penelitian Hukum Tata Negara lanjutan, utamanya mengenai bagaimana konstitusi harus mengonstruksikan posisi realitas alam dalam negara.

The string of disputed elections in Nigeria has posed a significant threat to the country’s efforts to consolidate democracy. In representative democracies, inconclusive elections are a quite frequent occurrence. But in Nigeria, they are sometimes stage-managed and permitted to occur in order to further the deliberate goals of power centers. Consequently, the causes and solutions of Nigeria’s recent political growth are critically examined in this paper. This paper uses a mixed method research design that includes both quantitative and qualitative data collection and descriptive analysis. It has been determined through a thorough review of the literature that electoral violence and malpractice together are to blame for the nation’s rising voter turnout and disputed electoral legitimacy. According to the findings, Nigeria must immediately implement comprehensive electoral reform in order to establish a new electoral system built on digital election technology. This will produce leaders who lack originality and who are worthy of purposeful leadership and good governance, as self-serving leaders are disastrous for any country.

Although representing half of the world population, women remain largely excluded from political power and government structures. Various strategies have been introduced to increase women’s political representation, including electoral gender quotas. This paper explores the impact of electoral gender quotas on women’s quantitative participation in politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, analysing quota impact in combination with other related factors, such as the quota design, implementation and broader political context. A diversity of techniques has been used to collect a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, including academic resources collection and analysis, desk research, statistical data analysis and online questionnaire. The paper argues that electoral gender quotas have generally had a positive impact on getting women elected in BiH, though their efficacy depends on their formulation and other aspects of electoral law. Still, quantitative representation of women is not sufficient to facilitate their agency in politics. Social attitudes also continue to affect the electoral success of women once they secure a spot on the candidate list. Therefore, quotas must be implemented within a broader democratic, accountable and gender-sensitive political context to deliver qualitative representation of women in politics. Finally, the paper offers concrete recommendations to promote women’s political participation in BiH.

The connection between women representation in parliament and the extent of substantive representation of women’s interest remains ambiguous. Objective: this paper aims to understand if women representation in African parliament catalyses growth in women business ownership in Africa. Prior work: the paper inclines on the normative theory of democracy and the theory of politics of presence through the lens of descriptive or substantive representation. Approach: The paper’s method is both theoretical and quantitative. It uses a cross-sectional secondary data for women in parliament and women ownership of businesses for a sample of 26 African countries, through the application of simple regression analysis. Result: The regression result, which emerges at P>0.05 indicates that within the confines of the 26 African countries used as the sample, women's representations in these African parliaments have not catalysed a significant effect on women’s business ownership in Africa. Implications: The paper provides policy and academic implication as an academic study material in university administration and development classes and for women political manifesto guide. It also provides an agenda for further research. Value: The paper contributes to the political theory of presence by ushering a different result linked to women’s business interests based on an African sample. The paper also contributes a framework and suggests a new concept of inquiry for additional gender equality advocacy, namely the inclusion of women-in-women advocacy for political participation and women’s interest.

Artificial Intelligence constitutes one of the most fundamental pillars for the implantation of the EU Digital Agenda. Its impact both in private and public life is omnipresent. AI has become an inherent part of the political life since politicians use it for several reasons, such as to promote their strategy as well as to achieve better and closer communication with people. All this is based on the existing set of legal rules. However, there are significant issues, both ethical and legal, which pose a wide range of concerns: from the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms to the safeguard of the principle of rule of law. The core question is the following: does AI strengthen democracy or lead to its deterioration? This paper aims at demonstrating the implementation of AI in politics. Firstly, there will be pursued, via a juridical methodology, a description of the regulatory framework governing AI, in connection with justice and democracy. Following a critical approach, there will be an analysis of principal ethical and legal concerns regarding the necessity and/or efficiency of use of AI in political life. Finally, the ultimate goal of the paper is to stimulate critical thinking and suggest fruitful proposals for the safeguard of the democracy and the establishment of a trustful and powerful digital environment.

Sustainable development of any progressive society is expected to have in it a level of citizens’ participation which is an outcome of a democratic system. In our society today, e-government as a practice has contributed to the style of democracy and political development. Some societies have failed to apply the indices of e-government and democracy which has led to their inability to witness development that is beneficial to them and their coming generation. This paper is to explore numerous ways that e-government and democracy have contributed towards sustainable development in society. The paper also is set to inquire into various challenges such as finance, insecurity, and lack of skills facing e-government and democracy and strategies that can lead to the strengthening of e-government and democracy. The study adopts a qualitative method where secondary data are gathered and utilized. These data are gathered from Newspapers, Magazines, books, journals, and conference materials. Internet sources are also obtained from reliable platforms that serve academic purposes. Governance theory is adopted for the analysis of this work to drive home the impact of e-government and democracy. The paper concludes that e-government and democracy despite challenges faced have impacted in no small measures towards sustainable development that stands to benefit people today and in the future. It is then recommended that continuous and standard innovation and transformation must be embraced for a robust developmental process in the arena of e-government and democracy.

This paper analyzes the theory of Islam as a religion that could have formed a rationalistic civilization, based on scientific progress, individualism and democracy. One of the representative studies on this topic is the work of Mustafa Akyol Reopening of Muslim Minds, in which the author uses the method of counterfactual analysis, posing the fundamental question: what would Islamic civilization look like if in the Sunni majority had not prevailed Ash’ari theology, but rationalistic, Mu’tazili theology? Although it could be said that the author of this study does not err when he concludes that Ash’ari occasionalism stopped the development of science in Islam, he nevertheless errs when he claims that the doctrines of voluntarism, predestination, and uncreatedness of the Qur’an, were generators of injustice in Islamic society. In this paper we tried to analyze the metaphysical foundations of these doctrines, re-examine the validity of the hypothesis about their harmfulness, and re-examine whether the observed harmful effects come from Islamic tradition or from the more recent attempts of modernization of Islam.

As the world is threatened by new and powerful climate-driven hazards, how are states and societies likely to react? In this paper, I explore the role of regime type in determining the likelihood of state survival under extreme environmental conditions. I begin with a theoretical and empirical analysis of public goods provision under different regime types, finding no evidence for the contention that any one particular regime is superior to others. Following from this, I argue that the survival of the state under increased hazard conditions will at least partly be a function of political flexibility, with more democratic regimes better able to weather crisis than non-democratic ones. I explore this argument by analysing two historical cases of climate change: the non-democratic Maya civilisation in the first millennium and the quasi-democratic Icelandic state at the start of the second millennium. These historical cases highlight potential advantages to the democratic system in allowing states to survive a world with increased hazards but also underscore how rising competition and political instability can negatively impact those same democratic institutions.

This paper is a rejoinder to Christian Fuchs’ “Democracy, the Internet, and Capitalism,” published in tripleC as a reply to our essay “On a Potential Paradox of Public Service Media” (2024), which was part of tripleC’s special issue “Critical Perspectives on Digital Capitalism: Theories and Praxis”. In this rejoinder, we will critically engage with open questions and unsolved contradictions of three points of discussion: the ideal of deliberative democracy in relation to the Internet, the broadcast model applied to ICTs, and the neutrality of (digital) technology.

Petre Țuțea (October 6, 1902 – December 3, 1991) was a Romanian Christian thinker and an orator, who was preoccupied with philosophical and religious matters. He was the author of numerous studies and articles that focused on economic, social and political issues in the inter-war era. This paper intends to point out the main guiding lines of Petre Țuțea’s system of thought as an economist and his personal comprehension of the relation between the economic and the political elements

A Member of Parliament, as a citizen of Bangladesh, has all the rights including freedom of speech and expression. However, the provision prohibiting floor crossing by the Member of Parliament seems to be contradictory with constitutional rights provided by the constitution. Especially, it curtails the constitutional right of freedom of speech. Balancing the practice of freedom of speech with political discipline and stability is key to a prosperous democracy. This paper argues that the provision prohibiting floor crossing has adverse effects on the constitutional rights of MPs. It compares the current state of the provision of floor crossing in Bangladesh with other countries. This paper also suggests a way of improving the provision of floor crossing in Bangladesh.

This article seeks to explore the relevance of compromise in Raymond Aron’s essays. The concept of compromise has never been subjected to critical scrutiny in his works. The paper offers a new interpretation of R. Aron’s democratic theory by arguing that “the sense of compromise”, mainly set out in Democracy and Totalitarianism, is a foundational and pivotal concept to highlight the specifics of his liberal thought and his understanding of democratic pluralism. It aims to provide a critical analysis, presenting a focused exploration of three types of compromise, broken down into three areas (the political-pluralist compromise; the economic compromise; the foreign policy compromise). In each of these cases, key qualities and limitations of compromise solutions for deadlocked controversies are outlined. The article argues that, for R. Aron, economic compromise is the easiest to achieve. The paper further discusses possible criteria that can help to discriminate moral from immoral compromises. It concludes that “the sense of compromise” is inseparable from any serious attempt to think afresh R. Aron’s democratic theory.

2023 elections in Nigeria had been visualized as critical juncture in Nigerian history of democracy. With lack of functional state institutions which is detrimental to the conduct of free and fair elections without which the will of the electorates would hardly be respected, the problem is how to eradicate identity (ethnicity and religious) politics with its penchant for the use of force and fraud in the quest for political power. The paper argued that promoting heroism of integrity against identity politics will create electorates that would adhere to the principle of accountability in the exercise of their franchise, thereby enabling the emergence of viable democratic state. The objective of the paper is therefore to show that building a viable and stable state with sustainable democratic practices, besides respect for the rule of law, requires leadership with integrity. Phenomenological design and method were adopted with data sourced from physical and online libraries and lived experience, and respectively described, analysed and interpreted to underscore the actual condition of fragility of the Nigerian state and the challenges of a new democratic dispensation. The paper concluded by observing that in a state as envisaged by the paper, identity politics might still persist in other forms even when, in its ethnic and religious expressions, it has become irrelevant.

Nigeria is a democratic country. Political actors in Nigeria have covered themselves with the spirit of favouritism, unequal allocation of resources, sectionalism, unbalanced political structure and political struggle to be in control of power. This negates the principle of organic unity in diversity which could amount to crisis. Democracy connotes respect for the sovereignty of the people and can only be realized in an atmosphere of love for one another and patriotism. Therefore, integrating religious values into the democratic system becomes paramount. This paper examines how religious values could be used to improve the democratic culture of the country. It adopts a qualitative research approach and data was collected from secondary sources. The findings revealed the ineffectiveness of democracy without religious values; some religious values have direct link with essential of democracy. This paper advocates religious values for lasting democracy and continuously advancing towards an improved society.

Starting from the traditional public administration dichotomy ‘power versus knowledge’, concerned with the cleavage between politicians and bureaucrats, this paper’s main purpose is to reframe a classic theoretical model, by placing the spotlight on a new, under-conceptualized public sector actor: the technocrat. Second, the paper performs empirical research starting from an own-build comprehensive database that includes all the ministers appointed in the Romanian Government during a 30-year time[1]frame (October 1991-November 2021). In spite of being a rather young democracy with a communist public sector legacy, research findings indicate that in Romania we can clearly identify patterns similar to other European countries (primarily Italy), consisting of appointing technocrats to the cabinet. Such nominations are discussed in correlation with the advancements of new theories of democracy and public administration, imprinted with Neoliberalism, New Public Management, and Good Governance paradigms.

Abstract Background The resilience of democracy is tested under exogenous shocks such as crises. The COVID-19 pandemic has recently tested the resilience of democratic institutions and practices around the world. Aim The purpose of this article is to scope the early research literature that discusses democracy and the COVID-19 pandemic. We review scientific journal articles published during the first two years of the pandemic. We ask three research questions in scoping this body of literature: (1) what are the key topic areas of all published research that associates itself with both democracy and COVID-19, (2) what kinds of conceptual and theoretical contributions has research literature that more specifically discusses democracy under the pandemic produced, and (3) what are the impacts of democracy to the pandemic and vice versa according to empirical research? Methods The scoping review methodology draws on systematic literature search strategies, computational methods, and manual coding. The systematic Web of Science search produced 586 articles for which we conducted a Correlated Topic Model. After technical and manual screening, we identified 94 journal articles that were manually coded. Results The early research on democracy and the COVID-19 pandemic offers a versatile body of scholarship. The topic modeling shows that the scholarship discusses issues of crises, governance, rights, society, epidemiology, politics, electorate, technology, and media. The body of papers with conceptual and theoretical contributions has offered new insights on the difficulties, possibilities, and means to maintain democracy under a pandemic. Empirical research on democracy’s impact on the COVID-19 pandemic and vice versa varies in terms of methodology, geographical scope, and scientific contributions according to the direction of influence studied. Democracy appears to have a significant impact on some aspects of policy responses and epidemiological characteristics of the pandemic. In most parts of the world, the scope, franchise, and authenticity of democracy narrowed down due to the pandemic, albeit in most cases only temporarily. Conclusions A significant number of papers show that the pandemic has accentuated democratic backsliding but is unlikely to have undermined established democracies that have proved resilient in face of the pandemic. But empirical research has also made visible some weak signals of antidemocratic tendencies that may become more accentuated in the longer run.

This paper explores the complex relationship between energy poverty and the maintenance of democratic values within the European Union (EU), suggesting that energy poverty not only impacts economic stability and health outcomes but also poses significant challenges to democratic engagement and equity. To measure energy poverty, a composite index is developed using the entropy method, which surpasses traditional measures focused solely on access to energy or its developmental implications. To assess the level of democratic governance in EU countries, the voice and accountability index (VEA), which is part of the World Governance Indicators compiled by the World Bank, is utilized. By analyzing EU data from 2006 to 2022, the findings suggest that a 1% improvement in VEA quality, represented by a coefficient of 0.122, is correlated with a notable improvement in the energy poverty index. This suggests that the EU should focus on enhancing transparency and public participation in energy decision-making, along with ensuring accountability in policy implementation. The research also differentiates between full and flawed democracies, noting that tailored approaches are needed. In full democracies, leveraging economic prosperity and trade is crucial due to their significant positive impacts on the energy poverty index. In contrast, in flawed democracies, enhancing governance and accountability is more impactful, as evidenced by a higher coefficient of 0.193. Strengthening legal and regulatory frameworks, improving regulatory quality, and ensuring public engagement in governance could substantially mitigate energy poverty in these contexts. In addition, this paper demonstrates that this relationship is influenced by factors such as income inequality, energy intensity, and trade openness.

This paper focuses on campaigns against the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention). These campaigns not only obstructed ratification processes in a number of countries, but also that the openly hostile and highly gendered attacks had a direct impact on women’s rights activists and their work, seriously hindering their work, but also affecting their well-being and safety. In this paper we explore the violent implications of the campaigns against the Istanbul Convention which are part of wider anti-gender campaigns. We argue that the violence of the campaigns and the violent implications should be considered gendered political violence, which effectively marginalizes women and other targeted groups and obstructs their participation in society and politics and as such is central to current autocratization tendencies and undermining of democracy.

In this paper a baseline of contemporary access to justice research is established. The baseline clearly illustrates key features of the research field suggesting that while the field of research has become more multifaceted in the course of the last two or three decades, it is nevertheless very much dominated by law scholarship and structural analysis of legal service provision. Departing from this overview of access to justice research as of today, five calls for future research on access to justice explicated in the reviewed literature is presented and discussed. I argue that future research on access to justice should: 1) Reach a clearer understanding of the problem (of access to justice), 2) consider a multidisciplinary approach, 3) support and develop evidence-based policy by committing to empirical research, 4) study a wider variety of social realities and 5) look for quality. The reasonings of this paper are based on a scoping literature review. En este documento se establece una línea de base de la investigación contemporánea sobre el acceso a la justicia. La línea de base ilustra claramente las características clave del campo de investigación, sugiriendo que, aunque el campo de investigación se ha vuelto más polifacético en el curso de las últimas dos o tres décadas, sigue estando muy dominado por los estudios de derecho y el análisis estructural de la prestación de servicios jurídicos. Partiendo de esta visión general de la investigación sobre el acceso a la justicia en la actualidad, se presentan y discuten cinco peticiones de investigación futura sobre el acceso a la justicia explicadas en la literatura revisada. Sostengo que las futuras investigaciones sobre el acceso a la justicia deberían 1) alcanzar una comprensión más clara del problema (del acceso a la justicia), 2) considerar un enfoque multidisciplinar, 3) apoyar y desarrollar una política basada en pruebas comprometiéndose con la investigación empírica, 4) estudiar una mayor variedad de realidades sociales y 5) buscar la calidad. Los razonamientos de este documento se basan en una revisión bibliográfica de alcance. Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1352

The civil society midwife democratic government in 1999. They fought for it. Although, some died in the process of agitating for democracy, and the fundamental human rights and rule of law are firmly entrenched including the freedom of association, free movement, speech among others. The paper argues that today’s democratic government was worked for but those who work for it did not participate in the transition program since the military in their characteristics are maradonic particularly that of General Ibrahim Gbadamosi Babangida keep transition program in perplexity and continuous. The failure of the leaders and members of civil organizations to participate is responsible for the crisis of governance. Those elected into governments across the states including the federal government largely masquerading behind politics as governance output. The paper is of the view that the civil society organization in the country cannot claim irresponsible to Nigerians, since they ushered in democratic rule, therefore, efforts must be geared towards validating the purpose of democracy and dividends of democratic governance in Nigeria.

After 29 years of democracy, South Africa's public sector is in critical condition; the capacity of the public sector to meet people's needs has been called into question. This is due to poor public service delivery and frequent service delivery protests in South Africa. Citizens have taken to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with a government that no longer serves them effectively. Political office bearers' lack of political will has harmed and nearly crippled the public sector's ability to provide sustainable public service. The involvement of those in positions of government leadership in corruption, a lack of public accountability, and poor consequence management in the public sector all point to a lack of political will. The lack of commitment shown by politicians in the leadership roles has raised the question of whether South Africans can rely on the government. The poor and vulnerable citizens are most affected by the lack of political accountability in the public sector because they rely more on the government. The country's reliance on the public sector is caused by a lack of job opportunities. The country's current challenges, such as load shedding, corruption, and public debt, are also putting the public sector on its knees. This paper seeks to examine the impact of a lack of political will on public service delivery and the costs borne by citizens. This paper is timely, as the South African public sector is nearly paralyzed by a lack of political will after 29 years of democracy. To richly address the objectives of this paper, a qualitative research method was used in conjunction with a review of literature.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the ways the Liberalist ideology undergoes various changes, due to the changes occurring in the world at a geopolitical level. These changes are due to the destabilization brought about by various events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, then by the war between Russia and Ukraine. The advantages promised by the Liberal democracies lose various aspects due to current restrictions. One of the advantages of the liberal democracy was freedom of expression, which was visible all over the Internet. However, with the war going on, various Internet sites can be placed under interdiction in certain countries, so as not to influence public opinion. The role of the Internet in politics is beyond dispute. However, many alternative channels can promote alternative opinions, opposed to the mainstream trends. At the same time, information can become distorted due to this and biased, since it is presented only from certain perspectives. The paper will present the context of today’s world from a political point of view and analyse its consequences over the use of the Internet, until not so long ago a medium of pure freedom of action and expression. The ethics of freedom of expression on the Internet is a subject of current concern, and it can be analysed in strong connection with the practice of politics. The changing ideological features of liberalism will also be analysed.

The main aim of the paper is to analyse T. G Masaryk’s ideas about the importance of education in democratic systems. In particular, the study analyses the ideas that Masaryk associates directly or indirectly with the nature of democracy or with the improvement of the democratic system through changes in the education system. The first part of the paper traces the basic aspects of democratic systems in his work that immediately condition ideas about the importance and role of education in democratic systems. The second part analyses the importance of education in the reproduction of national values, the role of the arts and humanities in the formation of the “democratic man”, and the significance of education of broad social strata and political authorities in democratic systems.

The relationship between science and democracy has been an interesting and important issue in the study of philosophy as well as political science. Democracy does not only apply in the political realm but can also be seen in the context of science. This paper uses a political-philosophical approach to explore the relationship between science and democracy from the perspective of Philip Kitcher. As far as the philosophical research model used in this research is the concept of figure thinking by using primary sources in the form of Philip Kitcher's two main works among other works, namely: Kitcher's Science, Truth, and Democracy (2001) and Science in a Democratic Society (2011), as well as secondary sources such as books, journal articles and sources relevant to the concepts of the relationship between science and democracy. This paper concludes that the relationship between science and democracy according to Kitcher is based on the concept of a partnership model. This model emphasizes that scientists should consider how knowledge can be applied in a social and practical context, as well as enabling the active participation of the public democratically in the process of scientific research. The relationship between science and democracy, according to Kitcher, relates to the epistemological and socio-practical significance to be taken into account in scientific decision-making, as well as taking into account the public perspective in decision-making. In Kitcher’s perspective too, integration between science and democracy became essential to forming a normative framework for more transparent, democratic scientific research, and producing high-quality knowledge.

This paper considers the relationships between global international law and democracy as well as between democracy and human rights. Its primary assumption is that some obstacles to democracy are rooted in international law itself. Simultaneously, international law, particularly international human rights law, is also undeniably the flywheel pushing countries towards democratic governance, of which the protection of human rights is an essential element. Therefore, this paper examines the attitude of global international law to democracy and the interplay between democracy and human rights. It also traces whether a human right to democracy arises from international law. This research shows that international law has two faces. The first shows that international law is not conducive to, or at least is indifferent to, democracy. At the same time, there is another face of international law revealed by international human rights law as some pillars of democracy and the rule of law, are protected by human rights treaties. The universal hard and soft international laws and output of human rights bodies show that democracy should go hand in hand with the rule of law and human rights.

AbstractIn the current democratic dispensation in Nigeria in particular, and Africa in general, the public reputation of politicians and people in authority has acquired a new higher premium on which the political context is fought. Citizens make use of available information and knowledge about the reputation of politicians to arrive at rational choices. In the context of the responsibility placed on journalism in a liberal democracy, the media is looked upon to guarantee citizenship by, among others, making politicians and people in authority accountable. The symbolism that Watergate bears and brings to modern journalism lies in monitoring power and authority in the service of the general interests of society. For those at the center of its practice, investigative journalism provides journalists with the right to detach from vested interests in society and the capacity to bark at power on behalf of the public. Using a historical research methodology, this paper explores the role of investigative journalism in making power accountable in the contemporary era of promotional politics. This paper concludes that the challenges confronting investigative journalism in Nigeria go beyond the hostile illiberal democratic environment within which journalists operate. Rather, journalists are confronted with structural, institutional and political challenges in making power accountable, as both the state and politicians employ various means, including the use of promotional intermediaries to launder their public image.

This paper is on the role of the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality in bridging the disconnection in donor assisted projects and electoral administration and the perceptions of state institutions in an interface with donor support, electoral dynamics and democratisation in the municipality. The study on the perception of the BCMM on donor support and democratisation is to ascertain the reciprocal relations the BCMM have with donors, including government and stakeholders in an election and the local community where they operate. This paper argues that donor support to a large extent induces democratisation but no political democracy can survive and flourish if the mass of its people remained in poverty, and in a state of inequality and unemployment without real prospects for a better life. Although the state policies ensures and facilitates inter alia the free market economy, the deregulation of public institutions and state sponsorship of infrastructural development, the citizens in the local communities have been mostly impoverished as a result of their inability to access fully the benefits that were supposed to have been administered to them by sub-state institutions and donor managers. The study utilized the qualitative research approach and data was analysed through content analysis. The emerging findings indicate that donor conditionalities promote good governance, transparency and free and fair representation. The findings further shows that donor support in the municipality reduces poverty through academic skills training, vocational skills training, Agricultural entrepreneurship and Agro-processing. Nevertheless, the paper is of the view that the municipality and local communities are at a tipping point with regard to what can only be described as unequal and exploitative relationship between donor elites and community voters. The outcome of this paper and recommendations has great implications and influence for municipal officials, Communities voters, policy makers, Departments and Ministries, the Independent Electoral Commission, Social institutions, organizations and economic managers and administrators in developing countries

This paper addresses the question of how to educate toward democracy, which has as its defining trait the ability to self-correct. We draw on a study that investigated Deep Reflective Thinking (DRT) as a classroom method for cultivating collective doubt, which is essential for developing students’ capacity for self-correction in a community of inquiry.

Abstract Democracy, or what everyone is worth (Thuc. II 37, 1) The paper addresses two exegetical problems in a passage from the speech of Pericles (Thuc. II 37, 1). It is argued that the word μέρος probably means «rotation» rather than «class-affiliation», since in this way three successive phrases, instead of being tautological, form an elegant system of affirmations, each of which is precising the previous one. The words ἀξίωσις and ἀξίωμα are opposed as signifying the process of acknowledgment of ἀρετή and the result of it (be it gaining authority, recognition of merits, appointment to a post, or simply approval of a proposal in an assembly). If ἀξιώματος depends from κεκώλυται and not from ἀφανείᾳ, ἀφάνεια need not have the meaning «absence», which seems not characteristic of it.

The paper focuses on the lectures given by Piero Calamandrei in 1952 at the University of Mexico, which were collected in the famous volume Processo e democrazia published by Cedam in 1954. The volume, translated in China in 2005, has aroused lively interest among Chinese scholars. The Author expresses his appreciation for the scholarly tradition stemming from Calamandrei and, in particular, he emphasises the profile of judiciary’s autonomy and independence, which distinguishes liberal and democratic systems from authoritarian ones. Lastly, the Author dwells on the relationship between judges and lawyers, which should take place in a climate of active and mutual trust.

The paper analyses the genesis of social rights in the Italian legal system and examines the complex debate on the social question, which was animated by different awareness. The debate was inspired by Santi Romano’s crucial reflections in the early 1900s and continued throughout the century thanks to the contribution of important jurists, including Piero Calamandrei. The Florentine jurist is credited with having clearly outlined the different legal structure and political function of social rights compared to the traditional rights of freedom. A special attention is therefore paid to Calamandrei’s interventions during the Constituent Assembly debates, which resulted in the full recognition of social rights in the 1948 Republican Constitution.

The paper focuses on the emergence of the European Federalist Movement between the two World Wars up to the establishment of the Association of European Federalists in 1944. The Author pays particular attention to Piero Calamandrei’s significant contribution to European federalism. The Florentine jurist envisioned federalism as closely linked to regionalism and peace, in an international context marked by a world divided into two opposing blocs by the Cold War.

This paper elucidates the intricate relationship among bank performance, political connections, and the democratic environment. The existing body of evidence is notably limited in illustrating the impact of a democratic environment on bank performance. Our study examines a sample of 397 banks spanning 14 countries and districts, encompassing both politically affiliated and non-politically affiliated banks in both democratic and non-democratic settings. The empirical findings reveal a reduction in non-performing loans but an escalation in loan loss provision within a democratic environment. This phenomenon may be attributed to the diminished level of financial constraints prevalent in democratic settings. Furthermore, our investigation reveals that political connections exert a deleterious effect on the non-performing loans (NPL) ratio, coupled with a salutary impact on loan loss provision. Conclusively, our research identifies that the stock return of politically connected banks in democratic environments is inferior to their counterparts in non-democratic environments. Additionally, the non-performing loans ratio (NPL) of politically connected banks in democratic environments tends to be higher compared to their non-democratic counterparts. Conversely, the loan loss provision of politically connected banks in democratic environments tends to be lower than that in non-democratic environments. This nuanced analysis contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the interplay between democratic environments, political connections, and bank performance.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2021 6(3), 1307-1324 | European Forum Insight of 1 February 2022 | (Table of Contents) I. Climate litigation: a tool to overcome majoritarian paralysis? - I.1. One shared conclusion: politics is failing. - I.2. Different ways leading to a similar conclusion: human rights, tort, policy objectives, national legal obligations, and always international agreements and science. - II. Separation of powers at stake: what role for counter-majoritarian forces? - II.1. Different contexts lead to different separation of powers concerns. - II.2 We cannot exclude (failing) politics despite overwhelming climate science. - III. A research agenda. | (Abstract) The climate crisis is - as far as we can see in 2021 - the greatest challenge of the 21st century. The existence of global warming as a human-made problem and the abstract need of transiting away from fossil energy sources is largely accepted. The question, however, of how to best achieve this transition is a major bone of contention - internationally, within the European Union (EU), and in many EU Member States. However, the issue will only become more pressing and political struggle will only become more forceful as the negative impacts of climate change increasingly affect our lives and livelihoods. Until now, national legislatures and executives have failed to take measures anywhere close to what would be needed to reduce emissions sufficiently to mitigate the climate crisis. The consistent failure of "politics" in different contexts - international, European, and national, or even regional and local - has motivated a growing share of citizens and civil society actors to pursue what is necessary via counter-majoritarian instruments, most prominently through climate litigation. In this Insight, I analyse these growing counter-majoritarian pressures in the context of climate change. My primary focus lies with broader questions of separation of powers, the role of the judiciary in constitutional democracies, and how legally enforceable reduction standards could and should be determined.

This paper analyzes the text of Mamat Alkatiri's stand-up comedy in the Somasi program on the Close the Door Youtube channel. This paper uses critical discourse analysis from Norman Fairclough. Mamat delivered his disappointment with the government, especially in terms of: (1) The overlapping division of positions; (2) public officials who seem to be 'anti-criticism'; (3) A decision-making system that reaps the pros and cons. As explained by Fairclough, discourse practices and socio-cultural conditions influence the discourse that is built. Based on the results of the analysis, Mamat's discourse cannot be separated from discourse practices which include; the media organization that produces the performance, then the characteristics of Somasi's audience that are able to accept and negotiate his comedic performance. Then the socio-cultural conditions that influence Mamat's comedy text include; the presence of subpoena phenomena in Indonesia as a situational dimension, government institutions in Indonesia, especially in bureaucratic management and decision-making systems, situational dimensions that occur in Indonesia such as the presence of subpoena phenomena which indirectly put pressure (repression) on freedom of expression. Mamat's discourse is also influenced by Mamat's political culture spirit, this spirit is the same as cyberspace's opportunity to achieve a democratic system that is coveted by cyberspace audiences. Mamat's criticism implies messages for all of us to reflect again, has the current era of government provided democratic public space.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the 1964 law banning the recording and broadcasting of court hearings was preceded by more than a decade of debate, initially centred on the presence of microphones in courtrooms before the rise of television in the late 1950s. This paper analyses those discussions based on court archives documents, which shed light on both the discourses of the stakeholders and the practices adopted in the courts. The debates should also be seen in the context of new challenges facing the judicial institution, including the democracy-building process, while many of the judicial stakeholders remained the same as before 1945. The analysis shows that radio succeeded in carving out a – fragile – place for itself in West German courts. A critical discourse denouncing the presence of microphones as illegitimate and dangerous coexisted with a more open discourse, albeit in a minority. However, the position of the judiciary gradually hardened and, from 1959 onwards, against the backdrop of increasing tension between the judiciary and the media, there was a massive demand for a general ban on recordings.

This paper introduces an unsupervised framework that illustrates how insights gathered from opinion surveys regarding the functionality of democracy can be connected to social media messages of politicians on an international scale. By concentrating on the influence of social media messages from elected officials, the study adopts a “top-down” theoretical approach that links citizens’ attitudes towards democracy with the viewpoints about democracy expressed by politicians within social media discourses. Using a word embedding classification strategy, democracy-related themes are extracted from politicians’ messages. The research is conducted across 11 European countries, namely, Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Switzerland is also included in the study because of its direct democracy system. The 10th round of the European Social Survey serves as the basis for assessing citizens’ democratic attitudes. The study encompasses two main analytical segments. First, aggregated analyses conducted at the country level reveal the degree of alignment between prominent democracy-related themes present in politicians’ discourse and citizens’ perceived significance of these same themes. Second, individual-level connections between social media data and survey respondents are established through their preferred political party (or orientation). Variable importance analysis is subsequently applied to explore which democracy-related themes conveyed by politicians hold significance in predicting public contentment with democracy.

Liberalism advances democratic rights and representation through three principles. First, it seeks to protect individuals from abusive state power. Second, it shares an affinity with the epistemology of the Enlightenment, where an objective world can be discovered and observed. Third, it limits “tyranny of the majority” through civil liberties that counter the weight of public opinion and political rights that enable political competition of ideas. Rapidly evolving demands for recognition in the United States have advanced a broad critique of liberalism, highlighting the boundaries it imposes on representation as well as its limited success protecting rights. This essay traces disenchantment with liberalism to two very different sources: first, many progressives who resent how the jurisprudence of equal opportunity obscures efforts to achieve actual equality reject “anonymity” under the law—removing a core civil rights principle for promoting fairness. Such demands for more explicit rights and representation conflict with the majoritarian model’s application of liberalism, which biases cultural assimilation over multicultural integration. Movements for recognition increasingly challenge both assimilation and the institutional devices of multicultural integration. The other source of tension around recognition comes from the right, where populists have set out to revive nativist ideas of coerced assimilation or outright homogenization through exclusion (ie, non-recognition). Such failures of representation have promoted subjectivist views as a credential for contesting facts. The paper argues for “pluralist solidarity” as a tool for reconciling multiculturalism with new rights and demands for recognition emanating from liberalism’s traditions of individual liberty. This device aims to help separate the quest for recognition and dignity from the subjectivity that contributes to post-truth politics.

The study analyses empirically the role of FDI as an interactive factor in the democracy, corruption, economic growth, ICT and carbon emissions nexus in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We use the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) technique with data from 37 SSA countries covering the period 1970–2019. We find evidence that corruption and democracy create a significantly negative association with carbon emissions across most quantiles for the SSA countries. Conversely, economic growth, ICT and FDI develops a significantly positive relationship with environmental quality. Thus, the paper confirms validity of the Pollution Haven Hypothesis in SSA countries. More results demonstrate that the interaction variables, corruption × FDI, democracy × FDI, economic development × FDI also produces positive and significant links with carbon emissions, but the link between ICT × FDI and emissions is insignificantly negative. In conclusion, our findings indicate the need for a targeted approach towards improving FDI to fight corruption, enhance democracy, ICT and economic growth in pursuit of green economy and sustainable development in SSA.

This paper shows that, on average, populism in power produces a decrease in state capture. However, (unconstrained) populism in power that reduces existing levels of rule of law generates greater state capture than (contained) populism that has no negative effects on rule of law. The moderating effect we theorize is that the strength of the rule of law on state capture will show decreased effects at controlling state capture when a country is populist relative to non-populist. Populist leaders may seek to rid the old corruption networks, but once they aggrandize their power and weaken the rule of law, they have incentives to establish corrupt linkages with opportunistic economic elites who are willing to work with them, increasing state capture as a result. To test this theory, the paper employs a random effects model with 6 different specifications across 18 different Latin American countries, throughout the time period 1996-2017.