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What are the downstream political consequences of state activity explicitly targeting a minority group? This question is well studied in the comparative context, but less is known about the effects of explicitly racist state activity in liberal democracies such as the United States. We investigate this question by looking at an important event in American history—the mass internment of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. We find that Japanese Americans who were interned or had family who were interned are significantly less politically engaged and that this demobilizing effect increases with internment length. We also find that camp experience matters: those who went to camps that witnessed violence or strikes experienced sharper declines. Taken together, our findings contribute to a growing literature documenting the demobilizing effects of ethnically targeted incarceration and expand our understanding of these forces within the U.S.

In recent times, the idea of popular sovereignty has figured prominently in the rhetoric of neo-populist thinkers and activists who argue that legal and political authority must be concentrated in one single body or individual elected by the people to act in its name. The thesis of this article is that, while the notion of popular sovereignty may seem to offer some support to the neo-populist image of democracy, it serves more persuasively to support the idea of a polycentric, constitutional democracy. The constitutional state can be polycentric and yet feature a sovereign. And if this constitutional state is democratic in the sense of distributing power relatively equally amongst individual citizens, thus empowering the people-several, then it will establish the people-corporate in the role of sovereign.

This study deepens our understanding of environmental knowledge production under varying political-economic regimes. While the extant scholarship on undone science, that is the systemic non-production of knowledge, is largely based in liberal democracies in the US and Europe, it elides important differences in the making and unmaking of science elsewhere. Using the case of Peru’s left-leaning military dictatorship (1968–1980), I show how undone science contributed to the 1973 collapse of the world’s largest fishery and one of the most studied fisheries on the planet: the anchoveta (Engraulis ringens). In an effort to reconstruct the fishery and resolve undone science, I also demonstrate how the state collapsed established boundaries by brokering research between previously antagonistic scientific fields and enabling South-South coalitions across Latin America. The evidence presented here illustrates how, during times of crisis, states can nationalize fisheries science, meaning they promote novel scholarship from domestic data sources, among local scientists, and between endemic research institutions. Thus, the main drivers of epistemic change, in this case, are state actors exercising “conventional” practices, undermining the assumption that only bottom-up and “contentious” pressure can do so. This research offers important lessons for future research on state-science relations in the Global South.

This review essay examines the recently published collection titled Constitutional Democracy in Crisis?. The insightful and diverse range of chapters in this book mainly seek to answer a combination of questions in relation to liberal democratic constitutionalism.

Australia's post-war programme of mass immigration has been accompanied by growing ethnic and racial diversity. This process of diversification accelerated markedly from the 1970s onwards after the abandonment of the White Australia Policy in the 1960s. Despite this diversification, Australia has been able to sustain itself as a peaceful liberal democracy. It is the contention of this article that Australia's policies of multiculturalism have played an important role in contributing to this state of relative peacefulness. This article seeks to assemble some evidence from the Australian experience to ‘test’ the notion that the peacefulness of Australian society may, in some measure, be understood as a product of the contribution of its policies of multiculturalism to engendering and reinforcing those very virtues which liberal democracies require in order to sustain themselves over time.

Philosophers now commonly reject the value free ideal for science by arguing that non-epistemic values, including personal or social values, are permissible within the core of scientific research. However, little attention has been paid to the normative political consequences of this position. This paper explores these consequences and shows how political theory is fruitful for proceeding in a world without value-neutral science. I draw attention to an oft-overlooked argument employed by proponents of the value free ideal I dub the “political legitimacy argument.” This argument claims that the value-free ideal follows directly from the foundational principles of liberal democracy. If so, then the use of value-laden scientific information within democratic decision making would be illegitimate on purely political grounds. Despite highlighting this unaddressed and important argument, I show how it can be rejected. By appealing to deliberative democratic theory, I demonstrate scientific information can be value-laden and politically legitimate. The deliberative democratic account I develop is well suited for capturing the intuitions of many opponents of the value free ideal and points to a new set of questions for those interested in values in science.

This article addresses two great global challenges of the 2020s. On one hand, the accelerating climate crisis and, on the other, the deepening crisis of representation within liberal democracies. As temperatures and water levels rise, rates of popular confidence in existing democratic institutions decline. So, what is to be done? This article discusses whether sortition – the ancient Greek practice of selecting individuals for political office through lottery – could serve to mitigate both crises simultaneously. Since the 2000s, sortition has attracted growing interest among activists and academics. Recently it has been identified in countries like the UK and France as a mechanism for producing legitimate political answers to the climate challenge. However, few theoretical reflections on the potentials and perils of sortition-based climate governance have yet emerged. This article contributes to filling the gap. Based on a critique of the first successful case of sortition used to enhance national environmental policy – in Ireland in 2017–18 – we argue that sortition-based deliberation could indeed speed up meaningful climate action whilst improving the health of democratic systems. However, this positive outcome is not preordained. Success depends not only on green social movements getting behind climate sortition but also on developing flexible, context-specific designs that identify adequate solutions to a number of problems, including those of power (providing citizens’ assemblies with clear agenda-setting prerogatives beyond non-binding consultation); expertise (allowing assembly participants to influence which stakeholders and experts to solicit inputs from); and participation (engaging wider parts of the citizenry in the deliberative process).

In this paper I draw on qualitative material from the first complete data set of the ‘Measure of the quality of life in detention’ (MQLD) survey in the UK to explore common causes of distress in immigration removal centres and to reflect on their implication for understanding and challenging these sites. While similarities between immigration detention centres and prisons make it tempting to place the testimonies from people in detention within the framework of the ‘pains of imprisonment’, I propose an alternative reading of these first-hand accounts. Rather than approaching them as sociological statements of suffering, caused by the loss of liberty, I interpret them as political statements which, in turn, demand a political response. Immigration Removal centres, these people assert, are fundamentally at odds with key values of a liberal democracy. Those detained within them are not considered to be equal members of a shared community of value; rather, their incarceration in detention centres marks them out symbolically but also, as the testimonies in this piece make clear, quite practically, as outsiders to these ideas. The pain people describe illuminates the need for a new politics of detention.

Using composite indices that quantify the quality of institutions and democratic functioning, the paper argues that Turkey has always deviated in terms of liberal democracy and civil liberties from...

Este trabajo busca presentar, a partir de un testimonio directo, una visión legible y actualizada del concepto de Europa Central, como subregión diferenciada en el contexto de la Unión Europea. Entender la construcción de una nueva Europa Central luego del fin de la era comunista -caracterizada hoy por democracias liberales y economías de mercado consolidadas y con gran potencial- es uno de los retos más significativos de la política exterior de México. El concepto instrumental que orienta este trabajo es la construcción y funcionamiento del Grupo Visegrado, formado en 1991 e integrado por Polonia, República Checa, Eslovaquia y Hungría como la expresión política y de cooperación más consistente y clara de Europa Central en la actualidad. La reflexión que presenta este trabajo tiene como punto de partida un diálogo directo de los autores con uno de los artífices del Grupo Visegrado y actor central del fin del comunismo en Europa: el célebre líder obrero y expresidente polaco Lech Walesa. A treinta años de distancia de la creación del Grupo Visegrado, resulta fundamental conocer su perspectiva.

We are living in a world which is severely crisis-ridden and faces some major challenges. The fact that we are currently facing a genuine global pandemic (COVID-19) brings about even more uncertainty. The social and political institutions, which emerged and consolidated during the 20th century, and which created stability, have become fragile. The young generation born in the 1990s and onwards have experienced 9/11 and the ‘war against terrorism’, the financial crisis of 2008, changes to climate, environmental degradation, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. The generation born between 1960 and 1990 have had the same experiences along with severe economic crises in the 1970s and 1980s and the Cold War. Some of these challenges are in different ways intertwined with capitalism and its crises, while others are linked to the rapid development of new technologies, in particular innovations within communication and information technologies. This introduction lists the most important grand challenges facing the world as they have emerged more recently. The five articles following this introduction address some of these challenges, with particular attention to the problems of capitalism and democracy and the relation between these two areas. Most authors agree that climate change and the destruction of the environment are the biggest and most pertinent problems to address, but it is their stance that we can only meet these challenges if democracy is functioning well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Thesis Eleven is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The nature of state governance in consolidated liberal democracies has important implications for the ideal theory debate. The states of these societies are polycentric. Decision-making power withi...

This text sets out to examine the dilemma of the 2021 second round of elections in terms of a tragic conflict. Both electoral options pose authoritarian political proposals that violate the principles and practices of liberal democracy. As Polybius warned, the corruption of democracy leads to the oclocracy, a political figure that dissolves all forms of institutionality that produces the tyranny of the crowd. The only way to face this danger lies in the recovery of civic ethics, as well as the reconstruction of historical memory.

Este texto se propone examinar el dilema de la segunda vuelta electoral de 2021 en términos de un conflicto trágico. Ambas opciones electorales plantean propuestas políticas autoritarias que vulneran los principios y prácticas de la democracia liberal. Como Polibio advirtió, la corrupción de la democracia lleva a la oclocracia, una figura política que disuelve toda forma de institucionalidad que produce la tiranía de la muchedumbre. La única forma de enfrentar este peligro reside en la recuperación de la ética cívica, así como la reconstrucción de la memoria histórica.

The four Visegrad countries (V4) are widely perceived to be undermining liberal democracy and the stability of the European Union they joined in 2004. The essays in this special issue approach this...

The relationship between Eastern Orthodoxy and the political ethos of the West is of crucial importance for contextualizing the Church’s social engagement in the present day. Aristotle Papanikolaou and Vigen Guroian highlight points of tension in their respective accounts of the relationship between the Orthodoxy and western democratic social orders. Analysis of their argument provides a context for examining their contrasting understandings of human rights as a dimension of the public engagement of Orthodox Christians with the political realm. While neither completely rejects appeals to human rights, neither claims that such rhetoric manifests the full truth about the dignity of the human person according to the theological anthropology of Orthodox Christianity. Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos of Albania, the statements of the Council of Crete (2016), and several other contemporary Orthodox voices place appeals to human rights in a theologically nuanced context that affirms their legitimacy while refraining from identifying them with the fullness of the moral and spiritual vision of Orthodox Christianity. Analysis of the debate between Papanikolaou and Guroian gives rise to a tentative affirmation of the critical use of the language of human rights in Eastern Orthodox social ethics.

This study deals with the political theory of Thomas Hobbes and its implications to the political dynamism in Indonesia. The aim of this research is to analyze the philosophical concept of Hobbes on human rights and the theory of liberalism, and its relevance to the current situation in Indonesia, which has recently been exposed to the politics of populism. The presence of the populist movement is not new in Indonesia; but the rise of the politics of identity, it could threaten the protection of human rights and liberal democracy. We utilize the methodology of text analysis based on Hobbes’s original writing, Leviathan, and his other political treatises to explore his account on human rights and liberalism, and then employ Hobbes’s thoughts to investigate the phenomenon of populism. We divide the study into two sections, the first deals with the philosophy of human rights which Hobbes elucidates in the perspective of his hypothetical notion of the state of nature, the concept of authority, and his theory of liberalism; the second discusses populism in Indonesia today. The study found that the concept of human rights and liberalism would lead to awareness of mutual respect in society, while the populist movement becomes a real challenge to the implementation of human rights and the development of liberal democracy. The philosophy of human rights is in accordance with the political dynamism of Indonesian society. On the contrary, the populist movement could possibly plunge the country into a conflictual precipice of religious, racial-regional, and socio-political identities.

Polarization in society may hold consequences beyond the undermining of social cohesion. Here we provide the first evidence highlighting the power of perceived moral polarization in society to drive support for strong leaders. Across two studies and four samples drawn from the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States (N = 1,664), we found evidence linking perceived moral polarization with perceived anomie in society (defined as the perceived breakdown of social fabric and leadership) and with the rise in support for leaders with both a conservative/authoritarian and progressive/democratic style. Specifically, via the perceived breakdown in social fabric, heightened moral polarization predicted increased support for conservative/authoritarian style strong leaders, and via the perceived breakdown of leadership, increased support for progressive/democratic style strong leaders. Experimentally, using a fictionalized society paradigm, we then established causal links between moral polarization and the desire to elect conservative/authoritarian and progressive/democratic strong leaders. The current research is the first to identify the potential political consequences of heightened perceived moral polarization in two-party liberal democracies and contributes to the growing body of research highlighting the role of societal factors in driving support for strong leaders.

In contemporary democracies, the balance between the minority principle and democratic principles, one of the components underlying the relationship between liberalism and democracy, is being broken. This paper offers a reflection on this theme – crucial for the future of representative government – in relation to the importance of the theory of elites. The article is divided into three parts: the first part briefly traces the main phases of the theory of elites from the late nineteenth century to the present, indicating, for each, the salient features; the second part focuses on the elements characterizing the alliance between the minority principle and democratic principles, which forms the basis of liberal representative democracy, with specific consideration paid to the geometric architecture of democracy, comprising a horizontal dimension and a vertical dimension; finally, the third part argues the need for strengthening the logic of distance to consolidate the connection between the theory of elites and liberal representative democracy.

During the rule of law backsliding crisis in Poland since late 2015, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have been active in the struggles to defend judicial independence. CSOs cooperate closely with judges and support their ‘judicial resistance’. This Article has three main objectives: describe and analyze the relationship between judges and CSOs; show the evolution — both continuity and discontinuity in their relations over time; assess whether CSOs’ activities are of any practical significance and therefore worth attention. The CSO-judicial relationship is analyzed for three periods: 1976–1989, the years before the transformation of Poland from a ‘people’s republic’ to a democracy; 1989–2015, the time of building liberal democracy and the rule of law; 2015–2020, the time of defending the rule of law from a populist attack.Drawing on sources including years of participant observation providing unique and insider knowledge, the author analyzes the activities and outputs of CSOs and judges focusing on their interactions and cooperation. The author argues that CSOs play a significant role in the struggle for the rule of law and judicial independence. This Article demonstrates that CSOs’ current engagement and input is not an extraordinary, ad hoc phenomenon, but rather one that arose from the previous interactions between the judiciary and civil society. The author argues that what we witness in Poland is an unprecedented phenomenon, both in the character of the relationship between judges and CSOs, and the scale and diversity of their cooperation. At the same time, the author claims that CSOs are underappreciated, including by academia, their work is taken for granted, and their role in the legal complex can be seen as a partly lost opportunity. If noticed, appreciated, and supported CSOs activities and their role could be more meaningful.

This article explores how the concept of democracy is constructed, conveyed, and instrumentalised in the discourses of the populist radical right in the current EU context. The comparative analysis of the speeches of the leaders of two dissimilar PRR parties in government (Polish Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) and in opposition (French Rassemblement National) in the run-up to the 2019 European elections using tools of the discourse-historical and discourse-conceptual approaches to CDS highlights the common core of PRR interpretations of democracy, influenced by the shared axiological, institutional, and discursive framework of the EU. It shows that in the EU the PRR constructs the concept of democracy as an ideological complex, by diluting its essentially populist interpretation of democracy with liberal democratic elements. Only by advancing nativist and authoritarian interpretations of the people, does the PRR bring the concept of democracy in line with its ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism.

Parallels have been drawn between the 1930s and today, notably the existence of unstable economic conditions as well as deepening, antagonistic ideological divisions. In the 1940s, two books appeared that presented opposing diagnoses of, and remedies for, the problems that faced Western societies at that time. In Man and Society, Karl Mannheim argued that forms of political organization had not adapted to changing social, economic, and technological conditions, and that this explained the rise of communism and fascism. He insisted that, in order to avoid disorder and political extremism, liberal democracies needed to engage in greater planning of their economic and social affairs, with sociology providing the synthesis of scientific knowledge required for this. Just a few years later, Friedrich Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, in which Mannheim's work was a central target. He insisted that only the preservation of liberal freedoms and competitive markets could prevent the spread of totalitarianism. This paper outlines the arguments of each of these authors and provides an account of some of the historical background against which their disagreement arose. It also explores the relevance of their very different positions today, at a time when the neoliberal ideology that Hayek championed continues to have great influence but is under increasing attack from across the political spectrum.

The narrowing eligibility and increasing conditionality of social security payments in Anglophone liberal democracies like Australia has been accompanied by growing attention to the ways benefit recipients navigate the personal and practical challenges of life amid welfare reforms. This article reorients the study of getting by on welfare benefits to focus on the material and affective investment in making life liveable. I argue that the generative dimension of getting by is suggested but submerged within the reactive orientation of much welfare scholarship on coping and resilience. This article takes up the challenge of telling sociological stories of hope in hardship without romanticising everyday struggle. It does so by focusing on the pleasures, pursuits and projects – however modest and muted – that sustain a liveable life in hardship but do not necessarily conform to normative ideas of ‘good resilience’.

In what follows, I reflect on themes arising from my reading of Jacob Levy’s The Separation of Powers and the Challenge to Constitutional Democracy. According to Levy, the separation of powers in contemporary constitutional democracies is failing, thus endangering the rule of law. Briefly, this is because political parties have bridged the gap between the legislature and the executive: by giving rise to partisan politics that cross the institutional divide, political parties have dampened, if not disabled, the institutional incentive and motivation of the legislature to keep the executive in check. Furthermore, when this is combined with the myth of the united and undifferentiated people, which the executive, populistically, can easily claim to embody, the simple act of opposing the executive may be framed as seditious. In the end, the power of the executive is set free by the partisan loyalty of fellow party members and by the framing of opposition as disloyal and deleterious to the polity.

This work intends to investigate the different conceptions—accommodation and laicization—that underlie processes of legislative regulation and judicial decision in matters of conflicts involving the right to religious freedom, in the legal systems of North America and Brazil. We will also investigate the potential for harmonization of legal in conflicts with other fundamental rights. The objective here is to build possibilities in order to establish a synthesis meaning for the right of religious freedom, in accordance with the democratic constitutional models of law to begin with, the recent modulations which allowed the fundamental right to religious freedom, especially from the edition of some US federal and state legislation, as well as from a set of decisions taken by Brazilian courts. As a corollary of these modulations, the article intends to assess the consequences that these new laws and judicial decisions caused in the legal system, through social andinstitutional democratic practices related to any fundamental rights. We used the dialectical method, since the idea and the foundation of the right to religious freedom follow a three-stage approach: thesis (religious freedom in its original sense and secularized conception), antithesis (right to religious freedom as a possibility to act in the exercise of belief, by claiming accommodation with other rights), and synthesis (the perspective to elaborate a proper sense to liberal democracies). Initial results indicate that both models based on secularization and accommodation can generate democratic and undemocratic meanings to the right of religious freedom; both models can either harmonize conflicting rights or escalate social antagonisms.

The history of political philosophy serves as a valuable resource for the current research paradigms in political science. In comparative terms, the paradigm of Western research is essentially “change-oriented” and tends to shift constantly with its evolving thoughts. Due to the influence of bourgeois revolutions around the world, contemporary politics has transpired as the synopsis of governance of the established order. As the “governing strategies” of the established order encounter multiple social crises, the Marxist political science or Marxism has emerged as the naturally preferred alternative research paradigm. During the Cold War period, such governing strategies were adopted as universal values in Western political science, effectuating the prediction of “the end of the history.” After the launch of the reform and opening-up campaign, “change-oriented” liberal democracy became an instrumental paradigm for Chinese political science. However, as the contemporary world order disfavored this paradigm, Chinese scholars shifted their research focus to developing an independent discourse power in democracy and governance, as well as prioritizing state governance as their primary research paradigm and methodology. Thus, political science is expected to resume its common sense nearly after a century of political chaos.

Este artigo resgata alguns conceitos doutrinários sobre o tempo até sua compreensão como uma instituição social, com referencial teórico no filósofo belga François Ost. Com base nessa concepção, o trabalho identifica quatro momentos característicos no período transcorrido entre o golpe civil-militar e a democracia constitucional no Brasil. Conclui-se que o processo transicional brasileiro se revela como atrasado e inacabado, e que no momento em que a Constituição brasileira completa trinta anos é urgente retomar o processo constitucional de transição, sob pena de surgirem fissuras no Estado Democrático de Direito brasileiro. Enviado el (Submission Date): 18/10/2020 Aceptado el (Acceptance Date): 22/12/2020

Objetiva este artigo enfocar a crise da democracia liberal com a ascensão de movimentos populistas e o seu riscodemocrático, sob a perspectiva do sistema interamericano. Para tanto, foram analisados três julgados emblemáticosda Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos, identificando dois importantes aspectos: a tendência populistaem atacar a independência judicial e o princípio da separação de Poderes; e a essencialidade da atuação conjuntados atores institucionais internos e internacionais para a necessária proteção dos princípios básicos democráticos,considerando, sobretudo, o impacto do sistema interamericano de proteção dos direitos humanos.

Agonism, which emphasizes the importance of conflict in politics, can be opposed to classical pluralism and deliberative democracy, although there are attempts at its reconciliation with the deliberative model. The aim of this essay is the analysis of political theory, which emphasizes agon (contest, Greek) as an inherent characteristic of politics, which should not be eradicated or suppressed into the private domain, but rather acknowledged and treated within the framework of liberal democracy. I will focus on the agonistic model of democracy offered by Chantal Mouffe, as one of the most influential theoreticians in this area. This essay will concentrate on the agonistic critique of the two mentioned models of democracy, questioning its justifiability and considering the alternative presented as agonism. Finally, I will present an attempt at integration of deliberative and agonistic democracy.

There is a general scholarly consensus that populist governments undermine liberal democracy at home, but less agreement over how they behave abroad. While many scholars still subscribe to the view that populism has no consistent impact on foreign policy, we argue that populist leaders engage in a characteristic set of behaviors calculated to elevate the state’s status on the international stage. However, the mechanism by which populist elite-versus people rhetoric translates into concrete foreign policy action remains underspecified. To address this gap, we develop a model showing how populism serves as a political argument to enable status elevation on the international stage. To illustrate this mechanism in action, we analyze the foreign policy rhetoric and behavior of the 2010–2020 Fidesz governments in Hungary, showing how populist argumentation was used to justify revisionist foreign policy through (1) the politicization of diplomatic machinery, (2) confrontation with traditional allies, and (3), the pursuit of more flexible partnerships. In these three respects, we show how populist arguments were used by Orbán to achieve a revolution in Hungarian foreign affairs. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41295-021-00256-3.

Based on a nationwide survey dataset collected by Taiwan’s Executive Yuan (2017) (N = 2737) and adopting structural equation modelling with bootstrapped method, we confirm that citizens’ positive appraisal of liberal democracy can foster subjective wellbeing via political trust but find civic participation irrelevant in this model. The proposed model remains significant after age, education, residency and personal income are controlled. The only exceptions are the gender effects in the relationship between appraisal of liberal democracy and political trust and that between political trust and civic participation. The former is positively stronger for female, whereas the latter is negatively stronger for male. While civic participation has long been widely accepted as a foundational component of any consolidated democracy, empirical evidence of this study calls for reflection on the application of this notion in an East Asian setting.

Across Africa, as in Ghana, state funding of political parties continues to generate debates across academic and policy circles. Against this background, three constituencies in the Upper West Region of Ghana were selected purposely to interrogate views of the public on this development. A combined 78 participants were selected in a mixed study design through purposive and quota sampling techniques. Primary data were gathered through focus group discussions and interviews revealed that 72.2% of the respondents favoured direct state funding of political parties indicating this will make multi-party democracy vibrant and competitive. 44.2% favoured full-state funding, whilst 32.7% proposed state-private partnership funding. 27.8% however, disapproved with state funding of political parties arguing that Ghana is already burdened with poor health systems, lack of quality education and unemployment. The study further revealed that the political parties’ programmes and activities proposed to be financed by the state principally include training of party agents, candidates and leaders (42.3%). Key words: Political parties, democracy, state funding, constitution, consolidation.

In his 1953 novel of ideas, The Outsider, Richard Wright ominously predicted that industrial capitalist society would inexorably result in “the total and absolute in modern life.” Wright did not mean that Soviet communism would prevail, capturing the hearts and minds of Americans. His point was that the West's capitalist democracy was just as capable of slouching toward a dystopian, totalitarian future as the Soviet Union. How might Wright’s prescient thoughts on the death of liberal democracy inform our attempts to save ourselves from the “totalitarian danger” looming in the United States? As multiracial American democracy, voting rights, and the rule of law are under assault from the U.S. far right, it is abundantly clear that anti‐Black racism animates the enemies of democracy and those who would establish and support autocratic rule. These reflections seek to historicize the assault on democracy in the US and the epochal events of 2020, including: the global protests following the murder of George Floyd by police;the death of hundreds of thousands in the US during the global Coronavirus pandemic;and concerted efforts by Trump and the far‐right to destroy multiracial democracy before and after the 2020 election, culminating in the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Peace & Change is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Advanced liberal democratic states interdict migrants on the High Seas global commons. Why have liberal states engaged in this practice over the past four decades? Deterrence and humanitarian rescue explain part of this puzzle, but they are insufficient for understanding the patterns and justifications for migrant interdiction on the High Seas. Tension between states promoting international human rights and circumventing those obligations challenges expectations of liberal state behavior. International relations scholars must incorporate the global commons when explaining state behavior; ungoverned areas create exceptional zones for states to partially suspend their standard operating procedures to execute policies furthering their interests. We argue that liberal states use the regulatory gray zones of the High Seas to ‘muddy the waters’ in order to advance their security interests. States with the highest domestic refugee protections have incentives to circumvent their own obligations, which vary over time with changes to domestic asylum laws.

Throughout 1990, an attempt at federal transition in Yugoslavia was intended to keep up with global and regional transformations based on the establishment of liberal democracies and the geographic...

At the beginning of the millennium, consumer culture researchers predicted that people would increasingly demand that marketplace actors subscribe to contemporary ethics of liberal democracy. Although their prediction indeed came true, they did not foresee that an algorithm-powered media ecosystem in combination with growing authoritarian movements would soon come to fuel an increasingly polarized political landscape and challenge the very fundament of liberal democracy per se. In this macroscopic, conceptual article, I discuss three assumption-challenging logics—counter-democratic consumer culture, de-dialectical algorithmic manipulation, and growing illiberal consumer resistance—according to which the market increasingly monetizes the conflicts accompanying this polarization and, thereby, reinforces it. I call this new logic a conflict market and illustrate it through three, historically situated and currently conflicting, consumer ideoscapes—the neoblue, the neogreen, and the neobrown—between which consumers engage in marketized conflicts, not in a de-politicizing way, but in an increasingly un-politicizing, de-dialectical, and polarizing way. At the technologically manipulated conflict market, the role of marketers is to monetize politically sensitive topics by creating conflict, knowingly renouncing large groups of consumers, and giving fodder to the political extremes.

The paper aims to clarify the origins of contemporary populism, as well as to outline the prospects for further research on this matter. The author examines this phenomenon within the framework of the dominant mainstream in political science. The latter imply the totality of approaches to conceptualization of the key modern social, economic, political and cultural issues. The author advances a hypothesis that both the extreme diversity of the views regarding the nature of populism and the impossibility to develop an all-encompassing defi nition of this paradoxical phenomenon directly stem from the characteristic features of this dominant discourse. The paper shows that this discourse emerged from the overlapping narratives of transition, modernization, free market, unlimited economic growth and ‘the end of history’ and establishes an hierarchy of global knowledge based on three principles: Western dominance, capitalism and liberalism. The author emphasizes that within this theoretical framework non-Western populism is portrayed as a relatively progressive phenomenon, as a means and an indicator of progress towards capitalism and democracy. In this case populism is interpreted as an element of transition to a ‘proper’ Modernity. However, identical political movements, practices and rhetoric of the Western populists are usually portrayed as a deviation from the norm, from Modernity in general and the ideals of liberal democracy in particular. Meanwhile, the paper argues that as Western liberal democracies transform into ‘conciliatory democracies’ (‘oligarchies’) and increasingly resemble ‘defective democracies’, they themselves start to deviate from the normative ideal, just as any regime they label ‘populist’. Therefore, the existing concepts of populism signify not only a certain deviation from the ideal but also the birth of a new reality which cannot be conceptualized within the framework of the contemporary mainstream political science. The concept of populism appears as an ‘empty signifier’ and as a collective term for all inconvenient and troubling social-political phenomena that mainstream political scientists are unable or unwilling to explain.

Three decades since the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the ideal of liberal democracy is under considerable strain. Recent developments in the region show that democratic inst...

In the context of the global recession of democracy, this article engages with sub-Saharan Africa’s so-called ‘democratic’ deficit. Three arguments are presented. First, sub-Saharan Africa’s challe...

Ustavna demokracija opis je, obilježje, ali „i počelo, i cilj“ suvremenih država civilizacijskoga kruga kojem RH pripada. Sama demokracija kao oblik vladavine u idealnom je slučaju asimptotski proces stalna usavršavanja. Isto vrijedi i za ustavnost. Dakako, ti procesi nipošto nisu ireverzibilni. I dok je u suvremeno doba u biti nemoguće povući potpun i oštar rez između pridjeva i imenice spomenute sintagme „ustavna demokracija“, namjera je ovog rada promotriti prevladavajuće procese razvoja ustavnosti u našoj državi kako bismo upozorili na prijeteće točke, ali i na važne potencijale za buduća postupanja državnih tijela i samih građana. Identifikacija problema u svojevrsnom Dunning-Kruger sindromu pretpolitičkog stanja svijesti znatna dijela društvene potke u RH čini evoluciju ustavne vladavine osobito kompleksnom i nipošto izvjesnom. Dopuštamo si blag optimizam s obzirom na dosadašnje korake te podsjećanje na to da demokratski i ustavni procesi općenito nisu linearni. Ipak, stanje opasne stagnacije i zaglavljenost u glibu koruptivno-klijentelističkog mentaliteta nalaže ozbiljan i interdisciplinarni pristup svladavanju problema. Osnovno je pitanje ovdje kako ustavno pravo može doskočiti rečenim izazovima te koji su potrebni i mogući koraci u tom smjeru. U radu prvo analiziramo stvarnu vrijednost konstitucionalizma u našoj državi, i to preko njegova pozitivnog i negativnog naboja. Potom upozoravamo na uzroke identificiranih izazova koje nalazimo u stanju hrvatskoga društva i u refleksiji takva stanja u nedavnom djelovanju najviših državnih institucija. Ističemo bitnost preuzimanja institucijske i građanske odgovornosti. Imajući u vidu notornu potrebu ustavne revizije, fokusiramo se na formativno-edukativni potencijal budućega ustavotvornog procesa. Ustav bez odgovarajućeg stupnja internalizacije državnih tijela i građana ne može živjeti. Odgoj i obrazovanje za ustavnu demokraciju ostaju kamen temeljac funkcionirajućega društva. Na kraju predlažemo i dodatan sinergijski angažman sveučilišne zajednice., Constitutional democracy is a description, a characteristic, but it is also the „foundation and goal“ of contemporary civilizations which Croatia belongs to. Democracy itself, as a form of governance, is ideally an asymptotic process of constant improvement. The same goes for constitutionality. These processes, however, are not irreversible. While it is impossible to draw a complete and sharp demarcation line between the adjective and the noun in the „constitutional democracy“ syntagm, the aim of this paper is to look into predominant processes of constitutional development in Croatia not only in order to point out challenges, but also to draw attention to important potential for the future functioning both of the state and its citizens. A major problem is identified as a form of Dunning-Kruger syndrome of pre-political state of mind of a significant part of the social matrix in the Republic of Croatia that in turn renders the evolution of constitutional governance particularly complex and not at all certain. We allow a mild optimism given the previous steps and remembering that democratic and constitutional processes are not linear. However, the state of dangerous stagnation and immersion in the corruptive-clientelistic mentality calls for serious and interdisciplinary approach to this problem. The fundamental question remains: to what extent can constitutional law provide remedies to these challenges and what are the necessary steps in that direction? The paper firstly analyses the actual value of constitutionalism in Croatia through its positive and negative aspects. Then we turn to the causes of problems we have identified. We find them both in the state of the social matrix and reflections of this state in recent acts of the highest state institutions. The importance of assigning institutional and civil responsibility is particularly pointed out. Keeping in mind a notorious need for constitutional revision, we focus on formative and educational potential of the future constitution-making process. A constitution cannot prosper without an adequate level of internalization on the level of state bodies, but also of its citizens. Education and understanding of constitutional democracy remain the corner-stones of a functioning society. At the end we propose a synergy of members of academic institutions for an additional beneficial effect.

The article is devoted to the study and scientific understanding of the process of formation and evolution of Poland as a modern democratic European state. The importance of the influence of the democratic traditions of the Polish people on the formation of the current model of the state system of the Republic of Poland is pointed out. The general chronological framework of each of the periods of democratization of Polish society, starting from the times of "noble democracy", has been established. The main characteristics of the stages of democratic development of Poland up to the present period are determined. The main factors that influenced the course of democratic transit in the Polish state have been clarified. It turns out that the peculiarities of modern Polish statehood are due to the historical traditions of Polish democracy, the mentality of the Polish people, membership in the EU and other international organizations. It is emphasized that the implementation of economic and institutional transformations in the Polish state in the post-Soviet period was accompanied by the simultaneous formation of civil society. It is established that the result of democratic transit in the Republic of Poland is a liberal democracy of the western type with a certain bias towards social democracy. Emphasis is placed on the decisive role of European integration processes in the establishment of the Republic of Poland as a democratic, legal and social state. Based on the analysis of current legislation and ongoing reforms in the law-making sphere, the main factors that determine the existing systemic threats to the rule of law and democracy in Poland at the present stage of its state-building have been identified. It is stated that Polish democracy at present shows some negative tendencies, but it is unlikely to collapse due to the current challenges, as the Republic still maintains a balance between state power and political freedom of citizens and their associations and the general atmosphere in Polish society remains open and free.

Este artículo parte del argumento, la democracia liberal está en crisis. Partiendo de un análisis sistemático de la literatura, se identifican modelos alternativos que podrían remplazar este tipo de democracia hasta ahora hegemónico. A continuación, se hace una propuesta para una educación política alineada con la democracia radical que plantean Ernesto Laclau y Chantal Mouffe. Se entiende que el objetivo de la educación democrática radical y política debe facilitar que el alumnado pueda abrir, expandir y cambiar el proyecto democrático. Para ello, se propone tres pedagogías: pedagogías para la diferencia, para la articulación y para la equivalencia que, desde este punto de vista, pueden contribuir a este objetivo. Se termina el artículo presentando ejemplos de cómo estas pedagogías se podrían llevar a la práctica basados en las investigaciones cualitativas recientes de la autora Edda Sant.

What is the future of liberal democracy? Is the “liberal” ingredient of 21st century democracy compatible with its “demos”? Are developed democracies more equalitarian and less stratified than other regimes? Or are present day democracies evolving into something different that needs a new definition? By the early 1990s liberal democracy appeared to have become the dominant system at a global scale. The hope of citizens, scholars, and observers was that the stride toward broader democratization and inclusion would continue. It did, but as this paper argues, the forms adopted by democratic regimes, especially under the fourth industrial revolution, are not necessarily democratic. Rather, liberal democracies have created a new aristocracy that includes high tech monopolies, extremely skilled professionals, and a selected intelligentsia that from social media, conglomerates, and many times Hollywood, supports this new stratified version of the democratic polity. Family dynasties, clientele networks, and mechanisms of reward and punishment reminds us of the pseudo democracies of the late 19th century. Surely the dwindling middle class in developed democracies still have some consumer power based on credit. Global markets offer many more available consumer goods than in the past, creating the illusion that all is going well. Comparatively, however, democracies are doing worse. As this paper shows, 21st century liberal democracies have concentrated wealth in fewer hands than in the recent past, have favored power centralization especially in the executive branch, have stimulated the formation of giant high-tech monopolies, and have generated more rigid forms of social stratification. Liberal democracies, therefore, are weaking, in many cases as the logical consequence of the natural evolution of the liberal doctrine, and in most cases because of profound changes at the global scale. Citizens’ confidence in their elected representatives has been in the decline for a long time. The increasing influence of populist nationalism is an indicator that confidence in traditional politicians continues to deteriorate. Democracy could not be democratic without the popular vote, but it has been precisely the popular vote that has empowered populist nationalist leaders, both from the right and the left. There is not very much that democracies can do about the coming to power via the ballot box of leaders who can rework the system in their favor and, in some cases, destroy it. As the paper shows, changes in the international system of power have not been favorable to liberal democracies, adding to its burdens. They are no longer the optimal model of choice, especially in the less developed world. Finally, I claim that the broken promises of political elites that have traditionally provoked voters’ apathy and loss of trust, have, In the 21st century, created new unintended consequences. They have generated illusions of entitlement and deservingness that, especially young voters, have converted into a sort anti-democratic culture that cares less for the collective and much more for themselves.

At the time of the official Coronavirus, 2020-2021 Pandemic emergency measures and general restrictions on the freedom of movement and the other fundamental human and constitutional rights and freedoms were and still are in place. The question of what kind of world will we enter after the official end of the Pandemic was quickly raised. The problem of fear intensified. This is not only a social problem but also a legal one: people have a fundamental human right to protection against fear. The absolute short-term priorities of public administration in all EU and Council of Europe Member States will have to be focused on ensuring that fear and anxiety do not become a new epidemic. Concern for the efficiency and quality of the public health system should be strengthened and improved. Including mental health care and suicide prevention, care for the well-being of the elderly and terminally ill, people with disabilities (in general and disabled workers), care for children, especially children with special needs, and care for large, diversified, and quality palliative care. Also, a need exists for a changed and improved legal policy regarding the system of education, scientific research, and employment. Last but not least, care must be taken not to take fundamental human rights and freedoms for granted. The health crisis will result in a new economic crisis. It should not be accepted as the end of the Welfare (Social) State. It is a new opportunity to defend social and economic human rights and to create the common European Welfare State. Right now, new ideas are needed –even crazy ideas. We need a kind of utopia. And faith and hope in it, which will be the driving force of active action. The experience of the Pandemic must not prevent or take this away from us.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the democracy and the challenges towards liberal democracy. Desk review and thorough document analysis have been used to dig out the challenges for liberal democracy. Politically liberal democracies are contextualized and more flexible, assure the freedom of speech and enable voters for alternatives in case of incapable governments. The central view of liberal democracy is that every citizen must be treated on an equal basis. Pakistan and Bangladesh (separated from Pakistan in 1971) are the democratic republic countries by constitutional arrangements. The political system of both countries is based upon the elected people and then the elected people generate further policies, rules, laws, and regulations for governing the system in states. Theoretically, both states consist of governments, political parties, and official apparatus of military and civil society organizations. However, historically both countries remained unable to continue the democratic systems due to recurrent involvement and intervention by the military, undemocratic institutions, terrorism and extremism, political disorder, and uncertainty from their inception.

This article attempts to conceptualise the relationship between the indi-vidual (professional) and the structural in a period of relatively radical changes in society. The challenging and revealing dialectic of such rela-tions is analysed through the combination of auto-ethnographic reflec-tions and archival documents showing the changes in the functioning of a council of experts in a country that experienced and coped with three fundamentally peaceful transitions: the transition from a self-managed socialist economy to a market economy, the transition from a one-party socialist system to a representative liberal democracy, and from a re-public that was part of a federal state to an independent state. The Ex-pert Council of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia (then still part of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia), later renamed the Expert Council of the Republic of Slovenia (at that time a liberal democracy with a mar-ket economy and an independent state), can serve as an example of the productive intertwining of individual (expert) and the structural in the formulation and the implementation of the functional transformation of the educational system. The contextualised account and assessment of the shifts that together helped bring about the independent state and its education system formation outlines the complexity and importance of reflexive governance in the times of transition, which, in itself, brings to the fore a number of relevant issues and invites and supports change in the educational system. Such an opportunity should not be missed by the country and its educators.

This article introduces a special issue of West European Politics on the COVID-19 crisis. It first sets out the dual challenge to democratic principles and democratic performance that the COVID-19 pandemic has posed to European liberal democracies. Three bodies of scholarship are especially relevant in framing this dual democratic challenge: those that provide accounts of policy, institutional and legitimacy crises; accounts of the governance of emergencies and of emergency politics; and accounts of political turbulence and organisational and policy responses. The articles that comprise the special issue provide comparative empirical insights into first reactions, with a focus on the responses by political decision-makers, European publics and the EU. Assessments of the likely longer-term, potentially transformative effects of COVID-19 on the principles and performance of European liberal democracies will need to draw on both sectoral and systemic perspectives, with a focus on the organisation and operation of public authority and the state.

The article studies the compliance of democracy of the Baltic States with the principle of tolerance. The study demonstrated specific social phobias (xenophobia, migrant phobia, homophobia, islamophobia, romaphobia, etc.), hate speech and other destructive trends in the Baltic countries that contradict values of liberal democracy. The authors argue that Baltic States face similar challenges of strengthening the principle of tolerance as well as how they differ in intolerance manifestations and mechanisms of their prevention and counteraction. In the Baltic States, issues related to promotion of tolerance are claimed to be common at two levels: at the institutional level (countries do not fulfil some of the EU guidelines aimed at enhancing the principle of tolerance); at the value level (population does not accept completely liberal-democratic values that the EU advocates).