Tag: democracy

Democracy in The News (11): Canada’s Rights and Democracy agency

Recently, the government of Canada announced that they are scrapping the Rights and Democracy agency (or, for googling purposes, better known as The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development). According to the website, the agency was created in 1988 “to encourage and support the universal values of human rights and the promotion of democratic institutions and practices around the world” (source). This was interesting timing for the agency’s creation, as it was right towards the end of the Cold War and the Western powers’ fight against communism.

CBC outlines the turmoil that arose within the agency in 2010, when government-appointed board members challenged the funding of three human rights organizations because they were anti-Israel.

The controversy stems an interesting conversation about the supposedly non-partisan nature of the agency. Traditionally, non-partisan has been associated with intra-national politics. With increasing internationalization, countries are faced with the challenge of maintaining this non-partisan stance on a global level.

While the government says it will simply absorb the work of the agency into other departments, it will be interesting to see whether or not Canada’s role changes within international politics.

Democracy In The News (9): Russia

A recent poll shows that 8% of Russians see their country as democratic, with another 40% labeling Russia as “partly democratic”.

The article to which I am referring is written by Forbes, and seems to discuss these designations of citizen-identified democracy (or lack thereof) to what the author refers to as “Western style democracy”; that is, free press, freedom of speech, and religious freedoms. This was an interesting description to me as I suppose I assumed that a democracy is a democracy regardless of geographic location.

One specific part of the article of note is the fact that this 8% who see Russia as democratic is increased from 4% in 2010; this number may seem insignificant, but comparatively, it’s double. The article gives credit to Vladimir Putin, who “is still seen as the best man for the job” according to a provided poll. (I would like to criticize the article in this regard, as the article provides results for a poll but does not seem to state anywhere what was actually asked. My best guess is “job approval”.)

As far as I can tell, this significant change in public perception isn’t due to any empirically observed changes in the democratic system according to Freedom House, which states that Russia is not free. Unfortunately the 2011 country reports for Polity IV are not yet available; interestingly, however, the popular measure for democracy has described Russia as democratic since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Mini-Assignment (9): Digital Democracy

In what way do new technologies affect democracy? A quick google search on the topic (ah, technology) turned up this article: “Social Media. Good for Revolution. Bad for Democracy?” My issues with the use of punctuation in the title aside, the article raises some interesting points, particularly in distinguishing between technology’s effect on revolutions in comparison to its effect on the creation, or the maintenance, of democratic structures.

There is no doubt that it does have an effect on revolution. Social media websites such as Twitter offer a global platform with which people can come together – internationally – to raise awareness and lobby support for a specific cause. Twitter has been so influential in this regard that in a Wikipedia search of “Twitter Revolution”, four possible options come up. A more recent example can be see with Kony 2012, a campaign that sparked the support – and the outraged, dissenting opinions – of people using Twitter and Facebook. Was the revolution successful? Well, I don’t think many people will forget about Joseph Kony for awhile. On the other hand, it gained massive momentum in its first 24 hours and then halted substantially.

One part of the article sticks out to me in particular, regarding the timing of revolutions in social media. This is particularly important when discussing the development and stability of democracies. As has been discussed in this class, there are a wide variety of competing theories regarding both what a democracy is, and how it came about. This is something of particular interest to me not only in political science (though it’s certainly an important discussion), but in popular culture and in various research topics. Malcolm Gladwell discusses this in his book The Tipping Point; that is, maybe the successful establishment of democracy is due to a variety of factors, the most important of which is timing. The dangers of technology may be their ability to instigate revolution, and potential intervention, before these factors are aligned. As the article argues, this accelerated process may cause instability in development of new governing principles.

Democracy In The News (8): Protests in Bahrain

It’s amazing how creating a Google News category (in this case “democracy”) – and simply paying more attention – can make you feel like the world is revolving around the subject material you’re covering. This week, pro-democracy protests escalated in Bahrain to what has been “the biggest demonstration in the past year” (source). According to the news report, Bahrainis are denouncing dictatorship and protesting to demand democratic reforms.

I don’t know much about the political situation in Bahrain (and by “not much”, I mean I know nothing about the political situation in Bahrain), so if any students in the class are particularly enlightened on the topic I would love to learn more about it. But using some of the handy tools in the class, I checked out its current rating from Freedom House. With a rating of 6 for political rights, and 5 for civil liberties, its current status is “Not free”. According to the Freedom House website, there has been a downward trend in recent years due to a variety of reasons, including assaults and arrests of members of the press and political activists.

According to the article, the government of Bahrain has made recent changes (“pressed by its Western allies”) to allow for peaceful protest. If this is the case, it will be interesting to see how the protests unfold, and in a year’s time, what assessment is given to Bahrain in Freedom House’s 2012 Country Reports.

Democracy In The News (7): Voter Suppression

This Democracy-In-The-News post is coming to you guys a little late – I have unfortunately been out of commission for a few weeks and have fallen behind. The good news is, it’s a good week to write three posts on Democracy in the News, as plenty seems to be happening in the world.

I figured I’d kick off my catch-up-blogging by discussing the recent voter suppression controversy that has been dominating the news. This issue is, obviously, incredibly pertinent to our class material. Voter suppression would be a serious infringement on the freedoms that are inherent to a “true democracy”, as outlined by basically every measure of democracy discussed in this class. This particular blog post will discuss this article in the Vancouver Sun. For those of you who don’t know – though I am sure you all do – voters in certain districts reported receiving phone calls sending them to incorrect (or non-existant) polling stations. In the article, MP Pat Martin is quoted discussing the fundamental freedom of free and fair elections – and, importantly within that quote, free and fair elections “without interference”. The article makes reference to the illegality of interference in the Elections Act, although (irritatingly) did not provide a link or reference a specific section of the act in which it says this.

Thank goodness for google, I found it here, under provision 281(g), stating:

No person shall, inside or outside of Canada, willfully prevent or endeavour to prevent an elector from voting at an election.

It may seem obvious enough to us in a democratic system, but pending the results of an investigation into this situation, this country may be in need of a reminder.

Assignment (4): Describing Democracy

“So what is democracy, anyways?”

If I were to be asked this question by a politically astute distant relative, my first reaction would be to say that seeing as how much smarter minds than me have been unable to reach a consensus on the answer to this question, it’s unlikely I’d be able to enlighten her over dinner. But I would give it a try.

First, I would explain to her the different ways to conceptualize democracy. Personally, I prefer minimalist definitions, as they allow you to move up and down the “ladder of generality”, as discussed by Collier and Levitsky. To me, the minimalist definition of democracy would be free and fair elections, and the protection of civil liberties. Ideally, these liberties would extend to all citizens equally.

In my opinion, this is the most troubling part of democracy for me. As discussed in class, surely a line has to be drawn somewhere in the extension of these democratic rights to a country’s citizens. Age is a key example of this. If we let two year olds go to the polls, we can expect that other people would be manipulating their decisions, as we can’t expect them to inform themselves. So where is this line? Why is it that we feel that an 18-year-old can make a more informed decision in the electoral process than a 17-year-old?

The purpose of democracy is both to give citizens the opportunity to choose their leaders, but also to protect them from the leaders they choose. In Canada, for example, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects Canadian citizens from the potential actions of elected government.

At the end of the discussion with this distant relative I would, of course, refer her to take POLI333 at UBC.

Assignment (3):

Collier and Levitsky introduce an interesting method of defining democracy through the use of adjectives, which allows for differentiation between types of democracy while “avoiding conceptual stretching”. They do so by using a minimalist definition of democracy, which will be addressed later on in the post, and placing it within Sartori’s “ladder of generality” in order to organize concepts. Theoretically speaking, if democracy is in the middle of this ladder, moving up on the ladder of generality would have less defining attributes (and therefore more generality), and moving down on the ladder would include more defining attributes. For the purpose of their analysis, they define democracy procedurally: that is, defining the necessary procedures of democracies rather than the outcomes. Their minimal definition includes the following procedural attributes: contested elections, full suffrage, and guarantee of civil liberties.

“Democracies with adjectives” are then types of democracies described with a specific adjective to differentiate between them, without stretching or changing the defining attributes of the concept of democracy itself. For example, parliamentary democracies and presidential democracies both have have the attributes necessary to be considered a democracy, but are undeniably different in structure. These would then be placed lower on the ladder of generality, as they have more specifically defining attributes. Collier and Levitsky refer to these as “classical subtypes”. The classical subtype of parliamentary democracy is discussed in this Winnipeg Free Press editorial, which is highly critical of the Canadian government’s intentions to put committee meetings “behind closed doors”. Her use of the term “parliamentary democracy” was specifically in reference to the proroguing of government in 2008.

Another level of differentiation is “diminished subtypes”. Unlike classical subtypes, these are democracies that are specifically defined by what aspect they are missing from the root concept of democracy. Illiberal democracies, for example, are characterized by missing the core attribute of civil liberties. This article in the news this week uses the diminished subtype of illiberal democracy as an example in defining where Turkey is heading. As the author argues, to a certain extent Turkey is getting more democratic (with “the power of ballots being consolidated”); on the other hand, journalists are being imprisoned, limiting civil liberties such as free speech.

Democracy In The News (1): SOPA

I suppose anyone with access to a computer is aware of the Stop Online Piracy Act that was introduced to the House in October – especially if you’re someone who uses Wikipedia as obsessively as I do. When I say obsessively, I mean obsessively – I probably look something up five times a day, and at least once of those five times, I’ll end up spending hours link-surfing Wikipedia pages.

Needless to say, Wednesday’s blackout was an effective way to get my attention. Every time I forgot about the blackout and searched for something on Wikipedia, only to find the highly frustrating image as featured in this post, I cursed SOPA and everything it stood for – and then attempted to look it up on Wikipedia.

It was, undeniably, an effective protest. My twitter-feed was abuzz, and Facebook was overloaded with political comments by friends I know would have trouble naming a local newspaper. The protest became an interesting reflection on democracy when Rep.  Smith announced that he was postponing action on the bill for the time-being. It was an exciting moment for a lot of people, I imagine, who may feel as jaded as I do about the limited impact that peaceful protest seems to have nowadays.

In a country where “lobbying” is a bad word, it seems to me that Wikipedia’s protest – and the similarly peaceful protest of many other websites – can be seen as democracy by a different definition. While there is no general election to give power to these websites, we do so by electing to use them on a regular basis. Without a constitution, or a charter, many of these websites chose to represent the wishes of their own “constituents”, and acted as delegates for a massive online community of people who would be negatively affected by the implications of SOPA and PIPA. It was a perfect example of E-Democracy, a fun term you can read all about on Wikipedia, for free, because the internet is a great and powerful thing.

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