Kate's Blog

A blog that I enjoyed reading throughout the term was Jocelyn’s Diagnosis on Democracy. Her post on the fall of the Conservative government was really interesting because of her in-depth discussion of what it means to be “in contemp” of parliement. I like how she assessed whether Harper should still be running in the next election, critiqued the system that allows him to do this and asked all the right questions. Most of all I like the fact that Jocelyn’s post comes full circle and assess the effect this has on our democracy.

I also enjoyed her opinionated through social media piece because it was really interesting to see the diffrence in blogging based on gender.

Since I’m still working on my blog I wish I had more posts to choose my “best post” from. Nonetheless, one of my favorite posts was one that I wrote on the development of democracy in Tunisia. I really enjoyed writing this post because it was a follow-up to my first Democracy in the News post.

We started the term at about the same time that the Jasmine revolution began, which was my first Democracy in the News post. Later on in the term, it seemed like we had forgotten about the democracy in the countries we’d discussed during their revolutions so I decided to write about what was happening in Tunisia post-revolution.

I like this post because all too often I get caught up in the big headlines and forget about the important pieces of news that are more low-key. This is why it was interesting to go back and write about Tunisia again, as other countries had become more newsworthy in the last little bit.

Hope you enjoy(ed) my blog!

It seems as if lately, the level of democracy in Canada has been diminishing. Perhaps this is relative to the definition of democracy one may have but the attack ads, the fact that the Conservative government fell on Contempt of Parliament, makes me question our democracy.

Another damaging effect to democracy in Canada is Harper’s election campaign. The Conservative party has turned away two students from their campaign-rally. Awish Aslam, a political science student at the University of Western Ontario was asked to leave by the RCMP at a Conservative campaign-rally where an official told her and a friend that “We know you guys have ties to the Liberal Party through Facebook and you’re not welcome here” (The Globe and Mail). According to the student, she has no affiliations with the Liberal party but did have a photo of her and Michael Ignatieff on facebook that was taken at a Liberal rally. The student received a Facebook message apology from Conservative campaign spokesman Dimitri Soudas.

“Awish, my name is Dimitri. I wanted to send you a short message of apology for the rally the other night. I’d like to offer to introduce you to Prime Minister Harper next time we are in London.” (The Globe and Mail)

Doesn’t this apology at least deserve a phone call? They are treating this situation as if the student came to the rally wearing a t-shirt with Ignatieff’s face on it. I find it quite ridiculous for the Conservative party to even be looking at attendees’ social networking profiles let alone turning students away from their rallies.

Another student at Guelph University was told that her name was flagged and she wasn’t allowed to attend the rally despite having preregistered. Apparently this was because she part of an Environmental Club at her school and had attempted to end the sale of bottled water on the campus. Guelph students surprised Harper with a “vote mob” when he attended their school and many were later not allowed to attend Harper’s talk “because party officials said they had participated in a protest.” (Maclean’s)

Despite being hounded for days for an explanation to these incidents, Harper only said that more people have been attending his events and that “It’s better when you’re turning people away than when you can’t get people to come” (The Star).

The news that we’ve been hearing about Harper’s campaign has been really outrageous but the party doesn’t seem to mind stepping all over our privacy rights and jeopardizing our democracy to get themselves back in power again.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/student-booted-from-event-buries-hatchet-with-tories/article1974816/

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/970029–rcmp-implicated-in-harper-s-closed-to-public-campaign

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2011/04/05/guelph-students-mob-harper/

As the pro-democracy sentiment sweeps the Middle East, anti-government protesters have begun gathering in Yemen.

They have been gathering in an attempt to get president Ali Abdullah Saleh to resign after three decades in power. However, on Monday security forces gunned down protesters in Taiz, killing at least 15 people and wounding many more. The opposition leaders have called this a true “massacre” which happened after protesters attempted to storm a government building.

The BBC reports that while security forces have shot warning shots into the air to calm protesters, this incident was different because many had injuries on their chests, necks and heads prompting a doctor who examined the protesters to believe they were deliberately shot.

In Hudaida, witnesses have claimed that they saw security forces with snipers on the rooftops as well as security officials dressed in civilian clothing shooting at the crowds. Many protesters have regarded the incident as increased aggression from the government but they do plan on backing down. The unrest in Yemen is escalating and it is a matter of time that Saleh steps down.

I’m wondering what will happen to the rest of the Middle East. Will more governments fall due to the pro-democracy revolutions? And will only some move towards democracy?

Giovanni Carbone’s article “The Consequences of Democratization” looks at democratization as an independent variable. Rather than looking at democracy as an endpoint, he looks at it as a starting point.

In his examination of the consequences of democracy, time is a key factor for the author. He suggests that looking at the short-term effects of democracy (which can be quite different than long-term effects) risks missing the “true” effects of democratization. Carbone assesses the notion that many people believe that democracy has instant positive consequences by looking at the effects on democracy on the political, economic and social spheres over time by looking at democracy as a “stock”. The “stock of democracy” accounts for the extent of experience with democracy that a country has had.

He criticizes the viewpoint that democracy generates many positive effects and looks at some of the downsides of democracy. First he challenges the widely accepted notion that there is a positive relationship between democracy and social welfare by suggesting that democracy simply favours the survival of the worse-off and that it has had a limited success at fighting poverty in low-income countries. He then addresses the relationship between democracy and inequality by suggesting that initially democracies contribute to rising inequality that eventually produced equal outcomes by shrinking the gap between the rich and the poor. Finally, he addresses the enlargement of the public sector. Again he suggests that this is an effect that cannot be observed right away. As democracies become more established “by contrast, governments become more likely to adopt the kind of long-term perspective that favors the creation and execution of better social policy”.

Carbone’s (somewhat) pessimistic analysis of the consequences of democracy is refreshing as democracy is often looked at as endpoint that is the answer to every country’s problems. His look at democracy as a starting point is a necessary viewpoint that prospecting democracies need to take account of. Democracy does not bring all the effects immediately and some effects take a long time to become observable. Thus looking at democracy as a stock rather than measuring democracy at a given point in time, can yield better findings on the consequences of democracy.

In my previous “Democracy in the News” post, I followed up on the first post I wrote on the revolution in Tunisia at the beginning of the term. This post examines the consequences of the revolution and the first steps towards democracy in Egypt.

On February 11th, Hosni Mubarak was forced from power in Egypt as a result of protest against the authoritarian regime. Al Jazeera reports that since then, the military has ruled Egypt by dissolving the parliament and suspending the constitution. The president will be elected by the end of the year, but until then, the military will exercise the powers of the head of state. The military will surrender the powers to a new parliament after its elected in September. A member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces also stated that the presidential election will take place a couple months after the parliamentary elections and he also announced a constitutional decree for the temporary administration. The decree will act as an interim constitution that allows a competitive presidential vote, restores judicial oversight over elections and restricts the future president’s time in office to two four-year terms. Also, it declares Egypt as a democratic state, allows peaceful protest, guarantees freedom of expression and a free press. However, once the parliament is formed, a new constitution will be written.

Despite this, the young protesters that caused the revolution fear “that the military could ultimately retain its grip on power, [therefore]”saving” Egypt’s revolution will require a liberal program for moving the country forward — and fast.” While they have ultimately received what they were protesting for, the masses are still demonstrating. They want Mubarak and his associates to be put on trial and to return the public funds they stole from the Egyptian people. On Friday, tens of thousands protesters rallied in Tahrir Square to make their demands heard. The turnout was a signal to the military that the “people” were still invested in the revolution. The Atlantic reports that many of the protesters were independents “[who] have no leader or even set of leaders who can channel their demands for a better future into a widely agreeable program, and nobody can credibly represent them before the military council. So for now, the masses can only unify against things.”

While the progress in Egypt is evident, many (especially the youth that started it all) feel that they are still being underrepresented in the regime they fought so hard to obtain. What could be done to change this?

As we heard in class yesterday, the Harper government has fallen but since a few people have already covered this piece of news, I chose to focus on the development of democracy in Tunisia.

The revolution that took place at the begining of this year in Tunisia has been the impetus for revolutions alike in the Middle East and North Africa. Since then Syria and Libya have also began protesting. Often when countries strive for democracies, they are preoccupied with the concept of attaining it. However, during this, people often forget to ask what happens post-revolution?

An article in The Washington Post suggests that for now “Tunisia is perched delicately between revolutionary exuberance and chaos” but steps are being taken towards the construction of a new democratic system. After 23 years under the authoritarian leadership of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisians are able to take power into their won hands, a concept they are not familiar with. However, Tunisians are ready to be an example for the rest of the Arab world that, to prove that Arab Islamic identities can go hand in hand with democracies. In July, Tunisians will have the opportunity to vote on a 200-member assembly that will elect temporary leaders and until then an interim government is in place, while coalitions of politicians, civil society representatives and lawyers write a new electoral code.

While Tunisia is still in a state of chaos, mainly because the economy has suffered, the country seems to be on the right track towards a democratic regime. Tunisians are well educated, have had a constitution, given women equal rights and banned polygamy unlike most other Islamic countries. Because the “nations wears its Islamic identity lightly” (The Washington Post), some suggest that Tunisia may have an easier time than other nations at assembling a democracy.

However, some Tunisians are still skeptical as former Ben-Ali supporters and associates have formed political parties. Mr.Chawki Tabib, a lawyer form one of the coalitions, has said that these associates of Ben Ali are “trying to create a void in security so as to say that this revolution is heading to chaos, so the Tunisian people will come and say, ‘We want security back and we want things back the way they were’”. Despite this, most Tunisians still see a bright future ahead and have taken steps to aid their neighbours and refugees from Libya during its revolution.

In an article on the protests in Egypt, the U.S. director of national intelligence stated that “specific triggers for how and when instability would lead to the collapse of various regimes cannot always be known or predicted”. And while there was not a specific trigger that caused the revolution in Egypt, the Jasmine Revolution which took place just before is said to have been an indirect trigger.

The New York Times article lists the “large unmet expectations of the people; the large numbers of youth, many of them well educated but jobless; and the dynamic role of the Internet” as pressures that were building in the region long before Tunisia’s revolution. The article lists “the regressive regimes, the economic and political instability, a stagnation, the lack of freedoms,[and] the need for political reforms” as evidence that has contributed to the pressures that were building. The Telegraph also lists similar factors that contributed to the popular protests such as hundreds of thousands protestors “fed up with high unemployment, a corrupt elite and police repression”.

While the role of the Internet lead to the mobilization of protesters that caused Mubarak to step down, it’s probably the most useful to attribute the unemployment of the Egyptian youth to the cause of protesting. Many political scientists acknowledge economic factors as causes for democratization and in class today, we discussed the dissatisfaction that arises from economic inequality. This is the dissatisfaction that was felt by the youth in Egypt that created the atmosphere of mistrust between the people and the government that was not doing enough to procure employment its qualified citizens.

While writing this post, I was thinking about what we covered in lecture today about the emphasis of political culture in democratization.

Indonesia, the world’s third largest democracy, despite having democratized 13 years ago is still dealing with corruption and violence. However, Indonesians are grateful for the revolution that brought down Suharto, because of the freedom they have gained that has lead their country to blossom into an open society.

The government encourages Islam groups to help build the country and make themselves electable to the people. The Prosperous Justice Party is a political Islamist party that now has four ministers in the government. The article on Al-Jazeera suggests that “as the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia offers an example of how Islam and democracy go hand-in-hand”.

Thinking back to the lecture, we talked about which religious factors (and cultural factors) might be more or less likely to lead to democratization? We also noted that these factors should not be regarded in isolation but this seems to be the case in many countries trying to make the transition towards democracy especially in the Middle East.

For our first paper I’ve chosen the region of Post-Soviet Europe. Since we’re writing a report spanning from 1985 to present that encompasses the decline and eventual fall of the Soviet Union from the 80’s to the 90’s, I think examining this region will allow me to focus on the transition from communism to the emergence of a democracy. Also, I’ve always been interested in all things Europe.