Mandy @ POLI 333D

“Former Rights and Democracy president Remy Beauregard died of a heart attack after a heated meeting. – Julie Oliver / Postmedia News files”

When I first learnt from this National Post’s article that Canada has decided to shut down the federally funded International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (known as Rights & Democracy), I was slightly frustrated because I felt like Canada is isolating itself from the larger world again. However, as I read on, I realized that this Rights & Democracy has indeed been dysfunctional, especially after the Conservative government began its partisan appointments to the agency’s board of directors in recent years. Therefore, it seems to me that closing the agency is a right thing to do.

Nonetheless, I cannot help to develop this conspiracy theory that, this is the government’s strategy to first seed the agency with problems, and then to legitimize the closure of the agency as these problems manifested.

In fact, I feel like my cynicism is confirmed by this Globe and Mail’s article, which suggests that not only Rights & Democracy, but other Canadian human-rights promotion efforts, have to be closed down due to limited funding.

While I think Canada should be condemned for unwilling to contribute to human-rights promotion, I wonder if Canada’s isolationist foreign orientation is what makes it friendly to other (democratic and non-democratic) nations. This is always a puzzle and irony to me. Although Canada’s international isolationism may cost “its position and its reputation in the area of democracy promotion,” my travel experience has told me that Canada is viewed differently in local contexts. From my experience, people in other countries tend to see Canadians as “people with not much threat” and therefore “people whom you can make friends with”. (I also hold a Canadian citizenship but still, please forgive me if you find this offensive my Canadian friends.)

I do not mean that it is right for Canada to stop its human-rights promotions, but somehow the country’s lack of participation in the international realm has prevented it from projecting itself as an interventionist, which is often detested by everyone.

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My best post: Has Democracy lost its Ground in the Euro Crisis?

Highlight:

“In face of the urgent debt crisis, should the Greek government officials be more resolute in deciding what steps to take, or should they listen to the public before taking any step, given that they are just representatives of the public in a democracy? According to this article, the Greek government should have no hesitation in choosing the latter option. This is because, “there are no wrong answers in a democracy,” meaning that as long as the choice is chosen by the public, it is a right choice.”

I seldom agree that the public is (overtly) unwise, but in the Greek case I may have to break my record. The fact that the public opposed to austerity measures, even if they would help the Greek economy, makes me puzzle over if the government should just ignore the public opposition and go for austerity. However, upon reading the macleans article, which suggests that even if the public is wrong, it is the duty of democracy to represent its view, I find myself wanting to criticize the Greek government and the Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, who dismissed members of his government who vetoed the austerity package after the package was passed. I find the idea that “all choices chosen by the public are right” sad but unfortunately correct. After all, democracy has only promised to represent and act on the public views, rather than to provide the public the greatest common goods.

In sum, I really like this post because it reminds me (us?) of “what does it mean to be a democracy.”

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Jocelyn Mclean’s best post: Democracy In the News (9): Russia

Highlight:

“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.”

This post gets me to think about whether a “democratic status” is conferred by the people or by certain measures (with certain democratic criteria). Somehow I feel that the former option is more valid, given the public is the ultimate beneficiaries (/subjects) of a democracy regime.  However, the Russian case, in which the public rated their government based on the “Western style democracy” (which I have always seen as a myth), reminds me that the public perception of the government is not limited to government-public interactions but also to interactions between the public and the foreign worlds (mainly through information exchange).

Finally, in response to Jocelyn’s comments that “I assumed that a democracy is a democracy regardless of geographic location,” I guess the author identifies a (fanciful) “Western style democracy” mainly because he wants to contrast Russian democracy with the North American ones, rather than to identify democracy based on a country’s geographic locations.

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This is a to-be-published and detailed Economist article on China’s military rise. As first, I was a bit irritated because I thought it is another article which aims to create fear of China, but as I read on, I find it to be quite neutral, at least in terms of its portrayal of China-US relations.

According to the article, “the threat from China should not be exaggerated” because

1. China would constrain its military ambition, which would threaten its national interests in the world economy. As well, China would likely maintain its military spending at 2% of GDP, especially because its needs to spend money in other areas such as internal security and health care.
2. Even the West is ambivalent about how they prefer China to exercise its military power in the global system. After all, maybe China’s military expansion is not for strengthening national defense but international security?
3. “China’s military technology has suffered from the Western arms embargo imposed after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.” Therefore, China has been struggling to professionalize its defense industry.
4. The PLA has little combat experience since the 1979 was against Vietnam

I particularly like the point that “China’s leaders will continue to worry more about internal threats to their control than external ones.” Because I think it has brought new light to the democratic peace theory. Overall, it is not autocracies but democracies, which tend to wage wars against autocracies with the claim to promote peace.

* this is an extra elective post 🙂

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I remember Professor said we should post our draft of paper 2 on our blog before the workshop. However, assessing all these articles has taken me more time than expected. So, I am just going to provide a brief layout of my paper:

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Assessment of literatures pertaining to Democratic Peace

Proponents of Democratic Peace

John R. and Bruce Russett

Argument: Instead of the democratic peace theory, the Kantian liberal theory, which posits that democracy, interdependence and international law and organizations would result in peace within a “federation” of liberal republics[1] – is more capable of explaining pacific foreign relations in a realist, or anarchic, world in which states would promote peace for self-interests.

Evidence: Statistical analysis coving 1885-1992

– “pooled cross-sectional time-series regression analysis of data regarding pairs of states (dyads) observed annually” [2]

– “It considers variance in states’ involvement in militarized disputes across dyads in each year and in dyadic relations through time.”[3]

– “we use the annual mean scores of democracy, bilateral trade as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP), and joint memberships in IGOs graphed in Figure 1.”[4]

Findings: The “increases in the Kantian influences at the system level may have beneficial effects on the behavior of dyads that are not particularly democratic, economically interdependent, or involved in international organizations.”[6] “All dyads -even those not democratic or interdependent -become less dispute-prone when those systemic Kantian variables increase.”[7]

Assessment:  By attributing peace not only to democratic institutions, but also to economic interdependence and membership in international organizations (IGOs), Oneal and Russett’s study would not be convincing enough to support democracy. However, the study suggests that the promotion of democracy would contribute to the Kantian influences and hence international (instead of merely interstate) peace. This implies that by promoting democracy, international norms and institutions would emerge to constrain warring motives between states regardless of their regimes, economic dependency and participation in IGOs.

Allan Dafoe

– Argument: Results from statistically analysis have challenged Gartzke’s claim that “capitalist dynamics explain away the democratic peace relies on results problematically driven by (1) the censoring from the sample of observations containing certain communist countries or occurring before 1966, (2) the inclusion of regional controls, and (3) a misspecification of temporal controls.”[8]

Finding: a (statically significant) co-relation between peace and joint democracy

Assessment: The study only shows a (statically significant) co-relation between peace and joint democracy, but not that between peace and democratic institutions – such as “regular competitive elections, constraints on the executive, liberal norms, or civil rights”[9]. As such, Dafoe’s article is less convincing in promoting democracy given its lack of explanation about such co-relation.

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Critics of Democratic Peace
Rosato

Argument: Evidence suggests that the democratic peace theory is flawed, because

–  “Democracies do not reliably externalize their domestic norms of conflict resolution and do not trust or respect one another when their interests clash.

– Moreover, elected leaders are not especially accountable to peace loving publics or pacific interest groups,

– Democracies are not particularly slow to mobilize or incapable of surprise attack,

– Open political competition does not guarantee that a democracy will reveal private information about its level of resolve thereby avoiding conflict”

Evidence: The role of mutual trust and respect in preventing aggression between democracies can be easily rebutted by the Cold War, in which America covertly intervened in other democracies which did not have any conflict of interests with itself.[10] The evidence suggests the absence of respect for other democracies on the American part, as contrary to the claim of the theory.[11]

In rebutting the institutional theory, it is argued that democratic leaders are not in general more accountable than autocratic leaders, because both types of leader are equally prone to losing office with their unpopular foreign policy.[12] The uncertain accountability of democratic leaders may have also suggested that the constraint imposed by political mobilization for war is limited. In fact, this argument is evidenced by the classical democracy, America, which has a history of launching wars against other states without getting the consultation and consent from its democratic institutions.[13] In terms of public constraints, it is founded because the costs of war falls on a small proportion of the population in a democracy, public opinion does not usually get affected by their state’s war plan against other states, and therefore the public is unlikely to be enthusiastically anti-war.[14] Besides, if the public perceived a war as a defense of nationalism, they would support the war regardless of the costs.[15]

Assessment: Rosato’s argument is convincing. (Recommendation: Therefore, it would be more effective for our foundation to appeal for Kantian peace rather than democratic peace.)

Recommendation on how to evidence the pacific benefits of democracy

– suggests to readers that the direction of the causal relationship between peace and joint democracy have not been found

– suggest to readers “alternative explanations for the association: random chance, reverse causality, lurking variables, other complex causal relations”[16]

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– Question:

– Do I need to define democracy again?

– Can I recommend the Foundation not to promote democracy with the democratic peace rationale, which I find as ill-found?

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“Jurre Hermans, a school boy from Breedenbroek in Gelderland Achterhoek, was the youngest entrant to the Wolfson Economics Prize. He decided to enter the prize after watching Jeugdjournaal, and because of his concern about the Eurozone crisis.”

His plan: Greece should leave the euro, and that the Greeks should exchange their euros for drachmas (through the pizza-liked bank). To implement this plan successfully, anyone caught moving euros abroad would be penalized financially. Then, creditors to the Greek government would get a slice of pizza (i.e. euros) from this pizza-like bank.

As figurative as it is, he even has a “diagram” (I particularly like how he drew the Greek people)

Of course we know his plan won’t work, because the Greeks can use other ways to safeguard their wealth without being penalized for not exchanging their euros.  The easiest way is to use their euros to invest in fixed assets such as land and real estates, or in commodities such as gold, before exchanging them for drachmas, which has a great potential to depreciate. This way to avoid exchanging euros for drachmas is highly practicable, because I don’t think it is possible for the Greek government to prohibit these transactions. Even if such prohibition is possible, I doubt if the government can do that for the whole period when it collects the euros from the Greeks.

Meanwhile, I find it to be a feel good story that it was the entrepreneur Simon Wolfson, rather than the Greek government or any political institutions, which launched this competition in order to find solutions to the Eurozone Criss. Although obviously this Mr. Wolfson has vested interests in saving the euro, his initiative deserves respect as he is really utilizing his financial capability to do something productive, instead of just doing nothing and complaining this and that.

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As a common citizen who believes that civil society should have political leverage in state affairs, I see the currently renewed ruling of the Supreme Court of Appeal to review the Zuma’s case as not only legitimate, but also contributing to South African democratic development.

First, opponents argue that the judicial review would undermine South African developing democracy. However, the reverse should be true. Especially because South Africa is an developing democracy, civil society and the state should strive to develop mutual trust, which is a foundation for any healthy democracy. This can be done by having the two sides to cooperate on state decisions (and therefore giving the public more leeway to partake in political decision-making), rather than just having the public to delegate their decisions to the government which they distrust. This argument is especially valid when the decisions largely involve public interests, as in the case of Zuma’s pre-election corruption.

Second, the renewed ruling would help strengthen the accountability and transparency of future judicial processes. Perhaps the ruling is made more acceptable given it is a judicial review, but not a decision reversal. In fact, the court already declared that the judicial review does not challenge the merits of the decision, but the technical legal issues. A court statement said,

“We wish to emphasize that the decision taken by the acting national director of public prosecution on April 6, 2009, not to prosecute President Jacob Zuma, stands”

As the ruling requires portion of hitherto undisclosed documents backing up the prosecution decision to be made public, there shows the South African recognition of the need for transparent and accountable of the judiciary and hence the government.

Finally, the capability of the appellant and opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), to influence political judgments which had been agreed upon but might be potentially flawed, would inspire the public to engage in evaluations of their government’s performance. By empowering the public to partake in political decision-making, it is hoped that the idea of “ruled by the people” would be nurtured in South Africa.

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On another note, the allegation that the appellant and opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), is using the appeal to gain political points and is therefore biased and wrong in challenging the initial ruling, is an illogical claim. Such allegation problematically suggests that because of the conflict of interest involved given DA’s role as the opposition party, the DA is partial when engaging in judicial judgments. Put differently, the allegation focuses on the DA’s role but not the merit of their appeal, which appears to be legitimate given the evidence on the cooperation between Zuma and the investigation teams to conceal his wrong-doing prior to the election.

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I don’t have much to add on to my initial post, especially as other bloggers (so far I have found two…..)  share my sentiment that the judicial review is a democratic thing to do.

Nonetheless, I find Nielc’s comment insightful given his consideration of “opposition” as “the proxy for democracy”. According to him,

“While it is true that the DA is an opposing political party, I don’t think the actions were entirely politically motivated. In a sense, it may be even more democratic, if the proxy for democracy is the degree of “opposition” that is faced by the ruling executive.”

While my initial post argues that the role of the DA as the opposition party has nothing to do with the legitimacy and validity of its appeals, the post does not concern the other side of the argument that, it is exactly because the DA is the opposition party, its appeals are rendered more democratic given their aim to challenge the ruling government/ party through democratic means (such as using the court by the DA). As such, because the DA has succeeded in appealing for reopening a closed case, not only its power as the opposition party, but also the democratic performance of South Africa, are confirmed and therefore reinforced.

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Leung Chun-ying and his wife Regina celebrating his victory Photo: AP

“Hong Kong’s election of a new chief executive Sunday was a mess — a travesty in which the 1,132 handpicked voters were outnumbered by demonstrators who were kept away from the assembly with pepper spray. The winner, Leung Chun-ying, was muscled through by pressure from Beijing despite his unpopularity with the local business elite. As for the general population, an online poll in which 220,000 people took part recorded 54 per cent for none of the candidates, followed by 17 per cent for Leung.” Read more…

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I guess I have started making my blog become on China rather than on democracy since last week (or earlier?)…but I cannot help….especially after last Sunday when the prime minister of Hong Kong (my home) was elected mostly because of his support from the CCP.

Hong Kong is a democracy, which “allows free speech and assembly but not free elections.” The 7millions citizens of Hong Kong not only have no right to vote, but also have no say in the election. This is because the election committee is composed of tycoons and business elites….Meanwhile, any candidates who wish to be on the ballot need to attain the CCP’s approval. What it means is that common citizens barely have the chance to run for PM, even if they have massive public support and impressive political skills.

Until now I am still so disheartening….as someone who really wants to do some good to my community, I have become more and more discouraged from dabbling in Hong Kong’s politics, which has appeared to be increasingly integrated into the CCP.

Although I believe that colonialism should end (in fact it should never have existed!) and I am a proud Chinese who is glad that China has got back its own territory – Hong Kong, sometimes I am reminiscent of those days when we were under British rule. Those days, our city was more elegant and vibrant both domestically and internationally…now everything seems to be falling apart………

I know, I am being ambivalent.

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Just as (almost) everyone says that China is going to rule the world economy with its fast-growing economy, there comes the proof that the economy is not only slowing down, but also being “sluggish”.

According to CNN.:

“The country’s manufacturing sector shrank for a fifth month in a row, according to HSBC’s latest China PMI survey Wednesday. That follows news of weaker industrial output from January to February.

This news shows that Beijing’s policies to slow down the economy are in fact working. But Premier Wen Jiabao – who’s been the champion of those measures – may now be asking whether they’re working a bit too well.”

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I think it is smart of the government to slow down the economy. If you recall the Japanese economic miracle crash in the 1990s, you realize the risk of making another economic bubble. Although I am worried about potential of such crash, China’s successful (or accidental) socialist economic reform since 1987 has somehow assured me that China understands the art of gradualism when implementing reform strategies. In fact, I admire the first phase of China’s economic reform in the 1980s, in which the country applied the “dual-track” system by combing market and plan mechanisms. As such, the first phase had witnessed the scenario of “everyone wins” as the CCP’s power and resources were decentralized to local officials, who could implement better economic measures (than the CCP) in their locales, and as the labor sectors were given enough time to develop as the market was relatively shielded from international competition. The second phase of the economic reform that is happening now is less gradual than the first phase, thereby contributing to a widening income gap as the upper/middle-classes continue to prosper, while the lower-classes have marginal chance to elevate their socio-economic status. Despite I don’t think that China’s current economic control measures would help eliminate the income gap, I see them as having the potential to narrow the gap (a bit) by giving the society, and in particular the lower-classes, more time to adapt to the thriving economy while China is still able to maintain its growth rate of ~8%.

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Something I have been working on (once a week). Guess who is this 🙂

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I hope I am on the right track to doing this assignment; if I am not, please correct me!

Logical fallacy

So the new Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, just got elected.

According to this NY article, which is titled “Hong Kong Elects Pro-Beijing Chief Executive,”

“Mr. Leung won on the first ballot, receiving 689 votes, after Beijing’s representatives here put heavy pressure on electors in the final week of the race to support him.”

So yes, I have heard all these rumors that Mr. Leung has personal and professional ties with the CCP, but I have never heard him supporting the CCP publicly. Instead, he has always positioned himself as politically neutral (although some of his moves have betrayed him…..)

Anyways, although Mr. Leung may be really “pro-Beijing”, this article lacks justifications for such claim.  The article should acknowledge that, Beijing’s support for Leung ≠ Leung is “pro-Beijing”.

Rhetorical fallacy – Oversimplification

This editorial suggests that because of Latin American abundance of natural resources and of other countries’ (mostly China’s) increasing demand for such, Latin America will “own the century”.  Not only that, the editorial claims that because of the increasing Latino population in the U.S., the latter “will be so Hispanized that the Spanish language will rival English for predominance.”

This editorial seems to me has ignored the political dimension of the issue. In particular, it does not explore the very possibility that other countries would exploit Latin American resources with unfair prices or other negative conditions. Having abundant natural resources does not necessarily translate to economic or social prosperity (If Latin America will own the century, so will Africa).

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