In a democracy we pride ourselves on having a few basic elements: competitive electoral process, minimal corruption and separation between government branches. Though the executive may not be able to directly influence the independence of the judiciary, social and political elites still maintain the ability too and thus pre-determine their trial outcomes. Oscar Pistorius was on trial last week for accusations of murder. The evidence uncovered prior to and during the trial seemed to support that Pistorius did indeed murder his supermodel girlfriend. Yet when the trial verdict was released a couple days ago Pistorius was granted bail by the judges.

Did Pistorius’ athletic stardom and/or South African celebrity status enable him to secure bail in the premeditated murder trial? If so what does this say about the democratic levels of the courts in South Africa? The courts may be independent and free from executive constraints yet subject to corruption.

 After having recently watched Ted I had rather high expectations for Seth MacFarlane as not only the creator of Family Guy, but last night’s Oscar host. His opening presentation received a mediocre response from the audience though it contained some good one-liners about Django Unchained. Once MacFarlane moved past his opening speech his host performance adopted a sexist and crude nature. With many sexual innuendos that seemed borderline inappropriate for a highly publicized event, and misogynist comments his hosting took a negative turn. It seemed as if he tried to over compensate for the audience’s failure to respond to his earlier comments with more bold and crude remarks. The audience provided more laughter and response to Daniel Day Lewis’s role-swapping Oscar award winning speech and when Jennifer Lawrence tripped on her gown on her way to the podium. MacFarlane could have built his jokes and comments around the musical theme and 50 year anniversary celebration of Bond, instead of paralleling the sexist theme of Family Guy. In comparison Hugh Jackman, and Whoopi Goldberg surpassed Seth MacFarlane. In all fairness Tina Fey and Amy Poehler should have doubled up and done both the Golden Globes and Oscars. We would have all been spared the misogyny laden with MacFarlane’s performance.

Democracy can embody a minimalist and maximist definition. From a minimalist perspective democracy can be defined by three terms: 1) contestation, 2) participation, and 3) civil liberties. To expand on these three terms we would get a maximist definition that captures more components of democracy. However, I believe that a minimalist definition is more justifiable as it has a less contested nature. My readings this far for the course have all listed minimalist definitions of democracy that embody contestation/competition, participation/inclusiveness and from time to time civil liberties and freedoms. I do believe the incorporation of civil liberties is pertinent as it addresses matters that fall outside the realm of elections and political matters therefore capturing a more holistic, accurate, valid and reliable score of democracy. Elections are a primary part of democracy, and all the matters pertaining to elections such as corruption, independent judiciary, limited presidential terms, executive recruitment, and suffrage. But economics, ethnic, religious and social matters need to also be accounted for.

Women suffrage movements fought for decades for the right to vote and to be considered political equals among men in the realm of voting. Women viewed democracy as gender equality persisting in the political electoral process. However, men had other views. Democracy could be established once the majority of adults (which would be males most likely) had the right to vote. It viewed the term universal suffrage as majority suffrage which discriminated against women. As if feminists didn’t have enough on their plate trying to gain gender equality in the workforce, and at home; they were now being discriminated against in the waves of democratization. Democracy which is built on terms such as freedom and equality, could persist without women’s participation and contestation in the electoral process. Thus Paxton and Doorensplet advocate for the reassessment of demcoratization dates and waves to account for womens suffrage.

My elective and democracy in the news posts labelled “7”, are for Week 6 and should be labelled as #5.

After having spent quite a bit of time debating about how elections can be truly democratic I thought it would be interesting to compare country elections with that of the Pope’s in Vatican City due to the recent ‘stepping-down’ of the current Pope. (http://www.catholicnews.com/jpii/stories/concl03.htm) Only cardinals (males under the age of 80) can vote in order to elect a new Pope. The only people eligible for being elected as Pope are baptized Catholic males. Nine cardinals are selected to oversee the election and ensure that all electors have voted. A person must receive a two-thirds majority in order to become the new Pope. If a two-thirds majority is not met in the first conclave it can be reduced to a simple majority in the following days (conclaves) of voting. Aside from prerequisites of becoming a cardinal the form of voting a new pope can be deemed highly democratic. The Vatican City experiences an astronomically high voter turn-out due to the overseeing of voting by the nine randomly selected cardinals. A Pope is always voted in by a majority therefore meeting the preferences of over 50% of the cardinals in the Vatican (in regards to national elections where you can get a minority government voted in that isn’t wholly representative of the peoples wants). However, women are barred from being elected Pope as indicated by 15th century church law. This doesn’t affect the overall election process but places a barrier to equality on those who can be nominated for election.

In light of the recent findings of horse meat in frozen meat products in the EU I thought I expand on the subject of is it better knowing what we are eating or not knowing; thus assuming that there isn’t certain health risks associated with either option. (Horse meat in the EU has been deemed as providing no health risks to eaters). In regards to the case of horse meat in the EU the outrage that erupted after the mislabelling of meat was unveiled seemed to arise due to people being deceptively tricked into eating “pretty lovely” horses. The concern was about deception, people assuming they were eating cow when really they were eating horse. At the end of the day though when there are no health side affects felt by the consumer does it really matter that they didn’t know what they were eating?

After having traveled back and forth to Asia due to my parents careers growing up and being exposed to cultures that feast on various animals not commonly eaten in North America I found that I was better off not knowing what animal was bbqed, deep fried, or cooked in soup and was lying in front of me. All matters aside all forms of meat taste relatively the same. But once I saw the chef bringing out an entire duck on a platter, or that my beef was actually dog, or finding the snake’s head in my hot and sour soup I was turned off from eating whatever meal was before me. It came down to that I had been socialized into eating animals that were deemed appropriate kinds of meat- pig, cow, chicken, turkey. It wasn’t the norm to eat dogs as dogs were basically family members and you just don’t eat your family. You wouldn’t eat a duck cause they are the harmless cute animals swimming in the lake outside of your house. Back to the mislabelling case, are we really upset that we are eating horse because it goes against the norms of what animals are deemed appropriate for eating and those groups of people who constructed those norms tricked us into acting against them? Cause they didn’t know at first that they were eating horse meat, and at first they weren’t too concerned that they were.

After perusing through the six assigned datasets for the paper and the readings for Week 7 it becomes clearer that all datasets designed to measure democracy emphasize contestation and participation/inclusiveness. Munck refers to these as the attributes of democracy. Where all the datasets differ is in what components of the aforementioned attributes they use to signal the strength and weakness of these components among countries. For example Munck under participation highlights vote, fair voting, suffrage and parties access to money while Coppedge identifies adult suffrage as the component attribute of inclusiveness. In an attempt to explain comparison among measures of democracy these components of attributes for democracy provide the basis for discrepancies on labeling countries as either democratic or non-democratic. Munck points to the balance between parsimony and dimensionality as the key proponent in choosing component attributes and how dataset designers weigh those two factors. This week’s readings led me to analyze the component attributes of the datasets used in the first paper to see if the datasets that produced different results did so because of the component attributes they chose to best represent contestation and inclusiveness/participation; as well as civil liberties in regards to the case studies in my first paper.

So I am not sure how to make an attachment on my post, therefore I just copy and pasted my paper draft here for those of you in my group (Jeremy, Zach and Genessa).

Regional Democracy Report: Measures of Democracy in South Asia

The following six datasets provide measures of democracy, or polyarchy in the case of Coppedge and Reinicke, which are grounded in various conceptions of elections and competition. In regards to measuring democracy in the region of South Asia, the concepts of elections and competition provide a minimal definition of democracy that fails to capture the complexities of democratization and those within existing democracies. For the purpose of this Regional Democracy Report I will define democracy in broader terms to account for the political complexities in South Asia and thus attain a more accurate and reliable dichotomy of countries. These six datasets—Freedom House, Measuring Polyarchy, Democracy and Dictatorships, Political Regime Classification, Polity IV and Vanhanen—will provide democratic scores for Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka[S1] . I will examine which dataset provided the most holistic scoring method for measuring democracy in South Asia in light of basic political and socioeconomic assumptions.

Summary of Datasets

Freedom House states that a country will be free (and thus democratic) if people choose their leaders from competing groups and individuals not designated by the party in power, highlighting the democratic features of competition and elections. Freedom House assesses political rights (which measure degrees of participation) and civil liberties (which measure freedom to pursue activities under the current government) to expand on the minimal definition of democracy as limited to competition and elections. On the Freedom House scale India is the only free South Asian country, scoring a 2 in political rights and a 3 in civil liberties (Freedom House 2012). The other five countries all rank as partly free on the Freedom House scale with scores between 3-5 for political rights and civil liberties (Freedom House 2012). Despite Sri Lanka and Bangladesh’s political rights and civil liberties scoring being labelled as partly free the two countries, along with India, qualified for electoral democracy status. This raises concerns about the inclusiveness of the electoral democracy dichotomy in Freedom House.

Vanhanen’s democratic measure focuses on two political variables, competition which is defined as the percentage share of smaller parties of votes cast in elections and participation which is defined as the percentage share of adult population that voted in elections (Vanhanen). Vanhanen states that these variables provide a complete measurement of a country’s distribution of power, therefore linking democracy to how power is distributed in a country. Vanhanen sets threshold values for competition (30%) and participation (10%) which provide a relative description of a country’s index of democratization.

            Polity IV assigns countries level of democracy and autocracy scores on a 21 point scale pertaining to their particular scoring in categories such as polity fragmentation, regime durability and persistence, executive recruitment, independent executive authority and political competition and opposition (Polity IV). Polity IV heavily emphasizes elections and competition by providing complex indicators.

            Democracy and Dictatorships (DD) by Cheibub, Vreeland and Gandhi provide a minimalist dichotomous measure producing a six-fold system of regime classification (DD). Under DD a country can be classified as a democracy if all these requirements are fulfilled:

• The chief executive must be chosen by popular election or by a body that was itself popularly elected,
• The legislature must be popularly elected,
• There must be more than one party competing in the election,
• An alternation in power under electoral rules identical to the ones that brought the incumbent to office must have taken place (Cheibub, Vreeland and Gandhi 2010).

These are all necessary conditions for democracy to exist. Cheibub, Vreeland and Gandhi ground their distinction of regimes as a democracy or dictatorship on the basis of whether or not legislative and executive offices are filled through contested elections. The indicators emphasized are ‘offices’ and ‘contestation’ which determine a country’s institutions capability of removing its ruling government from power (ibid). However, the Democracy and Dictatorship dataset fails to account for variables such as rule of law and corruption that persist outside the realm of elections thus limiting their potential applicability to South Asia. Yet this dataset divides democracy into three sub categories—presidential, parliamentary and semi-presidential—while a dictatorship is split into—monarchic, military and civilian which can potentially increase the inclusiveness of the democratic category (ibid).

            Coppedge and Reinicke’s Measuring Polyarchy dataset incorporates Robert Dahl’s eight features of democracy and narrows them down into two variables; contestation and inclusiveness. Through indicators such as suffrage, fairness of elections, freedom of organization, freedom of expression and media pluralism, Coppedge and Reinicke can identify institutional arrangements that adhere to their definition of democracy: permitting public opposition and right to political participation (1990). The perfect scale type denotes countries scoring in free fair elections, freedom of organization, freedom of expression, and availability of alternative info sources respectively on a scale of 1-4 with 1 relating to more polyarchic.

            Reich’s Political Regime Change (PRC) dataset provides a coding algorithm that identifies regimes as autocratic, democratic, semi-democratic or transitional (2009, 6). The assumption “guiding the PRC dataset is that no country can be considered democratic if national executive and legislative authority are not subject to meaningful competition via multiparty elections and no major, adult social group is excluded” (Reich 2009, 7). Therefore in order for a regime to be classified as democratic it must include:

• Competition among groups and individuals,
• Inclusive level of political participation,
• Sufficient level of civil and political liberties (ibid, 6).

Reich’s democratic measurement dataset, along with Freedom House, accounts for democratic features that occur outside of the election period. By Reich accounting for variables outside of the election scope he produced a more inclusive democratic and semi-democratic category.

Compare and Contrast Democratic Measures

South Asia is a region that has historically been ravaged by civil war (Sri Lanka), military coups (Pakistan and Bangladesh), assassinated government leaders (India) and low levels of economic development and politicized identities along ethnic and religious cleavages in all countries (Suri, 2). To fully capture the tumultuous political landscape of South Asia researchers and political scientists have emphasized popular rule, welfare, rule of law, periodical elections, and freedom as appropriate indicators of democracy in this region. Dr. Rohit Kumar Nepali, a researcher for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, identifies the electoral process as the crux of weak democratic governance in South Asia due to corruption (2009, 12).

As previously mentioned, Freedom House and Reich’s Political Regime Change datasets include variables outside of elections through assessment of political, and socioeconomic rights and liberties guaranteed to citizens. This enabled a more exclusive democratic labelling of South Asia countries. Freedom House identified India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as democracies while Reich labelled India and Nepal as full-fledged democracies. Democracy and Dictatorship, Polity IV and Vanhanen list India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as democracies, while Measuring Polyarchy identifies the same countries by democratization percentage scores.

Freedom House states that having multiple parties and elections doesn’t imply democracy, and therefore competition cannot be a duly emphasized feature of democracy unless it concludes in “the chief executive and legislative elected by a meaningful process” (Freedom House 2012). Other factors affecting the political right scoring are military influence, decentralization of power and reflection of voters’ preferences in parliament which tests for corruption levels. These indicators for political rights and civil liberties embody the complexities of the political system in South Asia. Democracy Digest states that “corruption remains one of the most pernicious threats to the quality and legitimacy of democratic governance in South Asia” (2012). Indicator #25 civil liberties and #4 political rights account for corruption, while #16 tests for rule of law adherence. These indicators test for the attributes in the South Asian countries that have been determined to undermine their democratic governance ability. Thus, Freedom House offers a holistic survey of democracy through political rights and civil liberties producing an exclusive electoral democracy category.

The Political Regime Change coding algorithm addresses corruption, censorship, and availability of alternative information sources after identifying whether multi-party elections persist with full adult suffrage. Under this coding algorithm two countries, India and Nepal, qualified as democracies which Reich defines as: regime in which (i) meaningful and extensive competition exists among individuals and organized groups for all effective positions of government power, at regular intervals and excluding the use of force; (ii) a highly inclusive level of political participation exists in the selection of leaders and policies, such that no major (adult) social group is excluded; and (iii) a sufficient level of civil and political liberties exists to ensure the integrity of political competition and participation” ().By avoiding dichotomous classification Reich can classify regimes that have substantial political freedom and competition but lack rule of law abidance and structured elections as semi-democracies ( ). This increases the exclusiveness of the democracy category providing a more accurate depiction of democracy levels in South Asia.

Democracy and Dictatorship resembles the Political Regime Change dataset by avoiding dichotomous classification of states as either democracies or autocracies. It provides sub-categories of democracy which divides it into parliamentary, semi-presidential and presidential. Due to the political and socioeconomic complexities associated with political governance in South Asia a dataset that differentiates forms of democracies and autocracies could potentially provide an accurate labelling of countries’ regimes. However, Democracy and Dictatorships scoring proved lenient as 3/6 countries were labelled as parliamentary democracies and Sri Lanka was labelled as a presidential democracy. The definitions associated with these sub-categories of democracy are light and minimal as they merely denote who has the ability to remove the elected government from power (7). Unlike the Political Regime Change dataset which provided comprehensive definitions of each regime type, Democracy and Dictatorship failed to provide sufficient differences to differentiate sub-categories and categories.

The Polity IV elicits a 21 point index scale fostering restrictive standards of democracy. The Polity IV dataset provides a holistic measurement of elections assessing their regulation and degree of competition which can determine to what extent the elections in South Asian countries are corrupted (Polity IV). Though South Asian countries have multi-party election systems, mainstream parties have co-opted the electoral process to ensure their continuous rule in upcoming elections (Nepali 2009, 7). Also mainstream parties have exploited religious cleavages in the South Asian countries to sustain electoral domination. Other datasets such as Democracy and Dictatorships and Vanhanen emphasize election indicators for supporting democracy but fail to attach any significance to the way governments are formed via elections, how political parties compete against each other, and whether voters vote according to religion or ethnic cleavages (Cheibub, Gandhi and Vreeland 2010, 75). Vanhanen’s dataset encounters the same problem as Cheibub, Vreeland and Gandhi’s when measuring democracy in South Asia. The election indicators fail to capture corruption levels and describe the procedural election process; they merely measure the presence of ‘free and fair elections’ or signify distribution of political power (Cheibub, Gandhi and Vreeland 2010, and Vanhanen).

As I have mentioned in my self-introduction my regional interests in Political Science and IR are South Asia and Southeast Asia. Due to the groupings of the regions between those two regional blocs, I have decided to write my first paper on the South Asia regional bloc. In the past few months I have observed a few governance, corruption and rule of law indicators for India and Sri Lanka in regards to my thesis research. I have also taken a 300 level political science class focusing on the post-independence regimes of Pakistan and India which gives me a general idea of what to expect from the data generated on these countries in terms of degrees of democracy. I also think the regional report on this specific region will provide interesting data findings due to the religious diversity, ethnic diversity and degrees of modernization experienced in the 6 countries.