In this article, we analyze the nexus between political regimes and external voting rights. Using a global longitudinal dataset, we report that higher levels of inclusion and contestation bring... Show moreIn this article, we analyze the nexus between political regimes and external voting rights. Using a global longitudinal dataset, we report that higher levels of inclusion and contestation bring higher probabilities that a state adopts and implements emigrant enfranchisement. Taking outliers from our quantitative assessment, we then further examine two liberal democracies, Ireland and Uruguay, and two electoral autocracies, Turkey and Venezuela. These country cases reveal three mechanisms that shed light on the strategic role of political elites in explaining the relation between political regime type and emigrant enfranchisement. First, the democracies under study show us that in certain contexts with a relatively large diaspora size and in which part of the political spectrum is hesitant about the political orientation of nonresident citizens, emigrant enfranchisement is neither necessarily promulgated nor implemented. Second, the autocracies illustrate that when the diaspora favors (or is perceived to favor) the incumbency, then external voting rights are extended; otherwise, third, they are withheld or limited for nonresident citizens. Show less
(Abstract) This article argues that the contemporaneous phenomana of the ‘third wave of democratisations’ and the ‘second wave of liberalisations’ – or neoliberalism as it were – has disrupted the... Show more(Abstract) This article argues that the contemporaneous phenomana of the ‘third wave of democratisations’ and the ‘second wave of liberalisations’ – or neoliberalism as it were – has disrupted the promise of democracy in the Global South. While the mainstream literature considers that democracy and the promotion of open market economies are mutually reinforcing, I claim that they in fact clash around the roles of the state, which both democracy and neoliberalism seek to reform, but in opposite directions. Democracy requires a broadened and responsive state system, mediating between social classes, while neoliberal reform typically shrinks the state system and shapes it to the preferences of elite classes. In this article, this thesis is explored in historical and comparative ways. I build an analytical framework through a comparison between the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952 and the democratic reforms undertaken under Evo Morales. Using this tool, I compare the fraught relations of Niger with French nuclear giant Areva and those of West Bengal with Indian industrial giant Tata. These comparisons, developed following descriptions of historical backgrounds, show why the vexed issue of the reform of the state should constitute a central research agenda if we are to grasp the fundamental conditions of the prospects of democracy in the Global South today.(Résumé) Cet article affirme que la coïncidence de la « troisième vague de démocratisations » avec la « deuxième vague de libéralisations » – néolibéralisme – a bouleversé les promesses de démocratie dans lespays du Sud. Alors que la littérature traditionnelle considère que la démocratie et la promotion d'économies de marchés ouverts se renforcent mutuellement, nous pensons qu'en réalité, elles s’affrontent sur les rôles de l'État, que la démocratie et le néolibéralisme tentent de réformer, mais dans des directions opposées. La démocratie nécessite un système étatique élargi et réactif, assurant la médiation entre les classes sociales, tandis que, généralement, la réforme néolibérale rétrécit le système étatique et le façonne selon les préférences des classes élitistes. Dans cet article, cette thèse est explorée de manière historique et comparative. Nous construisons un cadre analytique en comparant la révolution nationale bolivienne de 1952 aux réformes démocratiques entreprises sous Evo Morales. Utilisant cet outil, nous comparons les difficiles relations du Niger avec le géant nucléaire français, Areva, et celles du Bengale occidental avec le géant industriel indien Tata. Ces comparaisons, développées à la suite de descriptions de contextes historiques, justifient la constitution d’un programme central de recherche sur l’épineuse question de la réforme de l’État si nous voulons saisir les conditions fondamentales des perspectives de la démocratie dans les pays du Sud. Show less
This thesis focuses on liberal peace building in the DRC. The thesis takes a critical approach which emphasises local agencies and their engagements with liberal peace building. However, it seeks... Show moreThis thesis focuses on liberal peace building in the DRC. The thesis takes a critical approach which emphasises local agencies and their engagements with liberal peace building. However, it seeks to bring this critique back to the institutions with which liberal peace building is preoccupied, by focusing on the hidden local that operates within these institutions. This approach seeks to give new meaning to processes of institution building without rendering institutions irrelevant as a top-down approach. Focusing on the first legislature of the Congolese Third Republic (2006-2011) this thesis provides a case study of how local agencies consume liberal democracy within the National Assembly, and make it their own. It discusses current liberal peace building practices as a process of mutual disengagement, in which both the local and liberal intervention seek to disengage from each other. Although this results in a lack of legitimacy of the peace building project both locally as well as with liberal interventions, it also creates hybrid space in which local agencies consume liberal democracy. The thesis conceptualises these local agencies as being convivial, in other words, they are enabled by people's relations. The thesis therefore focuses on MPs relations with their electorate, as well as with the executive and other MPs in their party or ruling coalition. In through these interactions local agencies consume liberal democracy - it is accepted, rejected, diverted, substituted, etc. The thesis concludes that through these practices of consumption local agencies negotiate liberal democracy. The liberal democratic framework is kept intact, but it is not enabled to function as foreseen, because local agencies are responsive to a moral matrix of the father-family. However, the liberal democratic framework itself provides new tools through which local agencies also renegotiate the unwritten rules of the moral matrix of the father-family. Show less
In this article, the author assesses the nature and the impact of the May 2005 Ethiopian parliamentary elections on Ethiopian politics. The elections, although controversial and flawed, showed... Show moreIn this article, the author assesses the nature and the impact of the May 2005 Ethiopian parliamentary elections on Ethiopian politics. The elections, although controversial and flawed, showed significant gains for the opposition but led to a crisis of the entire democratization process. The author revisits Ethiopian political culture in the light of neopatrimonial theory and asks why the political system has stagnated and slid back into authoritarianism. Most analyses of post-1991 Ethiopian politics discuss the formal aspects of the political system but do not pay sufficient attention to power politics in a historical perspective. There is a continued need to reconceptualize the analysis of politics in Ethiopia, and Africa in general, in more cultural and historical terms, away from the formal political science approaches that have predominated. The success of transitional democracy is also dependent on a countervailing middle class, which is suppressed in Ethiopia. Furthermore, political-judicial institutions are still precarious, and their operation is dependent on the current political elite and caught in the politics of the ruling party. On the basis of the electoral process, the post-election manoeuvring, the role of opposition forces, and the violent crisis in late 2005, the author addresses the Ethiopian political process in the light of governance traditions and resurrected neopatrimonial rule that, in effect, tend to block further democratization. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. (Comment by Tobias Hagmann: in African Affairs, vol. 105, no. 421 (2006), p. 605-612, with a reply by Abbink on p. 613-620.) [Journal abstract] Show less
Fundamental changes are taking place within the African State system which is still, in essence, the one created by the colonial powers and inherited at independence by the governments of modern... Show moreFundamental changes are taking place within the African State system which is still, in essence, the one created by the colonial powers and inherited at independence by the governments of modern Africa. Powerful forces in the industrialized world continue to have a crucial influence on events in the African continent. This paper identifies some of the key features of the emerging political economy of Africa, focusing on the manner in which external forces combine with internal ones in affecting Africa's politics. It pays attention, amongst others, to the importance of foreign aid as a source of revenue for African elites; the industrialized world's misperceptions of Africa; democratization and the decline of African States since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; surviving patterns of precolonial political entities; new economic patterns in Africa; the policy of the industrialized world towards Africa and the role of African political elites now that, with the end of the Cold War, Africa has lost its global significance; the end of the Cold War as the real end of the colonial order in Africa and the intimate connection to the present crisis of African States; the collapse of African States and the world's policy of abandonment. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum Show less
The current discussion on democratization in Africa tends towards Eurocentrism in that it pays insufficient attention to the analytical and methodological implications of cultural imperialism,... Show moreThe current discussion on democratization in Africa tends towards Eurocentrism in that it pays insufficient attention to the analytical and methodological implications of cultural imperialism, localization, wrongly claimed universality, and the social price of relativism. Conceptually, formal constitutional democracy is only one variant of democracy among others, and besides, it is an item of political culture which has only relatively recently been introduced to Africa. Recent developments among Nkoya peasants of Kaoma district, Zambia, and working-class townsmen from Francistown, Botswana, most of whom identify themselves ethnically as Kalanga or Tswana, suggest that the democratization movement is only another phase in the ongoing political transformation of Africa. In the course of this process, by an interplay of local and national (ultimately global) conceptions of political power, indigenous constitutional, philosophical and sociological alternatives of political legitimacy are tested, and subsequently accommodated or discarded as obsolete. The author carried out anthropological fieldwork among the Zambian Nkoya in 1972-1974, and in Francistown in 1988-1989, and in both cases has made repeated return visits since. Bibliogr., notes, ref Show less
