This book analyzes the relationship between religion, secularism, and liberal democracy—historically, theoretically, and in the context of the contemporary Muslim world. The central issue is: liberal ...democracy requires a form of secularism, yet simultaneously the main cultural and intellectual resources that Muslim democrats can draw upon are religious. A paradox, therefore, confronts the democratic theorist. Challenging the popular belief that religious politics and democratic development are structurally incompatible, three arguments are advanced: In societies where religion is a key marker of identity, the road to liberal democracy must traverse the gates of religious politics. The primary theoretical implication that emerges from this claim is that the process of democratization cannot be de-linked from debates about the normative role of religion in government. While liberal democracy requires secularism, religious traditions are not born with an inherent secular conception of politics. These ideas must be socially constructed. In the context of an emerging democracy, how secularism becomes indigenized as political value is topic that this work explores. An intimate relationship exists between religious reformation and political development. While the first often precedes the second, the processes are interlinked. Democratization does not require a privatization of religion but it does require a reinterpretation of religious ideas that are conducive to liberal democracy. By engaging in this reinterpretation, religious groups can play an important role in the development and consolidation of democracy. Overall, this book argues for a rethinking of democratic theory so that it incorporates the variable of religion in the development and social construction of liberal democracy.
"One of the most important books on political regimes written in a generation." —Steven Levitsky, New York Times –bestselling author of How Democracies Die A new understanding of how and why early ...democracy took hold, how modern democracy evolved, and what this history teaches us about the future Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer—democratic practices were present in many places, at many other times, from the Americas before European conquest, to ancient Mesopotamia, to precolonial Africa. Delving into the prevalence of early democracy throughout the world, David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished—and when and why they declined—can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but also about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future.Drawing from examples spanning several millennia, Stasavage first considers why states developed either democratic or autocratic styles of governance and argues that early democracy tended to develop in small places with a weak state and, counterintuitively, simple technologies. When central state institutions (such as a tax bureaucracy) were absent—as in medieval Europe—rulers needed consent from their populace to govern. When central institutions were strong—as in China or the Middle East—consent was less necessary and autocracy more likely. He then explores the transition from early to modern democracy, which first took shape in England and then the United States, illustrating that modern democracy arose as an effort to combine popular control with a strong state over a large territory. Democracy has been an experiment that has unfolded over time and across the world—and its transformation is ongoing.Amidst rising democratic anxieties, The Decline and Rise of Democracy widens the historical lens on the growth of political institutions and offers surprising lessons for all who care about governance.
In this article, the author shows that in the '30s of the 20th century, the Romanian democratic institutions modelled after the liberal Constitution of 1923 entered a slow process of wear and tear, ...due, first of all, to the inability of the political parties to find solutions to serious economic, social and national problems faced by each party called to govern. The electoral system based on the electoral primacy was the main virus that generated the instability of liberal democracy in the interwar period. The degradation of the party life and the gradual loss of the electorate's trust in the democratic political formations revealed their inadaptability to the principles and the substance of Western constitutionalism. Against this background, the far-right political formations have gradually managed to capture enough electoral interest in order to offer an ideological and political alternative to the democratic parliamentary regime, a danger noticed in time by the liberal governments in power, which resorted to measures to counteract the extremist movements. The author notes, at the same time, that, at the level of the European continent, the parliamentary regime entered, after the First World War, into an acute identity crisis, in the conditions where in Europe only France, England and Switzerland had remained faithful to parliamentary democracy and, for a while, Czechoslovakia and Romania. The article shows that King Charles II, as a constitutional factor of balance between powers, failed in his attempt to depoliticize the parliamentary life and resorted to an authoritarian, active monarchy regime as a solution to preserve social peace and to regenerate the internal political life, threatened by the violence of the legionary movement and by the politics of the revisionist European states.
The Indo Pacific concept (IPC) may be one of the hotspots in IR during the past decade. This ancient geographical concept was originally packaged by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe into the ...so-called Free and Open Indo Pacific (FoIP). After being highly politicized, this concept has been officially adopted by Australia, the United States and India. After President Biden took office in 2020, the Indo Pacific strategy has undergone further diffusion around the world. Especially in Western democracies. By 2022, the Biden government has taken the promotion of FoIP into the primary strategic goal in the In-do-Pacific Strategy of the United States 11. At the same time, the report emphasized that protecting the democratic values of regional allies from interference is the direction of the US efforts. Leading by values has become an important accelerator for the United States to boost the diffusion of Indo-Pacific strategy. However, It is implausible for observers to explain the global diffusion of IPC after 2020. This article adheres to the viewpoint of constructivism and holds that the IPC, as an idea, has been recognized and accepted by states with common values. When the IPC was put forward and used by states platform as an initiative, it was constructed as a blueprint of “Democratic Alliance”. The Western-dominated international order based on the values of democracy and freedom is socially, politically, and historically ‘embedded’. This article argues that the diffusion of IPC could be understood as an political aspiration. Such aspiration contains the expectation of reuniting states sharing values of western democracy and freedom.
Este trabajo aborda el principio republicano de publicidad y sus corolarios constitucionales dentro de la actividad administrativa, a la luz de la reciente Ley de Acceso a la Información y los ...lineamientos constitucionales. Para el funcionamiento fluido de una sociedad abierta, todo espacio estatal está sujeto a la luz de la publicidad. El concepto de que la transparencia en la Administración Pública es fundamental para que funcione de manera más responsable y eficaz está adquiriendo una importancia creciente en la teoría del derecho administrativo.
