This book presents a new explanation of the rise, development and demise of social movements and cycles of protest in autocracies; the conditions under which protest becomes rebellion; and the impact ...of protest and rebellion on democratization. Focusing on poor indigenous villages in Mexico's authoritarian regime, the book shows that the spread of US Protestant missionaries and the competition for indigenous souls motivated the Catholic Church to become a major promoter of indigenous movements for land redistribution and indigenous rights. The book explains why the outbreak of local rebellions, the transformation of indigenous claims for land into demands for ethnic autonomy and self-determination, and the threat of a generalized social uprising motivated national elites to democratize. Drawing on an original dataset of indigenous collective action and on extensive fieldwork, the empirical analysis of the book combines quantitative evidence with case studies and life histories.
This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political ...power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.
“South America is not the poorest continent in the world, but it may very well be the most unjust.” This statement by Ricardo Lagos, then president of Chile, at the Summit of the Americas in January ...2004 captures nicely the dilemma that faces Latin American countries in the wake of the transition to democracy that swept across the continent in the last two decades of the twentieth century. While political rights are now available to citizens at unprecedented levels, social and economic rights lag far behind, and the fledgling democracies struggle with long legacies of poverty, inequality, and corruption. Key to understanding what is happening in Latin America today is the relationship between the state and civil society. In this ambitious book, Philip Oxhorn sets forth a theory of civil society adequate for explaining current developments in a way that such controversial neoconservative theories as Francis Fukuyama’s liberal triumphalism or Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” cannot. Inspired by the rich political sociology of an earlier era and the classic work of T. H. Marshall on citizenship, Oxhorn studies the process by which social groups are incorporated, or not, into national socioeconomic and political development through an approach that focuses on the “social construction of citizenship.”
In Misagh Parsa's view, the outlook for democracy in Iran is stark. Gradual reforms will not be sufficient for real change: the government must fundamentally rethink its commitment to the role of ...religion in politics and civic life. For Iran to democratize, the options are narrowing to a single path: another revolution.
For decades, scholars and politicians have vigorously debated whether Confucianism is compatible with democracy, yet little is known about how it affects the process of democratization in East Asia. ...In this book, Doh Chull Shin examines the prevalence of core Confucian legacies and their impacts on civic and political orientations in six Confucian countries: China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Analyses of the Asian Barometer and World Values surveys reveal that popular attachment to Confucian legacies has mixed results on democratic demand. While Confucian political legacies encourage demand for a non-liberal democratic government that prioritizes the economic welfare of the community over the freedom of individual citizens, its social legacies promote interpersonal trust and tolerance, which are critical components of democratic civic life. Thus, the author argues that citizens of historically Confucian Asia have an opportunity to combine the best of Confucian ideals and democratic principles in a novel, particularly East Asian brand of democracy.
This book explains why contemporary liberal democracies are based on historical templates rather than revolutionary reforms; why the transition in Europe occurred during a relatively short period in ...the nineteenth century; why politically and economically powerful men and women voluntarily supported such reforms; how interests, ideas, and pre-existing institutions affected the reforms adopted; and why the countries that liberalized their political systems also produced the Industrial Revolution. The analysis is organized in three parts. The first part develops new rational choice models of (1) governance, (2) the balance of authority between parliaments and kings, (3) constitutional exchange, and (4) suffrage reform. The second part provides historical overviews and detailed constitutional histories of six important countries. The third part provides additional evidence in support of the theory, summarizes the results, contrasts the approach taken in this book with that of other scholars, and discusses methodological issues.
O desafio analítico proposto por este artigo é explorado primeiramente a partir dos seus limites, o que vou denominar, com base em Santos (2007a), divisões abissais do acesso à justiça. O meu ...principal argumento é que a ação soberana do Estado que cinde o desenvolvimento civilizacional em zonas democráticas e estados de exceção é necropolítica (Mbembe, 2003), isto é, na medida em que distribui de forma excludente e desigual os recursos políticos e económicos exerce um direito de veto sobre as condições de vida e, consequentemente tem um poder de decisão sobre a exposição à morte, dos grupos marginalizados. Um exercício de veto que uma estrutura de assistência jurídica pode interromper circunstancialmente, mas não pode derrubar. Nesse sentido, o papel da política pública de acesso à justiça não manifesta a garantia de livre desenvolvimento democrático do indivíduo dentro do Estado, mas a abertura de redes de ação e luta social empreendidas em diferentes escalas de realização do direito. Na parte final, pretendo demonstrar que adotar uma conceção emancipatória do direito implica substituir a afirmação única da democratização promovida pelo direito estatal através do acesso à justiça pela repetição dupla e recíproca dos regimes epistêmicos da democracia e sua exceção. Palavras-chave: Acesso à justiça, pensamento abissal, necropolítica, poder, governamentalidade This paper posits an analytical challenge exploring for its limits, what I will call, based on Santos (2007a), access to justice abyssal divisions. State's action as sovereign split the civilizational development into democratic zones and states of exception, emerging a necropolitics of access to justice (Mbembe, 2003). By necropolitics of access to justice, I refer to a standard mode of distributing society political resources with implications on the living conditions or the exposure to death of underprivileged groups and poor people. A veto power of the sovereignty over life that a provision of legal aid could suspend extraordinarily but could not derogate. I will argue that, instead of operating as indicator of the levels of individual opportunities and state's democratization, the provision of legal aid should aim the replication of social struggles networking in different scales of law and justice. In the final part of the paper, I will argue that an emancipatory conception of law replaces the sole affirmation of the State's democratization through access to justice with the double and reciprocate affirmation of the epistemic regimes of democracy and its exception. Keywords: access to justice, abyssal thinking, necropolitics, power, governamentality
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