Suchergebnisse

The fact that even the moderate and broadly respected president Carlos Mesa was forced to step down in Bolivia in June 2005 suggests that the country's crisis goes beyond a conflict on specific policies. A longstanding practice of excluding large sectors of the population from all real influence in politics, despite the existence of formal democracy, has produced a crisis of belief in democracy, affecting both governing bodies and the party system. President Mesa was unable to reverse the generalised distrust of politics. This distrust, combined with persisting political stalemate, is currently tending towards societal disintegration, which makes the recovery of genuine democratic practices even more difficult.

In 2024, around the world nearly 60 national elections will be held involving billions of people. Many commentators see this as a make-or-break moment in terms of re-establishing democracy and pushing back against rising authoritarian regimes that have been increasing in recent years. This essay explores why –despite worldwide scientific consensus that we are facing ecological collapse –there is little discussion about the climate crisis among the upcoming wave of national elections. This silence around the climate emergency raises several pressing questions: Why is there limited political will on behalf of national leaders when it comes to mitigating the climate crisis? What does this suggest about the state of democracy when political leaders can sidestep and ignore the escalating demands of their constituencies? Finally, what actions can be taken by ordinary people who are increasingly subject to repressive anti-protest laws that prevent them from speaking out against antidemocratic leaders and their political collusion with the fossil fuel sector?

This contribution is based on four assumptions: 1) the social and political sciences should rebuild a systematic relationship with history, 2) this is urgent if we want to give depth to the analysis of new phenomena on a global scale that have characterized this long decade following the Great Recession, 3) sociology and political science need to build research of a comparative nature that will stand the test of time, 4) the crisis of democracies is the unifying topic that today requires a comparison between the crisis of American democracy with the crises of European democracies. This, however, can be done realistically only by understanding the historical uniqueness that characterizes each political system.

The Governance Agenda rests on the idea that economic & political liberalization in Africa can be mutually reinforcing; that liberal democracy, in other words, can help legitimize capitalist development. Tanzania, which began liberalizing its economy in the 1980s & its polity in the 1990s, is currently regarded by donors as a promising case of economic & political reform. The aim of the present article is to provide a different point of view. It argues that economic liberalization is associated with a series of political struggles that are imperfectly captured by the formal party & parliamentary system. Such struggles suggest that neither public institutions nor the policy of economic reform enjoy a high level of legitimacy. In consequence, the aim of Governance to promote capitalist development with democratic support under the rule of law is far from being realized. Adapted from the source document.