There is ongoing concern over the appropriateness of judicial supervison over legislative and executive action in Westminster democracies. This article addresses these concerns through consideration of the judicialisation of the exercise of prerogative powers. It examines all of the judicial decisions reviewing the exercise of prerogative powers after 2001 and finds that Canadian courts have expanded their scope of review through both Charter of Rights and Freedoms and administrative law principles. Despite this fact, they remained relatively restrained, intervening where government activity has arbitrarily interfered with the rights, interests or legitimate expectations of individuals and thereby limiting judicial activism concerns.
There is ongoing concern over the appropriateness of judicial supervison over legislative and executive action in Westminster democracies. This article addresses these concerns through consideration of the judicialisation of the exercise of prerogative powers. It examines all of the judicial decisions reviewing the exercise of prerogative powers after 2001 and finds that Canadian courts have expanded their scope of review through both Charter of Rights and Freedoms and administrative law principles. Despite this fact, they remained relatively restrained, intervening where government activity has arbitrarily interfered with the rights, interests or legitimate expectations of individuals and thereby limiting judicial activism concerns.
This article seeks to explain why some European & former Soviet states abandoned communism for democracy while others turned to authoritarian rules. In endorsing actor-centric approaches that have dominated analyses of the third wave of democratization, this argument nonetheless offers an alternative set of causal paths from ancient regime to new regime that can account for both democracy & dictatorship as outcomes. Situations of unequal distributions of power produced the quickest & most stable transitions from communist rule. In countries with asymmetrical balances of power, the regime to emerge depends almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful. In countries where democrats enjoyed a decisive power advantage, democracy emerged. Conversely, in countries in which dictators maintained a decisive power advantage, dictatorship emerged. In between these two extremes were countries in which the distribution of power between the old regime & its challengers was relatively equal, resulting in protracted confrontation between relatively balanced powers. The regimes that emerged from these modes of transitions are not the most successful democracies but rather are unconsolidated, unstable, partial democracies. 1 Figure. Adapted from the source document.
AbstractThis study investigates the role of religion in shaping the norms of citizenship from a cultural perspective for an East Asian country that exhibits fundamental differences in social contexts from Western advanced democracies. Using data drawn from the Taiwan Social Change Survey, we find that the Eastern religions of Buddhism, Taoism, and Folk Religions are important for explaining the formation of the concept of being a good citizen. This study further examines the relationships between citizenship norms and various conventional and unconventional types of political participation. The empirical results herein suggest that duty-based citizenship and engaged citizenship have significant differences in their effects on political participation.
Drawing on arguments about politics during the French Fourth Republic, the concept of cabinet instability is reconsidered. Rather than studying cabinet duration, the article examines the accumulation of experience by individual cabinet ministers. Two variables are measured in nineteen parliamentary democracies: portfolio experience the experience of cabinet ministers in the specific portfolios that they hold) and political experience (the experience of cabinet ministers in any significant portfolio). The results cast doubt on existing claims about cabinet government in the Fourth and Fifth Republics. They also uncover substantial cabinet turnover in majoritarian systems, suggesting that existing claims about stability in such systems may be overstated.
For the first time in over twenty years, authoritarian governments outnumber liberal democracies, according to a Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem) report. However, in this year of elections, 1.8 billion potential voters have an opportunity to participate in the democratic process and make their voices heard. With elections come newly elected officials, and with thousands […] The post A Year of Legislative Strengthening appeared first on International Republican Institute.
Dealing with the communist past was one of the constitutive elements of the new or reborn democracies of East Central Europe after 1989. 'Coming to terms with the communist past' was especially important as a means of securing the legitimacy of new democratic regimes. This article provides an overview of how this process was shaped in the Czech Republic and touches upon the most significant events and actors since 1989.
Libya emerged under United Nations auspices as a stillborn, failed state dependent on Western subventions. The civil war in which it is embroiled in 2011 confirms its manifold failures, now attributable to Colonel Muammar Qadaffi. The West is ill-positioned to reengage in nation-building, given its past failures.
Кратко рассматриваются биография Джеймса Брайса и его подход к европейским и американским демократиям. Освещается интерпретация Джорджем Гэллапом взглядов Брайса относительно американского общественного мнения. Обозначается российская судьба книги «Американская республика».James Bryce's biography and his approach to European and American democracies are considered briefly. George Gallup's interpretation of Bryce's views on the American public opinion is lighted. The fate of the book «The American Commonwealth» in Russia is designated.
Warwick, P. V.: Ministerial autonomy or ministerial accommodation? Contested bases of government survival in parliamentary democracies. - S. 369-394; Laver, M.; Shepsle, K. A.: Understanding government survival: empirical exploration or analytical models? - S. 395-401; Warwick, P. V.: Getting the assumptions right: a reply to Laver and Shepsle. - S. 402-412; Laver, M.; Shepsle, K. A.: Government formation and survival: a rejoinder to Warwick's reply. - S. 412-415
The argument of this paper is that the emergence of military dictatorships, such as the Brazilian regime of 1964, is not caused by an economic crisis of dependent capitalist development. Rather, it results from a polarization and radicalization of the democratic regime by which it is preceded. Democracies handed down from above, like that in Brazil and other South American countries, favor the emergence of modern forms of autocracy
A member of the Indian parliament who changes his political party is praised by some for having the courage of his conviction, and censured by others as a turncoat or an opportunist. The Indian Parliament has now legislated firmly against the practice, regardless of the motives of those involved. This measures was necessary in India, and is perhaps as unique piece of legislation in parliamentary democracies. (Internat. Polit. Science Assoc.)
The increasing cost of political campaigns and its impact on the electoral process are issues of paramount importance in modern democracies. We propose a theory of electoral accountability in which candidates choose whether or not to commit to constituency service and whether or not to pay a campaign cost to advertise their platform. A higher campaign cost decreases voter welfare when partisan imbalance is low. However, when partisan imbalance is high, a higher campaign cost is associated with a higher expected level of constituency service. More costly campaigns can thus have a rebalancing effect that improves electoral accountability. We discuss the implications of our findings for campaign finance regulation and present empirical evidence consistent with our key predictions.
AbstractAccording to many of its proponents, the proposition that democracies do not fight each other is 'as close as anything we have to an empirical law'. However, there have been several incidents among solidified liberal democracies where force was threatened or even used. Since these inter-democratic militarised interstate disputes (MIDs) almost always took place in the context of fisheries disputes, we examine two of these conflicts in detail: the cod wars between Iceland and Britain between the 1950s and the 1970s and the turbot war between Canada and Spain. We ask why these fisheries conflicts became militarised in the first place but did not escalate further. In both cases it was actually the presumed impossibility of a more violent escalation which led the parties to use force in the first place. Moreover, the (limited) use of force was almost always accompanied by the efforts of the parties involved to achieve some formalisation of international rules in the context of expanding regimes. Having demonstrated how some of the more prominent causal mechanisms stipulated by democratic peace theorists fail to convincingly account of these cases, we refrain from concluding that any of this falsifies the democratic peace proposition. However, in conclusion we do call into question the premises of the falsificationist methodology underlying much of the democratic peace debate on both theoretical and metholdological grounds. Reframing the democratic peace proposition in terms of a large-scale process of descuritisation, we contend, allows us to understand better how democratic interstate interaction remains inherently conflictive and possibly still subject to process of resecuritisation.
In the 1990s, HIV/AIDS became a major threat to health, economic stability and human development in countries in eastern Europe and central Asia. Social, political and economic transition exacerbated the structural conditions that allowed HIV/AIDS to flourish as dramatic changes led to increasing drug injection, economic decline and failing health and healthcare systems. There is a need to address the professional and ideological opposition - even in countries considered to be fully functioning democracies - to evidence-based public health interventions like harm reduction, coupled with treating HIV/AIDS for all those in need, if countries are to provide a more effective response.
