Search results

The notion of environmental space, based on the principles of environmental limits and sharing environmental resources equitably, offers a starting point for a positive approach to the global "return of scarcity" challenge, notably by providing a basis legitimating and strengthening the global governance of environmental and resource limits. First, it provides a cognitive framework for determining limits and for dealing with these more comprehensively and effectively, at all levels of government. Second, the environmental space approach supports, notably at the global level, a more equitable distribution of access to, and/or the benefits from, increasingly scarce resources. Third, it can be used as a basis for designing and introducing institutions and processes that enhance democracy and community control over the use of resources. Although the adoption of the environmental space approach at the national, international and global levels faces formidable obstacles, more people stand to gain from it, materially, socially, and politically, than from the nationally based "environmental security" approach. The basis of support and agency for the environmental space approach is most likely to be strengthened by the development of institutional designs that enhance economic democracy, giving all people a material and political stake in the management of resources.

The Urban Roots of Democracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe: Harare and Highfiled, 1940-1964by Timothy Scarnecchia, University of Rochester Press, 2008
Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores self-respect', argued Frantz Fanon in his popular book, The Wretched of the Earth. That work became a handbook for revolutionaries. Likewise, Timothy Scarnecchia's The Urban Roots of Democracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe is every scholar and activist's dictionary, giving meaning to various pages and vocabulary in the Zimbabwean bookof violence. In other words, if you have always sought to find out the author of Zimbabwe's violence, you have the answer in the pages of Scarnechia's clear, concise and explosive exposé. Many of us have always argued that Zimbabwe's violent nature was scripted in the years leading to the struggle for independence. We did not always have the evidence or data to support these claims. Now, we have a well-researched study that takes the reader back to the early formations of democratic spaces in Zimbabwe and how those spaces were eventually closed to make way for violence, manipulation...

AbstractThe Labor Movement has entered a crisis. Declining support for unions and for socialist political movements reflects the exhaustion of a reformist growth strategy where capitalists and state officials accepted unions in exchange for labor peace. While winning real gains for workers, this strategy undermined labor and its broader democratic aspirations by establishing unions and union and party leaders as authoritiesoverthe workers themselves. In the upheavals of the late-1960s and the 1970s, dissident movements, directed as much against reformist leaders as against employers and state officials, pushed protest beyond traditional limits toward demands for popular empowerment and democracy. Union decline began then, not because workers had lost interest in collective action but because employers and state officials abandoned collective bargaining to find alternative means of controlling unrest. Capitalism entered a new post-union era, when national leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan used policies of open trade and capital flows and high unemployment to discipline labor. Abandoned by their capitalist bargaining partners, reformist unions and political parties have withered. Now, without social space for reformist movements, the labor movement can only advance by openly avowing its original goals of popular empowerment and the establishment of economic democracy.

Rorty on Science and Politics
In my paper I will prove my overall thesis that Rorty consistently enforces his politically saturated liberal ironic standpoint in the fields of science and politics from his "Contingency" book (1989). As a neopragmatist thinker he gives priority to politics in the sense of a liberal democracy over everything else. Even philosophy as "cultural politics" serves this purpose. He did not want to create a detailed political philosophy, but the main motive of his philosophy is political. He is charged with complacency, relativism and misinterpreting traditional pragmatism, but I show that this is mistaken. Rorty offers "only" a non-systematic, but logical and permanently developed interpretation of our present world on the basis of knowledge he appropriated and improved by building bridges between pragmatism, analytic and continental philosophy. I will analyze briefly in the first part his neo-pragmatist thoughts on science in connection with his political views. In the second part I will interpret Rorty as a liberal ironist who regards almost everything as contingent, except democracy. He outlines a liberal utopia that means first of all a just society in a Rawlsian sense, but he also develops his idea further in a neo-pragmatic way.

Election law is the main element of the constitutional democracy. In democratic society the Nation, as the holder of suverenity, grants power to the authority institutions. Fundamental rules must be implemented during the formation of political representative bodies. Fundamental principles are: universal election, equal election, free election, secret suffrage and direct suffrage. These principles consists of narrower regulations, which are important for the nature of the main principle. Electors' rights and duties originate from principles of the election law. Main principles of the election law are sometimes called Europe's electoral or constitutional law heritage. These principles are the main rules for organizing and administrating the process of election. Constitutional democracy requires that national authoritues should povide effective legal basis to implement and safeguard these rules. These principles are regulated in the Constitution of Lithuania and election statutes. Well-established safeguard apparatus can not be created, since statutes are often changed. This research is focused on the content of principles of the election: it discloses and gives broader understanding of the compaund elements of the principles; the research focuses on the problems deriving from the implementation and safeguard of the main principles.

Election law is the main element of the constitutional democracy. In democratic society the Nation, as the holder of suverenity, grants power to the authority institutions. Fundamental rules must be implemented during the formation of political representative bodies. Fundamental principles are: universal election, equal election, free election, secret suffrage and direct suffrage. These principles consists of narrower regulations, which are important for the nature of the main principle. Electors' rights and duties originate from principles of the election law. Main principles of the election law are sometimes called Europe's electoral or constitutional law heritage. These principles are the main rules for organizing and administrating the process of election. Constitutional democracy requires that national authoritues should povide effective legal basis to implement and safeguard these rules. These principles are regulated in the Constitution of Lithuania and election statutes. Well-established safeguard apparatus can not be created, since statutes are often changed. This research is focused on the content of principles of the election: it discloses and gives broader understanding of the compaund elements of the principles; the research focuses on the problems deriving from the implementation and safeguard of the main principles.

RESUMEN: En Brasil, los mecanismos de accountability horizontal implantados con la Constitución de 1988 garantizan al Legislativo una serie de prerrogativas, como pedidos de información, convocatoria de ministros, propuestas de fiscalización y control (PFC) y comisión parlamentaria de investigación (CPI). Desde la instauración de la democracia, innumerables veces esos instrumentos han sido activados en virtud de crisis políticas. Este artículo tiene como propósito analizar el desarrollo de la accountability horizontal en Brasil, buscando dialogar con las corrientes teóricas y presentar datos nuevos sobre la efectiva actividad de control en estas casi dos décadas de democracia. ABSTRACT: In Brazil, the horizontal accountability mechanisms established with the Constitution of 1988 guarantee a series of prerrogatives to the Legislative power such as: inquiries, convocation of ministers, inspection and control proposals (PFC) and parliamentary investigation committees (CPI). Since the reestablishment of democracy these instruments have been used due to political crises. The purpose of this article is to analyze the horizontal accountability development in Brazil, intending to dialogue with the current theories and with the purpose of presenting new data about the real control activity developed in these nearly two decades of democracy.

The history of local government on Polish territories is not shorter or less fascinating than in other European countries. However, political obstacles, military conflicts, changes in the statehood system or finally its loss caused that what wherever else is the basis for further development of local democracy in Poland has to be built from the start. I mean here of course the long-lasting tradition of independent shaping and strengthening patterns, views and visions of local & regional self-governance, of which chance to fully develop Poland had not have. €The socio-political reality of today's 3rd Republic is a dynamically evolving country, which due to the rapidness of that change demands strong support from its finest researchers and scientists.€ The goal set for them is to present a wide range of concepts that will allow to program the future direction of progress. €This way the necessary fundaments for Polish democracy at the regional and local level, and a tradition of discussion and sustainable development is born. In my opinion a good attempt to take part of the mentioned responsibility was the book edited by PhD Joanna Marszałek-Kawa from Univeristy of Nicolaus Copernicus in Torun, Poland.

La mayor parte de los Estados afirman hoy que son democráticos, aunque en la mayoría de las ocasiones la participación de los ciudadanos se limita a la elección de los representantes en los comicios periódicos a los que son convocados, sin que tras la elección exista un control posterior a la actuación de los poderes públicos. Con este artículo se pretende llamar la atención sobre la necesidad de potenciar, mediante la formación del electorado, la intervención de los ciudadanos en los asuntos públicos. De lograrse, la democracia delegativa actual con ciudadanos-súbditos, se transformaría en democracia participativa formada por auténticos ciudadanos. ; The majority of current countries state nowadays that they are democrats, although most of the times, citizens' participation is limited to voting for their representatives in periodic elections without wielding any control on them afterwards. The purpose of this article is to call the attention about the need to promote and to reinforce, through education given to voters, a higher degree of citizens' intervention in public affairs. If this goal was achieved, the current delegative democracy with citizens-subjects would turn into a participative democracy with real citizens ; post-print ; 122 KB

Quantitative cross‐national research on human rights violations and repression has made considerable progress in identifying and eliminating economic and political factors that influence the use of torture and killing by governments. Warfare tends to increase violations, democracy—notably full democracy—and trade tends to inhibit violations. Where motives have been considered, this research has generally assumed a strategic motivation for government use of repression. Repression is employed to counter threats from the opposition as represented by the presence of warfare. Less attention has been given to the effect of implementation on levels of repression. Theory suggests that agents are likely to make a substantial independent contribution to the level of repression, if given the opportunity. In this article we develop this argument and present cross‐country comparative evidence that suggests that agents' opportunities for hidden action measured by perceived levels of financial corruption substantially influences the incidence of torture in a political system, after controlling for the strategic motive of governments and the other factors found influential in earlier research. We show that the results are robust and not sensitive to alternative modeling, measurement, and research‐design decisions.

Political scientists have for years used the framework of patron-client relations to describe both the structure and the transformation of rural politics in the Philippines. Scholars writing in the 1960s described rural Philippine society as "integrated" into the national polity through a "pyramid" of patron-client ties, while their successors in the 1970s attributed political instability and the demise of formal parliamentary democracy to the "breakdown" of patron-client relations. However, the patron-client paradigm fails to account adequately for both change and continuity in Philippine rural politics. Only a mode of analysis that factors in the role of coercion and the autonomy of localities from central control will explain both the persistence of rural elite monopolies on local political power and the emergence of a strong revolutionary movement in the countryside. Evidence abounds that a regime which might be described as "petty sultanism" -- akin to caciquismo in Latin America, the mafia in Sicily, and "warlordism" in Republican China -- structures contemporary local politics in the archipelago. The importance of this phenomenon is obvious when it is recalled that scholars have identified the survival of "neofeudal" agrarian elites as an important obstacle in the paths to economic development, state formation, and democracy throughout the modern world.