Essays on Democratization

The worst years of human history are well and truly behind us. Democracy, as a political system, reigns supreme with the fall of the Berlin Wall. More countries today have established democracies than ever in human history and which has led to both the social and economic development of mankind. Still, for all its shortcomings, there are a number of benefits to this system that a monarchy, oligarchy or even authoritarian or totalitarian regimes cannot offer. Even if we are in the New Millennium, most of these changes took place during the times known as the Third Wave Democratization ...

How the Internet enables intimacy

In her speech “How the Internet enables intimacy”, Stefana Broadbent identifies a new phenomenon in a modern social communications. Nowadays, with progression with modern communications channels such as email, cell phones, social media and instant messages, the communication between the closest friends and relatives penetrates the domains of people’s lives that had previously imposed isolation - schools, hospitals, workplaces, offices and factories. Ms. Broatbent gives this phenomenon a name of “democratization of intimacy”. Technology revolution in communication channels and emergence of mobile phones, smartphones, instant messengers and social media like Facebook, greater penetration of broadband, 3G and 4G ...

Introduction

It seems difficult to analyze democratic transition from the standpoint of international dimension both theoretically and practically because not so much literatures that discuss about what the external environment actually is and how it might contribute to domestic change (Cavatorta 2005). However, it does not mean that international context will be ignored in the analysis process because international factors might have impacts on the transition process through their connections with domestic actors particularly in terms of distribution of power and resources, which in turn have effect on how they will act (Cavatorta 2005). One thing to remember is a ...

Factors Promoting Middle East Conflict

The countries in the Middle East have never had peaceful coexistence for more than a century. There has been series of complicated blood-letting confrontations orchestrated by different factors among them the totalitarian nature of political leaderships, religious diversity and scramble for oil resources. Specific conflicts in the region might have been occasioned by one of these factors or a combination of all of them. This article explores how religious diversity, management of oil resources and totalitarian leadership have contributed to conflicts in the Middle East region. The Middle East is the territory that has the abundance of totalitarian countries, ...

Ever since attaining its independence from Portugal on September 7, 1822, Brazil has seldom enjoyed any prolonged spell as a true democracy. In fact, Brazil’s longest period as a truly democratic state began a few years ago in 1985 after transitioning from a military government. The period after independence has been dotted with a monarchy; which was one of the few in the Americas, and a series of military coups that the country became synonymous with in the 20th century. A multiplicity of both domestic and external factors coalesced to create political instability in the country with a ...

called and held to account

Introduction

Traditional models of accountability, primarily those of elections and legislative scrutiny, are no longer sufficient in holding governments accountable. While Emy and Hughes (1988) argue that accountability dilemmas have been long standing within ministerial government, they see accountability failures as an indication of mechanisms corrupted by political interest. The rise of new social movements is a strong indication of the collective desire of citizens to interrupt the “chain of accountability”. The desire to influence political decision makers is a reflection of a growing assumption that the democratic deficit facing most western governments requires experiments ...

Abstract

The Middle East has been in the center of international attention for the past couple of years as the region has been embroiled in several conflicts that reshaped the region’s status quo. While a majority of the conflicts reported in the Middle East are caused by armed factions, some of these conflicts were brought by various social movements intending on forcing change to the country. Some of these social movements are brought in by the public themselves; hoping to pressure the government to impose reform. Some of these social movements sometimes meet failures, but there are those which ...

General background

The western supremacy which has persisted for the past two hundred years is slowly depreciating due to the shift of power towards the eastern region. The western states are losing the authority to sustain a multilateral order based on the set rules. In 2008 during the wake of great brash, the G20 leaders took initiative steps to reinforce the multilateral order, which included the reinforcement of the IMF and the World Bank governance. This was to reflect an increasing weight of the economy of the developing countries. It will be shown that the reforms at the IMF and the ...

Democracy can be described as a government for the people and by the people. It is a government where the people have the supreme power, and they can exercise it either directly or indirectly. A good way of applying democracy is through free and fair elections. Democratic satisfaction is the degree to which the citizens of a particular country trust the kind of democratic leadership presented to them. In the world as a whole, democracy has taken different turns depending on the region. Latin America has also felt the Democratic wave and democratic transition has been witnessed in many ...

A fundamental problem facing new democracies is the hijacking of the political process by elites. Economic performance is affected by elite politics leading to underdevelopment and sometimes morphing into political violence. The transition from colonial regimes to democracy has been subverted by the harm that was done by the colonial subversion of traditional institutions in favor of artificial Western ones. This provided an opening for the rise of elites and the rule of ‘the big men’ (Owusu, 1992). What role do elites play in transition to democracy or its opposite? This paper seeks to provide an analysis on how ...

Political culture is a component of the general culture, a cumulative indicator of political experience, a level of political knowledge and feelings, examples of behavior and functioning of political subjects, the integrated characteristic of a political way of life of the country, a class, the nation, social group of individuals. A feature of political culture is that it makes not policy or political process, but their understanding, an explanation. In the political sphere often the importance is gained not only by real actions and measures of the state but also, by the way they are estimated and perceived in ...

Iran Revolution of 1979

Abstract The Iranian Revolution of 1979 involved the popular uprising in Iran against the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. This paper examines many of the leading explanations for the uprising, including the rise of militant Islam, structural weaknesses of the Shah regime, the coalition of three important social groups (e.g. woman, youth, and the intelligentsia), the composition of the reform movement, and the effect of the Shah’s policies of accommodation and repression, to name a few. This paper also draws on leading theories in social movement theory, contemporary field work involving discussions with the Mullahs and their ...

The research problem will be to investigate whether the patrimonial political systems of Singapore and South Korea are democracies that surpass their liberal Western analogues in terms of national growth and even democratization in some ways. It appears that, contrary to the popular misperception, democracy is not necessarily a lack of restraint and complete discretion or at least a range of freedom like the right to media. Sometimes, states like Singapore being low on resources and facing external threats decide on less liberal norms and behaviors bordering on authoritarianism in specific aspects. Regulated merit-based selection practices and disciplining norms ...

The Growth in Internet Use Has Affected Cultures Around the World, Leading to a Westernized, Homogenous World Culture

The concept of globalization is sometimes discussed as an undesirable feature of the current geopolitical realities of the world. However, in reality, globalization is an immutable feature of the current human race. Human beings have been striving to travel and to stretch their legs since their earliest days. Some might ascribe some early form of imperialism to this behavior, while others might suggest that human beings, as a species, have a distinct curiosity that compels them forward. One of the impacts of going out to explore the world is that cultural interactions take place. These cultural interactions have been ...

The 16th century exploits of Christopher Columbus and his men did not only bring about social, cultural and political clashes that created the United States, it also led to the process that resulted in the emergence of the state of Mexico. Mexico is an enigma of a country to the south of the United States border whose recent political, economic and social transformations have been overshadowed by its complex relations with the more prosperous United States. This country profile seeks to examine the history and current state of Mexico. It also explores and analyzes political culture, geography, demography, political ...