Archive for the ‘Democracy’ Category

Innovating Democracy in Latin America – Open Democracy

The LATINNO Project aims at making democratic innovations measurable and comparable, allowing for assessments of their actual role and impact on democracy in Latin America. Espaol

Image: LATINNO Project. All rights reserved.

Latin Americas countries have been consistently scoring badly in assessments of quality of democracy. Many years of authoritarianism and political instability have led citizens to distrust their institutions and have made scholars doubt democracys ability to reinvent itself. The international scholarship and the media have long echoed what opinion polls and democracy indexes have confirmed: democracies in Latin America have been unable to become fully consolidated because they are flawed by clientelism, corruption, and populism, not to mention poverty, crime and inflation.

This shadowed scenario and the pessimism associated with it have, however, for a long time hindered that constructive questions were asked and that their answers were sought in the right places. How can political trust be rebuilt? How does one strengthen democratic institutions after long periods of authoritarian rule? How can governments become more accountable and responsive in countries with long traditions of political instability? How can the rule of law be enforced where crime and corruption are permanent problems? How can democracy ensure political inclusion and social equality in countries where poverty and hunger are still a reality?

One may never have new and different answers to these questions if one keeps looking for democracy in the same places and if one insists on labelling only a limited set of institutions as democratic, which no longer effectively represent citizens nor truly translate their will. Where elections are perceived as a civic burden, parliaments are unable to express citizens voices and parties fail to connect government and society it is necessary to rethink and reform these institutions. Moreover, it is necessary to create new institutions and search for answers in new places. It is necessary to innovate.

When one looks beyond the usual places, one will see that state and civil society in Latin America have found common spaces of social and political experimentation, thus defying democracies of a mere representative character. Be it through joint work or independently, but frequently converging, State and Society have begun to design and create new forms of doing politics, in which citizens play a central role in the reconstruction of democracies and their institutions. Citizens are involved in co-government processes and move on to participate in agenda setting, formulating, implementing and evaluating public policies.

State and civil society in Latin America have found common spaces of social and political experimentation.

These processes of political experimentation have increasingly developed since the 1990s in many countries in the region, in some of them following up democratic transitions. Either by turning to the left or staying within the right side of the political spectrum, many Latin-American governments, both at the local and national level, have allowed for inner transformations in their institutions so as to include citizen participation or create new institutional designs in which citizens are the protagonists. These institutional changes or the creation of new institutions, these spaces and political practices that engage citizens in the construction of democracy, are named democratic innovations.

However, enthusiasm regarding innovations, which has become a trendy word in Latin America, should not feed an excessive optimism. The expansion of citizen participation is a positive step in itself, but it is necessary to further question: which effect have these initiatives had upon the qualities of democracy? How do these new institutional designs coexist with or even expand representative democracy? How does innovation affect representation? Which institutional designs allow for a broader and more effective participation of Latin-American citizens in processes of formulation and implementation of public policies? How can innovations be replicated in different countries? And why have some cases succeeded while others have failed?

The LATINNO Innovations for Democracy in Latin America Project, based at the Democracy and Democratization Department of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, aims precisely at offering answers to such questions. It has collected and assessed 2400 different cases of democratic innovations implemented in 18 countries of Latin America from 1990 to 2016. The LATINNO Project aims at making democratic innovations measurable and comparable, allowing for assessments of their actual role and impact on democracy in Latin America. This broad compilation of data which can be consulted in English, Spanish and Portuguese at the web platform http://www.latinno.net does not only enable academics to gain access to a wide empirical basis for establishing and revisiting existing theoretical frameworks on participation and democracy in Latin America, but also allows activists, politicians, organized civil society and international organizations to evaluate and to compare different innovations in the region, as well as to improve and replicate them.

It is expected, moreover, that the 2,400 cases of political experimentation unveiled in two and a half years of research show that democracy in Latin America is not exhausted in traditional institutions of representation and participation, such as parliaments and elections. Above all, this rich collection of new forms of participation and representation should finally enable new institutions and policy practices to be evaluated and compared, in order to be included in traditional national and international indicators of the quality of democracy. Only in this way can a comprehensive perspective on democracy in Latin America be known and effectively evaluated.

However, enthusiasm regarding innovations, which has become a trendy word in Latin America, should not feed an excessive optimism.

Preliminary results of the LATINNO Project show, among other things, that since the 1990s and especially since the 2000s democratic innovations have been consistently increasing in the region. Countries as different as Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru have each over a hundred of active new institutional designs for citizen participation and have engaged millions of people. Although such increase is well perceptible within countries that took the left turn, the political orientation of parties is not a condition to the creation of innovations: both left-leaning and right-leaning parties have implemented new spaces and mechanisms of citizen participation. These take place not only at the local level but also and especially at the national level. Although the State plays a major role in their implementation, civil society organizations have been increasingly expanding their chances to have their initiatives implemented, especially when they associate to the State in creating new forms and spaces for political participation.

The LATINNO data also shows that participation is open to individual citizens and groups, which only in a smaller number of cases need to join a civil society organization or to expect an invitation from the government in order to take part in the new spaces. Citizens participate in diverse ways in these new institutions, but most and foremost through deliberation. This indicates that voicing preferences and debating alternatives may become a usual way of doing politics in Latin America, and deliberation may eventually play a role as important as casting a vote in the ballot box.

Latin America has always been a region of deep contradictions. It should not be a surprise that such intense democratic experimentation takes place in countries where democracy seems so fragile and political institutions so unstable. Innovation requires adaptation and transformation, and in this regard instability and malleability may turn out to be sources of deeper institutional changes. Innovation also requires discontinuity something that the changing political tides in the region will allow democracy to test for itself in the coming years.

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Innovating Democracy in Latin America - Open Democracy

The Senate subway: The new epicenter of American democracy? – Washington Post

(Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

Its a slightly comical transportation system in the bowels of the U.S. Capitol that few Americans know exists: the Senate subway system. Not subway like Metro but two sets of tracks that carry underground trams ferrying lawmakers from Senate chambers to their office buildings, less than a third of a mile away.

And its the unlikely backdrop to the tumultuous Capitol Hill legislative goings-on of the past seven months.

The subway and its adjoining no-frills, fluorescent-lit station platform have long been a gathering place for the swarm of Capitol Hill journalists, aides and lobbyists who aim to pounce on senators as they disembark from trams or hitch a ride in the same car as a fellow lawmaker, hoping to bend an ear for the 90-second ride from one station to another.

But at a time when Congress has all but abandoned regular order with legislation crafted in secret, public hearings placed on the back burner and pivotal actions determined by razor-thin vote margins the transit-station jockeying has taken on new levels of intensity and importance.

Stand at the bank of trains long enough and youll get a momentary reading on the state of American politics: Theres former House speaker Newt Gingrich, setting off a flurry of speculative tweets when hes spotted disembarking from a train to the Capitol. Theres Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), jumping over the live tracks to ditch a gaggle of reporters seeking details on the Affordable Care Act repeal vote.

There are warnings from the Senate Media Gallery that the subway platforms are too crowded with the hoards of journalists seeking reactions to President Trumps latest tweets. A lobbyist, waiting for one of the trains, turns to a slightly bewildered-looking police officer.

Is it me, she says, or are things really crazy here today?

And there, in the middle of the night, minutes before a climactic vote on the repeal of Obamacare, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has a heart-to-heart with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) about his upcoming vote as they make their way from the Russell Senate Office Building to the Senate chambers, a conversation so meaningful that Murphy later said he plans to share it with his grandchildren.

The subway tunnels snaking underneath the Capitol have always been busy, said Donald A. Ritchie, the Senate historian emeritus. But of late, the system has reached new levels of stardom.

Its a little like Times Square down there now, Ritchie said.

[Inside the heaving, jostling Capitol media mob: We are one tripped senator away from disaster.]

The feverish atmosphere may be new, but the underlying infrastructure is not. The need to build an underground Capitol transportation network came more than 100 years ago, when new office buildings were being built beside the Capitol to meet the demands of lawmakers seeking their own office space. To win over the senators miffed at the prospect of exile in an adjacent building, architects came up with a compromise: The government would build a transportation system to ferry lawmakers back and forth to the Senate for casting votes, a chore that sometimes takes place several times per day.

The tunnel to the offices first featured electric Studebaker automobiles; later, officials switched to trains on tracks out of concern that a lawmaker would one day get mowed over by a careering car.

After multiple rounds of expansions and upgrades, there are now two types of trains on the Senate side: an open-air tram to the Russell building driven by operators who ping-pong back-and-forth all day, and a Disneyland-style driverless train that runs from the Capitol to the Dirksen and Hart office buildings.

Back when the tunnels were first built, such an investment in infrastructure for a rarefied few seemed excessive.

And now, to many, it still seems like an excessive expense. But Ritchie defended the system.

If the Capitol had been designed as a 60-story building, youd have a bank of elevators and you wouldnt be surprised, he said.

[Some senators need a lift, others use the elevator to go bunning for cover]

Many of the design changes over the years have reflected shifts in Congresss cultural sensibilities. After Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) joined the Senate 1949, Plexiglass shields were installed on the open-air trains. (Gusts from the 15-mph train rides mussed her hair to the point that she sat with her head ducked low in the cab.)

And the newer set of cars were designed for accessibility, which helped accommodate lawmakers such as former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.), a Vietnam War veteran who had lost both legs and his right forearm and used a wheelchair during six years in the Senate.

Some politicians refusal to use the subway served as a political message. Former senator Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) refused to take the train in a protest against government waste and forbid his staff from riding too. Hard-charging former senators Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) were both known for skipping the trains to power-walk through the adjacent tunnel walkways.

And occasionally, the Senate subway has been a place of confrontation. In 1950, as Smith prepared to give a speech on the growing risks that McCarthyism posed to freedom of speech, she was approached by none other than Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) as she boarded the train to the Capitol.

Margaret, you look very serious, Smith later recalled McCarthy saying. Are you going to make a speech?

Yes, she responded, and you will not like it.

According to Smith, McCarthy used the rest of the subway ride to make threatening remarks in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to intimidate her from making the speech.

[The U.S. Capitols shadow army of nighttime workers]

But for the most part, the subway is a place of bipartisan goodwill.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) recalled that his first meeting with Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) took place on a train. In his memoir, Franken called the transit run-in a real meet-cute Grassleys opening line: You look just like you look on TV! and the subway-train bonding session laid the groundwork for extensive legislative co-sponsorship.

Rushing out of the Capitol and back to his office last month, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) said that hed occasionally time his subway ride strategically to catch a colleague and talk policy. Once, he said, he used the 90 seconds on the subway to persuade the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to move a federal judge.

Weve gotten some deals done on the train, Cardin said. I mean, youre looking for somebody, and you know you have a captured audience for about a minute. For the Senate, thats a long time.

And Ritchie, the historian, has caught more than one heartwarming senatorial moment inside a packed Capitol Hill train. One time, he said, he stepped into a subway car and encountered a group of senators on their way to vote on a bill doomed to fail that would have ceded the District of Columbia to Maryland.

One lawmaker turned to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and quipped: Bernie, why doesnt Vermont take the District?

Oh no, were planning to annex Quebec, Sanders shot back, according to Ritchie.

The banter proceeded among the senators, with more and more preposterous proposals, until Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) piped up.

Whatever you do, Cochran said, chuckling, dont secede. We tried it, and it doesnt work.

That type of idle joking and banter, Ritchie said, is an important part of fostering civility across the political aisle.

The real problem is that theres so little social time between them, outside of the legislative process, Ritchie said. Those few 90 seconds on the trains may be one of the very few off-camera moments they have when they can actually joke with each other. You have to make the most of that time.

Those interactions, however, might be growing increasingly rare. Bipartisanship in Congress is arguably at an all-time low. The senatorial gentility of yore has, at times, given way to the rancor and harsh words of the Twitter age.

And then, theres the most troublesome shift of all: the advent of the Fitbit.

As Cardin power-walked down the walkway next to the Dirksen-Hart subway line, he admitted that he hardly ever rides the train anymore.

The senator lifted his hand and pointed to the slim black band on his wrist.

I gotta get my steps in, he said, as another train zoomed by.

[Aug. 1994: Is the Senate subway going down the tubes?]

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The Senate subway: The new epicenter of American democracy? - Washington Post

The Guardian view on India at 70: democracy in action – The Guardian

Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to want fundamental changes in Indias pluralistic democracy and not for the better. Photograph: EPA

When the British departed from the subcontinent 70 years ago, the most appropriate epitaph was probably provided by an Indian official who remarked: You British believe in fair play. You have left India in the same condition of chaos as you found it. The months that followed the partitioning ofBritish India seemed to confirm the nature of the gift of independence. The subcontinent endured a lawless, bloody anarchy that encompassed some of the 20th centurys greatest migrations and crimes. Born in blood were two newly created nations of mostly-Hindu India, and Pakistan, a Muslim homeland in south Asia, as well as about 500 feudal autocracies, which ranged from princely states some as large as a European nation to village-sized chiefdoms. When the British predicted there would be many more partitions, it was because the former colonial masters thought no one can make a nation out of a continent of many nations.

In Pakistan, that forecast came partly true, thanks largely because of an attempt to impose a single language Urdu on its most populous province, East Bengal. By 1971, after a civil war in which India played a part in stoking, Pakistan had been cleaved in two. The unfinished business of princely states remains: continuing revolts in Pakistans Baluchistan, Indias Kashmir and Manipur are rooted in identities distinct from the nations that swallowed them up. However, gloomy prophecies of fragmentation have been proved wrong decade after decade in India despite the poverty and diversity. It is perhaps Indias greatest achievement that one-sixth of humanity now cast their votes regularly in free and fair elections.

Unlike democracy in the west where voters first had to be rich men, then adult men and later women, Indias democracy came into being peacefully in 1951 with its first general election where every citizen irrespective of gender, caste, creed, religion, occupation, wealth or level of literacy got to vote. It is also a democracy where the military have been confined to their barracks in peacetime. Almost alone in the non-western world barring a brief interruption in 1975 India has clung doggedly to its democratic convictions. Voting is only one part of a liberal democracy. Indias noble aim of political equality is undermined by a creaking criminal justice system, flagrant interference in its public institutions and the inability toeliminate large-scale political corruption. Freedom ofexpression, necessary for true democracy, does not exist in full measure. India is a land of taboos where almost every fundamentalist be it religious, linguistic or regional cancall for books to be banned or film sets burned. That India was the first country to ban the Satanic Verses is a blot onits democracy.

Indians were once in academia described as Homo Hierarchicus, a species of human who most intensely practised inequality. This in-built discrimination chained Dalits and women for centuries. Indias laws abolished untouchability and made men equal to women, yet in practice violence and prejudice continue. Thanks to casteism and bigotry against Indias tribal peoples, the country is home to the worlds largest slave population. However, we can see examples ofeveryday equality between people in India. The link between a persons occupation and their caste is weakening, thanks in part to the worlds biggest affirmative action programme. Theres also evidence that women are choosing their own spouses, abigshift in a nation where marriage was seen as a contract between families.

In an Asian century, India has long been considered as a democratic counterweight to its larger authoritarian neighbour, China. Last year Indias economy grew faster than Chinas, although alarming pollution levels suggest Delhi risks making many of Beijings mistakes. Worryingly, Indian and Chinese troops have in recent weeks been engaged in a tense Himalayan standoff. But Indias biggest threat is internal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an impressive politician but he also runs a government backed by rightwing Hindu extremists who condone and actively support violence against minorities, especially Muslims. Like its less-peopled cousin, the European Union, India works because no single culture or language is central to its identity or mandatory for unity. Mr Modi seems to want fundamental changes in Indias pluralistic democracy and not for the better. The quest for equality and the rule of law have shown impressive resilience in India, but they are under threat from within.

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The Guardian view on India at 70: democracy in action - The Guardian

Pence: US determined to see ‘democracy restored’ in Venezuela – Washington Examiner

Vice President Pence assured U.S. allies in South America on Monday that the Trump administration will work with them to address the crisis in Venezuela as the country descends into a "dictatorship."

"The American people will always come alongside allies like Colombia should this crisis continue to drive a greater refugee flow into Colombia and neighboring countries," Pence told reporters gathered at a chapel in Cartagena, Colombia.

The vice president, whose trip comes days after President Trump declined to rule out a military option in Venezuela, said he was asked by Trump to send a clear message during his trip to the Nicolas Maduro regime that the Venezuelan leader's attempt "to change the laws and the structures and ultimately, the constitution in Venezuela to full dictatorship [is] simply unacceptable."

"The United States is going to continue to send a message of resolve and determination," Pence said, reiterating that the U.S. has "many options with regard to Venezuela to ultimately make it possible for the people of Venezuela to see their democracy restored."

White House officials have said Pence's visit to Colombia and other allies in South America is meant to turn up the pressure on Venezuelan President Maduro, who has sought to consolidate power in the country by installing a controversial constitutional assembly and replacing the attorney general, who was a forceful critic of the Maduro machine.

Pence will travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina, later Monday, followed by stops in Chile and Panama City.

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Pence: US determined to see 'democracy restored' in Venezuela - Washington Examiner

Silencing Big Ben is like stopping the heartbeat of our democracy – Telegraph.co.uk

Welcome to the sound of silence. As of noon next Monday, the lives of Londoners will no longer be punctuated by the bongs of Westminster. Those 10ominous strokes which herald ITNs News at Ten will seem incongruous not apt. For Big Ben (the clock and tower to which that great bells name has spread), is due for repair and the tolling will cease for the next four years. The builders are certainly taking their time about it.

Big Ben has been silenced before, of course: to protect Parliament from German Zeppelins (in case the bombers could hear the bells); for the funerals of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher; for briefperiods of maintenance work. But on this occasion its as if the city were having a heart transplant. While surgeons tinker away at the pulmonary arteries, we are left staring at a monitor that is flatlining.

Big Ben, as his name suggests, is less a giant grandfather clock...

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Silencing Big Ben is like stopping the heartbeat of our democracy - Telegraph.co.uk