The Quality of Democracy in Belarus and Ukraine

Korosteleva-Polglase, Elena, 'The Quality of Democracy in Belarus and Ukraine', The Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, (2004) 20 (1), pp. 122-142(21) Special Issue: The Quality of Democracy in Post-Communist Europe RAE2008

The Offstage of Democracy: The Problem of Social Dialogue in John Dewey’s and Walter Lippmann’s Writings

The aim of this article is to present and discuss John Dewey’s and Walter Lippmann’s views on the problem of communication in a democratic society, particularly their views on the question of a role of communication in forming social processes. First part of the paper outlines the framework of this problem and its meaning to the question of possibility of democracy. Part two is concerned with anthropological and socio-political considerations: I discuss the Deweyan and the Lippmannian understanding of individual, society, intelligence and democracy. In part three I examine in detail the problem of communication, with special attention given to the questions of the role of communication in forming social processes, the foundations and conditions of communication, the debaters, and a subject matter of a debate as well as the questions of who and what forms this debate and whether we can form it altogether.

Challengers to provisional republicanism: the official republican movement, people’s democracy and the Irish republican socialist party, 1968–98

The Provisional IRA and its political wing Sinn Féin have attracted by far the greatest scholarly interest of all the players in the Northern Irish conflict. This emphasis is perfectly legitimate, given the centrality of the Provos to so many turning-points in the conflict, from the collapse of Stormont in the early 1970s to the hunger strikes of the following decade and the ceasefires which were followed by the Belfast Agreement. My project, however, looks at political groups that at one time or another challenged the Provos for leadership of the militant, anti-state constituency in Northern Ireland (chiefly based in the Catholic working class). Although never as large or influential as the Provisional republicans, groups such as the Official IRA and the Irish Republican Socialist Party sometimes had a discernible impact on the course of events which is overlooked by most studies, and often pioneered ideas and tactics that were later adopted by the Provos themselves. The idea that republicans should embrace political action and work in broad campaigning alliances was promoted by the IRSP and socialist groups such as People’s Democracy before it was taken up by Gerry Adams and his allies, while the Official IRA supported the principle of a settlement based on democratization of the Northern Irish state, which was later accepted by Sinn Féin in the form of the Belfast Agreement. The goal of my research is to provide a novel perspective on the conflict in Northern Ireland, while engaging with theoretical debates about its character.

The legitimation of risk and democracy: A case study of Bt cotton in Andhra Pradesh, India

This thesis explores the inter-related attempts to secure the legitimation of risk and democracy with regard to Bt cotton, a genetically modified crop, in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The research included nine months of ethnographic fieldwork, extensive library and newspaper research, as well as university attendance in India, undertaken between June, 2010 and March, 2011. This comparative study (involving organic, NPM and Bt cotton cultivation) was conducted in three villages in Telangana, a region which was granted secession from Andhra Pradesh in July, 2013, and in Hyderabad, the state capital. Andhra Pradesh is renowned for its agrarian crisis and farmer suicides, as well as for the conflict which Bt cotton represents. This study adopts the categories of legitimation developed by Van Leeuwen (2007; 2008) in order to explore the theory of risk society (Beck, 1992; 1994; 1999; 2009), and the Habermasian (1996: 356-366) core-periphery model as means of theoretically analysing democratic legitimacy. The legitimation of risk and democracy in relation to Bt cotton refers to normative views on the way in which power should be exercised with regard to risk differentiation, construction and definition. The analysis finds that the more legitimate the exercise of power, the lower the exposure to risk as a concern for the collective. This also has consequences for the way in which resources are distributed, knowledge constructed, and democratic praxis institutionalised as a concern for social and epistemic justice. The thesis argues that the struggle to legitimate risk and democracy has implications not only for the constitution of the new state of Telangana and the region’s development, but also for the emergence of global society and the future development of humanity as a whole.

A Politics of the Unspeakable: The Differend of Israel

Israel's establishment in 1948 in former British-Mandate Palestine as a Jewish country and as a liberal democracy is commonly understood as a form of response to the Holocaust of WWII. Zionist narratives frame Israel's establishment not only as a response to the Holocaust, but also as a return to the Jewish people's original homeland after centuries of wandering in exile. Debates over Israel's policies, particularly with regard to Palestinians and to the country's non-Jewish population, often center on whether Israel's claims to Jewish singularity are at the expense of principles of liberal democracy, international law and universal human rights. In this dissertation, I argue that Israel's emphasis on Jewish singularity can be understood not as a violation of humanism's universalist frameworks, but as a symptom of the violence inherent to these frameworks and to the modern liberal rights-bearing subject on which they are based. Through an analysis of my fieldwork in Israel (2005-2008), I trace the relation between the figures of "Jew" and "Israeli" in terms of their historical genealogies and in contemporary Israeli contexts. Doing so makes legible how European modernity and its concepts of sovereignty, liberalism, the human, and subjectivity are based on a metaphysics of presence that defines the human through a displacement of difference. This displaced difference is manifest in affective expression. This dissertation shows how the figure of the Jew in relation to Israel reveals sexual difference as under erasure by the suppression of alterity in humanism's configuration of man, woman, and animal, and suggests a political subject unable to be sovereign or fully represented in language.

The African National Congress and its Critics: 'Predatory Liberalism', Black Empowerment and Intra-Alliance Tensions in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by centralized, neo-liberal policymaking that perpetuates, and in some cases exaggerates, socio-economic inequalities inherited from the apartheid era. The African National Congress (ANC) leadership’s alignment with powerful international and domestic market actors produces tensions within the Tripartite Alliance and between government and civil society. Consequently, several characteristics of ‘predatory liberalism’ are evident in contemporary South Africa: neo-liberal restructuring of the economy is combined with an increasing willingness by government to assert its authority, to marginalize and delegitimize those critical of its abandonment of inclusive governance. A new form of oligarch power, combining entrenched economic interests with those of a new ‘black bourgeoisie’ promoted by narrowly implemented Black Economic Empowerment policies, diminishes prospects for broad-based socio-economic transformation. Because the new policy environment is failing to resolve tensions between global market demands for increasing market liberalization and domestic popular demands for poverty-alleviation and socio-economic transformation, the ANC leadership is forced increasingly to confront ‘ultra-leftists’ who are challenging its credentials as defender of the National Democratic Revolution which was the cornerstone in the anti-apartheid struggle.

Towards a Stronger Conception of Democracy in the Strasbourg Convention

The purpose of this article is to examine the promotion of democracy through human rights law. The focus will be on the possibilities for using the European Convention on Human Rights to promote participatory democracy. The author argues that the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court is beginning to recognise some participatory measures such as the requirement of consultation, notably under Article 8 of the Convention.