“Democracy works best – and survives longer – where constitutions are reinforced by unwritten democratic norms”, stated Levitsky and Ziblatt in their book How Democracies Die (2018). Indeed, in many middle-income countries, norms and political culture work in governance, yet these unfamiliar models are labelled as “undemocratic” to the Western democratic traditions.
In facing democratic crisis and the rise of populism, we think it is important to examine democratic tradition and norms working in the middle-income countries. We plan to seek an acceptable form of democracy that works for both the country’s population and the wider communities as well. How do the roles of the existing and the new structures, both utilizing local values and institutions, mesh inside a democracy within these regions? Values and local institutions include elected local government and community-based associations, as well as traditional and religious authorities. What are the norms that serve as a lesson-learnt? We also question how the democratic principles of the middle-income countries would address and contribute to the endless debates surrounding the current political situation, such as climate change, sustainable development, migration, and human rights.
Our panel discusses democracy and democratization in middle-income countries, notably in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We welcome presentations of research papers and practice-oriented experiences that explore democracy, current representation and active participation within the middle-income countries. The working language is in English.
organiser:
Ratih Adiputri, University of Jyväskylä, ratih.d.adiputri@jyu.fi
Papers
Challenges to International Order
Fatemeh Shayan, PhD, assistant professor, University of Isfahan (email: f.shayan@ase.ui.ac.ir)
This paper investigates a handful of the sources of the liberal international order’s challenges. It is supposed that the post-war liberal order was not a global order: Western liberal order has dominated the world for several decades, with the United States (US) and its allies having built a multi-lateral international order since 1945. Boasting the organized economic openness, multi-lateral institutions, security cooperation, and democracy, the US has swiftly become the leader of this order, and has provided hegemonic leadership, whilst Western Europe and Japan have linked their economy and security to this liberal order. Today, however, this order is in crisis: the presidency of Trump bred hostility to liberal internationalism, environment, and human rights, Britain’s decision to leave the EU, similarly indicating an end to the building of a greater union. Meanwhile, uncertainty of democracy is yet another issue that has recently arisen as various authoritarians have risen in countries such as Hungary. These challenges have been fully brought to light under the external shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has certainly challenged the global, political, economic, and social fabric. Furthermore, competition amongst great powers like the US and China is yet another factor challenging the liberal international order and, in this context, there is an evident long-term shift in the global order away from the open trade, multi-literalism and cooperative security. Here, the main findings indicate that the US cannot base its leadership on the coalition of the West and Japan, and instead needs to actively co-opt the wider world of democracy. On a similar note, China plays mixed roles, which reflects the complex dynamics in existing order.
Dueling Populisms: How Governing and Opposition Parties Exploit Populist Discourses, Close the Market, and Trap Serbia in a Hybrid Regime
Nikola Mladenović (PhD) is a Research Associate at the Institute for Political Studies (Belgrade, Serbia), https://www.ips.ac.rs/en/ e-mail: nikolamlad@yahoo.com institutional e-mail: nikola.mladenovic@ips.ac.rs
Populism, along with its perplexing relationship with democracy, has been one of the major objects of scholarly interest in recent years. This work in progress was inspired by Milada Vachudova’s (2020) question: how do opposition parties respond to incumbent’s populism? It was already argued that populism could be a useful corrective for a polity (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2012). Therefore, in a context of a country with a symptom of a democratic backslide, if opposition parties respond with an arsenal of populist tools, can it be a useful corrective for a polity? Should a political movement that opposes the rulers and seeks to input additional preferences of a part of a political community which are neglected or suppressed by the government be welcomed? Simply, an opposition to populist, democracy–degrading regime should be good. This work examines the case when populist styles are utilized by both governing and opposition parties in an environment where democracy backslides and when both signal values inimical to flourishing of democracy. Typical elements of populist styles are identified in both Serbia’s Vučić regime, and its opposition, which boycotted institutions. These include antiestablishmentarianism, simplified good/bad worldview, fear of dangerous entities, aggressive confrontational style, and opposition to democratic rules. Both governing and opposition parties are entrenched in their self-righteous worldviews and signal reservations to the Europeanization process. The Europeanization process of East European countries is closely related to their democratization, as the scholarly literature suggests. The point this work attempts to make is that if populism has a propensity to do good, if it is to be a corrective for a regime, it needs to promote democratic values on its own or the values that foster democratization. Otherwise, a country could be trapped in a hybrid regime equilibrium, which is exemplified in Serbia. Keywords: populism, democracy, authoritarianism, discourse, Europeanization, party politics, Serbia
The Rise of Illiberal Democracies in Post-Revolutionary State
Marwa Mamdouh Salem (email: marwa.salem@helsinki.fi)
In the aftermath of the Cold War, analysts, politicians and even laymen addressed the conventional political wisdom of liberal democracy as the most successful system that enabled societies to achieve freedom, sustainable development and social justice to people. In fact, the Velvet revolution, i.e. the mostly peaceful systemic change, that took place in the Eastern Europe demonstrated the yearning of the people for freedom and democracy. Similarly, the third democratic wave arrived at Africa and for the first time in their histories several states conducted multi-party elections that overthrown historical leaderships who used to rule their countries since independence from the European colonial powers. Two decades later, the Arab Spring revolutions happened in Arab-African states, starting in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Algeria. Yet, despite the regularly organized elections the political dynamics show resemblance with the situation before these revolutions took place. It seems that illiberal political systems display capability to adapt to external requirements, such as European norms and concepts of democracy. This paper aims to compare what are the convergences and divergences of illiberal democracies in the case of Egypt and Hungary. The paper addresses the following questions: What are the possibilities of exporting such hybrid model to other countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East? How can the European Union deal with the existential fact of this illiberal democratic system, either at home or outside? Is it possible to balance between realpolitik and democracy and freedom as doctrine for Europe and modus operandi for the EU? What are the possibilities of informal alliances between the states that share common illiberal democratic systems in the three regions forming a bloc to balance the other camp?
Democratizing parliaments for supporting Sustainable Development Goals: the case of Southeast Asia in international parliamentary forums
Ratih Adiputri, postdoc researcher and university lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä (email: ratih.d.adiputri@jyu.fi)
Parliament has its role in supporting Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). SDG number 16 on peace, justice and strong institution states one indicator of legislative institution, as the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) commits to achieve. However, parliament must support the government in achieving all SDG programs as stated in Agenda 2030. What is the role of parliament in this and how to achieve it? This paper aims to show that the role of parliament in SDG is beyond the traditional legislative role of legislating, budgeting and overseeing the government, but more on representing people, meaning channeling people’s voice at the global forums, notably the parliamentary forums discussing sustainable development issues. The case are Southeast Asian parliaments, notably Indonesian, Malaysia and Singapore. The paper uses four cases of parliamentary gatherings: the World Parliamentary Forum on Sustainable Development Goals in 2017-2019 (3 meetings) that Indonesian parliament organized and the 10th Asia-Europe Parliamentary Meeting (ASEP) in 2018 that the European Parliament organised, where parliaments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore participated. The study shows that Indonesian parliament, DPR, still acts more as event organizer instead as a representative body, taking into account more on secondary sources: the government’s ministers and senior policy makers, inviting more governments’ side and international agency personnels. The parliament must be encouraged to look for ideas, sharing and discussing among parliamentarians based on constituents views, and bringing the voices of people on these forums so that policy makers know what happen exactly on the fields based on parliamentary members mastery. The case also shows that personalized politics still exists from the Indonesian parliamentary side –and not so obvious from the Malaysian and Singaporean sides. This may serve a base for further study whether the Westminster parliamentary system works better than presidential system, as the Westminster’s type emphasized the parliamentary member based on her/his constituent background, while the presidential type only stated the political party affiliation. Keywords: sustainable development goals/SDG, parliament, role, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore