scholarly journals Reform and Political Impunity in Kenya: Transparency without Accountability

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mwangi wa Gīthīnji ◽  
Frank Holmquist
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
History Of

Abstract:Kenya has been going through a period of political reform since 1991, when section 2A of the constitution, which had made Kenya a de jure one-party state, was repealed. This reform followed a prolonged struggle on the part of citizens both inside and outside the country, and their call for democracy was one that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was embraced by Western countries. Via diplomatic pressure and conditionality on aid, Western donors played an important role in the repeal of section 2A, the return of multiparty elections, and the creation and reform of a number of political institutions and offices via a separation of powers. But although these changes were supported by the political opposition and much of civil society in Kenya, they did not rise organically from the national struggle over political power. Nor did these reforms lead to a determination in the country to hold the political elite accountable for their transgressions. This article argues that modern Kenya's history of economic and political inequality has resulted in a population whose very divisions make it difficult for politicians to be disciplined. Accountability has two dimensions: the horizontal accountability among branches of government that is assured by checks and balances, and the vertical accountability of the state to its citizens. Vertical accountability depends on a constituency of like-minded citizens defending broad national interests, or an electorate with a collective identity or set of identities attached to the Kenyan nation. But in the absence of such shared goals and demands, narrow personal and local interests prevail, and politicians remain unaccountable to the nation as a whole.

scholarly journals The Ideal of Western Democracy and Law State as a Conceptual Basis for the Formation of National Political Interests

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-33
Author(s):  
O. Chmorgun
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
The Political ◽  
Steady Increase ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Western Democracy ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The Ideal

The proposition that modern western democracy is a point of intersection of modern political, economic and national interests is substantiated. In particular in the process of becoming a capitalistsociety, the political interests of the “middle class”, which are realized primarily through collegial legislative bodies in opposition to the institutions of feudal absolutism and despotism, wereinextricably linked with economic interests – mass interest in the creation of ground foundations of free competition, as shown in the article, formed the political interests of the general population andbecame a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of Western political democracy that arose as a result of great European and American bourgeois social revolutions. At the same time it is shown that the antimonarchical system of separation of powers based on the mechanism of “checks and balances”, the introduction of the principle of equality before the lawcontribute to the realization of the ideal of the state “night watchman” and, thus, activate the process of becoming national markets; it was thanks to these political institutions and the emergence of civilsociety that guaranteed the assertion of inalienable rights and freedoms and the filling of political interests with democratic content as one of the most important components of a modern law state thatthe advanced capitalist countries pushed. That is why the famous “Declaration of the Rights of Freedom of Man and Citizen”, which refers to the powerful motives of activity in the political realm ofcitizens of the law state proclaims that the “source of sovereign power is the nation”. It is also proved that the extremely negative impact on the democratization of the Ukrainian statehood and the development of a market economy, which made possible the Russian aggression against Ukraine, makes the current dismantling by the leading EU and US countries a model of a social state and a “mixed economy”, which has consequently become the next financial world crisis. In turn, the steady increase in global instability and the presence of a powerful comprador fifth column in Ukraine, require the formation of political institutions and mechanisms in our country that ensure maximum consideration and realization of political interests of nationally conscious citizens through an effective model of presidentialism, which all these years is only being imitated in our country. In the light of the world experience, a number of systemic characteristics of such a form of political government and a consistent democratic social order have been analyzed.

scholarly journals Returning urban political elites to the research agenda: the case of the Southern Low Countries (c. 1350 – c. 1550)

Urban History ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 568-588
Author(s):  
Frederik Buylaert ◽  
Jelten Baguet ◽  
Janna Everaert
Keyword(s):  
Special Section ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
High Turnover ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article provides a comparative analysis of four large towns in the Southern Low Countries between c. 1350 and c. 1550. Combining the data on Ghent, Bruges and Antwerp – each of which is discussed in greater detail in the articles in this special section – with recent research on Bruges, the authors argue against the historiographical trend in which the political history of late medieval towns is supposedly dominated by a trend towards oligarchy. Rather than a closure of the ruling class, the four towns show a high turnover in the social composition of the political elite, and a consistent trend towards aristocracy, in which an increasingly large number of aldermen enjoyed noble status. The intensity of these trends differed from town to town, and was tied to different institutional configurations as well as different economic and political developments in each of the four towns.

History of the Word "Democracy" in Canada and Québec: A Political Analysis of Rhetorical Strategies

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Dupuis-Déri
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Masses

An examination of the speeches of modern Canada’s “founding fathers” reveals that they were openly antidemocratic. How did a regime founded on anti-democratic ideas come to be positively identified with democracy? Drawing on similar studies of the United States and France, this analysis of the history of the term democracy in Canada shows that the country’s association with democracy was not due to constitutional or institutional changes that might have justified re-labelling the country’s political regime. Rather, it was the result of discursive strategies employed by the political elite to strengthen its ability to mobilize the masses during the World Wars.

scholarly journals The Difficult Path to a Civil Nation: the Experience of Nation-Building in Modern Kazakhstan

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-151
Author(s):  
N. A. Baranov ◽  
Sevgi Kok
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Civic Identity ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Interethnic Relations ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Republic

Kazakhstan, like most of the multi-ethnic post-Soviet states, in the course of state building, faced the problem of rallying the peoples living in the Republic. Two interrelated projects were being implemented on the political agenda of Kazakhstan: the construction of state institutions and the formation of a civil nation. In a multi-ethnic state, the project of a civil nation is difficult due to the attempts of the titular ethnic group to obtain additional advantages, which causes tension in interethnic relations. The identification of the population, often, occurs by ethnicity, therefore, the policy of civic identity in Kazakhstan is opposed to the “Kazakhization” of language, culture, and social practices. Nevertheless, the process of unification of the nation is successfully developing in the Republic, initiated by the political elite of Kazakhstan. Achievement of national unity was declared a strategic priority in the development of the country. The article analyzes the factors affecting collective identity in the Republic of Kazakhstan: demographic diversity, language policy, state symbols. The article concludes that Kazakhstan is building its statehood based on the domination of the Kazakh ethnic elite, while pursuing a policy of uniting different ethnic groups into a single Kazakh nation.

The Constitution of the Roman Republic

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-84
Author(s):  
Eric A. Posner
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Agency Theory ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Military Forces ◽  
The People ◽  
Governmental Functions

The constitution of the Roman Republic featured a system of checks and balances that would eventually influence the American founders, yet it was very different from the system of separation of powers that the founders created. The Roman senate gave advice but did not legislate; the people voted directly on bills and appointments in popular assemblies; and a group of magistrates, led by a pair of consuls, proposed bills, brought prosecutions, served as judges, led military forces, and performed other governmental functions. This chapter analyzes the Roman constitution from the perspective of agency theory, and argues that the extensive checks and balances, which were intended to prevent the recurrence of monarchy, may have gone too far. Suitable for an earlier period in which the population was small and the political class was homogenous, the constitution proved unworkable when Rome acquired a vast, diverse empire. The lessons of Roman constitutionalism for the American constitution are also discussed.

Political Science

2018 ◽  
pp. 104-133
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Core ◽  
Gulliver's Travels ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Philosophers

Late seventeenth-century natural philosophers inherited the conjunction of politics and science at the core of Francis Bacon’s experimental project. Thomas Sprat’s The History of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels use the conventions of literary knowledge to express their scientific-political visions, insisting that natural philosophy cannot be understood apart from the political institutions enabling and enabled by its practice and promulgation. These writers use the experimental imagination to envisage, in turn, civil government, absolutist monarchy, and imperialism. Sprat advances scientific triumphalism and a model for schooling gentlemen into civil society.

Islam, History, and Politics

1963 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-97
Author(s):  
Thomas Hodgkin
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
African History ◽  
African Politics ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Social ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Belgian Congo

It is not, I imagine, necessary to argue in this Journal (whose birth I welcome) that the study of African politics should never be separated from the study of African history. There was a time when the political institutions of African states (except in a few special cases, such as Ethiopia) meant ‘colonial political institutions, together with such indigenous African institutions as had been permitted to survive within the colonial framework’. For students of colonial government the study of African history had no obvious relevance. For those who wished to explain such institutions as Legislative Councils in British-controlled territories, Communes Mixtes in French-controlled territories, or the Conseil de Gouvernement in the Belgian Congo, the history of the European state which had imposed the institution was understandably more significant than the histories of the African peoples upon whom it had been imposed. As for such indigenous African political systems as had survived, in a modified form, within the colonial administrative structure, their study was—by a kind of unwritten convention—left to the social anthropologists, whose historical interests varied according to the character of the system and the approach of the anthropologist.

Workers' Councils and Political Stratification: The Yugoslav Experience

1978 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidney Verba ◽  
Goldie Shabad
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Open Channels ◽  
Professional Status ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Political Inequality ◽  
Extensive Survey ◽  
Using Data

Many students of citizen participation claim that one solution to the problem of political inequality in liberal democracies lies in the establishment of direct participatory channels in decentralized socioeconomic and political institutions similar to those found in Yugoslavia. Others argue that the availability of participatory channels in the workplace leads to the domination of these channels by a technocratic elite. Still other students of participation in Yugoslavia claim that participatory channels are dominated by the political elite, the League of Communists.In this paper, we examine this set of conflicting hypotheses by using data which come from an extensive survey of participatory activities in four Yugoslav republics. Our findings are consistent with the interpretation that workers' councils open channels for a more technocratically oriented participation. When it comes to other kinds of activity, affiliation with the League is more important than socioeconomic or professional status in determining who participates. But because League members come disproportionately from upper-status groups, there is not a marked difference in the extent to which membership in workers' councils and participation in other kinds of activity are biased in favor of the advantaged segments of Yugoslav society. In each case, but for different reasons, it is the upper-status citizen who is likely to be active.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Trans-Pacific Business Linkages

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Witold Henisz
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
External Pressure ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Future Evolution ◽  
Latin American Countries

The current level and future evolution of trans-Pacific business linkages are tightly linked to domestic politics in Latin American countries. Where the structure of a nation's political institutions offer credible checks and balances against discretionary policymaking, external linkages including those with Pacific partners are stronger. Future liberalization including the formation of an FTAA is more likely when new policymakers arrive in office or when existing policymakers feel strong internal or external pressure to shift the course of their trade policy. A given liberalization is more likely to be sustained when coupled with short-term observable improvement in social and economic indicators. Countries with political institutions that fail to limit policymakers' discretion are particularly sensitive to a failure to demonstrate clear and immediate results. An analysis of the potential of an FTAA to influence trans-Pacific business linkages based on these arguments suggests that adoption is far from certain and that northern and southern countries alike will have to design an agreement with particular attention to social and economic consequences in Latin American countries.

scholarly journals A review of the memoirs of the Governor of the Samara region Konstantin Alekseevich Titov in the journal Samara Destinies. Samara, 2019, no. 9

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 190-193
Author(s):  
S. N. Abrashkin
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Political Career ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The review analyzes the memoirs of the first governor of the Samara region in the modern history of Russia Konstantin Alekseevich Titov. The ex-governor recorded the most important events of his political career, presented the personal characteristics of statesmen of the period of the 1990-s and early 2000-s. As a result of the study, it was found that in the memoirs of K.A.Titov, the relationship of the Samara governor with statesmen and representatives of the political elite of the Russian Federation is presented and fragmented his activities as a regional head of one of the largest regions of the Russian Federation.

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