Evaluation of the 1948 Election Law in Korea: On the Perspective of Democratic Principles

This article explores the role of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the role it plays regarding human rights in individual country situations in Africa. It specifically examines the extent to which it has been able to advance a human rights agenda in countries with long-standing human rights problems. The article uses Swaziland/ eSwatini as a lens to examine the matter, because of the longstanding problems that exist in that country. This is done to indicate how the institution works over time on a country’s human rights problems. The article examines a range of institutional structural matters to establish how these issues affect the role of the Commission in its work. The article examines the way in which the Commission uses its various tools, including its communications, the state reporting processes, fact-finding visits, and resolutions, to determine whether those tools are being used effectively. The article examines how the Commission’s processes issues also affect it work. Issues examined negatively affecting the Commission are examined, including problems with the status of its resolutions and communications, limited compliance with its outcomes, and inadequate state cooperation. Reforms necessary to enhance to role and functions of the Commission are surveyed to determine how the institution could become more effective. The African Union’s (AU|) Kagame Report on AU reform is briefly reviewed to examine the limited view and focus of AU reform processes and why AU reform ought to focus on enhancing human rights compliance. The article makes various suggestions on necessary institutional reforms but also as far as the African Commission’s procedures and methods of work to allow it to have a far more effective role in the promotion and protection of human rights on the continent. It is noted that political will by the AU and African states is the largest obstacle to giving the Commission the necessary independence, support and assistance that it needs to play the role in Africa that it should.

Download Full-text

The Many-Colored Cloak

American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences ◽

10.35632/ajiss.v27i2.358 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 27 (2) ◽

pp. 1-27

Author(s):

Malik Mufti

Keyword(s):

Political Thought ◽

Arab World ◽

Political Authority ◽

Electoral Participation ◽

Critical Questions ◽

Ibn Rushd ◽

The People ◽

Democratic Principles ◽

The Many ◽

Religion And Democracy

This articles argues (a) that democratic discourse has already become hegemonic among mainstream Islamist movements in Turkey and the Arab world; (b) that while this development originated in tactical calculations, it constitutes a consequential transformation in Islamist political thought; and (c) that this transformation, in turn, raises critical questions about the interaction of religion and democracy with which contemporary Islamists have not yet grappled adequately but which were anticipated by medieval philosophers such as al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd. The argument is laid out through an analysis (based on textual sources and interviews) of key decisions on electoral participation made by Turkey’s AK Party and the Muslim Brotherhoods in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Particular attention is focused on these movements’ gradual embrace of three key democratic principles: pluralism, the people as the source of political authority, and the legitimacy of such procedural mechanisms as multiple parties and regular elections.

Download Full-text

Election Law Originalism: The Supreme Court's Elitist Theory of Democracy

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.3661959 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Yasmin Dawood

Keyword(s):

Election Law ◽

Theory Of Democracy

Download Full-text

From Top-Down Control to Self-Organisation: The “Thaw” and Motor Action Theory

Philosophical Literary Journal Logos ◽

10.22394/0869-5377-2020-2-129-152 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (2) ◽

pp. 129-156

Author(s):

Irina Sirotkina

Keyword(s):

Soviet Union ◽

Action Theory ◽

Scientific Progress ◽

Mathematical Concept ◽

New Paradigm ◽

Top Down ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

New Models ◽

Democratic Principles ◽

Moscow School

The period from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s in the Soviet Union was known as the “Thaw,” a political era that fostered hopes of restoring the rule of law and democracy to the country. In that period cybernetics came to symbolize both scientific progress and social change. The Soviet intelligentsia had survived the hardship of Stalinist repression and now regarded the new discipline, which brought together the natural sciences and the human sciences, as a pathway to building a freer and more equal society. After decades of domination by Pavlovian doctrine, a paradigm shift was under way in physiology and psychology. Cybernetics reinforced the new paradigm, which put forward ideas of purposive behavior and self-organization in living and non-living systems. The conditioned reflex and a simplistic one-to-one view of connections in the nervous system gave way to more sophisticated and complex models, which could be formalized mathematically. Previous models of control in living organisms were mostly hierarchical and included top-down control of peripheral movement by the motor centers. The new models supplemented this picture with feedback commands from the periphery to the center. By the time cybernetics had made its appearance in the Soviet Union, new models of control had already been formulated in physiology by Nikolay Bernstein (1896– 1966). He termed the feedback from afferent signals “sensorial corrections,” meaning that they play an important part in adapting central control to the changing situation at the periphery of movement. The new paradigm emphasized horizontal connections over vertical ones, and new models took hold based on less “totalitarian” and more “democratic” principles, such as the idea of automatic or autonomous functioning of intermediate centers, the mathematical concept of well-organized functions, the theory of “the collective behavior of automata,” etc. This line of research was carried out in the USSR as well as abroad by Bernstein’s students and followers who formed the Moscow School of Motor Control. The author argues that this preference for less hierarchical models was one expression of the Thaw’s trend toward liberalization of life within the USSR and greater involvement in international politics.

Download Full-text

Fit for Purpose? Exploring the Role of Freedom of Information Laws and Their Application for Watchdog Journalism

The International Journal of Press/Politics ◽

10.1177/19401612211006702 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 194016122110067

Author(s):

Mária Žuffová

Keyword(s):

Differential Treatment ◽

Freedom Of Information ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

The Press ◽

Fit For Purpose ◽

The Law ◽

Ground Delays ◽

Democratic Principles ◽

State Relations

Despite great volume of research into press–state relations, we know little about how journalists use information that has been generated through independent bureaucratic processes. The present study addresses this gap by investigating the role of freedom of information (FOI) laws in journalism practice. By surveying journalists ( n = 164), interviewing activists and civil servants ( n = 7) and submitting FOI requests to twenty-one ministerial departments in the United Kingdom, this study explores press-state interactions and the limits of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) application to advance the media’s monitorial function. The results show that journalists perceive FOIA as an essential tool for their work. However, they often described their experience as negative. They reported refusals lacking legal ground, delays, not responding at all or differential treatment. In response to gating access, journalists might also adopt tactics that use loopholes in the law. The press-state interactions, already marked by suspicion, thus, continue to perpetuate distrust. These findings might have implications for journalism practices, FOIAs’ potential for government oversight and democracy. In particular, the differential treatment of requests undermines equality under the law, one of the fundamental democratic principles. The study concludes with several policy recommendations for FOIA reform to meet journalists’ needs better.

Download Full-text

Determinants of Individual Support for Independence: Evidence from Montenegro

Nationalities Papers ◽

10.1017/nps.2021.23 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-20

Author(s):

Pëllumb Kelmendi ◽

Christian Pedraza

Keyword(s):

Individual Preference ◽

Minority Rights ◽

Relative Effect ◽

Factors Associated ◽

Eu Integration ◽

Eu Membership ◽

Individual Support ◽

Nationally Representative ◽

Democratic Principles ◽

The Impact

Abstract This article investigates the determinants of individual support for independence in Montenegro. We outline five theoretically distinct groups of factors covered by the literature and evaluate their impact on individual preference for independence. Using observational data obtained from a nationally representative survey conducted in Montenegro in 2003–2004, we find support for several hypotheses, showing that identity, income, and partisanship significantly impact individual opinion about independence. We also investigate and discuss the relative effect size of different factors associated with preference for independence. Additionally, we test variables with hitherto unexplored implications for opinions on independence, including the impact of support for EU membership, as well as support for democratic principles. Our logistic regression analyses reveal that attitudes towards EU integration and minority rights are strongly associated with support for independence. By systematically analyzing existing and new hypotheses with data from an understudied case, our findings contribute to the nascent literature on individual preferences for independence.

Download Full-text

Governmental Censorship in War-Time

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1949286 ◽

1942 ◽

Vol 36 (5) ◽

pp. 837-849 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Byron Price

Keyword(s):

National Security ◽

Free Enterprise ◽

Individual Liberty ◽

News Stories ◽

Radio Industry ◽

Democratic Principles ◽

The Many ◽

The Right ◽

Free People ◽

Magazine Articles

To a free people, the very word “censorship” always has been distasteful. In its theory, it runs counter to all democratic principles; in practice, it can never be made popular, can never please anyone.Everything the censor does is contrary to all that we have been taught to believe is right and proper. The Post Office Department, for example, has two proud mottoes: “The mail must go through,” and “The privacy of the mail must be protected at all hazards.” But censorship stops the mail, it invades the privacy of the mail, it disposes of the mail as may seem best. The same thing holds true in the publishing business. Censorship limits the lively competition and free enterprise of reporters. It relegates many a scoop to the waste basket. It wields a blue pencil—both theoretical and actual—on news stories, magazine articles, advertisements, and photographs. Censorship also enters the radio industry, where it may edit scripts and in some cases stop entire programs.Yet even the most vociferous critics of the principle of censorship agree that in war-time some form and amount of censorship is a necessity. It then becomes not merely a curtailment of individual liberty, but a matter of national security. It is one of the many restrictions that must be imposed on people fighting for the right to throw off those restrictions when peace returns.

Download Full-text