Conceptualising Disappearances in International Law

Enforced disappearance is one of the most serious crimes, prohibited across several regimes of international law, including human rights, humanitarian law and criminal law, yet Latin American governments and officials frequently avoid legal accountability for these violations. The dynamics of disappearances in post-transitional democracies call for a reconceptualisation of the international human rights framework, by reconsidering the meaning of state acquiescence. This chapter argues that a relevant and effective framework must embrace a contextual analysis and foreground the positive obligations of states to search and investigate these crimes, using generally accepted principles found in due diligence jurisprudence to measure the legal adequacy of the state’s responses to reported disappearances. Stretching the legal framework is necessary to disrupt the benefits of impunity, which violate the rights of victims, allow disappearances to thrive, and harm societies by hiding the truth.

Political Modernization in the Developing Countries: Challenges and Prospects

This paper is all about the political modernization of the developing world. The political party, Bureaucrats, Law enforcement forces have been a source of political modernization in the traditional as well as transitional democracies. But the primary duty of the political party serves as the main tool of running the state. Bureaucrats implemented the policy of government and Law enforcement force established the rule of law. Political parties, Bureaucrats, and Law enforcement forces are closely involved in bringing political modernization. Unfortunately, it is impossible to ensure political modernization without any one agent. The first part of this article is an attempt to discuss on meaning and conditions of political modernization. The second part of this study explained serious stumbling blocks in the implementation of political modernization in developing countries. The final part of the study highlights the prospects of political modernization based on different agencies like Political parties, Bureaucrats, and Law enforcement forces and makes a concluding remark on the overall concept.

The Role of Local Political Elites in East Central Europe

How does the elite continue to affect the evolution of local communities in the developing region of former Sovietized Europe? This book is concerned with the issue of local leadership in the countries of East-Central Europe. It is an attempt to examine, with a comparative method, the profile and the role of the local political elites (members of the Municipal Councils) in six towns in six transitional democracies of the region.

Governing through Informal Mechanisms

In their post-authoritarian period, civilian governments in transitional democracies have often been battered by unelected power centers. Where do these unelected forces derive their power? This article addresses this question through a case study of Pakistan. Since the 2018 elections, a decade after leaving formal political office, the Pakistani military has asserted greater control over civilian government. Using the concept of informal institutions of political participation as an analytical framework, we argue that when formal forms of control become untenable due to legitimacy and/or functional constraints, the military turns into a Janus-faced institution, visibly acting as a formal state organ while invisibly protecting its institutional interests through what we call “informal mechanisms.” The article explains how Pakistan’s pre-2018 political situation dictated a quasi-military regime more suited to the military’s interests than direct military rule.

Evolution of Types of Democracy and the Threat of Populism for Transitive States: a Media Aspect

Drawing from the examples of newly formed and former democracies, the article examines the directions which the transformation of this political concept has taken in context of the expansion of the public sphere and changes in how the democratic process is implemented. Attention is drawn to how the transition of the forefront of political life from traditional centers of its “distribution”- governments, parliaments, and municipal authorities, to the “fatherland” of the public sphere and media of varying quality has become one of the reasons for the accelerated proliferation of politics of the populist variety. The rise of media in Ukraine, where it falls under complete ownership of centers of oligarchy, provides grounds for mentioning a special type of “oligarchic democracy”, which serendipitously exploits the opportunities offered by populism. At the same time, the examples of democratic crises in other nations have become widespread enough, so that they encourage casting doubt on crucial democratic processes, including elections: electoral democracy has formally taken place, although it hasn’t fulfilled its essential function of including the citizenry in making key social decisions. Researchers assert that media is not the only source that breathes life into populist politics as a means to seize power. This carries the threat of destroying the very institutions through which the democratic form of government is realized. Transitional democracies are also subjected to the erosion of populism through problems with asserting the supremacy of law and difficulties with establishing liberal market economics, which should have been synchronized with their political transformation. Authors refer to the fact, that populism is a problem shared by governments with diverse histories of democratic life. Behind democracy always lurks the threat of false self-rule, which can lead to the rise of new authoritarian regimes under the guise of populist conservative declarations and national protectionism. Russia could become an example of this, after its wholly democratic process of voting on amendments to its national constitution, which is expected during 2020. Controversy in equal or greater measure has also surrounded the future of Great Britain after Brexit.

Judicial Integrity through the Lens of Modern Social Transformations

The most important factors of building and maintaining public confidence in the judiciary are extralegal social factors are of great for. The active development of a postmodern society poses new challenges, one of them is the "post-truth" phenomenon, that gives rise to the circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. This leads to a peculiar interpretation of the facts on social media, which doesn’t always represent the facts, but may contains their selective and non-exhaustive interpretation. Therefore, the whole traditional value system got under blow,since facts doesn’t occupy a leading position in Western democracies. The issue of spreading the post-truth in the judicial sphere, adversely affects public legal awareness and confidence in the judiciary,particularly, inciting hatred and misinformation in the media results in putting pressure on judges.Because ofthe social context and new conditions of a postmodern society, the judicial authorities and every judge nowadays must be prepared for the possible challenges related to such an environment. It seems,trere are two types of these challenges : the ones related to the integrity of the judges and those related to communication with representatives of civil society. Today integrityis associated, above all, with the virtues of the judge and the standards of ethical conduct for judges.The judge's ethical standards are enshrined in Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct and reflected in the Code of Judicial Ethics, which state that the exercise of the right of everyone to judicial protection sets high demands on the moral qualities of each judge. It seems that the judicial integrity may be regarded as a result of implementing ethical standards and principles in each judge's behaviour. Civil society's demand is high in terms of the judicial integrity, and it is particularly exacerbated in transitional democracies, during a period of active reformation processes, when many issues may be shifted from the political plane to the plane of judgement. Moreover, there is not enough today for a judge to be virtuous, because society demands openness of the court procedures, and therefore the problem of judicial communication is raised. As we can see, judicial authorities and judges are aware of the communication importance and are willing to communicate with civil society, in particular, most courts in Ukraine have developed communication strategies; active participation of courts and judges on social networking is in evidence. Keywords: post-truth, court, integrity, professional ethics of judges, judicial communication.

The subjects of civil practice as a basis for democratic transit of Ukraine

It has become an axiom in the scientific literature that any civic engagement contributes to democratic transit and the development of civil society. However, different types of this behavior may have different determinants. These may be actions motivated by civic norms and values, but may also be actions driven by financial encouragement or administrative pressure, especially in transitional democracies. The purpose of the study was to identify the impact of modernization values and orientations on different types of civic activism. The author created an indicator where among the options for the answers was offered a list of socio-political measures that were most relevant at the time of the survey. The substantive side of these activities combined the way and the object of communicating their public aspirations and interests. The most common are discussion forms of civil practices that are individualized. These practices do not require much organizational or collective effort and do not require direct interaction with political or governmental institutions. Practices that combine economic activities also have individualized traits, but they require financial costs or sample consumption, so they are less common. Socio-political practices, civic-local practices and protest-demonstration practices are even less common because they require organizational or collective efforts. Five types of civic practices of the Ukrainian population have been empirically identified and their relationship with democracy and liberal values tested. By means of multiple linear regression method, there was found that only civic practices that combine an ethical consumerism, financial donations and political discussions claim that their subjects could be considered as a social basis of Ukraine’s democratic transit. The likelihood of such actions increases with the increase of education levels, decrease of age and living in large settlements. The paradox is that people who profess values of modernization are ready to fund activists, among whom these values are not traced.

Understanding the Phenomenon of State Capture and its Manifestation in South Africa

State capture has emerged as a global threat in several countries. This paper analyses the emergence of state capture in South Africa. It seeks to understand the phenomenon of state capture and how it has manifested in South Africa. Some scholars believe that state capture has been in existence since the 18th century as a form of colonialisation. The phenomenon of state capture in South Africa was recognised at the beginning of the new millennium as an irregularity in governance, but gained contemporaneousness in the South African political arena in 2016 during the administration of former President Jacob Zuma. In this paper, state capture is discussed as an aspect of systemic political corruption, implicated in causing poor governance in transitional democracies, with the potential of aggravating developmental problems. State capture is noted as ownership of elite corruption that influences wealth, both politically and administratively. State capture in a South African context manifests itself as a form of private lobbying and influence. To understand the phenomenon of state capture thoroughly, this article deployed a qualitative research approach in the form of content analysis (document review). Following thorough discussion, the paper recommends that firms and individuals, which are found guilty of such misconduct and misappropriation, must be blacklisted and should also face criminal charges in terms of the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Act 12 of 2004.

Detached or Interventionist? Comparing the Performance of Watchdog Journalism in Transitional, Advanced and Non-democratic Countries

This study proposes the interventionist and the detached orientations to watchdog journalism through the conceptual lens of journalistic role performance. Based on a content analysis of 33,640 news stories from sixty-four media outlets in eighteen countries, we measure and compare both orientations across different countries using three performative aspects of monitoring: intensity of scrutiny, voice of the scrutiny, and source of the event. Our findings show that the interventionist approach of watchdog journalism is more likely to be found in democracies with traditionally partisan and opinion-oriented journalistic cultures or experiencing sociopolitical crises. In turn, the detached orientation predominates in democracies with journalistic traditions associated to objectivity. Although both orientations have a lower presence in transitional democracies, the detached watchdog prevails, while in non-democratic countries the watchdog role is almost absent. Our results also reveal that structural contexts of undemocratic political regimes and restricted press freedom are key definers of watchdog role performance overall. However, the type of political regime is actually more important—and in fact the most important predictor— for detached than for interventionist reporting.