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Roberto Farneti

“polarization,” understood as the division of society into two substantial groups, may be the problem. To be sure, the literature on democratization considers polarization ( p ) and fractionalization ( f ) to be alternative options. Papers listing the causes of

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Robin Rodd

The third wave of democratization crashed early this century and has been receding since. By any number of metrics, qualitative or comparative analysis, leftist or establishment perspectives, democracy appears to be in retreat ( Brown 2015

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Avery Poole

states in regard to ASEAN’s references to democracy, in the context of their domestic political circumstances. The article then examines the way in which democratization literature shapes our interpretation of ASEAN references to democracy. It also

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Democracies Across Cultures

The Hegemonic Concept of Democracy has Dissolved, What Happens Now?

Frederic Charles Schaffer and Jean-Paul Gagnon

Premise Comparative politics, as a discipline of academic inquiry, can be described as a driver for the democratization of countries or other places—usually infra-level political units such as subnational regions or cities—to achieve a more

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Socialisms in the Tsarist Borderlands

Poland and Finland in a Contrastive Comparison, 1830—1907

Wiktor Marzec and Risto Turunen

Democratization of Concepts While in retrospect one may observe the gathering of storm clouds much earlier, it was the revolutionary upsurge that caused the hurricane to burst forth. Thus, if the Revolutions of 1848 made socialism a slogan in the German

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Civil Societies and Democratization

Assumptions, Dilemmas and the South African Experience

Lorenzo Fioramonti

During the past 20 years, the term ‘civil society’ has acquired a specific space within political and social discourse. Journalists have written extensively about this term, political leaders have employed it ever more frequently, and scholarly research has been equally fascinated by the idea of civil society. Paradoxically, the notion of civil society constructed its space within socio-political research as it remained largely unexamined, especially in its relation to democracy and democratization theory. Indeed, most academic literature on democratization has assumed the democratizing power of civil society, based largely on the wake of events occurring in Eastern Europe and some parts of Africa during the late 1980s and early 1990s, rather than on firmly-grounded empirical research.

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Participation without Deliberation

The Crisis of Venezuelan Democracy

Nicole Curato

The legacy of Hugo Chavez is contentious. Some lament the deterioration of Venezuelan democracy from one of Latin America's most stable political systems to a populist authoritarian regime. Others celebrate Chavez's participatory project of institutionalizing structures for community-driven development, redistributing oil wealth through welfare policies, and creating a political party closely linked to mass movements. This article provides an alternative assessment of Venezuela's democratic quality by drawing on deliberative democratic theory. I argue that Chavez's participatory project is incomplete because it fails to create structures for deliberative politics. Without these mechanisms, Venezuela remains vulnerable to crises brought about by “uncivil action,” such as military coups and violent protests, making deliberation an important component in averting crises in democratizing polities.

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Democratization of Perpetration

Human Rights, Transitional Justice, and Memories of Resistance in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste

Amy Rothschild

This article examines the effects of human rights and transitional justice on memories of Timor-Leste’s resistance to the Indonesian occupation, which lasted from 1975 to 1999. Data comes from ethnographic fieldwork in Timor, centered around remembrance of two major acts of resistance: an armed uprising in 1983 and a peaceful demonstration in 1991. The article argues that in Timor, an “apolitical” human rights has caused a post-conflict “democratization of perpetration”, in that similar culpability is assigned to all those who caused suffering in the conflict with Indonesia through physical violence, irrespective of context. Transitional justice has thus expanded the category of perpetrator in Timor, to include some who legally used armed resistance against Indonesian rule. Studies of violence have belatedly turned toward examining perpetrators of state terror; this article examines how discourses of human rights and transitional justice shape perceptions of those who resist state terror with violence.

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Democratizing the Digital Collection

New Players and New Pedagogies in Three-Dimensional Cultural Heritage

Jane-Heloise Nancarrow

-dimensional modeling and printing challenge normative models of static museum display, conservation technology, and teaching practice. In doing so, these technologies both democratize and create new monopolies within the cultural heritage sector. New stakeholders and

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Christophe Charle

Thanks to a comparison of social and educational characteristics of elites in France, Germany and UK at the end of the nineteenth century, this contribution shows the specificities of the French case: a mixture of persistent traditional elites, akin to British and German ones, and the growing domination of a more recent economic and meritocratic bourgeoisie pushing for liberalism and democracy. Nevertheless, evolutions in the same direction as France are also perceptible in the two monarchies and give birth to a new divergence when after WWI the democratization of elites go faster in UK and Germany than in France where the law bourgeoisie remain dominant and blocks the reforms asked by more popular or petit bourgeois groups present in the political parties on the left.