Democratization

M. Bratton, N. Van de Walle, G. Carbone elencano il Mozambico tra i paesi che, con sucesso, hanno messo in atto il processo di transizione democratica..... La conseguenza, inversamente proporzionale, del declino del dialogo democratico é stata il "boom" insperato ed inspiegabile dell'arricchimento delle élite legate al potere.

Since the 1990s, India has faced heavy criticism for its realist approach to Burmese affairs. Geopolitical imperatives indeed drove Delhi towards a closer partnership with its military-ruled neighbour. India, however, claims it plays a key role in fostering development in Burma; therefore, consolidating long-term democratization prospects there. This article aims to challenge this view. Using the literature on development and democracy, as well as interviews with Indian policy-makers, it will explore India's recent engagement with the Burmese socioeconomic landscape, and assess its democratizing impact. It argues that, despite an evident discourse shift since cyclone Nargis in 2008, India's development and infrastructure projects remain low-key and peripheral, its education and health assistance marginal and its transnational connections with the emerging Burmese civil society absent. India's own dilemmatic approach combined with Burmese traditional resistance impedes a broader Indian leverage. Unless a more diverse socioeconomic involvement is offered by Delhi in Burma and more knowledge about its evolving polity is nurtured at home, India will neither pave the way for pluralism to grow there nor alleviate its deep-rooted image deficit there.

This dissertation studies the trends, covariates and consequences of intergenerational social mobility in post-socialist societies. The existing literature does not provide an answer if cross-national differences in social mobility levels are determined by socialist legacies or by the divergent paths these countries followed in their transition from socialist to capitalist system. In addition to the industrialisation thesis and the role of income inequality, I study the implications of political democracy and economic liberalisation for intergenerational status reproduction. Individual-level consequences of mobility are explored using the social-psychological concept of the self-serving bias in causal attribution, which implies that people are more likely to explain individual success as resulting from their own abilities and efforts. Market-based democratic systems, almost by definition, emphasise the importance of self-determination in shaping an individual’s life chances. Thus, upwardly mobile groups are expected to show greater support of unequal reward distribution. The hypotheses are tested using multivariate and multilevel statistical methods based on data from the European Values Studies and Life in Transition Survey. Although I find evidence of the decisive role of social origin in predicting educational and occupational attainment, particularly during post-socialism, cross-country variation in intergenerational social mobility can largely be explained by the institutions that were in place immediately after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The findings suggest that while strong, positive links exist between social mobility and democracy levels in Western Europe, the economic liberalisation that took place in the early 1990s is the strongest predictor of why some post-socialist states have higher social mobility rates than others; subjective perceptions of mobility have stronger implications on attitudes than the objective mobility experience; upwardly mobile individuals do in fact demonstrate more support for inequality, democracy and market economy, but the strength of these links is mediated by macro-contextual variables. 

I have read Stefano Moroni's comment on my article "Aristotle, Foucault and Progressive Phronesis" with considerable interest. The comment is a welcome opportunity to discuss the relevance to planning theory of the Aristotelian concept 'phronesis' and power. I agree with Stefano Moroni on his main point, namely that planning theory should, among other things, work with critical reflection on common values and desirable ends. And I note that Moroni's aim is not to defend any particular interpretation of Aristotelian thought as being the more faithful or coherent, Still, I find problematic, (a) Moroni's interpretation of my article and (b) Moroni's interpretation of Aristotle, phronesis and practical philosophy and their implications for planning theory.

This paper argues that the experience of aborted democratization of Algeria in 1991-92 heavily influenced political strategies and ideologies of the Islamist movements and other political actors in Tunisia and Egypt, which was particularly evident during the Arab Spring. The autocratic secular governments learned that organizing democratic elections is too risky as it could lead to Islamist victories. For the same reason, the Western powers became reluctant to support democratization in the Maghreb. This led to entrenchment of Egyptian and Tunisian autocracies. On the other hand, the Islamist movements in the region learned that they have to unambiguously accept the tenets of democracy if they plan to reach the power through the ballot box. This led to significant ideological moderation of Tunisian and Egyptian Islamist movements in comparison to their Algerian counterparts. This moderation helped these movements achieve electoral victories after the breakdown of autocratic regimes during the Arab Spring. In consequence, it would be very difficult to understand politics in the Maghreb without taking into account how the Algerian experience affected the region’s history after 1992.