Illustration by Liz Lee Offset against grey skies and the black uniform of an average Istanbulite bundled against the cold, the bright yellow and turquoise banners of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) bring a hint of the Arab Spring to Taksim Square. Occupying the symbolic heart of a vibrant, modern Turkey, Kurdish demonstrators have gathered to protest a move to ban 12 of their candidates from the Turkish general election – a ripple in an oc...
...of the lingering traces of Red Scare politics. The supposed interference of the Russian political consultant is contrasted with a comparatively uncontested belief in the American political consultant’s noble mission of sowing democracy abroad. The Russian model, nonetheless, gives much insight into the consulting business. As Andrew Wilson explained, Russian political consultants – eerily renamed “political technologists” – bring forth a style of...
Wisconsin protests from Wikimedia Commons There’s a reason that one of the most popular chants in Madison, Wisconsin during protesters’ occupation of the capitol building was “This is what democracy looks like!” Because only being able to choose between two corporate-funded, unaccountable representatives is not democracy. There’s also a reason that the Democrats lost in Wisconsin earlier this month—not that incumbent governor Scott Walker outsp...
...of the collective despair, political repression and social misery shared by the Arab majority. This shared consciousness has galvanized uprisings that demand the end of state tyranny and the introduction of transparent, open democracy (though perhaps not the liberal democratic model used in the West). Neo-Arabism is certainly not a codified dogma or theory, nor should it be—the Arabs have only seen such ideas betray them. Rather, neo-Arabism re...
...to pension reform and economic transition in Central and Eastern European states. Orenstein began his presentation with a comment on the nature of previous research done on the democratic transition of former Soviet states to democracy. Much of this body of work, he noted, has been on the participation of the European Union in its Eastern European member states. Notably absent is discussion of the influence of the Russian Federation, the former h...
As President Barack Obama put it in a November 2010 speech, the Constitution of India and the United States Constitution “begin with the same revolutionary words.” Those words, of course, are “We the People.” This may seem to be a coincidence of diction, but the rights and ideals of democracy and personal freedom enshrined in India’s 1949 constitution bear a striking resemblance to those articulated in Philadelphia. India, however, is a lonely...
...w mindset that seeks to make sense of the law or improve upon it, they would be denying the authority of the Constitution as a special document ratified by the people themselves and thus undermining the very foundation of our democracy. When I first encountered this “fixed meaning” theory in my constitutional law class, my immediate, gut response was that this seemed less like a democratic judge’s guideline for interpreting the Constitution and m...
...ollege was that it was hard to figure it out all out. CPR : What is the general premise behind TurboVote and what are you working on now? Flaxman: The big idea of TurboVote is that voting needs to start where we live for our democracy to work. You vote on a Tuesday because in the 18th century that was the most convenient day for land-owning farmers to vote, and the idea behind TurboVote is that you have to design a voting system that is easy for...
...election — during which less than 50 percent of the voting-age population participated — the collective attitude towards voting in elections has been one of frustration or sarcasm, that we are in some sense humoring American democracy by going to the voting booth, or even that voting in elections has been reduced to a sort of symbolic ritual. This attitude resonates across the public sphere, in mainstream media, and especially in grassroots foru...
...other traditions. And we don’t have to look far, because liberalism has not always been America’s dominant political philosophy. Throughout its history, the United States has been in a perpetual identity crisis about whether democracy requires an active citizenry, or whether government should operate without demanding much citizen participation. Although the Constitution does not require active citizenship — and although Americans elect represen...
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