Democracy and Social Power - a Question of Interpretation?

Academia Letters, 2021

This journal introduces the concept of social capital as a valuable social resource that will be accumulated and developed through organizational activities in society: through reciprocal relationships as well as through relationships with political power. Society, as an institutional actor of political participation has a relationship with social capital, which largely improves political, economic, and cultural conditions. Community strengthening and development has a positive impact on strengthening and developing social capital and vice versa. On the other hand, social capital also lays a solid foundation and foundation for the growth and strengthening of society, thereby increasing citizen awareness of political participation which is an integral element of democratic development. By describing norms, networks and trust, as well as by bonding and bridging social capital, this paper will describe the subject of social capital that is "used" by the collaboration of citizens and stakeholders, thereby contributing to the development of democracy. The growing stability of social capital facilitates the development of political participation and enhances the development of democracy.

DEFENDOLOGIJA, 2014

This paper introduces the concept of social capital as a valuable social resource which is accumulated and developed via activities of civil society organizations: through reciprocal relationships as well as through relations with the domain of political power. Civil society, as the institutional actor of political participation, is in a relationship with social capital, which, to a great extent, improves the political, economic and cultural aspects of societies-those with consolidated democracy and institutions, as well as post communist societies with nonconsolidated democracy. Strengthening and development of civil society has a positive impact on the strengthening and development of social capital and vice versa. On the other hand, social capital lays a solid foundation and a base for the growth and strengthening of civil society, thus raising citizens' awareness about political participation which is an indispensable ingredient of the development of democracy. By depicting norms, networking and trust, as well as by distinguishing bonding from bridging social capital, this paper is going to portray the subject matter of social capital which is "utilized" by the citizens' and stakeholders' effi cient collaboration, thus contributing to democratic development. The stability of developed social capital facilitates the development of political participation and enhances democratic development.

2007

The Asian Barometer (ABS) is an applied research program on public opinion on political values, democracy, and governance around the region. The regional network encompasses research teams from twelve East Asian political systems (

The Crisis of Democratic Governance in Southeast Asia, 2011

The contributors to this edited collection analyze various aspects of democratic governance. The volume is organized into three thematic sections, each of which deals with different aspects of democratic governance in the region. The first section examines political culture, civil society, and democracy. The second part offers comparative analyses of institutional design systems of political representation. The third section centres on aspects of political performance and governance such as human rights performance, security sector governance, and the external as well as internal 'peacefulness' of the political regimes in Southeast Asia. The final chapter connects the insights derived from individual chapters and presents a comparative assessment of political performance and governance in democratic and non-democratic regimes in the region. Furthermore, it provides a comparative analysis of factors that are conducive or obstructive to future democratic change and democratic stability in Southeast Asia.

Center For the Study of Democracy, 2008

In fact, both views hold true. They do because they reflect fundamentally different conceptions of democracy. During the explosion of democracy that took place from 1989 to 1992 (which we will refer to as the Third Wave of democratization), electoral democracy spread rapidly throughout the world and it is clear that strategic elite agreements were a driving factor in this process--facilitated by an international environment in which the end of the Cold War reshaped the incentive structure in favor of democratic regimes. Accordingly, the correlation between standard measures of democracy and key indicators of societal development is relatively weak, when we use narrow measures that focus on nominal democracy-but it becomes much stronger when we use broader measures that focus on effective democracy. Thus, when one uses the Polity Project's "autocracy-democracy index" as a measure of democracy, the Human Development Index 6 explains only 35 percent of the cross-national variation in levels of democracy (N=114). Using the Freedom House measure of democracy, which takes civil liberties into account, the Human Development Index explains a larger share of the variance-41%. 7 But both of these linkages became considerably weaker if we use measures of democracy made after the climax of the global democratization wave (i.e., over 2000-04) instead of before it (i.e., over 1984-88): the variation in levels of democracy explained by the Human Development Index fell from 41 to 30 percent when we measure democracy with the Freedom House data, and from 35 to 18 percent when we use the Polity data. With the global diffusion of nominal democracy, formal democratic institutions were adopted even in poor societies, weakening the development-democracy link.

2013

Shortly after it was approached by the Democracy and Social Movements Institute (DaSMI) of Sungkonghoe University in August 2010 to conduct the Asian Democracy Index (ADI) project in the Philippines, the University of the Philippines Third World Studies Center (TWSC) found itself—in keeping with its orientation as a critical social science research center— questioning the fundamentals of the ADI initiative. What exactly was “Asian” democracy? With the project’s quantitative-qualitative approach to measuring Asian democracy, how would consolidation/aggregation issues cropping up from the diversity of data be addressed? How was this ADI different from similarly named democracy indices?1 These issues were tackled in discussions over the next few months until June 2011, bringing the ADI project closer to what it aims to be—a means of comprehending, thereafter prognosticating the state of Asian democratization. The Consortium for the Asian Democracy Index (CADI) defines democratization a...

2019

Making democracy the central point, Jamie Davidson's book Indonesia: Twenty Years of Democracy (Elements in Politics and Society in Southeast Asia) considers the impact of regime change that has affected the "super diverse country" of Indonesia, which consists of 17,000 islands and is home to 300 ethnic groups, among whom more than 700 languages are spoken (p. 5). The author argues that, amidst comparative perspective in regard to the country's accomplishments, Indonesia's amazing performance in the recent elections after twenty years of democratisation has set a new trend for its neighbors. However, inspecting the political regime, economy, and the emergence of identitybased mobilisations, the author claims that Indonesia is still coping with several challenges that could potentially harm many of the democratic gains the country has achieved since the forced resignation of Soeharto on May 21, 1998.

Wolff, Jonas: Power in Democracy Promotion, in: Alternatives 40: 3-4, 219-236., 2015

The international promotion of democracy is about power, but the scholarship on this issue offers little systematic attention to the role and relevance that power might have in this context. This article critically discusses the literature that does explicitly deal with power in democracy promotion and proposes a multidimensional perspective as a way to improve our understanding of the international politics of democracy promotion. First, the typology of power proposed by Barnett and Duvall is applied to systematically conceptualize the power dimension of democracy promotion. Second, the article revisits the two main attempts to theoretically grasp the role and relevance of power in democracy promotion that draw on the Realist concept of relative power and the neo-Gramscian theory of hegemony, respectively. In both cases, the article argues, a multidimensional concept of power is analytically useful, as it enables an understanding of the complex nature of democracy promotion that goes beyond interstate relations and includes the attempt to change the very constitution of the recipient or target country from within. Jonas Wolff, Powr in Democracy Promotion, in: Alternatives 40: 3-4, 219-236. doi: 10.1177/0304375415612269

This paper explores the relationship between political power and democracy. It was published Social Research 77, 4: 1049-1074.

South Asia is in pace with the global trend of boundless admiration for democracy. This article opposes the realization of democracy only in a sense of holding free and fair election in a regular interval and suggests an elaborated version, which is liberal democracy. Disagreeing with the predominantly pessimistic view, this article highlights some encouraging practices which have taken place in the new century, and argues that electoral democracy is going to be a norm in the coming days in the South Asian region. Besides, this article attempts to identify the impediments to flourishing a liberal democracy. In the end, the article proposes few remedies which could pave the ways to liberal democracy.