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19481. Democracy 'with Adjectives': Conceptual Innovations in Comparative Research

Author:
David Collier and Steven Levitsky
Publication Date:
08-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The recent trend toward democratization in countries throughout the globe has challenged scholars to pursue two potentially contradictory goals: to develop a differentiated conceptualization of democracy that captures the diverse experiences of these countries; and to extend the analysis to this broad range of cases without 'stretching' the concept. This paper argues that this dual challenge has led to a proliferation of conceptual innovations, including hundreds of subtypes of democracy-i.e., democracy 'with adjectives.' The paper explores the strengths and weaknesses of three important strategies of innovation that have emerged: 'precising' the definition of democracy; shifting the overarching concept with which democracy is associated; and generating various forms of subtypes. Given the complex structure of meaning produced by these strategies for refining the concept of democracy, we conclude by offering an old piece of advice with renewed urgency: It is imperative that scholars situate themselves in relation to this structure of meaning by clearly defining and explicating the conception of democracy they are employing.
Topic:
Globalization, Politics, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

19482. A New Discipline: Development Ethics

Author:
Denis Goulet
Publication Date:
08-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
'Development' has long been equated with modernization and Westernization and studied as a straightforward economic issue. The discipline of economics has been the main source of policy prescription for development decisionmakers. This view is now widely criticized as ethnocentric and as economically reductionist. Change is occurring: economics itself is reintegrating ethics into its conceptualization, methodology, and analysis; a new paradigm of development is in gestation; and a new discipline, development ethics, has come into being. Development ethics centers its study of development on the value questions posed: What is the relation between having goods and being good in the pursuit of the good life; what are the foundations of a just society; and what stance should societies adopt toward nature? The new discipline emerges from two sources, which are now converging: from engagement in development action to the formulation of ethical theory, and from a critique of mainstream ethical theory to the crafting of normative strategies to guide development practice. Development ethics has a dual mission: to render the economy more human and to keep hope alive in the face of the seeming impossibility of achieving human development for all.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Ethics, Economic Growth, and Modernization
Political Geography:
Global Focus

19483. Mexico's Auto Industry after NAFTA: A Successful Experience in Restructuring?

Author:
Juan Carlos Moreno Brid
Publication Date:
08-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Mexico's motor vehicle sector is viewed as a most successful case in industrial restructuring. In the mid-70s it was an industry characterized by outdated machinery and incapable of competing in the international market. Today its manufacturing plants are competing worldwide in automotive production, exporting more than a million engines and 400,000 vehicles a year. This transformation is explained by changes in Mexico's positioning within the automobile global market as well as by the policies applied by the Mexican government to regulate vehicle production, imports, and sale in the country. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is changing the institutional framework of the Mexican economy and radically liberalizing its highly protected domestic automotive market. In this study we examine the evolution of Mexico's automotive sector in the last fifteen years and the various factors contributing to its transformation. The first section reviews Mexico's overall economic strategy and trade policy. The second focuses on the regulation of vehicle and auto parts production in Mexico. Clearly, trade restrictions have been very important for the development of Mexico's automotive sector. The third section deals with the performance of the Mexican automotive industry up to 1993, before NAFTA was put into effect. It is followed by some comments on the changes that NAFTA is already bringing about. In the final section, we present our view on the industry's outlook.
Topic:
Development, Labor Issues, Economic Growth, NAFTA, and Automotive Industry
Political Geography:
Central America, North America, and Mexico

19484. Accountability for Past Abuses

Author:
Juan E. Méndez
Publication Date:
09-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The transitions to democracy in the 1980s have yielded a wealth of experience regarding the way societies reckon with a recent past of massive human rights violations. This paper looks at the most influential literature produced contemporaneously with those experiences and analyzes its current validity in the light of new contexts in which the issue arises. The author places emphasis first and foremost on the duties that the State owes to the victims of human rights violations and to society and then looks at the objective limitations that most transitions place on governments' ability to satisfy demands for truth and justice. These duties are part of an emerging rule of international law that demands that certain crimes should not go unpunished. But the obligations of the State to the victims and to society are varied and not dependent on each other; even if prosecution and punishment are rendered legally or politically impossible, the duties to disclose all that can be established about each violation, to offer reparations, and to dismiss the culprits from the armed and security forces remain fully in force.
Topic:
Democratization, Human Rights, Social Movement, Democracy, and Public Policy
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, South America, Central America, and Caribbean

19485. Ethnicity and Identity in the Caribbean: Decentering a Myth

Author:
Ralph R. Premdas
Publication Date:
12-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This discussion of a Caribbean identity begins by embarking on a discourse about where and what is the Caribbean, followed by some brief remarks about the need for identity. The author presents an analytic scheme for understanding the construction of Caribbean identities. In the larger body of the paper that follows next, he examines individually the constituent elements that have featured in the formation of claims to a Caribbean identity at all levels of its expression and shows how difficult it is to maintain the arguments that are made for them. Finally, the paper offers a topology of identities that best describe the Caribbean situation.
Topic:
Democratization, Social Movement, Ethnicity, and Identity
Political Geography:
Central America and Caribbean

19486. International Conferences: Considerations on the Evolution of the French and American Industrial Societies

Author:
Monique Borrel, Stephen Bornstein, Pierre-Eric Tixier, Chris Benner, Julia E. Kopich, and W. Norton Grubb
Publication Date:
02-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
From the beginning of the industrial era to the present time, French social history has been characterized by recurrent strikes of great magnitude. Contrary to most postwar industrialized countries where large strikes ceased to play a key role in sociopolitical changes, the French case presents an important anomaly. This research demonstrates that strikes have been instrumental in reshaping French society since the early 1950s. First, strike waves and generalized disputes supported the rapid expansion of the Welfare State throughout the postwar period. They also prompted leftist parties and unions to achieve coordination in their strategies and to orchestrate national demonstration strikes, which resulted in the emergence of a leftist electoral majority. Besides, the 1968 strike waves and the leftist strategy to achieve political power supported the upward trend in unionization in the 1970s. Beginning in the early 1980s, this French pattern of strikes has resulted in a number of perverse effects that account for the crisis of the mid1990s. In that respect, the French experience supports the idea that advanced industrial societies cannot afford recurrent general strikes without damaging the very fabric of democracy and without jeopardizing their economic future.
Topic:
Education and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
America, Europe, and France

19487. Co-Sponsored Projects: Transformation of German Party System

Author:
Wolfgang Seibel, Christopher S. Allen, Hans-Georg Betz, Henry Kreikenbaum, John Leslie, Andrei S. Markovitz, Ann L. Phillips, and Michaela W. Richter
Publication Date:
03-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
According to West German standards, there is only a weak nonprofit sector in East Germany today. The East German quasi-nonprofit sector nonetheless is an indispensable institutional ingredient of political integration. It is characterized by an amazing degree of structural and ideological continuity. Much of its organizational setting dates back to the pre-1989 era. Both funding and managerial attitudes are shaped by state-centeredness. Nonprofit institutions are heavily engaged in mitigating the social costs of economic transformation. Many of them, especially at the local level, are controlled by members of the former-communist PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism). Thus, the East German quasinonprofit sector presumably integrates two important societal groups more effectively than the regular polity: those alienated from the new democracy due to economic disappointment or deprivation and those alienated from the new democracy due to ideological reasons (former communists in particular). This indicates a remarkable institutional elasticity whose main function is to "synchronize" the dramatically accelerated pace of political change and the much slower pace of societal change.
Topic:
Cold War and Democratization
Political Geography:
Europe

19488. Co-Sponsored Projects: Germany's Role In Shaping the New Europe: Architect, Model and Bridge

Author:
Daniel N. Nelson, Andrei S. Markovits, Thomas Banchoff, Patricia A. Davis, Christian Deubner, Lily Gardner Feldman, JoEllyn Murillo Fountain, Stefan Immerfall, Michael Kreile, Carl Lankowski, Barbara Lippert, Susanne Peters, Elke Thiel, and Wolfgang Wessels
Publication Date:
04-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
This paper seeks to explain the continuity in German policy in Europe across the 1990 divide. Although the collapse of the Soviet bloc and reunification transformed the context of German foreign policy, its fundamental direction remained unchanged. The new Germany, like the old, made solidarity with the western allies the cornerstone of its policy in Europe. Chancellor Helmut Kohl did address new policy challenges in the East. But he made stronger western institutions, and a deeper European Union in particular, his top priorities. Neorealism and neoliberalism, this paper argues, cannot adequately explain the strong western orientation of the Federal Republic in the early 1990s. The constellation of power and institutions at the international level left German leaders with different ways to combine association with the West and engagement in the East. In order to explain the priority accorded solidarity with the West, it is necessary to bring in the foreign policy priorities espoused by Kohl and the views of history and its lessons that informed them.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and Diplomacy
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

19489. Discourse Analysis as Foreign Policy Theory

Author:
Ole Wæver
Publication Date:
11-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC)
Abstract:
Where is Germany heading? So we have been asking ourselves since the wall fell. We had been reasonably calmed down: they were apparently not out for new adventures of their own. No Eastward going it alone -- neither in Eastern Europe, nor with the Russians. Nor any autonomous power politics. On the contrary, Germany has primarily made itself noticed in global politics through its continued restraint, from half-hearted support in the Gulf War to qualms over participation in UN operations.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Government
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Germany

19490. Supranational Governance: The Institutionalization of the European Union

Author:
Wayne Sandholtz and Alec Stone Sweet
Publication Date:
11-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC)
Abstract:
We posit a continuum of modes of governance, anchored at the poles by intergovernmental and supranational politics. Movement from intergovernmental politics toward the supranational pole implies the increasing importance of three factors in EU policymaking: EU rules, EU organizations, and transnational society. We propose that an increase in one of the three factors creates conditions that favor growth in the other two. We also offer a theory as to what drives initial movement toward supranational governance: increasing levels of cross-border transactions and communications by societal actors will increase the perceived need for European-level rules, coordination, and dispute resolution mechanisms. The theory provides a coherent answer to the question of why integration proceeds faster in some domains than in others. We expect movement toward supranational governance in sectors where the intensity and value of cross-border transactions is rising.
Topic:
Government and International Organization
Political Geography:
Europe