Tolerance of Civil Liberties in a New Democracy

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 313-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Marsh

AbstractHow tolerant of the civil liberties of people who advocated various unpopular political stances were the citizens of Taiwan, a new democracy in the late 1980s? Are the reasons some Taiwanese were more tolerant than others the same as in other societies? A 1992 survey of a representative sample of the population of Taiwan (N = 1,408) is used to answer these questions. Of the four political stances studied, communism and Taiwan's independence from China were perceived as "more harmful to Taiwan" than the immediate unification of Taiwan with China and the restoration of martial law.Of the hypotheses tested in multivariate analysis, two were largely confirmed: (1) the more one subscribes to the value of democracy as the correct political system for Taiwan, the more tolerant one is of the civil liberties of the "harmful" target groups, but (2) the greater the perceived threat of the harmful political stance, the more intolerant one is of the civil liberties of those advocating the stance. The remaining hypotheses concern the effects of sex, age, ethnicity, education, occupation and income on tolerance.I contextualize the theoretical causal model by reviewing the political history of Taiwan as it changed from an authoritarian one-party state into a democracy. In conclusion, I suggest that the reason the level of intolerance in Taiwan in 1992 has not lead to a diminution of democracy and civil rights between 1992 and the present may be due to "pluralistic intolerance," i.e., the public does not agree on which group to target for intolerance.

2021 ◽  
pp. 002234332098421
Author(s):  
Sam Whitt

This study considers how ethnic trust and minority status can impact the ability of ethnic groups to pursue cooperative public goods, focusing on groups with a history of conflict and lingering hostility. A public good experiment between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in postwar Kosovo reveals that subjects contribute far more to a mutually beneficial public good when they are part of an experimentally induced coethnic majority. However, when in the minority, subjects not only underinvest, but many actively divest entirely, privatizing the public good. Majority/minority status also has wide-ranging implications for how individuals relate to real-world public goods and the institutions of government that provide them. Compared to majority Albanians, survey data indicate how minority Serbs in Kosovo express greater safety and security concerns, feel more politically, socially, and economically excluded, are more dissatisfied with civil liberties and human rights protections, and are less likely to participate politically or pay taxes to support public goods. Conflict-related victimization and distrust of out-groups are strong predictors of these minority group attitudes and behaviors. This suggests a mechanism for how conflict amplifies out-group distrust, increasing parochial bias in public good commitments, especially among minorities who are wary of exploitation at the hands of an out-group majority. To restore trust, this study finds that institutional trust and intergroup contact are important to bridging ethnic divides that inhibit public good cooperation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1099-1112
Author(s):  
Mehrdad Soleiman Fallah ◽  
Abdolvahid Zahedi

Purpose: This study aims to analyze political crime in the Iranian penal system and the place of civil, constitutional freedoms in the criminalization of political crime. Methodology: In this study, we have tried to study articles and related research in this field and analyze the results of each to make a proper conclusion about the relationship between the Iranian systems in dealing with political crimes. Therefore, the only tools used in this study are documents related to political crimes at the international level. Main findings: Political Crime Law enacted in 2016, despite the basic forms of extensive discretion and lack of specific criteria for the judicial authority in determining whether a crime is political or non-political, practically made this law ineffective, regardless of the problems mentioned. Application of the study: Since the commencement of the country, political wrongdoing has been viewed as wrongdoing against the public authority. Therefore, the results of this study can be very effective in improving the performance of governments in preventing possible crimes against governments. Novelty/Originality: Given the multiplicity of political crimes in our country, as well as the complexities involved in the case of political crimes, it seems that in the history of our criminal law, there has been a will to legislate and determine the exact causes of political crime, and governments in most historical periods, they have made great efforts to identify political criminals. The novelty of this research lies in investigating the effect of political crimes on legal confusion in legislating political offenses.


2021 ◽  
pp. 88-108
Author(s):  
Marie Brossier

Senegal has a history of representative politics dating from the nineteenth century, and has experienced political stability since independence in 1960. Progressive political liberalization since the 1980s has occurred without coups or national conferences, making the country an outlier in the region. However, despite two peaceful transitions of power in 2000 and 2012, Senegal’s politics have also been continuously marred by autocratic behavior and periodic limitations on civil liberties. As such, Senegal remains a “patrimonial democracy.” The country’s social and generational inequalities have been exacerbated by mismanagement of resource reallocation by the state, as well as by its dependence on international aid and remittances. The worrisome socioeconomic situation has sparked migration but also bolstered the engagement of younger generations, with social movements increasingly active in the public arena and more women participating in politics. In addition, religious diversification and greater religious pluralism have increasingly challenged the historically central role of Islam, and especially the Sufi orders, in politics.


Author(s):  
Alexander Joel Eastman

Dozens of newspapers written and edited by people of color flourished in the last decades of the nineteenth century in Cuba. Through an analysis of black press periodicals representative of the main political tendencies between 1879 and 1886 this article examines the economic and socio-political contexts in which the black press operated and demonstrates how Cubans of color successfully carved out a space in the market of newspaper consumption. By examining the economic forces determining circulation and readership of these periodicals, it argues that black Cubans actively negotiated the public spheres of journalism and the marketplace, becoming empowered consumers and creators of information and economic value. This article foreground debates within the black press in order to analyze the history of the Cuban civil rights movement through the perspectives of people of color and to destabilize the notion of black political homogeneity. Black journalists and leaders with national and royalist affiliations vied for political positioning and debated over how to represent the people and the struggles of the raza de color.


Author(s):  
Andrew Denson

The 1830s forced removal of Cherokees from their southeastern homeland became the most famous event in the Indian history of the American South, an episode taken to exemplify a broader experience of injustice suffered by Native peoples. In this book, Andrew Denson explores the public memory of Cherokee removal through an examination of memorials, historic sites, and tourist attractions dating from the early twentieth century to the present. White southerners, Denson argues, embraced the Trail of Tears as a story of Indian disappearance. Commemorating Cherokee removal affirmed white possession of southern places, while granting them the moral satisfaction of acknowledging past wrongs. During segregation and the struggle over black civil rights, removal memorials reinforced whites' authority to define the South's past and present. Cherokees, however, proved capable of repossessing the removal memory, using it for their own purposes during a time of crucial transformation in tribal politics and U.S. Indian policy. In considering these representations of removal, Denson brings commemoration of the Indian past into the broader discussion of race and memory in the South.


Author(s):  
Mark Rush

This article discusses the evolution of U.S. civil rights and civil liberties through the lens of Supreme Court decisions. It traces the evolution of negative rights against the state and positive liberties from nineteenth-century property rights decisions through early-twenty-first century decisions regarding same-sex marriage. It also traces the shift in the Court’s approach to rights cases from one in which the state is regarded as a threat to individual rights to one in which the state plays a complex role of balancing rights claims. As well, the article demonstrates that rights claims and cases have become more complex as notions of the “public interest” become more contested when the pursuit of general interests has a disproportionate effect on the interests of particular social groups.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-91
Author(s):  
Maskuri Maskuri

In the history of Indonesian, education policy has always been dynamic. Before independence until the reform era of education policy can not be separated from the political system. We know that education policy as part of education policy is a political product. Political configuration in every era of state political leadership has always changed according to the political wind and the configuration of political rulers. However, forces outside the governance system, such as educational community groups, will give color to the education system. When the political system demands the centralization of power, the education system will also concentrate on a centralized government. With the flow of reforms, it has spawned many changes in the education system. Several articles, even the law which, according to the public, lack attention to the aspect of education itself, are sued to the Constitutional Court. Along with the policy of regional autonomy, education policy must be able to adjust to the development of society in autonomous regions. This necessarily requires the creativity of leaders in the region in terms of promoting education in the region in accordance with the aspirations of the community.


1988 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Klöti

WHEN SWISS CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS SPECIAL ISSUE LIMIT themselves to the presentation of a picture of modern Switzerland and leave it to the public to decide whether they want to learn something from the Swiss experience, two problems remain unsolved. First, in Switzerland we have neglected to some extent the analysis of the structures and the processes of the political system. We know more about the history of our political institutions than we do about their actual functioning. Normative theory is better developed than empirical research. This leads to the second problem: as many questions concerning the mechanics of the system are not answered in a sufficiently clear way, interpretations of the Confederatia Helvetica differ considerably between various analysts.


Author(s):  
Kristina Mani

The Honduran military has a long history of established roles oriented toward both external defense and internal security and civic action. Since the end of military rule in 1982, the military has remained a key political, economic, and social actor. Politically, the military retains a constitutional mandate as guarantor of the political system and enforcer of electoral rules. Economically, its officers direct state enterprises and manage a massive pension fund obscured from public audit. Socially, the military takes on numerous civic action tasks—building infrastructure, conserving forests, providing healthcare, and policing crime—that make the state appear to be useful to its people and bring the military into direct contact with the public almost daily. As a result, the military has ranked high in public trust in comparison with other institutions of the state. Most significantly, the military has retained the role of arbiter in the Honduran political system. This became brutally clear in the coup of 2009 that removed the elected president, Manuel Zelaya. Although new rules enhancing civilian control of the military had been instituted during the 1990s, the military’s authority in politics was restored through the coup that ousted Zelaya. As no civilian politician can succeed without support for and from the military, the missions of the armed forces have expanded substantially so that the military is an “all-purpose” institution within a remarkably weak and increasingly corrupt state.


Author(s):  
Lane Windham

The power of unions in workers’ lives and in the American political system has declined dramatically since the 1970s. In recent years, many have argued that the crisis took root when unions stopped reaching out to workers and workers turned away from unions. But here Lane Windham tells a different story. Highlighting the integral, often-overlooked contributions of women, people of color, young workers, and southerners, Windham reveals how in the 1970s workers combined old working-class tools--like unions and labor law--with legislative gains from the civil and women’s rights movements to help shore up their prospects. Through close-up studies of workers' campaigns in shipbuilding, textiles, retail, and service, Windham overturns widely held myths about labor’s decline, showing instead how employers united to manipulate weak labor law and quash a new wave of worker organizing. Recounting how employees attempted to unionize against overwhelming opposition from bosses and corporations, Knocking on Labor's Door dramatically refashions the narrative of labor and politics during a crucial decade and remaps the recent history of the American workplace. Windham's story inspires both hope and indignation, and will become a must-read in labor, civil rights, and women’s history.


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