Concepts of democracy in democratic and nondemocratic countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Zagrebina

Democratic experience constitutes an essential part of people’s world view and affects their understanding of democracy. This statement is confirmed by evidence from the World Values Survey (WVS) showing that the concept of democracy among citizens differs in democratic and nondemocratic societies. Democratic citizens associate democracy principally with gender equality, while people in nondemocratic countries associate it more strongly with a prospering economy and social control. People in democratic countries are also less likely to associate democracy with army rule and the intervention of religious authorities in political life than people in nondemocratic countries.

Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo

This book investigates how Thailand's judges were tasked by the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) in 2006 with helping to solve the country's intractable political problems—and what happened next. Across the last decade of Rama IX's rule, the book examines the world of Thai judges: how they were recruited, trained, and promoted, and how they were socialized into a conservative world view that emphasized the proximity between the judiciary and the monarchy. The book delves into three pivotal freedom of expression cases that illuminate Thai legal and cultural understandings of sedition and treason, before examining the ways in which accusations of disloyalty made against controversial former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra came to occupy a central place in the political life of a deeply polarized nation. The book navigates the highly contentious role of the Constitutional Court as a key player in overseeing and regulating Thailand's political order before concluding with reflections on the significance of the Bhumibol era of “judicialization” in Thailand. In the end, under a new king, who appears far less reluctant to assert his own power and authority, the Thai courts may now assume somewhat less significance as a tool of the monarchical network.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Iwan Ridwan ◽  
Aries Widiasturi ◽  
Yulianeta Yulianeta

A literary work reflects world vision of its writer, including the world of women. Pramoedya Ananta Toer participated to reveal the idealism of women’s resistance in revolution and reformation era through the characters of his story. Obtaining the world view of the writer toward women is important. This research aims to examine women’s resistance in the Revolution and Reformation era within 3 novels by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. This research uses qualitative method with content and sociological analysis model. The problems of the analysis are (1) the historic flaming in which Pramoedya Ananta Toer writes Larasati, MSBE, and PRdCM; and (2) world’s view of Pramoedya Ananta Toer toward women’s resistance in Larasati, MSBE, and PRdCM. To explain the world’s view of the writer, this research also applies Lucien Goldmann’s genetic structuralism. The objective of this research is to reveal the women’s resistance within three prominent characters who have fought in some different ways for justice in revolution and reformation era. This confirms that Pramoedya brings justice and gender equality in the world of women.


Economics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 104 (10-12) ◽  
pp. 28-40
Author(s):  
Bela Kutibashvili Bela Kutibashvili ◽  
Tariel Kikvadze Tariel Kikvadze

The article discusses gender equality as an integral part of democratic values. It is a democratic state that should be based not only on political and social, but also on the idea of gender equality, which means ensuring equal rights and responsibilities, responsibilities and equal participation in socio-political life. The 5th goal of the United Nations-Sustainable Development is to ensure gender equality in society. Therefore, the Government of Georgia is actively working to ensure economic empowerment of women and equal economic opportunities in the country by 2030 and to protect the gender balance in the decision-making process. According to global studies, female potential is the least used economic resource in the world, and a pandemic exacerbates this problem. According to world studies, globally, the rate of job losses in women due to pandemics is about 1.8 times higher than the same rate in men. The article extensively covers additional risk factors for gender equality, such as poverty, as women often do not have access to adequate nutrition, fresh air, water, doctor visits, and housing. For example, the production of textiles is one of the most important polluting industries in the world. 90% of the employees in this field are women. Similarly, in Georgia, the majority of employees in garment factories are women. Our observations show that women earn an average of 400-500 GEL per month, in return for having to work hard, working overtime, which also increases their health risks. Similar problems exist in other industry conditions. For example, the city of Rustavi, where the degree of air pollution is 3-4 times higher than the allowable norms. That is why most women complain of weak immunity, various allergic and oncological diseases. It should also be noted that in Georgia, the integration of gender issues in the development of legislative policies, laws, strategies and programs does not happen often and, unfortunately, the state puts the interest of business profit ahead of the needs of society. The UN Office in Georgia has set up an Extended Gender Thematic Group (GTG) to achieve the goals and objectives set out in the 2021-2025 Partnership Agreement, which brings together all gender contacts and works to promote gender equality and women's empowerment in the country. Keywords: Gender equality, sustainable development, cooperation agreement, women's empowerment, women's rights.


For a work written more than two thousand years ago, in a society in many ways quite alien to our own, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura contains much of striking, even startling, contemporary relevance. This is true, above all, of the fifth book, which begins by putting a strong case against what it has recently become fashionable to call 'intelligent design', and ends with an account of human evolution and the development of society in which the limitations of technological progress form a strong and occasionally explicit subtext. Along the way, the poet touches on many themes which may strike a chord with the twenty-first century reader: the fragility of our ecosystem, the corruption of political life, the futility of consumerism and the desirability of limiting our acquisitive instincts are all highly topical issues for us, as for the poem's original audience. Book V also offers a fascinating introduction to the world-view of the upper-class Roman of the first century BC. This edition (which complements existing Aris and Phillips commentaries on books 3, 4 and 6) will help to make Lucretius' urgent and impassioned argument, and something of his remarkable poetic style, accessible to a wider audience, including those with little or no knowledge of Latin. Both the translation and commentary aim to explain the scientific argument of the book as clearly as possible; and to convey at least some impression of the poetic texture of Lucretius' Latin.


Author(s):  
Douglas P Fry ◽  
Geneviève Souillac

This article focuses on what nomadic forager research suggests about human nature and examines how this ancestral form of human social organization is fundamentally partnership-oriented. Taking mobile forager social organization into consideration is important to partnership studies because all humanity lived as mobile foragers until very recently. The material considered in this article stems from 1) individual forager ethnographies, 2) qualitative comparative forager studies, and 3) research based on systematically sampled forager traits. The findings show the pervasiveness of egalitarianism (including gender equality), socialization and social control mechanism geared toward promoting prosocial behaviors such as sharing and the caring for others, conflict avoidance and resolution mechanisms, and no inclination toward warfare in values or practice. Such patterns that cut across nomadic forager societies from around the world call into question a familiar narrative about the supposedly self-centered, warlike, and hording nature of humanity. Mobile forager studies support an alternative narrative that challenges assumptions about the ‘'primitive versus civilized,’ normative progress and modernity, and biased projections of innate depravity onto all humanity. The article concludes by proposing that our nomadic forager forbearers solved the challenges of survival over evolutionary time not by making war, developing slavery, or ranking people into domination hierarchies of ‘haves’” and ‘have nots’—social institutions with which we are all too familiar today—but rather, our mobile forager ancestors promoted egalitarianism, cooperation, caring and sharing as they developed ways to resolve disputes with a minimum of bloodshed and sidestepped the development of war.


2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Göran Gunner

Authors from the Christian Right in the USA situate the September 11 attack on New York and Washington within God's intentions to bring America into the divine schedule for the end of the world. This is true of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and other leading figures in the ‘Christian Coalition’. This article analyses how Christian fundamentalists assess the roles of the USA, the State of Israel, Islam, Iraq, the European Union and Russia within what they perceive to be the divine plan for the future of the world, especially against the background of ‘9/11’. It argues that the ideas of the Christian Right and of President George W. Bush coalesce to a high degree. Whereas before 9/11 many American mega-church preachers had aspirations to direct political life, after the events of that day the President assumes some of the roles of a mega-religious leader.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-164
Author(s):  
Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn

Freedom and life satisfaction are desirable conditions and they both have a special meaning in Eastern Europe — transition was largely about gaining freedom and ultimately overall wellbeing. There are several studies about the effect of freedom on life satisfaction, but none of them focuses on Eastern Europe. I investigate the effect of self-reported freedom on life satisfaction in post-transition Eastern Europe using the World Values Survey. Surprisingly, East Europeans feel less free and less satisfied with their lives than other nationals. But a personal feeling of freedom increases their life satisfaction at a higher rate than in other countries. Freedom is a strong predictor of life satisfaction as compared to national income.


1970 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-214
Author(s):  
Mahmud Arif

In general, we know about Egypt very well, because of all this time, Egypt, especially Kairo, has been viewed as one of the centers of Islamic thought in the world. Naturally this country had a lot of Islamic thinkers, like Mahmud Syaltut (d. 1963) that has become the Rector of al-Azhar University. The influence of his thought overstepped the bounds of time and political territory. The Islamic jurisprudence is an inseparable legal thought from the fulfillment of social demands. One of the evidences is its’ response to actual issues, like gender equality represented in his opinions about domestical duty, women testimony, girl marriage, and poligamy. As a thinker in the Islamic jurisprudence, Syaltut has endeavored to respond such issues, including gender. As a reformer in the turbulent time, his reflection on such matters expressed critical preference, so frequently looked different from the prevalent opinion. In one side, his reflection was “liberal” because of his bravery in stepping beyond the Islamic orthodoxy and the modernity, but in another side, his thought was “conservative”if it was viewed from his endorsement to the old Islamic thought that reflected a gender bias. This showed the uniqueness and the ambivalence of his thought, so very interesting to being studied.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-63
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Niewiadomska-Cudak

Summary The article treats not only about the struggle of women to obtain voting rights. It is an attempt to answer the question as to why only so few women are in national parliaments. The most important matter of the countries in the world is to confront stereotypical perception of the roles of women and men in a society. It is necessary to promote gender equality in the world of politics.


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