Banning Parties: Religious and Ethnic Partisanship in Multicultural Democracies

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Rosenblum
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
The World ◽  
Countervailing Power

One under-theorized aspect of "multiculturalism and the antidiscrimination principle" is religious and ethnicity based political parties. With political organization, the fact of pluralism is made concrete for democratic purposes. When the struggle for empowerment is "waged within the world of democratic politics" it is waged through parties. That is the associational form modern democracies have settled on for participation, representation, and governing, and for countervailing power and regular opposition. Particularist parties and bloc voting are key instruments of political conflict and, as important, of political integration. This Paper looks at the challenges these parties pose to democracy; specifically, at the principal reasons given for banning parties from participation in electoral politics. I identify four categories of justification for disqualification: violent overthrow, incitement to hate, altering the character of the nation, and outside support or control. This is a preliminary to setting out regulative principles of "defensive democracy."

Partisan Attachment and Democracy in Mexico: Some Cautionary Observations

2010 ◽  
Vol 52 (01) ◽  
pp. 63-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Xavier Medina Vidal ◽  
Antonio Ugues ◽  
Shaun Bowler ◽  
Jonathan Hiskey
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Positive Sign ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Emerging Democracies ◽  
Democratic Development

AbstractParty identification is a central concept in studies of parties and elections. Drawing from an extensive literature linking the concept of party identification to the understanding of Mexico's electoral politics, this article explores how the Mexican experience informs the understanding of party identification in general, especially in emerging democracies. There, voters' attachments to political parties are usually seen both as essential to and a positive sign of democratic development. This study finds evidence consistent with these arguments in the Mexican case but also identifies aspects of Mexican party identification that are not so clearly supportive of democratic politics; that indeed may delay or even undermine democratization. These findings illustrate the relevance of the Mexican experience to the wider literature on parties and elections, particularly the well-documented relationship between party identifications and democratization.

Vertically Disconnected

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 54-77
Author(s):  
Jennifer Epley ◽  
Eunsook Jung
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Political Affiliation ◽  
Muslim Country ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
The World ◽  
Islamic Parties ◽  
Islamic Political Parties ◽  
Over Time

Although Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, secular political parties have been more successful than Islamic parties in the last four legislative elections since the country democratised in 1998. Why have Islamic parties been unable to dominate Indonesian electoral politics? This article argues that the underperformance of Islamic parties is because Islam itself is not a sufficient variable for political affiliation. Instead, we must analyse interactions among voters, Muslim civil society and Islamic political parties. The disconnection and fragmentation of linkages between these three levels explain electoral weaknesses over time. Original fieldwork research and survey data provide strong evidence for this argument.

Mammai Mataji

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-126
Author(s):  
Peter Maddock
Keyword(s):  
Social Values ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Western India ◽  
Right Action ◽  
Great Goddess ◽  
The World ◽  
Feminine Divine

The theological and sociological implications associated with the existence (or non-existence) of ancient Great Goddess religions have been hotly debated for more than half a century, even prior the rise of recognizable feminist approaches to Archaeology and Religious Studies. This rare, if not unique, ethnographic account of such a theology as practised today is therefore a significant intervention, hopefully putting some clothes on otherwise naked speculation. The Sorathiya Rabari pastoralists of Saurastra, western India, hold Mammai Mataji as their Godhead. Mammai Dharma (religion) provides their path to salvation and a guide to right action in the world. It is a vital ingredient of Sorathiya Rabari identity and offers a structure for intra-caste political organization. Like most other Hindus, Rabari social values are unambiguously patriarchal, so how this coexists with belief in an omnipotent feminine Divine is explored throughout the article.

Dilemmas of Inclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafaela M. Dancygier
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Political Incorporation ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Equality And Diversity

As Europe's Muslim communities continue to grow, so does their impact on electoral politics and the potential for inclusion dilemmas. In vote-rich enclaves, Muslim views on religion, tradition, and gender roles can deviate sharply from those of the majority electorate, generating severe trade-offs for parties seeking to broaden their coalitions. This book explains when and why European political parties include Muslim candidates and voters, revealing that the ways in which parties recruit this new electorate can have lasting consequences. The book sheds new light on when minority recruitment will match up with existing party positions and uphold electoral alignments and when it will undermine party brands and shake up party systems. It demonstrates that when parties are seduced by the quick delivery of ethno-religious bloc votes, they undercut their ideological coherence, fail to establish programmatic linkages with Muslim voters, and miss their opportunity to build cross-ethnic, class-based coalitions. The book highlights how the politics of minority inclusion can become a testing ground for parties, showing just how far their commitments to equality and diversity will take them when push comes to electoral shove. Providing a unified theoretical framework for understanding the causes and consequences of minority political incorporation, and especially as these pertain to European Muslim populations, the book advances our knowledge about how ethnic and religious diversity reshapes domestic politics in today's democracies.

Our universities away from partisan Altsarat

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
أ.د.عبد الجبار احمد عبد الله
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Moral Duty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Office ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
The University

In order to codify the political and partisan activity in Iraq, after a difficult labor, the Political Parties Law No. (36) for the year 2015 started and this is positive because it is not normal for the political parties and forces in Iraq to continue without a legal framework. Article (24) / paragraph (5) of the law requires that the party and its members commit themselves to the following: (To preserve the neutrality of the public office and public institutions and not to exploit it for the gains of a party or political organization). This is considered because it is illegal to exploit State institutions for partisan purposes . It is a moral duty before the politician not to exploit the political parties or some of its members or those who try to speak on their behalf directly or indirectly to achieve partisan gains. Or personality against other personalities and parties at the expense of the university entity.

Will the Time of Growth and Development of the Young Republic of South Sudan Come?

2018 ◽  
pp. 91-110
Author(s):  
Tatiana Kochanova
Keyword(s):  
Growth And Development ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
The South ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Independent State ◽  
South Sudanese ◽  
The World ◽  
National Resource

Тhe subject of this study is the young Republic of South Sudan (RSS), the “young” – both in terms of the age of an independent state, and in terms of its demographic potential. RSS, as a member of the United Nations and as a sovereign state, appeared on the world map in 2011, but, possessing super-rich natural resources, has not yet gained sustainable development, moreover, it fell into a deep military-political crisis. Like most countries of the African continent, South Sudan had real demographic capacity, but the authorities were unable to extract any “demographic dividends” from the truly main national resource for the development of the country’s economy, moreover, the number of refugees of young working age is constantly growing. Through the example of South Sudan, which so hard achieved separation of the South from the North and failed to take advantage of the conquered democratic values, the article explores the understudied problem of modification of the consciousness of the younger generation, dictated both by the specifics of the deep historical and cultural tradition of the South Sudanese nationalities and by new trends in global evolutionary processes. Studying the stories from the lives of multi-member families affected during the military-political conflict in the RSS, the author, based on the facts, strongly criticizes the ineffective, even often vicious, youth policy of the South Sudanese government. On the other hand, analyzing the origins, nature, basic traditional moral and sociocultural aspects of child employment in the region, the researcher finds a reasoned explanation of the cause for such a policy of universal child mobilization and tries to define this phenomenon that has not been studied in the scientific literature before. Summarizing the study of the causes of a humanitarian catastrophe in the RSS, the author, in addition to generally accepted factors that influenced the current situation (such as: the intervention of major world financial players in the affairs of a sovereign state, national discord, the struggle for power and resources), also highlights the subjective and not always correct work of the world information agencies and other mass media and, of course, the incompetent state policy of the leadership of the RSS in the Youth Field. Relying on the positive events of the past few months to resolve the conflict in the RSS, the author is still trying to predict in the foreseeable future the time for growth and development of the Republic of South Sudan, with the proviso that it can happen only in case of the inclusion of restraining leverage and expansion of the range of priorities of the main national resource – the youth.

Searching for Political Parties in the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common

Chapter 1 introduces the long and difficult process of the theoretical legitimation of the political party as such. The analysis of the meaning and acceptance of ‘parties’ as tools of expressing contrasting visions moves forward from ancient Greece and Rome where (democratic) politics had first become a matter of speculation and practice, and ends up with the first cautious acceptance of parties by eighteenth-century British thinkers. The chapter explores how parties or factions have been constantly considered tools of division of the ‘common wealth’ and the ‘good society’. The holist and monist vision of a harmonious and compounded society, stigmatized parties and factions as an ultimate danger for the political community. Only when a new way of thinking, that is liberalism, emerged, was room for the acceptance of parties set.

Toward Islam Through Political Parties, Ideology, and Democracy: A Discourse Analysis on Turkey’s AK Party, Tunisian Ennahda, and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-51
Author(s):  
Md. Nazmul Islam ◽  
Yılmaz Bingöl ◽  
Israel Nyaburi Nyadera ◽  
Gershon Dagba
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
Islamic Political Parties

This article aims to examine the legacy and policy of AK Party in Turkey, Ennahda’s political movement in Tunisia, and Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI) in Bangladesh, which is ostensibly identified with Islamic political ideology and acquainted with the world as a ‘moderate-conservative political Islam party.’ The study interrogates the nature, processes, and the characteristic features of the three countries’ administrative system, comparatively from three regions of the world, particularly from the Middle East and Europe region, Africa and Arab region, and the South Asian region. This study also highlights these political parties’ history, political ideology differences, and their practices reflective of democratic principles from a theoretical perspective on politics, policy, and philosophy. It also acknowledges whether the political development of Turkey from 2002 onward is feasible for Bangladeshi and Tunisian Islamic political parties to accept as a role model in their political arena.

History, Politics, and the Constitution: Ethnic Conflict and Constitutional Adjudication in Postcommunist Bulgaria

Slavic Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Venelin I. Ganev
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Constitutional Adjudication

Infamously, the 1991 Bulgarian Constitution contains a provision banning political parties “formed on an ethnic basis.” In the early 1990s, the neo-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party invoked this provision when it asked the country's Constitutional Court to declare unconstitutional the political party of the beleaguered Turkish minority. In this article, Venelin I. Ganev analyzes the conflicting arguments presented in the course of the constitutional trial that ensued and shows how the justices’ anxieties about the possible effects of politicized ethnicity were interwoven into broader debates about the scope of the constitutional normative shift that marked the end of the communist era, about the relevance of historical memory to constitutional reasoning, and about the nature of democratic politics in a multiethnic society. Ganev also argues that the constitutional interpretation articulated by the Court has become an essential component of Bulgaria's emerging political order. More broadly, he illuminates the complexity of some of the major issues that frame the study of ethnopolitics in postcommunist eastern Europe: the varied dimensions of the “politics of remembrance“; the ambiguities of transitional justice; the dilemmas inherent in the construction of a rights-centered legality; and the challenges involved in establishing a forward-looking, pluralist system of governance.

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