On alien Western democracy

2010 ◽  
pp. 53-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Western Democracy

Division de pouvoir et intégration social: de Montesquieu à la crise actuelle du parlementarisme

1968 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-269
Author(s):  
André Vachet
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Social Division ◽  
Western Democracy ◽  
Vital Forces

Division of power and social integrationExplanation of some of the recent challenges to western democracy may be found in a re-examination of Montesquieu's thought. Here we find the theory of the separation of power to be far more complex than is implied in the simple divisions of legislature, executive, and judiciary. For Montesquieu, the separation of power is more a social division than a political or juridical one. He contemplated returning the organs of political power to various social forces, e.g. monarchy, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie, and that then the self-assertion of forces would be restrained by the resistance of other social groups. The realization of its goals would require every important social group to integrate itself both to society and to the state and to seek its goals through realization of the general good.Since Montesquieu's time, political structures would seem to have been very little changed even though social structures have been greatly altered by the rise of economic powers. Political institutions have been losing touch with the vital forces of society and these have had to find other channels of expression. The personalization of power, the rise of the executive, violence, and increasing paternalism may be viewed as phenomena of compensation by which attempts are being made to bridge the gap between the structures of political power and those of a society which has been restructured.Revigoration of parliamentary democracy would seem to require that all vital social forces be reintegrated into the political system and be given meaningful channels of political expression. Failure to make such changes opens the way to identification of the political powers with technocracy and the increasing general use of violence in the resolution of social problems.

Foreword

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheri Berman
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
National Level ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Western Democracy ◽  
British Labour ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Government ◽  
Democratic Parties

The decline of the centre-left over the past years is one of the most alarming trends in Western politics. During the latter part of the 20th century such parties either ran the government or led the loyal Opposition in virtually every Western democracy. Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), once the most powerful party of the left in continental Europe, currently polls in high 20s or 30s. The French Socialist Party was eviscerated in the 2017 elections, as was the Dutch Labour Party. Even the vaunted Scandinavian social democratic parties are struggling, reduced to vote shares in the 30 per cent range. The British Labour Party and the US Democrats have been protected from challengers by their country’s first-past-the-post electoral systems, but the former has recently taken a sharp turn to the hard-left under Jeremy Corbyn, while the latter, although still competitive at the national level, is a minority party at the state and local levels, where a hard-right Republican Party dominates the scene....

Water policy differences between a western democracy and a country in economic transition

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (8) ◽  
pp. 125-128
Author(s):  
H.E. Valdas Adamkus
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Baltic Sea ◽  
Water Policy ◽  
Transition Economy ◽  
Economic Transition ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Baltic Sea ◽  
Western Democracy ◽  
Substantial Investment ◽  
The Baltic

Where environmental policy is concerned Western democracies and transition economies share more similarities than differences. Sound environmental policies require substantial investment. Public-private cooperation can play a major role in the search for solutions, but politicians, environmentalists and academics must act vigorously to ensure that big business does not acquire a final say in the implementation of environmental policy. Lithuania as a transition economy faces major environmental challenges, but international collaboration, including working with the European Union and cross-border cooperation with neighbouring states, is bringing good results. A major unifying factor for the Baltic Sea states is the continuing struggle to purify and protect the Baltic Sea.

scholarly journals The Islamist Challenge in the Greater Mediterranean

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-670
Author(s):  
Boris V. Dolgov
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Islamic Movements ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Western Democracy ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Muslim Communities

The article examines and analyzes the spread of Islamism or Political Islam movements in the Greater Mediterranean and their increasing influence on the socio-political situation in 2011-2021. The historical factors, which contributed to the emergence of the hearths of Islamic culture in the countries which entered the Arab Caliphate in the Greater Mediterranean parallel with the Antique centers of European civilization, are retrospectively exposed. The Islamist ideologues called the Ottoman Imperia the heir of the Arab Caliphate. The main doctrinal conceptions of Political Islam and its more influential movement Muslim Brotherhood (forbidden in Russia) are discovered. The factor of the Arab Spring, which considerably influenced the strengthening of the Islamist movements, as well as its continuation of the protests in the Arab countries in 2018-2021, is examined. The main attention is allotted to analyzing the actions of the Islamic movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, and in the Libyan and Syrian conflicts too. The influence of external actors, the most active of which was Turkey, is revealed. The author also analyzes the situation in the Arab-Muslim communities in the European Mediterranean on the example of France, where social-economic problems, aggravated by COVID-19, have contributed to the activation of radical Islamist elements. It is concluded that confronting the Islamist challenge is a complex and controversial task. Its solution depends on both forceful opposition to radical groups and an appropriate foreign policy. An important negative factor is the aggravation of socio-economic problems and crisis phenomena in the institutions of Western democracy, in response to which the ideologues of Islamism preach an alternative world order in the form of an Islamic state. At the moment the Western society and the countries which repeat its liberal model do not give a distinct response to this challenge.

scholarly journals Structure of social attitudes based on lexical approach in Serbian-speaking area

Sociologija ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boban Petrovic ◽  
Janko Medjedovic
Keyword(s):  
Political Correctness ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Western Democracy ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Universal Structure ◽  
Lexical Approach ◽  
High Level

Although usually applied in the field of personality psychology, in the last decade there were attempts of applying the lexical paradigm in the studies social attitudes studies. One of those attempts was made by Saucier (2000), who included and analyzed all the words ending with the suffix ?-ism?. The product of this analyze is a two-form instrument called "Survey of Dictionary-Based Isms (SDI)", with its long, 40-item version, and brief, 28-item version. This instrument measures four main dimensions of basic social attitudes: alphaisms (traditional and religious sources of authority), betaisms (dismissing political correctness), gammaisms (believing in Western democracy) and deltaisms (personal spirituality). Until now, this instrument was only used in English-speaking area, and therefore the objective of this research was evaluation and validation of Saucier?s basic structure of social attitudes model in the Serbian-speaking area. In this research, conducted on the sample of 253 participants, both sexes, average age of 39.3 years (SD=14.9), a slightly shortened version of Saucier?s 24-item questionnaire was used. The results of this study contribute to the hypothesis of a universal structure of basic social attitudes: the factor analysis extracted four factors, which correlate from moderate to high level with the original dimensions. However, the structure and content of the factors pointed to a strong cultural influence on the forming and shaping the basic social attitudes. Practically, only the first factor, Religiosity, is a full replication of the original alpha factor. Other items built the factors somewhat different from the original: Hedonism, Rational Spirituality and Nationalism. The results show a better fitness of the model obtained in this study for the Serbian-speaking area compared to the original one.

Introduction

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Good Chance ◽  
Western Democracy ◽  
Religious Devotion

This introductory chapter sets out the book's focus, namely the question of why the state should have to tolerate exemptions from generally applicable laws when they conflict with religious obligations but not with any other equally serious obligations of conscience. It illustrates this issue by describing two cases. The first involves a Sikh boy who is allowed to wear a kirpan, a dagger or sword (a symbol of their religious devotion) to school. The second involves a rural boy, who is not a Sikh and is not allowed to bring a knife to school despite the fact that doing so is a long-standing tradition in his community. There is no Western democracy, at present, in which the boy in our second scenario has prevailed or would prevail in a challenge to a general prohibition on the carrying of weapons in the school. Were he a Sikh he would stand a good chance of winning.

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