Measuring competences for democratic culture: teaching human rights through religious education

This paper aims to present research on measuring competences for democratic culture. It describes the development of a multiple-item scale that measures competences in teaching democratic citizenship and human rights through religious education. A principal component analysis based on the 135 items of the Council of Europe’s Reference framework of competences for democratic culture was carried out in two phases, in order to construct and refine the scale. The result was a 52-item scale divided into six components. This was tested for its reliability, factor structure and validity; firstly on a sample of 123, and secondly on a sample of 403 secondary RE teachers (2018-19). The research scrutinises the concept of democratic competences as being the ability to mobilise and deploy relevant values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and/or understanding. It concludes that these competences are more complex structures than has been assumed.

Chile’s Citizenship Education Curriculum: Priorities and Silences Through Two Decades

The article examines the evolution of the citizenship education curriculum in Chilean secondary education over last two decades from the perspective of the relevance of its contents for a democratic culture. The evidence and its analysis show the variations observed in the curricula are not related so much to the ideology of the governments that enact them as to socio-cultural changes of a macro nature, such as the growing emphasis on rights and participation. The analysis confirms some deficits common to the curricula, which have implications for the development of the democratic political culture in Chile. Among these are the scarce or null presence of the values of solidarity, the common good, and social cohesion, as well as a paradox of quasi-silence about voting, common in the curricula of Latin American countries and which is contrasted with the treatment of voting in the curricula of France and England.

AN APPRAISAL OF THE DILEMMA OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN SUSTAINING DEMOCRACY IN NIGERIA

For any Democracy to thrive, the onus lies significantly on the activities and strength of political parties. It is framework as per- analyzing the efficacy and efficiency of democracy in both the developed and developing countries. However, it is a different kettle of fish in Nigeria as our political parties are characterized by primordial and gender chauvinistic tendencies, inadequate ideology, inadequate mechanism and ethnic sentiments. Information is mainly sourced from existing literature and among other sources. This paper adopts the structural functionalist theory as a method of analyzing the political system in the country. Modern challenges of democracy in the country were highlighted, such as: ethnicism, inadequate political institution, poor internal democratic culture, electoral misconduct (vote buying, etc.), gender inequality, religious diversity, among others. Measures on how best to sustain the country’s democracy are strengthening democratic institutions, shunning: ethno-religious sentiment; electoral misconduct of any magnitude; among others.

Gender and Politics: Gender Balance as a Panacea to a Credible and Successful Election

This paper focuses on Gender Balance as a Panacea to a Credible and Successful Election, having as its raison d’être: to review the concept of gender balance and appropriate its implications towards achieving a credible and successful election required for the existence of human centered development process in sub-Saharan Africa, with Nigeria as a case study. Thus, the paper achieves its goal by adopting a qualitative descriptive method of analysis as it examines qualitatively: the urgency for the crusade on gender balance; the inter-linkages between gender balance and a credible-successful election. A few theoretical orientations were employed to mediate for a proper epistemic extrapolations and reconstructions to explaining gender balance as a panacea to a credible and successful election: these include, the notion of Social Contract, the notion of Democratic Culture, and the notion of Participatory Electoral Process. The paper made some findings, a few of these include: 1) there is the tendency in the sub-Saharan African socio-political cultural practice, Nigeria in particular, to socially exclude women in politics because the female gender has been judged first of all from sexuality point of view as a second class gender rather than seeing women, first of all, as humans, hence entitled to human rights for which right to political participation is inclusive. 2) There is a correlation between gender balance and a credible-successful election, and the absence of the former reproduces a negative outcome in the latter. The paper therefore concludes that strict observance of gender balance is a sine qua non for a credible-successful election conducive for human centered development process. It thus recommends for the total commitment of government to democratic culture by mainstreaming women in politics, inter alia. Received: 27 July 2021 / Accepted: 15 October 2021 / Published: 5 November 2021

3. From republican to Romantic

‘From republican to Romantic’ discusses how Enlightenment ideas came under pressure from the dramatic changes in American life during the early republic. Rapid population growth, westward expansion, urbanization, and industrialization tested the limits of Enlightenment thought, while new Romantic sensibilities shaped Americans’ response to their changing political and social realities. A shared concern during this period was the perceived absence of a truly “American” democratic culture, and this fostered efforts to build a variety of new intellectual institutions. The transcendentalists played a central role in trying to create a unifying intellectual culture befitting a new democracy, while the mental and moral worlds of Northerners and Southerners pulled farther apart over the issue of slavery.

Review Essay

This review of two recent books, with further discussion of a third, addresses questions of the direction of democracy and the impacts of media circulation and data extraction on democratic culture. The reviewed books are Selena Nemorin (2018). Biosurveillance in New Media Marketing: World, Discourse, Representation, and Dipankar Sinha (2018). The Information Game in Democracy, with discussion also of Peter Csigo (2016). The Neopopular Bubble: Speculating on “the People” in Late Modern Democracy.

Cross Carpeting and the Challenges to Democratic Culture and Political Stability in Nigeria's Fourth Republic

Cross carpeting is an act of swapping political parties. It is an act of changing party allegiance or moving from one party to another. Cross carpeting in known by different nomenclature such as party hopping, party switching, party crossover, party defection, party decamping, floor crossing, canoe-jumping, political party prostitution and political nomadism. The spate of cross carpeting at all the levels of government in Nigeria is beginning to cause serious political tension, hostility and a source of worry to Nigerians. It is against this backdrop that this study seeks to examine the effect of cross carpeting on democratic culture and political stability in Nigeria’s fourth republic. Cross - sectional research method was adopted and data was collected via a survey of 300 respondents in south – south geopolitical zone of Nigeria. Data collected were analyzed using correlation and linear regression analysis with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23. The findings of the study revealed that cross carpeting negatively and significantly impacts on democratic culture and political stability in Nigeria’s fourth republic. On the basis of these findings, the study recommends among others that every political party should have ideologies, programme and policies which will serve as a compass to their members and discourage them from defecting to another party.

Conclusion

The book concludes by putting forward equal democratic citizenship as the solution to political sectarianism. Political sectarianism is not the product of democracy but of dictatorships’ failure to build states based on citizenship. A democratic transition following a revolution or a foreign led regime change, where no democratic culture exists among the political elites, is fertile ground for those who set themselves up as the voice of repressed social structures.