Elective Despotism

This chapter highlights India’s elective despotism. It begins by explaining ‘resort politics’. This is the Indian ritual of herding away lawmakers like rustled sheep to secure places, usually hotels and holiday resorts, to ‘protect’ them from rival parties. This usually occurs when no one party or alliance of multiple parties has a clear majority in the legislature. At such moments, lawmakers are bought for billions of rupees and promises of high office by the highest bidder. If electoral democracy is disfigured by criminality, organized violence, and chremacracy, ‘resort politics’ marks the final stage of its decadence. As parties and legislatures kowtow to political bosses and executive supremacy, the drift towards what Thomas Jefferson first called ‘elective despotism’—elected governments that concentrate power in a few cunning and bossy hands—is unmistakable. The legislatures in effect rubber-stamp executive decisions. Governments cease to be answerable to Parliament.

Japan

This chapter looks at the Japanese experience with judicial review. The Supreme Court of Japan does not enforce those parts of the Japanese Constitution, like Article 9, which prohibits war making; Article 21, which protects freedom of speech; or Article 89, which forbids taxpayer money from being used to hire Shinto priests. The Supreme Court of Japan thus refuses to enforce important articles in the Constitution of Japan. It does rubber stamp and thus legitimize actions taken by the political branches of the government. Why has judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation failed to take root in Japan? Japan does not need either a federal or a separation of powers umpire, since Japan is, firstly, a unitary nation-state with no need for a federalism umpire; and, secondly, a parliamentary democracy with a weak upper house of the legislature. Moreover, Japan has never atoned for the wrongs it committed during World War II nor has it truly admitted to even having done the horrible things that Japan did. A nation cannot get rights from wrongs judicial review and a Bill of Rights unless it admits it has done something wrong. Finally, the Japanese Constitution contains an inadequate system of checks and balances. As a result, the Supreme Court of Japan may not have the political space within which it can assert power.

Relational Dignity, State Law, and Chinese Leftover Women’s Choices in Marriage and Childbearing

Legal scholars tend to understand dignity as an intrinsic value that each individual gains at birth. This article aims to rethink dignity from a relational perspective. As dignity is highly dependent on other people’s judgement and evaluations in China, I use “relational dignity” to stress the precarious and relational nature of dignity in societies in which people attach great importance to guanxi networks. I discuss how relational dignity and state law interact to shape leftover women’s choices in marriage and childbearing. The precarious and relational nature of dignity motivates leftover women to follow dominant social norms in order to fit in. As a result, it reinforces state law’s discrimination against unmarried women and single mothers. On the other hand, the rubber-stamp quality of state law enables leftover women to use legal recognition to win societal recognition and attain relational dignity.

Legislative Cross-carpeting, Multiparty System and the Challenges of Democratic Good Governance in Nigeria

The legislature is unarguably the fulcrum upon which democracy rests. Democracy, in this context, is representative government. Thus, the institution of the legislature as an assembly of elected representatives becomes the engine room of the structural framework upon which democratic governance is built. As history has shown, the beauty of legislature is greatly enhanced by a healthy multi-party system wherein elected representatives from different party backgrounds engage one another alongside party ideological positions with a view to deliberating on issue of governance and socio-economic well-being of the people. Legislative cross-carpeting in Nigeria is becoming a norm rather than exigency, and is taking a negative toll on the capacity of legislatures to fulfill their mandates as against functioning as merely rubber-stamp annexes of the executive/ruling party. This study examines the impacts of the wanton cross-carpeting, often times bereft of any ideological underpinning, that have characterized legislative assemblies in Nigeria and its implications on good governance. Among others, it concludes that concrete legal and political frameworks must be developed to check the direction of cross-carpeting in Nigeria’s legislative houses if good governance is to be entrenched.

‘Enemies of the People’? The Judiciary and Claude Lefort’s ‘Savage Democracy’

The chapter attempts to, first, clarify the position of human rights in Claude Lefort's unique blend of phenomenologically and psychoanalytically inspired political theory. Human rights, and by extension rights more generally, are in this account an integral element of a 'savage democracy' that Lefort envisioned as the only plausible challenge to the totalitarian tendencies of neoliberalism. From this starting point, the chapter will then discuss the position of the judiciary in contemporary democracies. Standard accounts of the separation of powers reduce the courts' constitutional functions to the application and interpretation of laws issued by an elected legislator. But as the relationship between the legislator and the executive has changed, so, too, has the relative position of the judiciary. A strong executive as the engine of legislative initiatives, supported by a weak 'rubber-stamp' legislature, has highlighted the need to emphasise the democratic potential of the judiciary that goes beyond the 'deferential' role of standard accounts. The chapter will provide a theoretical framework for understanding this democratic role through Lefort's account of human rights.

The demographics of Egyptian dissent may be shifting

Significance Although small, the disturbances are significant, occurring in a climate where public opposition often results in a lengthy prison term, or even death. The unrest was bound up with an intensified government campaign to demolish informal housing. It comes as the authorities prepare for lower house elections later this month. Impacts The combined impacts of COVID-19 and state subsidy cuts will squeeze household finances further. The new parliament will continue to serve a mostly rubber-stamp function, with little room for debate, still less opposition sentiment. Victories for pro-government candidates in recent elections for the upper house offer patronage opportunities for loyalists.

Business incubator effectiveness and commercialization strategy: a thematic analysis

Purpose This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of the business incubator and its impact on commercialization strategies based on incubatees’ aspirations in three business incubators in Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative approach was used, which involved conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews on 14 startup owners who are tenants in 3 incubators in Indonesia. The data obtained were analyzed using a thematic analysis assisted with NVivo 12. Findings Business incubator effectiveness was found to be heavily dependent on incubatees’ satisfaction in their interactions with the incubators. Moreover, some patterns were formed from thematic analysis and used to produce three propositions. Research limitations/implications The study was conducted qualitatively using only 14 interviewees or incubatees from 3 business incubators in Indonesia. Moreover, a thematic analysis offers flexibility from basic to organizing and global themes, but, in this case, there may be a lack of deeper understanding, for example, in psychological viewpoints. Practical implications Business incubators in this study need to reevaluate their incubation process based on their incubatees’ aspirations. These have to be considered from the beginning of the process, particularly the innovation aspect. Meanwhile, policy implications were also discussed Social implications Policymakers have realized the importance of business incubators in enhancing Indonesia’s innovation and competitiveness, and this has made them encourage the establishment of some new business incubators. It is, however, important to note that most of the existing ones are simply “rubber stamp” and to improve their operations and performances, some recommendations were made. Originality/value Despite the potential importance of incubation in enhancing technopreneurship and increasing a nation’s competitiveness, little research has been conducted on incubators in Indonesia’s ability to fulfill such high expectations. This specifically means there is no information on the present and past perceptions of tenants or startups on the incubators’ performances.

Representational measurement theory: Is its number up?

Representational measurement theory was proposed initially to solve problems caused by disciplinary aspirations of 19th-century mathematicians, who wanted to construe their subject as independent of its applications in empirical science. Half a century later, S. S. Stevens seized the opportunity provided by representational theory’s reconstruction of measurement as numerical coding to rubber-stamp psychology’s own aspirations to be counted as a quantitative science. Patrick Suppes’ version of representational theory rectified defects in Stevens’ theory, making it explicit that representational theory entails that mathematical structure is already embedded in empirical systems. However, Suppes’ theory neglected the fact that attributes, not objects, are the focus of measurement and when that oversight is corrected, it follows that empirical systems sustaining measurement already instantiate positive real numbers. Thus, in measurement, real numbers are estimated, not assigned from without. Representational theory not only misrepresents measurement; it refutes itself.