Exploring the Relation Between the Digital Divide and Government's Effort to Develop E-Participation

According to the digital divide theory, the provision of opportunities to broaden participation in political processes pose a challenge for governments worldwide. In this research, the authors analyze the relationship between the evolution governments' effort to develop citizen e-participation in public policy—measured through the UN's e-participation index—and that of national contexts variables identified by the digital divide theory at country level, using panel data for 178 countries over the period 2008-2016. The results confirm the strong and positive connection between EPI and economic development and technological infrastructure of the countries, ageing population associated to higher life standards, as well as a negative impact of rurality, gender, and political freedom and democracy result not influential, as well as education. Some practical implications derive from the findings, contributing to explain performance differences across different national settings and identifying current inequalities that still require public action to bridge the divide.

Analysis on the Impact of Economic Globalization on Human Development and Economic Growth in the ASEAN-4

Economic globalization has made economies fruitful; however, a few studies argued that its impact on human development is not at par with economic growth’s advancements. With this, the effect and difference of economic globalization in terms of Trade, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI) on Human Development Index (HDI) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita were examined among the ASEAN-4 nations, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand conjointly from 1990 to 2019. Multiple regression was used to estimate the parameters and significance of the models. Results have proved that the predictors, collectively, have a positive and statistically significant effect on GDP and the HDI. However, the data showed that linear regression of GDP per capita at 51.21% has more variation than HDI at 35.95%, which could mainly be due to that human development is highly influenced by other factors such as demand political freedom and prioritization of human rights, while the preferred subset still has the three variables altogether. Yet there were sub predictors towards GDP per capita that showed a partial effect except for FDI and FDI+FPI. This might be caused by its unidirectionality and volatility in investing.

Foucault and Chomsky on Grammar and Governmentality

This essay explores the use of the notions of grammar and governmentality in the work of Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky. The goal is to exhibit the contrast but also mutual influence of these thinkers. Chomsky places his own linguistic theory in what he calls a tradition of Cartesian linguistics. Foucault’s presents an archaeology of general grammar in the French Classical Era. Chomsky and Foucault equally posit principles of governmentality. Both differ in terms of what they think the study of language brings to our understanding of ethical and political freedom. Governmental structure and grammatical structure, for Foucault, are always conventional, rather than essential – merely expressions of power dynamics. For Chomsky, the innate and natural human universality implied by underlying structures, in contrast, intimates a path to freedom from governmental coercion and oppression.

Artistic expression: freedom or curse?

The purpose of this contribution is to evaluate the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in freedom of artistic expression cases dealing with visual and performance arts. The reasons for this particular evaluation are salient to the fact that the ECtHR has consistently provided a lesser level of protection to artistic expression than to political expression. The aim of this article is to challenge the approach of the Court to the freedom of artistic expression in relation to visual and performance arts. The critical evaluation is based on two different but complementary grounds: contemporary theory of art critique of the ECtHR’s understanding of art and critique based on the ECtHR’s own political freedom of expression cases. The argument of the authors is that the ECtHR approach to visual and performance arts as an exercise in ethics and aesthetics is contradicted by contemporary art theory and practice which invariably assumes the societal role of art, its potential subversive and transformative function within a society at large, and, ultimately, its lato sensu political value. In addition, visual and performance arts are powerful yet fragile instruments for delivering the debate to society at large. Viewed from this perspective, artistic expression has the same beneficial effect on a democratic society as political expression stricto sensu. Therefore, the rationales underpinning protection of political expression are essentially the same as those of artistic expression, therefore the ECtHR should extend the same level of legal protection to arts and artists to keep valuable social dialogue alive.

Parties and Party Systems

Since the late 1980s, South Korea has established democratic rules and institutions to protect the political freedom and civil rights of its citizens. In this process, political parties played a pivotal role in building democratic institutions and became a necessary actor for democratic governance. The characteristics of South Korean political parties and party system such as non-ideological regional factionalism, personality-based party organization, growing electoral volatility due to party changes, and a cartelized two-party system have contributed to weak party system institutionalization (PSI). Despite weak PSI, South Korea successfully underwent three peaceful power transfers, thus exceeding Huntington’s two turnover test of democratic consolidation. The stability of interparty competition has been maintained despite moderate electoral volatility. While regionalism is still the most important factor in voter decisions, the ideological linkage between parties and voters has been tightening. The South Korean parties and party system have a long way to go before achieving the levels of PSI seen in the West, but they have followed in these countries’ footstep to some extent. More sophisticated measures and concepts should be developed to analyse political parties and party systems in new democracies.

Moral Faith and the Legacy of John Lewis's Political Vision of “Good Trouble”

The late congressman John Lewis spent most of his political life engaging Black Power's commitment to economic and political freedom through a political vocabulary that aligned with his deeply held beliefs in nonviolence, human rights activism, and moral faith. The tension between the Black radical left and establishment Black politics dates back to Lewis's clash with elite Black leaders over the content of his prepared address for the 1963 March on Washington. The address provides a glimpse into Lewis's complicated political legacy. The youngest speaker at the March, Lewis faced the daunting task of both representing the political philosophy of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and meeting the expectations of established civil rights leaders. Negotiating the political interests of the organizers of the March alongside the demands of SNCC foreshadowed the congressman's political vocation: a lifetime of civil rights advocacy through a politics of respectability and Black Power's political philosophy of freedom and economic transformation. Lewis's political legacy is complicated; and yet, it was fueled by an unabashed commitment to Black freedom struggles, human rights activism, and racial reconciliation.

Political Context and Political Participation Across the Lifespan in Africa

Gerontologists have long documented how age is associated with political participation. However, few studies have considered how macrocontextual factors shape participation across the life span. Moreover, very few studies have dealt with political engagement and aging in emerging democracies, including those in Africa. This study addresses those gaps, integrating the most recent three waves of Afrobarometer survey data (2011–2018) with country-level data from the freedom house (i.e. freedom index). Findings reveal that, at the individual level, an age gap widens for engagement in protests and shrinks for electoral and non-electoral political participation. When the political context is considered, however, we find that political freedom softens the drop-off of protest behavior at later ages. For electoral and non-electoral political participation, we find that freer countries lessen the expected growth in engagement across the life span. The study implies that political oppression shapes the links between age and political behaviour, but the processes seem different depending on whether they are engaging in risky (where the age gap widens) or non-risky (where the age gap shrinks) political forms of engagement.

Freedom

Privacy can nurture our ability to develop political beliefs, identities, and expression, and is thus an essential source of political power for citizens against the state. Privacy enables political freedom, letting us act as self-governing citizens, and it is hard to envision a functioning democracy without privacy. Many discussions of privacy and political freedom rely on Orwell’s metaphor of Big Brother, but that image is incomplete because it fails to include private-party surveillance. Surveillance of any kind, whether government or private, raises two particular dangers. First, surveillance threatens the intellectual privacy we need to make up our minds about political and social issues; being watched when we think, read, and communicate can cause us not to experiment with new, controversial, or deviant ideas. Second, surveillance changes the power dynamic between the watcher and the watched; the power surveillance gives to watchers creates risks of blackmail, discrimination, and coercive persuasion.

Conclusion

Privacy will inevitably come into tension with other values that good societies should care about. This book intentionally has relatively little to say about those other values, because its goal has been to make the case for privacy on the occasion of its supposed death. We cannot appropriately weigh privacy against other values if we have little idea why it matters. To recap: Privacy is the degree to which human information neither is known nor used. Human information confers power over humans, and we should think about it in terms of the rules that govern human information—instrumental rules that promote human values like human identity, political freedom, and consumer protection. We should also start treating privacy as a fundamental right—not a right of individual control to be bartered away but one with social dimensions and that protects the most vulnerable among us. That’s why privacy matters.