Democracy & Democratic Regimes

Democracy and Democratic Regimes

• Democracy is associated with "rule by the people" and includes rights and liberties for citizens.
• Political rights include freedom of speech, the right to vote, and the right to join political associations.
• Civil rights encompass participation in civil life, including freedoms of assembly, speech, access to information, and equal access to institutions.
• The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) guarantees fundamental freedoms such as freedom of conscience, expression, assembly, and association.
• Democratic decolonization involves appreciating, recognizing, and re-establishing Indigenous cultures, traditions, and values within societal structures.
• Governance is emphasized over government.
• The inclusion of non-formal institutions and the role of citizenship as agents pushing the boundaries of representative democracy are important.
• Factors involved include:
• Recognizing Indigenous cultures and acknowledging the culture itself and acknowledging how culture was forcefully taken.
• Incorporating Indigenous principles into the nation-state.
• Developing new forms of citizenship that better represent Indigenous communities.
• Reclaiming control through self-governance.
• Unlearning colonial ways of thinking and being.
• Integrating Indigenous knowledge into the state and its institutions.
• The Canadian state has played an interventionist role in Indigenous peoples' lives.

Procedural Definitions of Democracy

• Procedural democracy defines democracy by adherence to basic rules, procedures, or standards.
• It is also referred to as the "minimal" definition of democracy defining only the base level requirments.
• This definition has been dominant for a long time.

Substantive Definitions of Democracy

• Suggests democracy is not only about following procedures, but also about achieving certain outcomes.
• Outcomes to consider:
• Participation, social inclusion, civil society involvement
• Equity/equality by gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity
• Accountability and institutional performance
• Public knowledge, awareness, and justice, which includes accounting for past and present injustices
• Addressing poverty, inequality, and other economic outcomes

Regime Change and Democratization

• Democratization leads from authoritarianism to democracy
• Democratic breakdown is change in the opposite direction.
• Successful democratization involves both:
• Democratic transition, which is the movement from an authoritarian regime to a democratic regime.
• Through revolutionary means or graduated and negotiated means
• Democratic consolidation, which is the process through which the new democratic order becomes institutionalized and more likely to endure.
• The nation fully sets up a democracy and civil rights become normal for citizens.

Representative Democracy

• Forms of representative government include:
• Constitutional republic, which is a polity without a monarch where basic political rules are in a constitution (e.g., United States).
• Constitutional monarchy, which is a political system with a monarch as head of state with powers limited by a constitution and/or legislature (e.g., Canada).
• Constituent components:
• Constitutionality
• Political or electoral rights
• Civil rights or civil liberties

Direct Democracy

• Direct democracy emphasizes direct citizen involvement in politics.
• It often uses citizen assemblies.
• Direct democracy makes use of initiatives where citizens gather signatures to qualify ballot issues
• Referenda are used, where state or provincial governments may place issues on the ballot.

Causes of Democratization

• Prominent lines of theory:
• Modernization traces democracy to broad social changes, particularly economic development and associated changes.
• Cultural attributes democratization and democratic consolidation to cultural variables
• Systemic situate countries in an international environment where major powers or global trends influence whether democracy emerges.
• Domestic posits that the forms of political institutions determine democracy's advent and success.
• Agency-Based focuses on individual actors or small groups driving regime changes.

Modernization

• Democracy is more common and stable in "modern" polities.
• Economic wealth correlates with democracy.
• Rich countries are often democratic.
• The can establish stronger judicial systems and can have the economic capacity to enforce the rule of law.
• The emergent middle class plays a role in democratization
• Urbanization, education and industrialization play important roles
• More industrialization leads to more development and leads closer to democracy
• Modernization may prevent democratic breakdown as economic development can support democracy.

Culture and Democracy

• Norms and attitudes support democracy in some places, while hindering it in others.
• Different regions or countries exhibit distinct cultures regarding power, authority, and rights, such as "Asian" versus "Western" values.
• Culture is complex and not static

The International System

• Global politics can affect regime types.
• Snapshots of the global situation can convey the importance of the international environment.
• Colonial economic systems were not based on democratic principles, and not everyone was included when the modern state was created.
• Major powers can affect the chances for democracy in smaller countries.
• The Cold War era (1945–1989) differed from the "democratic peace" era (1989–2001).
• During the Cold War, the US and USSR wanted "client states," prioritizing security over democracy, while democracy later prevailed as an "international norm."
• Democracy is not always supported but is often thought to be crucial.

Domestic Institutions

• Institutions shape whether democracies survive, needing to be effective and well-established.
• Federalism is used to mitigate conflict or civil war in ethnically divided countries.
• Federalism may secure democracy for countries like Iraq.
• Electoral rules are important however in Chile 1970, the president elected with <40% support later overthrown in military coup
• Institutions can be "designed" or "engineered".

Agents and Actors

• Democratization often features prominent leaders and "triggers" (religious, economic), such as Gandhi, Mandela and Walesa.
• Coalitions of specific groups (e.g., moderates) lead to some transitions and Institutions
• Can lead either direction.

Combining Arguments and Theories

• No single theory explains all cases of democratization, as it results from multiple factors causing complex causality.

Roberta Rice

Overview

• The history of settler colonialism, the Canadian state has taken an interventionist role in Indigenous lives
• Introduces the "Living Well" principle from Andean Indigenous values, emphasizing harmony, consensus, respect, wealth redistribution, and non-discrimination.
• The goal being diversity, community, and environmentalism
• A key difference exists between Canada and Latin America as Canada signed treaties and Latin America did not.
• This study seeks to understand Indigenous-state relations. Central claim: the relationships condition the pathway to democratic decolonization.

Theoretical Framework

• Employs a theoretical approach based on settler colonialism and political economy, examining how politics and economy together impact lives.

Methodology

• Adopts a comparativist method, drawing on four locations.
• Selection of cases are guided by similar experiences of effective forms of political rights despite socio-economic differences -The goal is to understand Indigenous politics as a whole. Used to inform global struggles.
• Ruptures, shifts, and power alterations are highlighted instead of smooth, rational development.

Regulation by the State

• Examining state regulation is essential to understanding politics and democratic practices.

####Evidence

• Section 35 of the constitution
• Canadian Indian Act allowed the federal government to impeded on the lives and policies of indigenous folk
  • Defined as interventionist policies
  • Qualification for "status of Indian" by the federal government
  • Denied status led to access to resources
  • Women lost status upon marrying outside Indigenous communities until 1985
• Bill C-31 grants back indigenous women no longer, lost status
• All the Policies together impact indigenous folkin Canada

Latin America

Region was built of Indigenous dispossession with slavery, resource extraction, and intentional genocide known as geonoice

• Legal, physical, and psychological methods were built
• Resistors of this were heavily taxed - accounting for half of their revenue
• In NA, Europeans brought their families, whereas in Latin America they procreated with Indigenous folks and indigenous people form a majority in some countries (Bolivia and Guatemala)
• European came to stay in both however when the Latin American nations achieved their independence, the elites took over

Conquest

• At the time of conquest, between 30-70 million inhabited the continent and about half of the continent died during this period.
• Indigenous people in Latin America are a marginalized majority
• They have been excluded from democracy, justice, justice, equity and constitutionalism and and colonial interests.

Indigenous Incorporation Timeline

• State-sponsored corporatism (1930s-1980s)
• Responses to Great Depression
• State lead reforms which pushed Indigenous off their land
  • Peasant title was traded for land
  • Key: The state took control using corporatist structures
• Neoliberal multiculturalism (1980s-1990s) - the market determines social wellness over the government
  • Leads to turn to IMF and World Bank due to roads that needed to be built
  • Agreed to remove state own state ownership in exchange
• Welfare state was discarded
• Plurinationationism (2000-presenet)
  • Anti-neoliberal protests
  • Formed Plrainationationalism in response
  • P: NATION-to-nation relationship with Indigenous relationship
  • Re founding if regime institutions
  • Reconceptualisation of nation-state
• Reconfiguration politcal map

Indigenous Rights in Political Science

What are the implications to applying the concept of living well?

• Connection to the land- -Environmental policies with indigenous guidance -Self governance allowed -Smaller Consensus allowed -Indigenous Justice system

Challenge to this - indigenous notions of reprocity treat land and all life forms as family and they need to not be the commodity

With this logic this cannot become because then have to have repsonsability over land

Have the responsibility to decommodify land

• Total transformation
• Comes with tensions of extraction
• Indigenous state relations condition the decolonization

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• To see how they have been regulated by the state to fully grasp politics and how this could lead to genuine democratic practices • Pg. 6: evidence • Section 35 of constitution • Indian act • Allowed the federal government to impede on the lives → interventionist policies • Who qualified as a “status Indian” with the government • Policies deny status to many people; and then deny access to resources for non-status • Until 1985, women lost their status if marrying outside Indigenous • Bill C-31 • Indigenous women no longer, lost status • British North American Act • All the policies came together to impact the lives of individuals in Canada • Latin America: • Region was built of Indigenous dispossession: intentional geonoice, slavery, resource extracted • Legal, physical and psychological • Those who resisted were subject to significant head tax • Accounted for 50% of revenue in some places • Difference: while in NA, Europeans brought their families, in Latin America they did not bring their families and procreated with Indigenous people on the land • Indigenous people form a majority in many of these countries (Bolivia and Guatemala) • Europeans came to stay in both countries; when the Latin American achieved their independence, the elites took the power

• Modernization → Cultural values → Democracy