Happiness, Markets, and Democracy: Latin America in Comparative Perspective

The literature on subjective well-being highlights the role of relative income differences, an issue which is particularly salient for the emerging market countries. We explore the demographic determinants of happiness in 17 countries in Latin America, as well as the effects of macroeconomic trends and attitudes about the market on happiness. We provide comparative reference with data from Russia and the United States. We find that the determinants of happiness in Latin America are remarkably similar to those in the advanced industrial countries. We also find a marked and negatively skewed perceptions gap between individuals' objective economic situations and their subjective evaluations in both Latin America and Russia. That gap, in turn, has negative effects on happiness. Inflation and unemployment have negative effects on happiness in both contexts, while pro-market attitudes and preference for democracy have positive effects.     

Governance Barriers to Sustainability

Humanity and water represent an intersection of two natural cycles: the human economy and the earth's hydrological system. Although water is vital for human survival and growth, the point where human endeavor intersects is the most variable and uncertain in the hydrological system. Significant spatial and temporal variation of evaporation and rainfall has led to a number of responses aimed at increasing certainty of access to water. However, many of the world's civilizations can attest that the very act of reducing water uncertainty by technical means (capture, storage, and irrigation) has ultimately led to greater uncertainty and civilization failure. This article explores the concept of living with water as a complex entity, inseparably connected with all three levels of existential complexity—individual, social, and ecological—rather than as a commodity, which has led to our current uncertain status.     

Disobeying an Illegitimate Request in a Democratic or Authoritarian System

Crimes of obedience in the form of illegal or immoral acts committed in response to orders from authority occur in many contexts. In particular, under some circumstances of threats, people can easily accept restrictions upon democratic procedures. Recent studies have underlined the role of legitimacy in understanding the authority relationship and the importance of evaluating the legitimacy of the request rather than the legitimacy of the authority in preventing the rise of authoritarianism. The purpose of this study was to verify if people respond differently when an illegitimate request is put forward by a democratic or an authoritarian authority. The results on 224 subjects confirmed that people tend to be more obedient when they perceive authorities as democratic, notwithstanding the legitimacy of their requests.     

Openness,economic freedom and democracy moderate the relationship between national intelligence and GDP

Recent studies have shown a consistent relationship between per-capita GDP and the average intelligence of the population. In the present paper we show that intelligence is indeed a powerful predictor of GDP. However, other variables significantly moderate the relationship. The rise in GDP with rising intelligence proved more pronounced in countries exhibiting high levels of openness, Freedom/Democracy, and economic freedom. These conditions appear to enable a country to translate its cognitive capital into material wealth.     

Mrs. Aremac and the Camera: A Response to Ryberg

In a recent article in Res Publica, Jesper Ryberg argues that CCTV can be compared to a little old lady gazing out onto the street below. This article takes issue with the claim that government surveillance can be justified in this manner. Governments have powers and responsibilities that little old ladies lack. Even if CCTV is effective at preventing crime, there may be less intrusive ways of doing so. People have a variety of legitimate interests in privacy, and protection for these is important to their status as free and equal citizens. Consequently, though necessary, effectiveness is insufficient to justify CCTV in a democracy.

From dissidents to collaborators: the resurgence and demise of the Russian critical intelligentsia since 1985

This paper investigates the multifaceted universe of Russian intelligentsia and addresses the following, troubling, questions: What caused pro-democratic political dissent to weaken among the intelligentsia in the aftermath of perestrojka? Why has the young generation of Russian public intellectuals undergone a radical metamorphosis of their value system and plunged into political passivity and conformism? Freedom has historically been a prima facie value for the Russian liberal intelligentsia. By the mid-1990s, however, much of the intelligentsia came to be associated not with advocacy of individual liberty and human rights but with the failure of liberal democracy in Russia. This paper focuses on how the generation of the 1960s liberal intelligentsia, or shestidesjatniki, who played an active role during perestrojka, gave way to a generation of the “sons,” who, characterized as Western-style intellectuals, became spin doctors and political technologists, replacing the original ideals and high moral stance of their predecessors with nihilistic nonchalance. It is argued that the demise of dissent in post-Soviet Russia derives from the younger generation of intellectuals’ view of the attainment of political power by the generation of shestidesjatniki during perestrojka and the first El’tsin term as the latter’s moral fall and abandonment of the intelligentsia’s traditional role as an outside critic of the state.     

Participatory Policy-Making,Participatory Civil Society: A Key for Dissolving Elite Rule in New Democracies in the Era of Globalization

The author argues that in democracies a strong state and strong civil society are not mutually exclusive. Only a democratic, legitimate, and strong state can provide the environment for civil society activities to flourish; in return, only a strong and a participatory civil society can outline the reach of state strength vis-à-vis the society. The author discusses the need for civil society organizations to collaborate with policy-making institutions, in which they can negotiate policy concerns with ministers and officials while retaining an independent distance from the state and the political parties. Further, the author argues that an environment as such would provide for the transformative capacity of human agency to manifest itself in full in a globalizing world. The author discusses how participatory state and civil society structures will enhance the role of the human agency in order to dissolve elite rule, especially in new democracies.     

The Irrelevance of Democracy to the Public Justification of Political Authority

Democracy can be a means to independently valuable ends and/or it can be intrinsically (or non-instrumentally) valuable. One powerful non-instrumental defence of democracy is based on the idea that only it can publicly justify political authority. I contend that this is an argument about the reasonable acceptability of political authority and about the requirements of publicity and that satisfying these requirements has nothing to do with whether a society is democratic or not. Democracy, then, plays no role in publicly justifying political authority. I also show that any non-instrumental defence of democracy must make claims about what justice requires and make several further claims that require substantial justification.

A Taste for Justice: Unpacking Identity Politics in a Nascent Democracy

This article examines attention to justice cues in the novel context of the nascent democracy of Tanzania. Using secondary national survey data, we illustrate Tanzanian citizens' attention to justice cues. We then test two competing hypotheses about the impact of religious identity on attention to justice cues. The first hypothesized model, based on System Justification Theory, predicts that subordinate group members (Muslims) will stay more loyal than dominant group members (Christians) to their government due to a decreased attention to justice cues. The second hypothesized model, based on the relational model of procedural justice, predicts that subordinate group members (Muslims) will dissent more than dominant group members (Christians) from their government due to an increased attention to justice cues. Multiple regression and mediational analyses indicate support for the procedural justice framework, with trust in the dominant political party mediating the relationship between process satisfaction and party identification. Implications for political and psychological theorizing about democratic processes will be discussed.     

Must we choose our leaders? human rights and political participation in China

The essay begins from Alan Gewirth's influential account of human rights, and specifically with his argument that the human right to political participation can only be fulfilled by competitive, liberal democracy. I show that his argument rests on empirical, rather than conceptual grounds, which opens the possibility that in China, alternative forms of participation may be legitimate or even superior. An examination of the theory and contemporary practice of ‘democratic centralism’ shows that while it does not now adequately support the right to political participation, a reformed version could. I focus in particular on the roles that could be played by consultative institutions, looking both to recent Chinese proposals and to analogues currently existing in Japan. I conclude that a reformed democratic centralism may well be the objective toward which Chinese people should strive.