Narrow Results

The paper reviews the economic motivations of the Arab Spring. After examining the possible relationships between the Arab riots and the global economic crisis started in 2007, the analysis focuses on some structural aspects characterizing North Africa and Middle East Countries, such as their demographic structure, the profound social inequalities, and the discrepancy between the education levels, of youth in particular, and the civil and political rights accorded to the populations. The combination of youth demographics, high unemployment rates, and high educational levels, coupled with an unrepresentative political system, increases the likelihood of social unrest.

Democratization is a century-long hot issue in comparative politics. Parliament functions as the central system of democracy. Studies on comparative parliament can shed light on the politics of democratization. The core issue in comparative parliament is that how to explain variation in parliamentary power. This study reviews the burgeoning literature on parliamentary power and focuses on the measurement and explanation of variation in parliamentary power. A small but growing amount of studies provide three theoretical perspectives, namely political institution, the incentive structure of parliament members, and political party. All those propositions emphasize the significance of the political party. As for the relationship between the political party and committees in parliament, there are two conflicting versions: substitution thesis and agent thesis. Based on these reviews, this paper puts forward the issues of future research in comparative parliament.

The sharing economy may be an opportunity to respond to real societal needs through the mutualization of resources and to encourage new communities through the democratization of power. Mutualization and democratization do not guarantee the ethical nature of this movement. Our research question is under what conditions the sharing economy can present the ethical dimensions highlighted by sharing-related literature. To answer that question, we explore the theoretical and empirical context of crowdfunding (CF) and focus on the comparative analysis of five reward- and equity-based CF platforms. This study emphasizes the conditions needed for ethical CF and, more generally, for an ethical sharing economy: the possibility to give gratuitously; the pursuit of a societal purpose; cooperation within and between groups of actors; long-term stability of spaces and times dedicated to cooperation; virtual and possibly physical arenas of cooperation; and people dedicated to cooperation.

The idea of civil society has been the source of contested debates, and has been a dominant discourse in recent Chinese political and ideological life since the late 1980s both in mainland China and Taiwan. The paper describes and explains the emergence and transformation of the ideas of civil society. It analyzes political innovations associated with, and democratic implications of, the conceptual changes of civil society both in mainland China and Taiwan. These conceptual changes can be identified as a shift from the idea of the totalitarian society to the liberal idea of civil society before June 4, 1989, to the antagonist model of civil society as a democratic strategy among some intellectuals overseas after 1989, and then to the mutual support model between the state and civil society since 1992 in mainland China. These changes also involve a shift from the antagonist model of civil society, which was popular in 1986–87, to the Habermasian version of civil society on Taiwan.

The discourse on civil society in both Taiwan and mainland China seems to support, confirm and reinforce the key element of the liberal idea of civil society, that is, the necessity of the normative distinction of the state from civil society. It also demonstrates that it is dangerous to believe that all the problems, and all the solutions lie within the body of civil society; the idea of civil society alone cannot offer a solution to all the problems. We need to turn for help from the democratic ideas of constitutionalism, citizenship, and the rule of law; above all, civil society itself has to be democratized.

This chapter aims to provide a concise review of reforms in different political institutions since China's reform and opening-up in 1978, and to analyze the progress, bounds, and agendas behind these reforms. We examine party-led reforms in the bureaucratic system, State Council, government agencies, legislature, judicial system, and rural politics, as well as changes and continuities in the Party elites' ideology of democratization and civil society–state relations. Along with political and economic reforms in the past three decades and as the process of state building gradually unfolds, the government has enacted more laws and regulations successfully. The Party has also transformed past administrative means into legal means with stronger leadership and governance. The Party's elites are gradually acknowledging the universality of democracy, although neither the adoption of Western context of freedom nor the establishment of liberal democracy in China is implied by such acknowledgement. The ultimate objective of the reforms is to drive the Party toward reclaiming its legitimacy. Currently, the paramount task is to strengthen party organizations and consolidate the Party's ruling capacity. This means that the Party may develop Singaporean-style authoritarianism and maintain its ruling position by laws and economic interests.

Within the last decade, Indonesia has been sympathetically admired by commentators for the smooth running of a democratization process following the end of authoritarian regime under Suharto's administration. So far, along with the alteration of political rules of the game, the democratization process that is taking place has generated significant institutional changes, and brings a fairly major transformation in political landscape. Citizens are enjoying free liberal environment and are receiving the rights of speech and association that is guaranteed by the laws. Regular free and fair elections have been conducted for the third time for electing a president, members of senate (Dewan Perwakilan Daerah/DPD) and the people representative assembly (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat/DPR) at both national and local levels. Free media has also been flourishing and plays an important role in scrutinizing governmental and political affairs. As well, power has been significantly distributed both vertically and horizontally: vertically, Indonesia has been carrying out a broad decentralization process where provincial and local governments are receiving a large number of authorities and responsibilities for the provision of public services; horizontally, a number of new democratic institutions (currently there are about 40 Institutions in the form of committees and commissions) have been formed for exercising a different set of power and rotating the wheel of governance. In addition to these, military force has been sterilized from the political arena and no longer engages, at least on formal regulations, in business activities. In sum, as the World Bank (2003: i) maintains, Indonesia has been able to construct basic requirements for a strong functioning democracy.

When it comes to corruption, however, the extraordinary process of governance reform seems to have no effect. Despite the success story of many democratic accomplishments, Indonesia continuously performs poorly in dealing with corruption. In the last 10 years after democratization began, Indonesia still ranked close to the bottom, together with the most corrupt countries of the world, according to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. The score has never been far away from the score that was achieved during the authoritarian government era.

On the practical context, the appearance of corruption acts could still be easily observed in almost entire governmental buildings, especially in the places where public service is carried out. Street conversations about the way government officials maintain red-tape bureaucratic procedures in order to attract bribery, collusion between government officials and businessmen to capture public resources as in the case of illegal logging, conspiracy of judicial authorities to take illicit profit from court cases, and the way politicians exercise power to grab public budget are still in the daily reports of the Indonesian media. Due to systematic corruption, the quality of public services remains extremely poor. Devolution and decentralization of power has no meaning other than prosperity for the elites and the new power holders. Needlessly to mention that annually the State Auditing Agency keeps finding a huge number of irregularities in almost every government branch. In short, corruption has not only become an endemic in contemporary Indonesian politics, but also, turns into “a new ideology” where everyone seems born corrupt.

This chapter will try to examine these contrasting phenomena by explaining why the governance reform in a new emerging democratic country like Indonesia is not sufficient to curb corruption. While theoretically the implementation of good governance principles could end chronic abuses of power including corruption, evidence shows that this is not an automatic mechanism. Instead, imprudent process of governance reform may create a fertile ground for the spread of corruption.