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Democracy under Threat
This book addresses some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is democracy threatened by globalisation? Is there a legitimacy crisis in contemporary democracies? Is the welfare state in individual countries under pressure from global trends? What are the implications of high-level migration and rising populism for democracy? Does authoritarianism pose a challenge? The volume builds on a cross-cultural study of democracy conducted by the Transformation Research Unit (TRU) at Stellenbosch University in South Africa for nearly twenty years. Three of the countries studied – South Africa, Turkey and Poland – receive individual attention as their respective democracies appear to be the most vulnerable at present. Germany, Sweden, Chile, South Korea and Taiwan are assessed in their regional contexts. Further insights are gained by examining the impact on democracy of the global screen culture of Television and the Internet, and by pointing out the lessons democracy should learn from diplomacy to fare better in the future. The book will appeal to both students and practitioners of democracy as well as the general reader.
Democracy Under Stress
DEMOCRACY UNDER STRESS focuses on the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 and its implications for democracy. Why and how did the crisis come about? Are there any instructive lessons to be drawn from comparisons with the Great Depression of the 1930s? What are the democratic response mechanisms to cope with serious crises? Do they work? Is China a new trend setter? Do values matter? Are global democratic rules a possibility? These are some of the key questions addressed in the volume.
Democracy under Pressure
This book identifies the main factors shaping the fortunes of democracy globally. Why do some democracies in the same region and presumably subject to similar global influences remain stable while others regress? This is the question guiding all the authors of this edited book. In the search for answers, they examine 16 democracies in paired and tripled comparisons in sub-Saharan Africa, North and Latin America, East Asia, Western and Central Europe, along with two polar cases. Insights from the perspectives of history, political science, economics and international relations are offered along with a sketch of possible future scenarios. Combining approaches anchored in the analytical tradition with empirical case studies and given the broad range of topics, this book is bound to be of interest not only to students and practitioners of democracy but also to the broader academic and general readership.
Comparative Area Studies
In the post-World War II era, the emergence of 'area studies' marked a signal development in the social sciences. As the social sciences evolved methodologically, however, many dismissed area studies as favoring narrow description over general theory. Still, area studies continues to plays a key, if unacknowledged, role in bringing new data, new theories, and valuable policy-relevant insights to social sciences. In Comparative Area Studies, three leading figures in the field have gathered an international group of scholars in a volume that promises to be a landmark in a resurgent field. The book upholds two basic convictions: that intensive regional research remains indispensable to the soci...
Paul, John, and Apocalyptic Eschatology
The texts of Hungarian reformers, whether Lutheran, Calvinist, Catholic, or Anti-Trinitarian have hitherto been virtually unknown to the scholarly community. For the first time, this collection of primary sources offers a comprehensive survey of the original writings of the Hungarian reformers. It includes texts from the period of the first stirrings of reform in the 1540s through to works written for the established churches of the region during the 1650s. It is an invaluable resource for historians interested in the Lutheran Reformation, the development of international Calvinism, the Catholic Reformation, and the emergence of Anti-Trinitarianism.
Democracy under scrutiny
Values – elites and ordinary people This book reveals the diverse worlds of history, civic culture and values of South Africa, South Korea, Chile, Poland, Turkey, Germany and Sweden. It explores the similarities and contrasts between the values of the elites and the ordinary people. Written from various disciplinary perspectives and offering both empirical evidence and insiders’ knowledge, this book is bound to interest a wide variety of readers. The study on which the book reports was in the main based on analyses of value orientations of the parliamentary and media elites and those of the ordinary citizens. The data for the elites were obtained from surveys conducted for the purposes o...
Modern State Development, Capacity, and Institutions
This book makes an important original conceptual and theoretical contribution to our understanding of modern state development, the role of the state, and the South African transition to democracy. Its focus on related concepts such as state capacity, political trust and tolerance adds to insights on the dynamics of political and democratic transitions. Furthermore, the selected focus areas as well as the comparative approach add new insights into the peculiarities of the South African transition, state development, state capacity and state institutions. Its focus on societal dynamics and state-society relations is a significant contribution.
Hermeneutics and Social Transformation
"In a South African context ... condemning apartheid is not enough. To make a non-racial, democratic, inclusive society viable and enduring, much more is required ? of which creative and imaginative theological thinking is not the least. Fundamental theological values and their implications for all the facets of society must be thought through ? not as an academic exercise, but as a grass-roots undertaking ? and the greatest challenge is to act in terms of this new understanding of society." - Bernard Lategan, Some implications of the family concept in New Testament texts
The Effects of Race
The STIAS research theme on Being Human Today explores the interrelated questions: What does it mean to be human? And: What is the nature of the world in which we aspire to be human? In the context of post-apartheid South Africa race and racism remain key references in both these questions. Why is this so, considering that the biological basis of race thinking has been refuted? Templates of race and racialism remain at the core of state policy in South Africa, periodic gross incidents of racism surface in public, and notions of the existence of races remain central to everyday thinking and discourse. This book is the result of the work of a group of leading thinkers and their in-depth conversations at STIAS during the winter of 2015 on the effects of race. Convened by evolutionary anthropologist Nina Jablonski and sociologist Gerhard Mare, the group included Njabulo Ndebele, Chabani Manganyi, Barney Pityana, Crain Soudien, Goeran Therborn, Mikael Hjerm, Zimitri Erasmus and George Chaplin. The group reconvened annually through 2017. This is the first in a series of planned publications on the their work.
Good Governance in Nigeria
Drawing on original fieldwork in Nigeria, Portia Roelofs reconsiders what good governance means, focusing on accountability and transparency.
