The anthology presents the lectures given on the symposium »From Dictatorship to democracy« at the House of the Wannsee Conference on 13–14 September 2021. The aim of the organizers was to show what problems existed during the transition from dictatorship to democracy in several countries around the world. They all enacted laws or other measures to ensure that fundamental rights and the rule of law would resist anti-democratic ideologies, anti-Semitism, racism, and war crimes in the future. However, the legal system and law in these countries themselves often had their origins in dictatorship. Thus, there were and are obvious and hidden anti-democratic continuities that influence law and the legal system up to the present. Scientifics and jurists from Italy, Japan, Poland, Spain, South Africa, and Germany examine these continuities in their contributions.
The transition to democracy in Paraguay has been one of the most difficult in Latin America. This book highlights the limitations of the process of democratisation in a country which lacked a previous democratic tradition and where the legacy of the harsh regime of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-89) is enduring. The book describes the nature of the Stroessner regime, examines the actors in the democratisation process, and shows how they influenced the policies of the transition governments.
Baker and his colleagues provide a blend of the theoretical and the empirical evidence in an examination of the nature of bureaucracy under non-democratic, authoritarian forms of government, whether on the right, as in Portugal, or the left, as in Bulgaria. In all these instances, the bureaucracy was constructed to serve the distorted interests of centralized, unaccountable power. Following the remarkable spread of democracy in the seventies in Iberia, the eighties in much of Latin America, parts of Asia and Africa, and the nineties in the former USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries, the main focus was on reforming the economy and the political institutions. Distinguished scholars concentrate on the inherited bureaucracy--the arm of government with which the people most often have to deal. They highlight the undemocratic, and sometimes antidemocratic, nature of the civil service that is supposed to serve democracy. Others consider the nature of reform as experienced, and as needed, why there is no major policy for real reform of the bureaucracy in many countries, and the similar experience of reforming from the left and the right. Contributors discuss specific experiences as case studies and examine the more general question of what lessons can be learned from this unique perspective into comparative public administration reform. Essential reading for scholars, students, policy makers, and others involved with comparative government and public administration.
This book examines contemporary recollection of Spain's transition to democracy in the late 1970s and its connection to the country's current political, financial and cultural crises through fiction, film, and television.
In this fascinating account of the master social scientist and policy innovator, Gino Germani, written by his daughter, the reader will find a rich social and intellectual history. Germani's life traversed Italy under Mussolini's fascism, Argentina under Peronism, and North America during the glorious days of the social sciences' postwar expansion. With high irony, the biography concludes with Germani's return to Naples, Italy, as what Ana Germani correctly calls "an outsider in the homeland." This is a volume that should be uniquely appealing to area specialists, social psychologists, and those concerned with the cross-currents of politics and society. From his youth in Italy, which he left as a result of persecution by the Fascist authorities, through his long and distinguished career in international social science, and a career carved out in a series of exiles, Germani maintained a unity of purpose based on a liberal world outlook in political terms and a struggle against totalitarianism. Social science was the cement that bound Germani's affirmations of democracy and his opposition to dictatorship. In Argentina, Germani is recognized as the founder of modern scientific sociology. There as elsewhere, his work was grounded on the presumption that a biometric society was the ground on which all science develops. Living and working during one of the most fertile periods in the development of social research in Argentina, Germani was the central protagonist of its most fertile period. Argentina served as a central focal point for discussion and debate on the practices of modern societies and the cultural forms. Whether in Italy, Argentina, or the United States, German's work took seriously the individual and transpersonal events that helped form social structures of modernization. The book is rich in details, providing a full bibliography of the works of Germani, his relationships with foundations, universities and personnel, and brief profiles of individuals who worked with and knew him.
The past four decades have seen the Spanish film industry rise from isolation in the 1970s to international recognition within European and World Cinema today. Exploring the cultural and political imperatives that governed this success, this book shows how Spanish film culture was deliberately and strategically shaped into its current form.
Since the end of the 1980 coup d’état Turkey has been in the midst of a complex process of democratization. Applying methodological pluralism in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of this process in a Turkish context, this book brings together contributions from prominent, Turkish, English, French, and Spanish scholars. Turkey’s Democratization Process utilises the theoretical framework of J.J. Linz and A.C. Stepan in order to assess the complex process of democratization in Turkey. This framework takes into account five interacting features of Turkey’s polity when making this assessment, namely: whether the underlying legal and socioeconomic conditions are conducive for the development of a free and participant society; if a relatively autonomous political society exists; whether there are legal guarantees for citizens’ freedoms; if there exists a state bureaucracy which can be used by a democratic government; and whether the type and pace of Turkish economic development contributes to this process. Examining the Turkish case in light of this framework, this book seeks to combine analyses that will help assess the process of democratization in Turkey to date and will be of interest to scholars and researchers interested in Turkish Politics, Democratization and Middle Eastern Studies more broadly.
Traditionally relegated because of political pressure and public expectations, courts in Latin America are increasingly asserting a stronger role in public and political discussions. This casebook takes account of this phenomenon, by offering a rigorous and up-to-date discussion of constitutional adjudication in Latin America in recent decades. Bringing to the forefront the development of constitutional law by Latin American courts in various subject matters, the volume aims to highlight a host of creative arguments and solutions that judges in the region have offered. The authors review and discuss innovative case law in light of the countries’ social, political and legal context. Each chapter is devoted to a discussion of a particular area of judicial review, from freedom of expression to social and economic rights, from the internalization of human rights law to judicial checks on the economy, from gender and reproductive rights to transitional justice. The book thus provides a very useful tool to scholars, students and litigants alike.
En aquest llibre s'ha defugit la temptació de convertir la història contemporània d'Amèrica en un mosaic inconnex de petites històries nacionals de cada país, i s'han abordat, per contra, i de forma innovadora, els grans problemes històrics continentals des de finals del segle XVIII fins a l'actualitat més estricta.
El Diccionario de la Democracia contiene la teoría y la ideología de los regímenes democráticos: sus antecedentes; orígenes; principios; modalidades de deliberación y leyes; sus instituciones clave y variedades, acorde con la clase social que los dirija y el arreglo institucional correlativo. Asimismo compara sus principios, leyes e instituciones con otros regímenes, particularmente con sus opuestos, las oligarquías o gobiernos de pocos, pero también con la república, la tiranía y la realeza; las razones de Estado que permiten su conquista, conservación y estabilidad; las fuentes internas y externas que los amenazan; las maneras de corromperse y las revoluciones que los afectan. Trata también de los usos, costumbres y caracteres democráticos; inventaría los rasgos éticos de la vida democrática, por sí mismos y comprobados con los de los ricos, las clases medias y los tiranos, hasta detallar las relaciones que sostienen entre sí dirigentes y dirigidos, hombres y mujeres, viejos, jóvenes, maestros y alumnos, ciudadanos y animales..., por el impacto que la libertad e igualdad popular tienen en la vida pública y privada de sus pueblos. Parte medular del mismo es la exposición de las doctrinas, dogmas, leyes e instituciones del modelo liberal moderno de la democracia; un credo que se analiza en calidad de justificación del nouveau régime por parte de sus ideólogos modernos más destacados y lúcidos, quienes desvían el significado de las palabras ] democracia ] y ] liberal ] atribuidas sin más a los Estados modernos.
