For Democracy
For Democracy
escrito por Dini Harmita
Abstract
Political participation represents different interests and emphasis of actors including voters, politicians, and scholars. Preferably taking consideration of every measurement makes us at least widen our knowledge about the different perspectives. It is also applicable to democracy. Each indicator has strengths and weaknesses. What is happening today is when we choose only one institution to measure our democracy, the possibility of the institution being compromised is higher than if we have comparative measurements. Depending on the contexts, some democracies may need only several indicators and some others need the different ones. When the indicators are embedded individually, it will be easier for the laws to work; it means the micro, meso, and macro levels or systems interact and complete each other. This paper is entitled and written to detail it.
Keywords: Democracy, Political Participation, Political Science, Voters, Politicians, Comparative
Participatory Democracy
Many scholars wrote representative democracy and very few did for participatory democracy. Since participatory behavior tends to be manifested in the forms of action and efforts to fix, most of its research is classified as action research.
Several indicators must have already comprised democracy indicators related to participation. V-Dem democracy indicators on participation emphasises on citizen involvement in governance. It seems like the growing current definitions and dimensions of democracy such as liberal democracy, deliberative democracy, electoral democracy, egalitarian democracy, and participatory democracy are originated from their indicators. Like most institutions in Europe, OSCE-ODIHR democracy indicators on participation emphasise on public involvement including in debates and lawmaking.
Asia including Japan (East Asia) moves in different directions nonetheless both can complete each other. Harmita (2022) classifies actors in political participation into at least voters, politicians, and scholars. If voters need to eat then they need to be fed and empowered; which means for this case we can use the Asian indicators for democracy. If voters’ stomach and brain are full 80% with better food and knowledge, the politicians will get what they want in their report figures with less or zero complaints including in European indicators. The current problems are actually in the scholars who are in favour of the Oligarchs. They are the ones who are not objective or subjective. Whatever methods they need to win they will use it. It makes them as worse as the compromised politicians. Since scholars are respected by almost every side and entity, we need to be careful in identifying which ones are the friends of democracy and vice versa.
The Russian case is the easiest one to mention because they're not democracy yet their reports will call themselves as one. Like when our articles are great, it will be better and feeling right when our readers say it instead of ourselves. Not to mention, I don't think wars are in the parts of any democracy indicators.
V-Dem and OSCE-ODIHR
Even V-DEM and OSCE-ODIHR can actually work together to complete their indicators. Nevertheless the call shouldn't come from V-Dem or OSCE-ODIHR because It will be easily compromised by those who generate Corruption, Collusion, Cartelisation, and Nepotism (C4N). It should come from the ones which are the users who need the indicators.
As the result of accompanying a collaborative management project in natural resources, Harmita (2009) found that like political parties (Casal Bértoa, 2019) water is the main problem in the related amicable conflicts and at the same can be the solution. The project encouraged the involvement of related sides from the planning. How to measure the performance? Like other projects and programs usually it is conducted through monitoring and evaluation. How about the indicators? Ideally the indicators should be formulated, tested, agreed, and implemented together. That is the basic principle of lawmaking.
Nevertheless, like what Casal Bértoa (2017) mentioned about everything tends to be about money, when illegal loggers bribed related officials they could freely continue their business; while the indigenous people who live and stole chickens plus countable timber inside or surrounding the national parks are jailed.
One day if those officials ask us to measure their democracy, which indicators are we going to use?
Asia and Europe
European democracies tend to be consolidated with one indicator that is rarely seen by most scientists, that regardless of how sometimes European Union officers are also implementing C4N as an institution they take care of their farmers. When democracy is eroded almost everywhere including in Europe, authoritarianism is rising. Is democracy backsliding happening because of authoritarianism?
From V-Dem’s citizen involvement in the governance point of view, European countries tend to be dominated by the elites. From OSCE-ODIHR’s public participation including in lawmaking only those who have gazillions economic capitals (Bourdieu, 1983) could have a say.
Asia’s countries tend to have new democracies because of the electoral or representative democracy definition. Mair (2005) calls both electoral and representative democracy popular democracy. When it comes to participatory development it tends to be studied as development studies from community to international development.
Those developments might be incorporated in any current democracy indicators nonetheless no one is really checking the field because with current workforce divisions it's not the job of those who assess democracy. Currently it is only the task of extension workers to check the citizen farms for example. When the leaders are showing off the charts in the meetings, not rarely their citizens are still hungry. Should we call it democracy then?
Conclusion
It goes without saying that quantitative, qualitative, and participatory methodologies in democracy studies go hands in hands. Should we have a better methodology to measure democracy it needs to consider subjective individual micro necessity so the macro quantitative figures shared by their leaders will have less or zero gaps with the reality. When the polarisation is still there, the participatory methodologies seem to be inevitable to complete or bridge.
References
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