Democracy and Elections

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Democracy and Elections

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VOX

VOX | The Student Journal of Politics, Economics and Philosophy

Editorial

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This year is an important one for voting and democracy. We have the American Elections in full swing, watching from across the pond as outlandish statements are made by certain politicians, with confusion as to how their system works. Alongside that we have the scandal of people being dropped off the electoral roll in the UK, and uncertainty about what the EU referendum will bring for the UK. This is the year to be discussing what it means to have the vote and how political systems shape every aspect of our lives.

In this issue of VOX we have an interview with Dr. Jo Rose and Janaka Jayawickrama from PRDU, discussing whether democracy should be viewed as a universal aim, what democracy means in real terms and how it is conceptualised differently in different countries. Francois Bares writes about the Left Right distinction in politics today, and how they represent a societal divide rather than opposing views. Sebastian Law considers the case of Cuba, arguing that they are not transitioning to a democracy, but are moving towards a widened dictatorship. Finally, I (Ida) explore the effects of democracy on expected and real levels of redistribution, and how the model does not fit the real world examples due to too many factors.

We hope you enjoy reading this issue, and you start to question what a democracy is, whether there are feasible alternatives, and understand how this fits in with the way countries are structured.

Thank you.

Ida and Nadia Editors in Chief

Editorial Team Editors-inchief

Ida Sjöberg Nadia Setiabudi

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Content Editors Uvin Dissanayake Christopher Proof-reader Lübker Leo Ehrnrooth Miguel Vidal Sebastian Law

Jack Harvey

Layout Editor

Secretary

Olivia Stephens

Web Officer Jack Turner

Emily Bradley Gloor

Front Cover - Nutrition Foundations

THE STUDENT JOURNAL OF POLITICS, ECONOMICS AND PHILOSOPHY

ISSUE XXVIII - SPRING 2016

contents

Interview Building Democracy in Developing Countries: Field View (Against the Book View) with Dr Janaka Jayawick-

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ram and Dr Jo Rose

Essays A Transition to What? Prospect for democracy in Cuba.

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Sebastian Law

The Crisis of the ‘Left and Right’ Distinction in the Global Era.

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Francois Bares

Given the Recent Increases in Inequality, would an Economist Expect to see a Rise in Redistribution in a Democracy?

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Ida Sjöberg VOX is an academic journal run by studentsthatprovidesaplatformforthe exchangeofideasandoffersinsightinto debates relating to Politics, Economics and Philosophy (PEP).

VOX is published triannually by the Club of PEP at the University of York and distributedonYork’scampusaswell as other universities world-wide.

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VOX | The Student Journal of Politics, Economics and Philosophy

Building Democracy in Developing Countries: Field View (against the Book View) Since its establishment in 1992, the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit of the University of York has become a world leader within the field of post-conflict reconstruction. By linking theory and practice, their staff has significantly influenced post-conflict reconstruction policies. They have first-hand experience with humanitarian projects aimed at influencing societies. In this interview with Dr Jo Rose and Dr Janaka Jayawickrama, the VOX journal asks: Can democracy work everywhere?

Janaka and Jo have been working in humanitarian crises for over 20 years in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, including the 2004 Tsunami in Sri Lanka. They are collaborating with disaster, conflict and uneven development affected communities worldwide while engaging in policy dialogue on humanitarian affairs including the UN World Humanitarian Summit. They come to the discourse on democracy, state building and peacebuilding from field-view perspectives.

VOX: Do you think democracy can

work worldwide?

Janaka: There are two things.

First, what is the definition of democracy? If you look at three major democracies, from the US to the UK and India, there are three different definitions of democracy. When we talk about these three countries, they all have processes evolved within those specific contexts.

Another important thing to bear in mind when we talk about democracy is that we talk about the Parliament, the Government and the 4

courts of law, but what does that mean at the local level? The definitions and practices are very different from place to place. When we look at key elements of democracy like human rights, the separation of powers, liberties, and general and equal rights, some can be universal but some are local. One example is freedom of opinion. Whose opinion is valuable? It’s about the class, caste, gender and other power balances. As the South African philosopher Mokokoma says ‘the thing with democracy is that vote of a well-informed 80-year-old carries the same weight as that of an igno-

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rant 18-year-old’. So suddenly the experienced versus unexperienced comes to play. But then, most societies, when we look at Asian, African and Middle Eastern communities, societies are hierarchical – age matters. I remember when I started as a local humanitarian worker I was 18. Nobody listened to me because I was 18. There is a structure and there is a hierarchy; when you start getting grey hairs in your beard, then people start listening to you.

These practices have been happening for the last 2000-3000 years, so you can’t really change them in a two to three year project.

VOX: So at a local level, democracy

requires a certain level of egalitarianism. Would you say that certain cultures are incompatible with democracy?

Janaka: Yes and no. For example,

in 2007, the monarchy of Bhutan decided to go for democracy by abolishing the monarchy, but people said ‘No, we are happy with the monarchy’. So what do you say about that, is that democracy there?

But, what works for people in a particular country may not work elsewhere. The word culture can be divided into two parts, ‘cult’ and ‘ure’, ‘cult’ meaning worshipping and ‘ure’ meaning earth. So culture can be defined as worshipping the earth.

In that sense, that particular geography and environment (people’s relationship to nature and their environment) is very specific to those people, and the way they develop their governance structure is always very specific to that locality based on their needs and wants. You can’t really say ‘that is wrong and that is right’. One of the problems with Western philosophy is rooted in the idea of ‘universality). In many ways, it is about Newton, the moment the apple hit his head; we got the universal law of gravity. That’s where the influence of universality came into Western philosophy. So we look about the universality of concepts, democracy, and human rights. We try to look at them as universal values, but we need to understand that some of these need to be adapted locally and understood locally.

VOX: Would you say that democ-

racy needs to be a bottom-up or a top-down process?

Janaka: Both. Sometimes there are certain things that have to be done undemocratically. If you were to ask all the schoolchildren if they wanted to go to school, they might say ‘No’; most of the time they are happy to stay at home and play. In a democratic process, there shouldn’t be schools. You can’t have democracy everywhere. In terms of top down or bottom up, they must meet some5

VOX | The Student Journal of Politics, Economics and Philosophy

where in the middle, or in a way that works for that place. Go to Afghanistan with the drugs; you cannot democratically go about that. You have to enforce the law; say that’s it, don’t do drugs.

Jo: Most local communities have

some form of decision-making mechanism, which has either emerged through their culture or traditions. If you take Somalia, general decisions are made through elders committees, they come together to discuss and decide, and then they tell the people. That is democratic as each town and village has a representative. Then you had the case of dictator Siad Barre who was toppled by General Farah Aidid.

At that time General Aidid and his supporters believed he should assume the presidency. But the international community said that peace talks were to be held in Addis Ababa to decide who should lead the country. General Aidid refused to participate as he believed these talks would fail as they have done in the past and that he was the rightful next President. Many Somalis agreed with General Aidid and we only have to look at Somalia today to see how those peace talks turned out.

VOX: That brings us to the next

question: Is it fair to offer humanitar6

ian assistance with conditions?

Janaka: No. When you look at

humanitarian assistance, there are different technical terminologies.

We are talking about humanitarian assistance, not humanitarian interventions (which include military interventions). When we look at humanitarian assistance, it is all about saving lives. The moment you are trying to save lives and say that one person’s life is more important than another’s because they follow our rules, you breach the Hippocratic Oath of do no harm. Anybody who is affected deserves help. There are certain rules and processes, independence, neutrality and impartiality. In that process we cannot say that since you aren’t doing this, we aren’t doing that.

However, there are certain ways of influencing situations. For example, I am a man, Jo is a woman, and we work as equal partners to set an example that in committees, men and women could work as equals.

So you can influence certain situations in the same way as the local situations influence us. We change while they change; no one is static in this situation. The idea of catalyst is a myth in this process.

Jo: We know there are all sorts of atrocities happening in different communities, but if you are there

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to deliver humanitarian assistance and lifesaving aid you are there to deliver that as your priority. If you have the opportunity to try to influence long-term development processes, that’s great, but you cannot put conditions on it. You can’t demand that they don’t beat their women or don’t carry out female genital mutilation. If you did, it’s no longer humanitarian aid; it is politically tied, conditional aid, which is not humanitarian aid.

Janaka: Humanitarian assistance can foster future development, where you can bring about those institutional changes, those human rights changes. You could lay the foundation for work towards future development.

Going back to the institutional side of the process, you need to think about the conditions of development, of human rights, equal rights, and all of that. You could lay the foundations during humanitarian assistance, but you can’t use the humanitarian assistance as a stick and carrot to tell a group of people, who are suffering through war or disaster, which they need to be democratic, otherwise we don’t feed you. If you do, it becomes somewhat a missionary process. In Nepal, or Sri Lanka, especially African context, you see many religious NGOs come and deliver Bibles instead of food.

But when they are hungry, there is no point in talking to them about anything else. When they need shelter, when they are sick and need practical basic support, you can’t really talk about the finer things in life like equal rights.

For example, in humanitarian situations, people prioritise assistance according to what they think is important. You prioritise a child, or a lactating or pregnant mother, and the 25-30 year old woman is not prioritised. But that society might prioritise based on age; it is respectful to provide for the elderly. As humanitarian agencies, we cannot walk into a country and destroy that and say that you are all equal and we are going to treat you equally.

Most these communities have had these practices, these traditional belief systems for generations. Six month to two years of humanitarian assistance won’t change anything.

Jo: Ultimately you need to get the

job done. They won’t let you deliver aid that way. Either you’ll become a target for kidnapping, you’ll be killed, or you’ll do worse for your organisation. The local staff that will remain once you leave will have their lives put at risk by doing that.

They’re left with whatever we have said to deal with.

But it all depends on how long you are going to be there for and 7

VOX | The Student Journal of Politics, Economics and Philosophy

what you are going to do. If there is a religion in the culture and you can explore it, it can be a useful tool. I worked in Somalia with a local group of religious leaders and Sheiks to explore the role of women in the Holy Qur’an where we used the Holy Qur’an as basis for how we involved women in projects, and that became a powerful tool.

Because that was coming from the leaders and the Holy Qur’an, it was fine. It wasn’t coming from me as an outsider. But you don’t always get the opportunity to do that.

that in a two-year project you are going to change any society or community. It needs time, education (not necessarily the institutionalised education), and the local society must debate amongst themselves.

People must feel confident to stand up against certain practices and that takes a lot of time. The moment you are going to change a society, it needs to be willing. And it requires courage as you are going against your parents, your elders and your systems. It cannot happen within a short period.

Janaka: You need to engage with

VOX: Is democracy necessary for

local populations in the long term.

In that process, as outsiders, you change whilst they change. It’s not just that we are the messengers of democracy and peace. We are also struggling to learn what that means in that particular context. So it’s a struggle together to find answers to some of the common issues and common questions. Some of these take generations. I mean talking from Sri Lankan experience, in Sri Lanka, we started having free education in 1938 and one of the major elements of influences in the education system was abolishing dowries and the caste system. However, my generation is the first generation that got married without thinking about dowries and the caste system.

It took that long! You can’t really say 8

development or are there alternatives?

Jo: Excluding China, without democracy, development is possible but not sustainable. At some point there will be a collapse in the capitalist market system, whether that is a revolution or international intervention, it will eventually collapse.

Janaka: Back to the basics: What do you mean by development? Is it a house, a car, a big television? Or is it, like it is defined in Bhutan, happiness? We don’t know. One of the big problems we have today is that communism failed. The only system we have is capitalism, and if you are

Issue XXVIII - Spring 2016

using the capitalist marketplace to define development, then definitely, you have to have democracy. But, we can’t forget about the communities in the Zomia region of South East Asia who are happy being who they are. That doesn’t mean they are not “civilised” or “backward”. It is a choice. If that is how people have decided to live their lives, that’s fine too. But we are not ready to accept that. From a capitalist market place point of view, everybody has to have a television, a car, a house, a mortgage, and a big student loan.

That’s what we call development?

In most countries, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Sudan, none of that matters. Your relationships, your kinships, your family, those are the valuable things. We have a student from Afghanistan whose course fee for his MA has been paid for by his tribe. How do you explain that?

They collected all their money to send one person to university so that they can come back and help the community. How do you explain that in the market place? These are not black and white answers, but what we need to understand is that the whole thing is about what works for people. Unfortunately we don’t let people decide. Where we are today with humanitarian affairs, and peace building and state building exercises, we’ve gone so far by thinking what we know is better than what others know, so we try

to impose on other people what we think is right. But there are different ways of achieving the same goal, that’s what we need to acknowledge.

VOX: Do you think there is a lot to

be said about the divide between focusing on individuals and focusing on the family / community? This seems to be quite a common theme.

Jo: When we deliver humanitarian aid, it is delivered to individuals.

When they come to the refugee camps we count them as individuals, we label them in categories. We don’t treat them, look after them or try to support them as a community, which is actually how they’ve functioned for so long, and we automatically start destroying what has worked for them, in the way we deliver aid.

Janaka: Even in terms of the refugees and asylum seekers coming into Europe now, I have seen some of the asylum applications.

Two application forms, from two countries, asked if you are happy to live in an area without your family, meaning they are going to divide the family by saying one part lives here and the other part lives elsewhere. Again, this is destroying 9

VOX | The Student Journal of Politics, Economics and Philosophy

those relationships and promoting individuality. However most people live as collectives, and the moment you take that away you destroy their identity.

Jo: If you strengthen one indi-

vidual, they get the best education, the best aid or the best experiences, they generally leave their community as they become an outsider to their own community, and that community is still going to be completely vulnerable. Whereas if you work with the community and look to build the community capacities as a whole, it is better. Their neighbours will look after them if they are sick, in a way it makes the humanitarian assistance as a whole redundant as it will be giving them the skills to cope with disasters themselves.

There is going to be the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016, hopefully some big issues will be on the table for discussion. Ultimately, there has to be recognition that what we have done so far has failed. Look at Somalia: How much money and aid have we given, and where are we today? It is obviously not working and there need to be changes. I don’t see the humanitarian summit itself as going to give the answers but hopefully it will open up the doors for agreement that changes need to be made.

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Everybody will be involved, from the UN and the World Bank, to governments and donors including countries who are often ignored, such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa as humanitarian and development dnors.

Janaka: They [BRICS – Brazil, China, India, China and South Africa, but also Turkey] don’t stick to the same principles as Western countries, with neutrality, independence and impartiality. What we need to do is have a conversation with everybody, see what works and doesn’t work. It’s all about the dialogue.

Jo: We do hope there will be a big

push in how we work with communities. Janaka is an advisor to the World Humanitarian Summit on community engagement and this is what we want to see as a major outcome of it. How the international community engages with the local community and begins collaborations. In most cases, the people on the ground are the first responders; there is a lot to be learnt from them.

The moment the humanitarian aid arrives those efforts are often sidelined and marginalised.

Janaka: Most experts on democratisation, state building and peace

Issue XXVIII - Spring 2016

building need to talk directly to the people on the ground – including affected communities. That doesn’t happen. I saw during the ceasefire in Sri Lanka 2002-2004, most of the peace-building experts came and sat in Colombo, talking to the elites.

That was it. They didn’t talk to the people, which are day-to-day folks.

They don’t know what to ask people.

Jo: Generally, if communities

themselves have peaceful processes of sitting down and discussing to resolve issues, they will carry that to whatever level they go to. One of the organisations we’re working with in Afghanistan, some of the communities have recently said that now they have a range of ways to resolve decisions and disagreements so that it does not become violent. They have seen a different way of doing it. That outcome was a product of many different factors coming into play. They got electricity, so they all got TVs and started watching Hindi programmes, but most importantly, the women got to talk to each other about how their husbands treat them or should treat them and then go back to the elders to pass this on. It’s a case of getting the right tools and allowing them to develop organically.

Janaka: It is human nature to be

tribalistic; you come to university, you have the SU, political societies and the VOX journal – that’s tribal.

You always have a leader, rituals and practices. That’s normal. Unfortunately, we have been told again and again that it is primitive. However, we need to understand what works for people. In today’s world, we do not have time. We want to get things done quickly, but life doesn’t work like that. Sometimes it takes beyond your lifetime and it may not happen. But it is good to have these ideas and that is the nature of being human; we have hopes and dreams.

That’s why, if you look to the far corners of Africa, Asia or the Middle East where the whole communities have been destroyed by conflicts, disasters or uneven development, people still get married, have children and have hopes and dreams.

That’s the beauty of being human.

We need to understand the nature of being human, but that takes time.

Dr Jo Rose is the Associate Lec-

turer in the MSc in International Humanitarian Affairs programme. Her background experience is mostly as a humanitarian practitioner in the African and Asian context. During the last 10 years Jo has conducted more than 20 evaluation projects of humanitarian and development assistance where she closely worked with the governments of the Neth11

VOX | The Student Journal of Politics, Economics and Philosophy

Dr Janaka Jayawickrama is currently the Programme Director for the University of York’s MSc in International Humanitarian Affairs.

For the last 22 years his work has been on the ground working as a local humanitarian worker and policy maker in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Since 2004, Janaka has been a researcher and an academic collabo-

ratively working with humanitarian and development establishment, while teaching postgraduate programmes at many higher education institutes in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. Apart from that, Janaka has implemented programmes and projects in election monitoring, civic education, women workers health, participation of women in local government and economic literacy activities in Asia and Africa.

A transition to what?

Prospect for democracy in Cuba Sebastian Law Sebastian Law, University of York PPE undergraduate.

Sebastian Law evaluates Cuba’s prospects for democracy.

For the last 50 years, communist Cuba has had an adversarial relationship with its re-gional counterparts and has a long history of denying liberalization of any sort. Cuba has nevertheless consistently managed to maintain economic growth, has a relatively high GDP per capita, and scores well on the Human Development Index (Hdr.undp.org, 2015).

In recent decades, the country has seen substantial changes; it has liberalized its economic policies, 12

restored economic ties with several western countries, and restored its diplomatic ties with the US. Ostensibly, democracy is within reach now more than ev-er. In this essay, I assess Cuba’s prospects for democracy and argue that the country is unlikely to democratize in the foreseeable future. To make the argument, I first stipulate the possibilities and limitations for predicting transitions to democracy; human actions are highly indeterminate, but the

Image: Vox.com

erlands, Denmark, Tanzania Mozambique and United Kingdom.

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imperatives of power make certain outcomes more or less likely. Second, I apply a rational-choice model to the situation in Cuba, arguing that the country’s liberalization is a move towards widened dictatorship rather than towards democracy1.

When making bold predictions such as whether countries will experience regime chang-es, it is important to explicate what generally can be predicted and what cannot. Some might think that the economic development and modernization that have occurred in Cuba inevitably will lead to democracy. Within the democratization literature, this con-viction is supported by modernization theorists. They argue that as countries 1 I have chosen to exclude the role of the US mainly due to space limitations, but also because their role is probably limited (endogenous democratization has a terrible track record; Przeworski, 2006).

grow eco-nomically and modernize, countries democratize. More specifically, economic develop-ment causes more specialization and higher education levels, which in turn lead to a more autonomous workforce and a society with the skills necessary to organize. This dis-persal of power leads to a strong civil society, strong institutions and, finally, democracy (Clark, Golder & Golder, 2013). Consequently, the key to knowing whether countries will democratize lies in their socio-economic indicators.

As persuasive as the theory might sound, it does not fit the facts; scholars such as Boix (2006) and Przeworski et al. (2000) have found that GDP per capita positively correlates with the longevity of democracy, but that the probability of dictatorships transitioning into democracies stays 13

VOX | The Student Journal of Politics, Economics and Philosophy

constant with income level. Thus, it seems that unlike many socioeconomic developments, which selfreinforce or are over-determined, democratic transi-tions occur stochastically. This unsatisfactory conclusion might result from neglecting other important factors that determine regime transitions, including individuals’ inter-ests, the complex workings of the human psychology (such as preferences, memories and expectations) as well as other unknown unknowns (Karl & Schmitter, 1991). More importantly, modernization theorists presume that the observed correlation between democracy and GDP means that socioeconomic factors cause democracy, when there are no good reasons not to think that causation goes the other way. Quite to the contrary, Robinson and Acemogul (2012), for example, provide a highly plausible account of how exogenous shocks to societies determine socio-economic

‘It seems that unlike many socio-economic developments, which self-reinforce or are over-determined, democratic transitions occur stochastically.’

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outcomes, the natures of which are functions of actors’ reactions to these shocks, constrained by existing political institu-tions. This theory allows the idiosyncratic nature of states as well as interests to be inte-grated into the analysis of regime change.

Following this theory, the answer to democra-tization might instead lie in examining whether some actor or group of actors will make the choice of transitioning to democracy given a certain exogenous shock. Although the theory cannot incorporate historical or psychological contingencies, it provides the analyt-ical tools for evaluating, more accurately, the probability of regime change.

I will now attempt to apply such an analysis to the case of Cuba. Presuming that actors will act in their own self-interest and rationally, an evaluation of democratization re-quires explicating the constraints the actors face in the case of a shock. The actors meet institutional constraints and the constraints imposed by the invisible hand of power. The constraints often sufficiently restrict the choices available to actors, and this enables meaningful analysis of what choices they are likely to make (as Machiavelli observed, in order to stay in power one generally has relatively few choices). Specifically, one can re-duce the situation in Cuba to a formalized rational-choice model.

As will become clear in the following

paragraphs, the situation in Cuba might be consid-ered a ‘Transition Game’ (Figure 1; see Clark, Golder and Golder, 2013), a well-tested rationalchoice model. The logic behind this model is that, when the elite in a dictator-ship has been incentivised by some shock (e.g. economic crisis) to liberalize its policies, the elite must, in order to avoid losing power, attempt to establish a broadened dictatorship within which it can consolidate, rather than lose control (Przeworski, as cited in Clark, Golder and Golder, 2013). Since the elite faces few or

no institutional constraints, only the relative strength of the opposition hinders its objective. The strength of the op-position can never be known for certain, thus liberalization always comes with the risk of popular uprising. If the opposition is strong, the elite prefers democracy to insurgency, but if the opposition is weak, reverting to the status quo (although less favourable than a broadened dictatorship) is preferable. Given the choices and preferences in Figure 1, there are 3 scenarios: (I) If the elite believes that the opposition 15

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‘One should be wary to interpret liberalization as synonymous with a move towards democracy.’ is strong, it will maintain the status quo; (II) if the elite believes, correctly, that the opposition is weak, it will estab-lish a broadened dictatorship; and (III) if the elite believes that the opposition is weak when the opposition is, in fact, strong, there will be democracy. Since Cuba has started a period of liberalization, Cuba is not a case of (I). Thus, following this paragraph, two questions remain to be answered in order to understand the developments in Cuba: Firstly, did Cuba experience a shock that induced the elite to liberalize so that one can reasonably conclude that the shock is the best explanation for explaining the elite’s liberalizing actions? Secondly, did the elite underestimate the opposition?

During the Cold War, Castro bet big on the wrong horse. To the US’s disliking, when Fi-del Castro seized control through revolution in 1958 (Knight, 2015), Castro’s regime went on to develop close ties with the USSR. Additionally, Cuba supported 16

various revolution-ary forces in Latin America and Africa, which led most Latin American countries as well as Europe and the US to impose sanctions. Consequently, Cuba became isolated and was forced to become severely dependent on USSR subsidies and markets. Consequently, the Soviet collapse was extremely detrimental to the Cuban economy; export earnings fell 79 percent from 1990 to 1993, and they did not receive aid from IMF or the World Bank because of the US embargo (Morris, 2014). The country reverted to an economic crisis and famine. With USSR subsidies gone, Cuba needed to take steps in order to overhaul the damaged economy, and the only remaining route to growth was liberaliza-tion to increase competitiveness, diversify production, and attract foreign direct invest-ment (FDI). Thus, the answer to the first question seems to be; yes, Cuba did experi-ence a severe shock that induced the elite to liberalize.

The Cuban government assumed correctly that it was a safe move to liberalize. The Cu-ban government had a tight grip on the population, opposition groups were weak and permeated by regime sympathizers, and the most decisive uprising by the people, the “Maleconazo”, was put down in a matter of hours (Gershman and Gutierrez, 2009; Suchlicki, n.d.). In subsequent years, the

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government managed to diversify and liberalize the economy, allowing for FDI and private business, opening up the housing market, and removing wage restraints. These steps have successfully led to economic recovery from the major blows of the post-Cold War era, but have been insufficient to reach Cuban growth targets (Sweig and Bustamante, 2013).

Indebted to China and having low wage levels, Cuba’s economic recovery is ongoing (Morris, 2014), but so far, the regime has used market liberalization as a means to consolidate its power (Hoffmann, 2010) rather than disperse it. Thus, the answer to the second question is probably; no, the elite did not underestimate the opposition. What is being observed in Cuba is well in line with the modelled transition to a broadened dictatorship rather than democracy.

In summary, the fall of the USSR catalysed economic liberalization, which the elite, knowing that the opposition was weak, allowed for and exploited to consolidate power. Democratization would have required the elite’s assessment of the opposition to be mistaken, which it was not.

One should be wary to interpret liberalization as synonymous with a move towards de-mocracy; the former is necessary, but not sufficient for the latter. But, as argued in pre-vious paragraphs, it is impossible to be certain when a regime change might be

triggered. Recently, there have been some indications that opposition is increasing, and the Castro regime has made concessions like releasing political prisoners (Hoffmann, 2010).

Yet, Cuba frequently harasses political dissidents and journalists, thus the threshold for re-volt is likely high.

Additionally, having learned from the experience of its ex-COMECON partners, the Cuban government will likely ensure that market liberalization is a con-trolled process. It is more likely that the future of Cuba resembles a controlled transition to a system modelled on the Chinese or Vietnamese style market socialism (Hoffman, 2010); history shows that the Cuban government has been reluctant to give up on social control.

However, all is not gloomy; broadened dictatorships are largely seen as better for the population in terms of freedoms (they frequently score medium in measures of democ-racy; Clark, Golder and Golder, 2013).

Moreover, geo-economically, Cuba is in a good position to capitalize on trade (adjacent shipping routes run between North America, Europe, and soon even Asia; Foreign Policy, 2015), thus disregarding Western ideals of human rights and freedoms, Cubans might nevertheless enjoy a future of wealth and probably rejuvenated cultural pride.

Bibliography 17

VOX | The Student Journal of Politics, Economics and Philosophy

Boix, C. (2006). The Roots of Democracy. Policy Review, 135, pp.3-21.

britannica.com/place/Cuba [Accessed 19 Nov. 2015].

Clark, W., Golder, M. and Golder, S. (2013). Principles of Comparative Politics. 2nd ed. CQ Press, pp.171308.

Mobile.reuters.com, (2013). Cuban group says political detentions rose dramatically in 2012| Reuters. [online] Available at: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/ idUSBRE9020QN20130103?irpc=932 [Accessed 20 Nov. 2015].

Gershman, C. and Gutierrez, O. (2009). Ferment in Civil Society.

Journal of Democracy, 20(1), pp.3653.

Hdr.undp.org, (2015). [online] Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/sites/ default/files/hdr14_statisticaltables. xls [Accessed 20 Nov. 2015].

Hoffmann, B. (2010). Cuba: On the Way to Market Socialism?. German Institute of Glob-al and Area Studies, 5.

Karl, T. and Schmitter, P. (1991).

Modes of transition in Latin America, southern and eastern Europe.

International Social Science Journal, 128(2), pp.267-282.

Knight, F. (2015). Cuba | history geography. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: http://www.

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The crisis of the ‘Left and Right’ distinction in the global era Francois Bares Francois Bares, University of York, PPE undergraduate.

Francois Bares discusses the Left-Right debate in light of global integration.

Morris, E. (2014). Unexpected Cuba.

New Left Review, [online] 88(5).

Available at: http://newleftreview. org/II/88/emily-morris-unexpectedcuba [Accessed 19 Nov. 2015].

Image: Paliamentary UK flickr

Foreign Policy, (2015). Why Cuba Needs to Follow the Singapore Model. [online] Availa-ble at: http:// foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/22/ why-cuba-needs-to-follow-the-singapore-model-economy-lee-kuanyew/ [Accessed 19 Nov. 2015].

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Przeworski, A., 2006. Self-enforcing democracy. Handbook of Political Economy, ed. by B. Weingast, and D. Wittman, pp.312-329.

Robinson, A.D. and Acemoglu, R., 2012. Why nations fail. The Origins of Power, Pros-perity and Poverty, New York.

Suchlicki, J. (n.d.). Challenges to a Post-Castro Cuba. Harvard International Review. [online] Available at: http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/ website_documents/Challenges.pdf [Accessed 18 Nov. 2015].

Sweig, J. and Bustamante, M. (2013).

Cuba After Communism. [online] Foreign Affairs. Available at: https:// www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ cuba/2013-06-11/cuba-after-communism [Accessed 2 Jan. 2016].

Introduction

After the dismantling of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, much has been written about the extinction of a significant distinction between the Left and the Right in the political landscape of liberal democracies. The subsequent experience of the ‘third way’ (Giddens, 1999)

endorsed by the likes of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair or Gerhard Schröder, signified for many the abandonment of Leftist ideals and resulted in an ‘ideology crisis’ that pointed out the erased ideological oppositions between Left and Right values.

In this essay, I shall argue against 19

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this position and develop instead the argument that the Left and Right division is indeed in crisis, but that the two sides are not to be understood as an opposing set of theories. Instead, they are a reflection of the fundamental ideological division within society. This fundamental opposition is in the present day represented by the contradicting imperatives of greater global integration and the democratic legitimacy founded upon national consent. With reference to American, French, and British politics, I first conceptualise the Left and Right dichotomy; the distinction consists not of two opposing sets of political values, but are a reflection of the most fundamental division in society at a certain point in time.

Thereafter, I explain in what way the current political divisions between Left and Right in liberal democracies fail fully to capture the fundamental opposition between global integration and democratic sovereignty.

Conceptualisation of the Left and Right divide and the societal polarizing factors The Left-Right metaphor originates from the 1789 debates over whether the French King should be granted a royal veto at the Constituent Assembly. The opinion of the house happened to be divided according 20

to the physical location of the deputies. Those against on the Left and those in favour on the Right, from the chair’s point of view (Caute, 1966a).

Ever since, the Left and Right

‘The left and right division is indeed in crisis, but that the two sides are not to be understood as an opposing set of theories.’ opposition constituted the main metaphor in democracies to depict the contrast between ideas and actions that characterise politics.

With the exercise of politics being necessarily an antithetical matter of ‘yes or no’, as an MP can only either vote ‘for’ or ‘against’ any kind of proposals, laws or amendments, it seems natural that the political class and discourse would be just as symmetrically divided between what came to be known as Left and Right. This symmetry, if truly divisive must be mutually exclusive, as one cannot be both for and against; and extensive, as everything political

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should be explainable in a matter of left or Right (Bobbio, 1996).

The theory of the ‘ideology crisis’ accounts for the Left and Right divide as a set of conflicting political values and theories that usually transcend national borders and generations.

From this, it follows that some political values are inherently Left-wing (for example the ideal that the state should allocate society’s resources), and others inherently Right-wing (for example the ideal that the market should allocate society’s resources). In the twentieth century the Left-Right discourse revolved mainly around the question of how society should manage its resources.

This is not to say, however, that material or economic interest is the only Left-Right distinction that might be made.

Claims that there exist inherently Leftist or Rightist political values or thoughts do not hold in the light of the different oppositions that the Left and Right divide constituted across space and time. In 1871, at the dawn of the French Third Republic, the parliament was divided between the proponents for a democratic republic on the Left, and the advocates of an undemocratic regime ­Bonapartists and Monarchists ­ that constituted the Right. The Left and Right frontier was not drawn along the division in the ownership

of the means of production, which was typically the division elsewhere in Europe, but on the type of regime that France was to adopt in the long run. Anticlericalism is a value that is usually seen as constitutive of the Left. Yet in 1929, when asked about their religious beliefs, only 8 out of 249 Labour MPs in the British House of Commons declared themselves atheists or agnostic (Caute, 1966b).

Right wing movements are usually perceived as militarist and prone to armed conflicts. Yet it was democratic presidents who involved the US army into both World Wars and in Vietnam. There are countless other examples of Right and Left wing parties or political personalities that endorsed values that would otherwise be associated with the opposing camp.

The diverging axis of Left and Right are not bound to reflect the theoretical opposition between the likes of Rousseau and Montesquieu, Marx and Smith, or even Keynes and Hayek (Keynes and Hayek Prophets for today, 2014). They are bound however, since they are formed in the representative assembly of the people, to reflect the division over the profound societal choices that are to orientate a nation toward one path or the other, for example toward capitalism or communism, monarchy or republic, centralisation or devolution etc.

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The main divide of our time and its manifestation in the Left and Right discourse “Globalisation is the process of integrating social, cultural, economic and political systems into a single global system that extend across the boundary of the state”. (Dryzek and Dunleavy, 2009). It is, however, not an inevitable process that leads to an ever growing volume of exchanged goods, capital and information. Recent globalisation has seen some drawbacks, most notably the financial meltdown of 2008 (The gated globe, 2013) which indicate that states can be effective at reducing the level of integration they are subjected to. It remains, however, that the interconnectivity between state, societies and individuals have deepened and multiplied. Monetary expansionist politics in Japan for example, might force Australia to lower its interest rate. Japan’s decision might be made as a ‘national’ decision, yet mechanically impacts other countries. Popular consent, which is the basis of legitimacy in a liberal democracy was probably achieved by Japan, but perhaps not in Australia (Held, 1995). In an integrated world, national endeavours have international consequences; it seems therefore that global integration mechanically undermines national sovereignty. Consequently, 22

two paths seem to open up for the nation state: accept interdependency that jeopardises national sovereignty, or reject integration that will secure sovereignty but result in isolation of the state. This is the fundamental societal choice for liberal democracies on the basis of which the Right-Left divide should be drawn. While this was already an issue in the twentieth century and before – interaction and exchange between states were not invented in the last twenty years – it was not as prominent and did not top the political agenda like it does today.

The practical divide between Left and Right in the UK, France and the US has not however accurately reflected this divisive issue of to what extend national self-determination should prevail over global integration or vice versa. Rather, the divide in day-to-day politics has been about the partial rejection or acceptance of globalisation of the state with regards to the domestic partisan political lines. In recent developments the British conservative party, the French Union pour un movement populaire (UMP) and the Republicans in the US have all broadly condemned immigration and the multicultural aspect of integrated societies, whilst on the other hand have generally welcomed the global markets.

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‘The divide in day-to-day politics has been about the partial rejection or acceptance of globalisation of the state with regards to the domestic partisan political lines.’

The main Left-wing parties in those same three countries (the PS, the Labour Party and the Democrats), on the other hand, recently welcomed the multicultural aspect of integration and generally regarded immigration as a positive externality. The integrated market is seen, however, as a vector of inequality, which undermines the ability of the nation state to control its economy, notwithstanding the more market friendly views of the Obama administration (CNN, 2008). In the specific case of green movements, globalisation is both perceived as a great tool to enforce effective cross-border policies for the protection of environment, and as a threat to the extent that the multiplication of exchange of goods, capital and information bears a great environmental cost.

In both the case of the Right and the Left, there is therefore a differentiated acceptance and/or refusal of the concept of globalisation according to whether or not globalisation espouses and upholds the values advocated domestically. Party leaders, when ascending to power, nonetheless often find themselves with an inability to steer the modalities of integration in their preferred direction. Both the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron in the UK and the Socialist President François Hollande in France have failed so far in fulfilling their promises of renegotiating the European Union treaties, despite the prominent position of their respective states in the European institutions.

Even the US does not always get its way on the global stage, as shown by the 14.6% tariffs imposed on processed food exports from the US to the EU compared to the American 3.2% tariff that applies the other way round (Francois, 2013).

The political rhetoric of ‘what kind of globalisation’ does not therefore manifest itself in actions that effectively influence the process in itself, but in the adjustment of domestic laws to this process. A nation state cannot decide which type of immigrants, if any, would knock at its door, but it can decide whether to let them in or not, to give them 23

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social benefits or not, etc. Similarly, a state cannot decide what type of products would be exchanged worldwide but can decide what products it wishes to import and export. The state therefore has the power to choose to what extend it focuses on its self-determination domestically or to what extend it accepts the externalities of the integrated world.

The practical Leftist and Rightist positions in the countries studied here all have at their core the assumption that globalisation should be partially accepted or rejected, but never altogether dismissed or welcomed.

The discourse over globalisation always seems to consider social and economic integration as two disconnected mechanisms, but never as the two faces of the same process.

The French Front National (FN) provides, however, an interesting case of multilateral rejection of the global integration process that can illustrate my point. The FN politics combines a fierce anti-immigration, xenophobic political line and the rejection of multiculturalism with a strong anti-capitalistic and protectionist view concerning the economic integration and its social cost (Page, 2014). It is classified as a far-Right party because of its xenophobic heritage, nevertheless it holds economic views that are 24

traditionally found in the far Left.

Its rhetoric revolves around the critique of the ‘UMPS’, depicting the two main Right-wing and Left-wing governing parties UMP and PS as the same pro EU, technocratic and elitist party. It emphasizes on “Rendre la France aux Français” (give back France to the French), allegedly taken away by the global integration. Conversely, the politics of the EU makes an interesting case of a multilateral acceptance of global integration. It holds as its core principle both the “free movement of goods and capitals” embodied by the single market and the “free movement of labour” embedded by the Schengen space (Charter of fundamental Rights of the European Union, 2000, C 364/8).

Naturally, those two examples are rather extreme cases of prevalence of self-determination over integration and vice versa, but such a discourse does not have to be that Manichean. Just like the communist and capitalist discourse was not solely about no intervention of the state whatsoever on the one hand and no Right to any kind of property on the other hand, the discourse of integration and sovereignty is not about complete isolation or the abandonment of the idea of countries. There can be many shades of integration and isolation.

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Conclusion

Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, pp. 1­2.

My arguments in this essay only hold in the restricted framework of liberal democracy and do not pretend to apply to all the form of statehood in the world. Moreover, they bear a significant bias as they rest on observations from only three countries. A general truth induced from such a small sample of cases is indeed uncertain.

In any case, I argue here that there is indeed a crisis in the relevance of the Left-Right divide in the age of global integration, but this crisis is not due to the ‘ideology crisis’ and the disenchantment over the Left-wing ideals, because Left and Right are not to be conceptualised in absolute terms as a set of intrinsic and antithetical political values, but in relative terms as the reflection of a societal divide at a certain point in time. Instead, I argue that the Left-Right divide is in crisis because it does not match the systemic opposition between global integration and democratic legitimisation. The Left-Right debates revolve around the question of ‘what kind of integration?’ and not around the more fundamental question of ‘integration or self-determination?’.

Caute, D. (1966a). The Left in Europe since 1789. London: World University Library, p. 26.

Bibliography Bobbio, N. (1996). Left and Right.

Caute, D. (1966b). The Left in Europe since 1789. London: World University Library, p. 19.

Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union (2000). Official journal of the European Communities.

CNN, (2008). Obama on globalization. [Video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=7owMXrLu2d8 [Accessed 13 Jan 2016].

Dryzek, J. and Dunleavy, P. (2009).

Theories of the democratic state.

Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 307.

Francois, J. (2013). Reducing Transatlantic Barriers to Trade and Investment An Economic Assessment.

London: Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, p. 22.

Giddens, A. (1999). The third way.

Malden, Mass.: Polity Press.

Held, D. (1995). Democracy and the global order. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, pp. 16­23.

Keynes and Hayek Prophets for to25

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day. (2014). The Economist. [Online] Available at: http://www.economist. com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/03/ keynes­and­hayek [Accessed 13 Jan. 2016].

Page, R. (2014). France’s Front National (FN). House of Commons

Library, pp. 3­5.

The Gated Globe. (2013). The Economist. [Online] Available at: http://www.economist.com/news/ special­report/21587384­forward­ march­globalisation­ has­paused­ financial­crisis­giving­way [Accessed 13 Jan 2016].

Given the recent increases in inequality, would an economist expect to see a rise in redistribution in a democracy?

Ida Sjöberg

Ida Sjöberg, University of York PPE undergraduate.

Ida Sjöberg, explores democracy from an economist’s point of view.

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show that the two main political factors that have a direct effect on the levels of redistribution are the size of the franchise and the type of governing party.

In Meltzer and Richard’s paper on Rational Theory on the Size of Government (1981), they contrast dictatorship with universal suffrage, looking at how the voting rule changes based on political system.

The comparison was as expected, with higher levels of redistribution where there is universal suffrage.

The basic model put forth discusses productivity in relation to income and taxation. People have different levels of productivity, and as productivity has a direct impact on your income level, if you cannot earn a higher wage than the welfare

payment, you will not work. Income in society is not distributed evenly and this means that, as it is skewed to the right, the mean income will exceed the median income. The variables in setting the tax level is the mean income of the population and the income of the voter. In this model the tax rate is flat and fully redistributive, as the government supplies no public goods. Therefore, the more you get taxed, the less you work. Using their example of the stationary bandit as a proxy for a dictatorship, the dictator will set a low tax rate. Similarly, if the decisive voter is on welfare and not working, they would set the tax rate at the same level as the stationary bandit. If the voter earns below mean income, the tax rate will be set at the level which maximises their per-

bring the country closer to equality.

However, this has not happened to the extent that could be expected, and the real problem is with power share, voting and electoral engagement. Yet, the levels of redistribution in democracies are far higher than that of non-democracies.

Using the research done on rational size of governments and how the franchise affects this, there will be an argument for what redistribution in a rational economy would look like. Following on from that, I will

Image: Rafael Alvarez for Fast Company

Looking at the purely economic argument, it seems logical to claim that democracy would lead to a decrease in inequality. The reason being that people will vote for what is best for themselves, and most often, the inequality is seen as a small minority (the 1%) owning the majority of resources, as the rest of the population have access to far less. Arguably, this majority of people who witness their respective inequality should vote for policies which will benefit themselves, and

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sonal income, balancing decreased income level with increased welfare payments. The voters who earn over the mean income level would set the tax rate at 0.

‘The comparison was as expected, with universal suffrage there are higher levels of redistribution.’

There are two main ways in which voting styles change; lowering property or wealth requirements for the enfranchised, and increased social security, leading people relying on retirement funds financed by taxes to support higher tax levels.

Those who may favour higher levels of redistribution may also support lower taxes on capital and property.

The conclusion drawn by Meltzer and Richard’s is that voting rule is not solely dependent on voting rule, rather the relationship between individual and collective choice. They view the government as a mechanism to allow a nation to create a collective decision, as put forward

by Wicksell (as cited in Meltzer and Richards, 1981). This also allows for a constant equilibrium of redistribution, which is disliked by the 28

population as each individual has distinctive desires which may not align with other members of this population.

Explanations for why democracy does not produce the expected levels of redistribution are many. These range from technological and productivity advances, to differences in government policy and institutions.

The fact that countries who have seen the same technological and productivity advances have wildly varying levels of inequality suggests that policy and institutional differences play a crucial role (Alvaredo et al., 2013). This is backed up by arguments which focus on the voter franchise, who engages in the electoral system and who is given the vote (Bonica et al., 2013). There are key political factors to looking into why democracy is not as redistributive as models suggest, and this is rooted in how the system works. For example in America, there is a large immigrant population, estimated to make up 13% of the total population (Batalova and Zong, 2015), who are likely to be at the lower end of the income levels, and are unable to vote due to not having citizenship.

Across the country, people of lower income backgrounds are less likely to vote due to it being far more expensive for them, in terms of lost time and accessibility to polling stations. This in effect means the

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median income as represented by the decisive voter in American elections is not the actual median, but far higher, meaning the preferred tax level ends up being considerably lower than the general population’s equilibrium. There are other factors that influence this as well, such as the propensity of US politicians to go into private sector jobs after leaving behind politics, making it sensible for them to reduce taxes for businesses and capital gains, to enable themselves to benefit as much as possible in their life after politics.

However, Goldin and Katz (as cited in Mankiw, 2013) disagree with this conclusion, as they believe that the real inequality is created by technological advances and rising gaps between skilled and unskilled labour.

This results in inequality being due to education and the slowing down of educational advances accessible to certain members of society. So rather than requiring a change in political institutions, there should be a change in education to get closer to equality.

What the rational economic agent may view as the equilibrium will not be the case in reality, as there are too many factors that influence levels of redistribution, and people’s opinions of redistribution. Mirrlees in Mankiw argues that although redistribution is necessary, it should not be perfect, as a certain level

of inequality must remain to motivate people to work. Otherwise, everyone will become reliant on redistribution, and eventually there will be nothing left to redistribute, as the tax burden will be a disincentive to work. Optimal redistribution is dependent on the elasticity of the labour supply. The more responsive levels of work effort are to incentives, the less need for redistribution. “[G]overnmental redistribution is an enforcement of the social insurance contract to which people would have voluntarily agreed in..”

(Mankiw, 2013:p.32), suggesting that redistribution is a tool for the government as well as a resource that is shared out. This would support the idea that there is a need for greater redistribution than is currently happening in both the UK and the US, to address the extremes of wealth and poverty.

In conclusion, economists would expect increased redistribution after periods of increased inequality. However, this would only take place if the median income of the voters had changed significantly, or significantly enough to require a new equilibrium tax level. Unfortunately, this is not the case in places such as the US and UK as the levels of redistribution are not optimal due to many political factors. The two most important factors are the franchise; the more people are 29

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included in the franchise, the lower the median income becomes and the higher the level of redistribution demanded will be, and the make up of the political body, which is often (especially in the case of the US) people looking out partially for their own post-politics personal gain. Ideally, there is a level of redistribution in the economy, but this level should not be high enough to become a disincentive to work, which is an apparent problem with redistribution. The reasoning behind encouraging redistribution is attempting to achieve increased market efficiency, which would suggest that it is logical to increase redistribution at times of increased inequality, so that the resources are efficiently shared and people were able to maximise their utility.

Bibliography Alvaredo, Facundo et al. ‘The Top 1 Percent In International And Historical Perspective’. Journal of Economic Perspectives 27.3 (2013): 3-20. Web. Batalova, Jeanne, and Jie Zong.

‘Frequently Requested Statistics On Immigrants And Immigration In The United States’. migrationpolicy.org.

N.p., 2015. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.

Bonica, Adam et al. ‘Why Hasn’t Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?’.

Journal of Economic Perspectives 27.3 (2013): 103-124. Web. Mankiw, N. Gregory. ‘Defending The One Percent’. Journal of Economic Perspectives 27.3 (2013): 21-34.

Web. Meltzer, Allan H., and Scott F. Richard. ‘A Rational Theory Of The Size Of Government’. Journal of Political Economy 89.5 (1981): 914. Web.

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