Search results

The literature studying the effect of democratic political systems on financial development has found conflicting results. Besides, recent work has focused on the level effects of democracy on financial outcomes showing evidence of positive, negative and no direct impact. This paper aims to investigate the dynamic effects of democratic transition on financial development, namely, short run and long run effects.

The author wants to see whether financial development improves after a transition to a democratic system and, if it does, for how long. Using a panel data set of 48 events of democratic transitions, the paper relies on an event study and on the estimation of dynamic panel after controlling for other potential determinants.

The author finds that transition to a democratic system raises the development of the financial sector. Particularly, these positive effects occurred in the long run, i.e. about 5 years following the democratic transition. However, in the short run, the author finds that the move to democracy does not impact financial outcomes.

The author contributes by studying the role of political system change on financial development finding that democratic transition increases the development of the financial system. Further, the author contributes by finding that the move to democracy produces positive effect only in the long term.

The development of Tanzanian civil society is widely understood to be one of the key processes in the democratization of the country, and this vision is also shared by the World Bank. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the intention and impact of World Bank policies aimed at supporting Tanzanian civil society organizations.

The paper uses the Lacanian psychoanalytic approach combined with Foucault's notion of governmentality as a conceptual tool. Within this theoretical framework, a specific World Bank programme in Tanzania, the Social Development Civil Society Fund, is analyzed.

Developed democratic states produce, through the World Bank, the desires of not‐yet‐fully democratic countries to embrace the benefits that (democratic) development can bring. The World Bank programme aimed at the development of Tanzanian civil society is formulated in a way that posits Tanzania as a not‐yet‐fully democratic country. This is achieved through the World Bank's advice and recommendations, which trigger the desires of Tanzanians to participate in development and thus to achieve (always elusive) prosperity and democracy. Moreover, the World Bank programme can be seen as an ensemble of governmental practices advancing the idea of self‐empowerment through which Tanzanians are made governable.

The paper contributes to the understanding of democratic transition, from the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis, as a social fantasy that plays a crucial role in the constitution of global hierarchical relationships and in the construction of the identities of so‐called democratic states and not‐yet‐fully democratic countries. Within this scheme, the World Bank's policies are governmental technologies that trigger desires of not‐yet‐fully democratic countries.

The July 2, 2000, electoral victory of Vicente Fox of the opposition National Action Party (PAN) as president of Mexico marked an historic turning point in that country’s political development. The ouster from power of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) after seventy-one years promised to rupture the long-time alliance between organized labor, the state, and the PRI. A transition to a democratic political regime would create new opportunities for the struggling independent labor movement in Mexico. More importantly, a political transition would make possible for the first time a shift away from an authoritarian-corporatist system of industrial relations toward a democratic model of labor governance.

This paper aims to examine the growing incidence of judicialisation of politics in Nigeria's democratisation experience against the backdrop of questionable judicial accountability.

The article draws on legal and political theory as well as comparative law perspectives.

The judiciary faces a daunting task in deepening democracy and (re) instituting the rule of law. The formidable challenges derive in part from structural problems within the judiciary, deficient accountability credentials and the complexities of a troubled transition.

Effective judicial mediation of political transition requires a transformed and accountable judiciary.

The article calls attention to the need for judicial accountability as a cardinal and integral part of political transitions.

Extensions/applications/revisions of the Marxian vision of socialism can broadly be categorized into two polar strands: the centralized and the decentralized strands of socialist economic systems. Explores the main postulates of a decentralized version of a socialist economic system as provided by Kautsky, Luxembourg, Bernstein, Bukharin and Lange. The centralized strand of socialist economic systems has been elaborated drawing mainly from the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, Dobb, Sweezy and Baran.

The fast-developing processes of globalization, with increased political and economic interdependence, along with competition; regionalization dynamics revealing more localized ambitions and either constraining or advancing intentions and policies; and Europeanization as a particular dynamic related to the EU role as a global actor, applied to the Polish post-communist transition, constitute our vectors of analysis. This essay aims to address the simultaneously interconnected and heterogeneous responses of Polish post-communist course of change to global and regional processes, including European integration. In this line of research, we search for answers to how the linkages among globalization, regionalization, and Europeanization work in the case of Polish post-communist transition. This will be pursued through an analysis of the democratization course, mainly regarding political, institutional and social aspects, and economic integration. Despite elements of complementarity and resistance in the working relationships among the three concepts, which are highly debatable, we find they have substantial implications on Polish policy-making. These implications include adjustment and bargaining between demands and concessions, resulting in gains and losses, though despite the negative effects associated and acknowledged, the fact of Poland pursuing the course of integration in the EU reveals an equation of cost–benefit, in favor of the EU.

In 2019, a popular revolution toppled Sudan's long-term military president, Umar al-Bashir. The country then entered a three-year transition toward democratic rule during which power was shared between Sudan's military and civilian political organizations. In this period, international organizations and foreign governments were quick to proclaim their support for Sudan's democratic transition. However, policy reforms during Sudan's transition went beyond changes to formal political institutions, as the transitional government implemented major programs of economic restructuring. These restructurings were supported by Sudan's international partners, who normalized a discourse that Sudan was “overindebted,” and who held that political and economic reforms ought naturally to accompany each other. As a result, the transitional government implemented a shock program of liberalization and austerity that imposed material hardship on much of Sudanese society, including during a global recession resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This contributed to endangering the transition itself and the progressive promises of Sudan's 2019 revolution.

This chapter traces the history of how Sudan was excluded from Western financial and commercial markets through the imposition of sanctions in the 1990s. This caused Sudan to explore non-Western sources of external financing in East Asia and the Arabian Gulf. This history then shapes the contested ways in which Sudan's debts are counted by international institutions to create the misleading impression that the country is overindebted. Finally, the chapter examines how different elites coalesced to impose a program of shock fiscal austerity and economic liberalization during a crucial political moment, which helped to imperil the country's fragile political transition.