Democratizing Democracy: A Postcolonial Critique of Conventional Approaches to the ‘Measurement of Democracy’

Russia's Postcolonial Identity

“…Chandler 2006, Koelble and Lipuma 2008, Hobson 2012). However, it runs a serious risk of sliding into the opposite extreme of relativism, ending up with an apology for imperialism and oppression.…”

“…At the same time, it suggests that the widespread criticism of the transition paradigm fully applies to the Russian case. Typically, this criticism questions transitological teleology (the image of all 'transition countries' making measurable progress towards becoming Western-type democracies and doing so in accordance with uniform general laws), as well as the propensity of the transition paradigm to reduce politics to 'good governance' and thus to bracket off the people as the subject of democratic politics (Carothers 2002, Kapustin 2003, Chandler 2006, Koelble and Lipuma 2008.…”

“…This, in turn, is an aspect of the central postcolonial enterprise of challenging the Eurocentric outlook of Western political thought, which tends to universalise particular European and North American experience and disregard the structural impact of colonialism on the preconditions for democracy in the periphery (Koelble and Lipuma 2008). As Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000: 41) puts it, with a reference to Spivak, the postcolonial subject 'can only be spoken for and spoken of by the transition narrative, which will always ultimately privilege the modern (that is, "Europe")'.…”

Corporate Scramble for Africa? Towards a postcolonial framework for transglocal development governance

“…This focus on the governance of ‘developing countries’ in conjunction with the qualifier ‘good’, Kapoor (2008, p. 30) argues, ‘conveys a moralistic tone, implying not simply that developing countries have “bad” governance, but also that the West is the model for good governance’. Thus, Kapoor – and other postcolonial critics (see inter alia Hill, 2005; Jones, 2013; Koelbe & Lipuma, 2008; Mercer, 2003; Minogue, 2002) – finds that the discourse of governance, even if and when reframed as ‘global’ (Kamola, 2015), simply reproduces the neo-colonial tendencies of development initiatives under a new guise.…”

Towards a worldwide (deliberative) democracy? Catholic social teaching and the idea of global governance

“…Indeed, democracy can be hardly deemed as a static system; there 'have already been major changes to liberal democracies in the past' (Chappell, 2012: 121). Over the last 15 years, we have seen a growing interest in the issues of democratization of the already existing democracies (Pateman, 1996;Cornwall and Goetz, 2005;De Sousa Santos, 2007;Koelble and Lipuma, 2008;Dufek and Holzer, 2013;Isakhan and Slaughter, 2014). One can hardly question the need to improve the process of citizens' inclusion into democratic decision-making.…”