Reports on Session I. Democracy in Asia, DAAD-Graduiertenakademie, Working Group Asia. Wandlitz, 19-23 September 2012. Rapporteur: Febrina Maulydia (University of Passau) Contents: 1. Discussions on summaries on two articles: - Article from Michael Coppedge and John Gering, Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach, - Article from Gerardo L. Munck and Jay Verkuilen, Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices. Presented by Syafa atun A. Kariadi. 2. Discussion on article of Samartya Sen: Democracy and Its Global Roots. Presented by Katharina Vitt. 1. Discussion on Summary of Articles presented by Syafa atun A. Kariadi The text written by Coppedge and Gerring focus on conceptualizing and measuring democracy and in this article they introduce a new approach. There are six issues of conceptualization and measurement, they are: definition, precision, coverage and sources, coding, aggregation, validity and reliability test. This article also discusses some works from Freedom House, Polity IV Database, a binary measure of Democracy and Dictatorship (DD) by Adam Przeworski and colleagues, the work of Michael Bernhard, Timothy Nordstorm, and Christopher Reenock (BNR) about binary measure, Economist Intelligent Unit works of multidimensional index and a work from Bertelsmann Foundation about Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI). Then they introduced a new approach to create a new sets of indicators that cut the material at different angels and to search somewhat different proposes. The new approaches are history, conception, component and indicators, and data collection and dissemination. Conclusions made by Syafa from this article are: The traditional approach falls short because its self-assigned task is impossible. The highly abstract and contested nature of democracy impedes effective operationalization. A more productive approach to this topic is to recognize the multiple conceptions of democracy and, within each conception, to disaggregate. At lower levels of abstraction the concept becomes more tractable.
The purpose of a set of democracy indicators is not simply to guide richworld policymaking bodies such as USAID, the World Bank, and the UNDP. As soon as a set of indicators becomes established and begins to influence international policymakers, it also becomes fodder for dispute in other countries around the world. The hope is that by reducing the elements of democracy down to levels that are more coherent and operational it may be possible to generate a broader consensus around this vexed subject. Another advantage is the degree of precision and differentiation that a disaggregated set of indicators offers relative to extant composite indices. The dataset would allow policymakers and researchers to clarify how, specifically, one country s democratic features differ from others in the region, or across regions. Relatedly, the proposed dataset would allow policymakers and researchers to track a single country s progress or regress through time. One would be able to specify which facets of a polity have improved, and which have remained stagnant or declined. This means that the longstanding question of regime transitions would be amenable to empirical tests. The second article written by Gerardo L. Munck and Jay Verkuilen: Evaluating Alternative Indices. They want to provide a systematic assessment of the large N-Data sets on democracy that are most frequently used in current statistical research. Then the article goes on steps in this systematic assessment. In the end of the presentation, Syafa has made some conclusions about this text, which are: - index creators have demonstrated widely divergent levels of sophistication in tackling the challenges of conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation. - this review shows that no single index offers a satisfactory response to all three challenges of conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation. Key question that arose from this warming-up session is whether democracy can be measured or is it qualitative or quantitative method that would be best used in a research about democracy. Before the discussion about these articles took place, Professor Mitra explained the reason why the participants were suggested to read this article. It is because they represent a general trend in democracy research, which is about ranking and this is done based on index. Indexing is measuring many different dimensions and trying to find a measure dimension, and it comes
with a result more or less. It is not an ideal curiosity. The ranking will be crucial in a way in policy decision making. For example, a country which is identified as a very low on democracy ranking could get a foreign military intervention, or another example, it is important to get foreign investment, etc. Ther
only because they are minority. A rather similar question also asked by Ma Li, by giving examples of China s experience. Professor Mitra responded to this question by giving examples of the quantitative researcher attempts to combine quantitative and qualitative methods to make the method richer and to answer all criticisms addressed to them, most are from his experiments in India s case. Regarding questions about minority problems Professor also gave some examples from India s experiences. Another comments came from Panji, who argued that it is not easy to combine these two methods. He was
2. Discussion II: Amartya Sen: Democracy and Its Global Roots The second discussion was about the work of Amartya Sen: an article titled: Democracy and Its Global Roots, which was presented by Katharina. This article was written not in his capacity as a scholar or a scientifist, but rather as a public intellectual. In this article, Sen argued that the values of democracy do not only belong and originate from The West but also has its roots in other cultures. That is why he argued that democratization is not the same with westernization. Core question of Sen: why and to what extent democratization is not imposition of western values? In his essay, Sen countered some objections to democratization of non western countries. There a two major objections to the idea that democracy is applicable in non-western contexts which, according to Sen, are both wrong. These objections are: - Democracy is a barrier to economic development Proponents say that economic reform should have a priority before having an election, etc, and secondly minorities can be better protected in authoritarian regime. Sen said that it is wrong. He has couple of reasons for that, but his main argument is that Lee hypothesis is wrong. Lee hypothesis refers to the idea that economic growth can be achieved better in an authoritarian regime. It is called Lee hypothesis because it goes back to Lee Ku
Furthermore in his essay, Sen focused on understanding democracy. He says that both lines of criticism that have been discussed are based on a narrow understanding of democracy (focusing on ballots) which needs to be replaced by a broader understanding of democracy as public reasoning. What is the narrow understanding of democracy? It sees democracy as a ballot or election only, a free and fair election is an indicator for democracy. This is basically the concept of electoral democracy, one of the minimalist concept of democracy. On contrary, a broader understanding of democracy (deliberative democracy), includes public discussion in the concept of democracy. It does not only take place before and after or during the election, but all the time and it must have an impact on decision making, and as a process it should be around all the time. This broader understanding of democracy reveals the global (and not exclusively Western) roots of democracy. The neglect of the non-western heritage of public reasoning undermines the positive role that democratization could and should play. To support his arguments, Sen gave some examples of tolerance and public discussion in non western communities. One of his example is the integration of Jews in Muslim communities during the hard time they had in western communities. They often migrate to Muslim countries or to Spain, which at that time was ruled by Muslim leaders. They even got an important position in the community while in Europe they were neglected. The example of public discussion in non-western community is the Buddhist council around 4 th century. Sen also said of course there are also a lot of examples from western countries, he did not mean that democracy is simply western or non western idea, he just wants to point out that there are examples from both sides. Katharina then proposed some questions to this essay from Sen. The first question related to theoretical foundation about the concept of democracy, whether the deliberative democracy should be the standard. The second question was about the blind spot which was not yet answered by Sen when he talked about the positive effect of democracy, for example when you have an ethnic conflict in a state, where there are small minorities and big majorities and they are democratized from the outside, what happen if the majority win the election, what happen to the minority after the history of conflict. Before the discussion began, Professor Mitra added some comments. He is an example of intellectual evolution who bridges the two methods, quantitative and qualitative. He also played an important role in India s history. And his work is a good example of when area meets theory. There is a text which is titled Identity and Violence, where Sen made a critical argument that there is no such a mono identity person. That one person has many
identities which determine his perception and behavior. This later on will affect the public reasoning in the community, a person will connect to many people in different way. For example, there s no such thing as a Muslim, there are some other identities that inherent within a person. After the break Professor continued with some cases from China, which showed the experience of how a community solve their problems between majority and minorities. To this article, most of the participants agreed with Sen, that democracy has been presented in all society, a kind of democracy is always there, people develop it in their own way. According to Farroukh, what happens now is that democracy is being bureaucratized (election, etc). But there were also some arguments that criticizing Sen s thesis. In history, authoritarian also had its roots in every society as well as violent, intolerance, etc. As Panji argued in his comment that we live in a world where ideas fly everywhere, we cannot protect ourselves from authoritarian or democracy. He then gave an example of Indonesia, when the founding fathers discussed about the constitution of the new state, they shared only one idea that they rejected individualism and liberalism as western ideas. They tried to implement what they considered as traditional ideas of Indonesian people. But it is interesting when they also took some forms of Germany state and Japanese state which had a form of strong state. Another critic came from Anthony who said that Sen has made a historical fallacy, because in history we can find also some forms of authoritarian and intolerance and also there are samples showing that democracy is not always has a positive correlation with economic development. Some examples for this argument were Singapore and China. In the end of the session, the group has came into conclusion that regarding what Sen has written his article that he tried to show us that democracy in terms of ideas (tolerance and public reasoning) does not only belong to the western culture but also to any other cultures so we can be more familiar with democracy. That is his objective in writing the essay. As Professor Mitra added that Sen s work is a cross contextual and cross cultural tool.