Scandal And Democracy

Successful transitions to enduring democracy are both difficult and rare. In Scandal and Democracy, Mary E. McCoy explores how newly democratizing nations can avoid reverting to authoritarian solutions in response to the daunting problems brought about by sudden change. The troubled transitions that have derailed democratization in nations worldwide make this problem a major concern for scholars and citizens alike. This study of Indonesia's transition from authoritarian rule sheds light on the fragility not just of democratic transitions but of democracy itself and finds that democratization's durability depends, to a surprising extent, on the role of the media, particularly its airing of political scandal and intraelite conflict. More broadly, Scandal and Democracy examines how the media's use of new freedoms can help ward off a slide into pseudodemocracy or a return to authoritarian rule. As Indonesia marks the twentieth anniversary of its democratic revolution of 1998, it remains among the world's most resilient new democracies and one of the few successful democratic transitions in the Muslim world. McCoy explains the media's central role in this change and corroborates that finding with comparative cases from Mexico, Tunisia, and South Korea, offering counterintuitive insights that help make sense of the success and failure of recent transitions to democracy.

Through analytical discussions of such events as Watergate and Britain's Profumo affair, this book demonstrates that such political scandals are neither idiosyncratic to democratic regimes nor unique to the United States (or, for that matter, unique to world-weary Europeans). Nor are they, as some political scientists claimed some years ago, routine to those underdeveloped societies who have a high toleration of corruption. While sex and money play their part, at the heart of the great scandals of the post-war era lies the violation of process in the pursuit of power.

A new breed of journalists came to the fore in post-revolutionary America--fiercely partisan, highly ideological, and possessed of a bold sense of vocation and purpose as they entered the fray of political debate. Often condemned by latter-day historians and widely seen in their own time as a threat to public and personal civility, these colorful figures emerge in this provocative new book as the era's most important agents of political democracy. Through incisive portraits of the most influential journalists of the 1790s--William Cobbett, Benjamin Franklin Bache, Philip Freneau, Noah Webster, John Fenno, and William Duane--Scandal and Civility moves beyond the usual cast of "revolutionary brothers" and "founding fathers" to offer a fresh perspective on a seemingly familiar story. Marcus Daniel demonstrates how partisan journalists, both Federalist and Democratic-Republican, were instrumental in igniting and expanding vital debates over the character of political leaders, the nature of representative government, and, ultimately, the role of the free press itself. Their rejection of civility and self-restraint--not even icons like George Washington were spared their satirical skewerings--earned these men the label "peddlers of scurrility." Yet, as Daniel shows, by breaking with earlier conceptions of "impartial" journalism, they challenged the elite dominance of political discourse and helped fuel the enormous political creativity of the early republic. Daniel's nuanced and penetrating narrative captures this key period of American history in all its contentious complexity. And in today's climate, when many decry media "excesses" and the relentlessly partisan and personal character of political debate, his book is a timely reminder that discord and difference were essential to the very creation of our political culture.

A new breed of journalists came to the fore in post-revolutionary America--fiercely partisan, highly ideological, and possessed of a bold sense of vocation and purpose as they entered the fray of political debate. Often condemned by latter-day historians and widely seen in their own time as a threat to public and personal civility, these colorful figures emerge in this provocative new book as the era's most important agents of political democracy. Through incisive portraits of the most influential journalists of the 1790s--William Cobbett, Benjamin Franklin Bache, Philip Freneau, Noah Webster, John Fenno, and William Duane--Scandal and Civility moves beyond the usual cast of "revolutionary brothers" and "founding fathers" to offer a fresh perspective on a seemingly familiar story. Marcus Daniel demonstrates how partisan journalists, both Federalist and Democratic-Republican, were instrumental in igniting and expanding vital debates over the character of political leaders, the nature of representative government, and, ultimately, the role of the free press itself. Their rejection of civility and self-restraint--not even icons like George Washington were spared their satirical skewerings--earned these men the label "peddlers of scurrility." Yet, as Daniel shows, by breaking with earlier conceptions of "impartial" journalism, they challenged the elite dominance of political discourse and helped fuel the enormous political creativity of the early republic. Daniel's nuanced and penetrating narrative captures this key period of American history in all its contentious complexity. And in today's climate, when many decry media "excesses" and the relentlessly partisan and personal character of political debate, his book is a timely reminder that discord and difference were essential to the very creation of our political culture.

This book focuses on the beleagured position of the SPD in Imperial Germany after the fall of Bismarck and underlines the enormous difficulties the party faced in establishing a right to political dissent. Dr Hall describes the development of the party press and analyses the relationship between SPD journalists and officialdom. He looks at Wilhelmine society and politics through the magnifying glass of the socialist press and shows how the law courts and the police were directed towards the suppression of free speech, as well as highlighting the important role of non-democratic forces in the state, such as the military. This use of the law as an instrument of repression, coupled with official discrimination against the working class, and the plethora of political malpractices, together with evidence of the personal failings and weaknesses of leading establishment figures, were all used by the SPD press as propaganda against the establishment and as a barometer of the impending collapse of society. The book will appeal to political scientists, especially those interested in the development of socialist thought, as well as to historians of Imperial Germany.

The book's essays take a multidimensional approach to the accountability matrix in Brazil. The first section of the book investigates the complex interrelationships among representative institutions, electoral dynamics, and public opinion. In the second section, authors address nonelectoral dimensions of accountability, such as the role of the media, accounting institutions, police, prosecutors, and courts. In the final chapter, the editors reflect upon the policy implications of the essays, considering recommendations that may contribute to an effective fight against political corruption and support ongoing accountability, as well as articulating analytical lessons for social scientists interested in the functioning of accountability networks. Brazil, the world's fourth largest democracy, has been plagued in recent years by corruption scandals. Corruption and Democracy in Brazil: The Struggle for Accountability considers the performance of the Brazilian federal accountability system with a view to diagnosing the system's strengths, weaknesses, and areas of potential improvement; taking stock of recent micro- and macro-level reforms; and pointing out the implications of the various dimensions of the accountability process for Brazil's democratic regime. "Timothy Power and Matthew Taylor have produced a compelling, comprehensive volume on accountability dynamics in Brazil that will inform future policy and research regarding corruption. The analyses in this book raise important questions for practitioners and for the general public. In pursuit of answers to these questions, this team of researchers does not sugarcoat matters. They document dimensions of improved accountability as well as resilient dynamics of impunity. This well-organized book is accessible to academics, policy makers, and students." --Charles H. Blake, James Madison University "Corruption stories are often told as lurid tales of individual greed. This book persuasively insists instead that corruption and the responses to it are embedded deep in national institutions--one might say they are politics by other means. This first-rate collection presents a powerful analysis of recent Brazilian democracy in practice, showing how accountability institutions have greatly strengthened since the transition to democracy, while remaining weak in ways that undermine citizens' trust in their government. While closely focused on Brazil, the book also embodies an approach worth emulating for studying corruption elsewhere." --Kathryn Hochstetler, University of Waterloo "By focusing on the largest democracy in Latin America, Brazil, a country with both a history vexed by political corruption and an elaborate web of accountability-enhancing institutions and organizations, Timothy Power and Matthew Taylor have produced a study of extraordinary value for comparative politics. They have gathered a rich array of original research by top scholars on major areas of the network of accountability. Each chapter answers the editors' core questions regarding how corruption operates, can be detected, and is preventable, while making clear those aspects that remain a drag on Brazil's quality of democracy." --Alfred P. Montero, Carleton College "This is a timely, insightful, and cohesive volume that will greatly benefit students of Brazil and analysts of corruption in developing countries. The authors are very much on top of their subject matter, much of which is not easily accessible in the academic literature despite the emphasis on corruption being so pervasive and harmful." --Wendy Hunter, University of Texas, Austin

Theories of justice are haunted by a paradox: the more ambitious the theory of justice, the less applicable and useful the model is to political practice; yet the more politically realistic the theory, the weaker its moral ambition, rendering it unsound and equally useless. Brokering a resolution to this "judgment paradox," Albena Azmanova advances a "critical consensus model" of judgment that serves the normative ideals of a just society without the help of ideal theory. Tracing the evolution of two major traditions in political philosophy—critical theory and philosophical liberalism—and the way they confront the judgment paradox, Azmanova critiques prevailing models of deliberative democracy and their preference for ideal theory over political applicability. Instead, she replaces the reliance on normative models of democracy with an account of the dynamics of reasoned judgment produced in democratic practices of open dialogues. Combining Hannah Arendt's study of judgment with Pierre Bourdieu's social critique of power relations, and incorporating elements of political epistemology from Kant, Wittgenstein, H. L. A. Hart, Max Weber, and American philosophical pragmatism, Azmanova centers her inquiry on the way participants in moral conflicts attribute meaning to their grievances of injustice. She then demonstrates the emancipatory potential of the model of critical deliberative judgment she forges and its capacity to guide policy making. This model's critical force yields from its capacity to disclose the common structural sources of injustice behind conflicting claims to justice. Moving beyond the conflict between universalist and pluralist positions, Azmanova grounds the question of "what is justice?" in the empirical reality of "who suffers?" in order to discern attainable possibilities for a less unjust world.

Through portraits of influential journalists of the 1790s, Daniel demonstrates how partisan journalists were instrumental in igniting and expanding vital debates over the character of political leaders, the nature of representative government, and, ultimately, the role of the free press itself.