Browsing by Subject "Democracy"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Managing a Civil Society Organization in Democratic Crisis
    (2020-11) Kilicalp Iaconantonio, Sevinc Sevda; Benjamin, Lehn M.; Mesch, Debra J.; Herrold, Catherine E.; Baggetta, Matthew
    This study investigated how civil society organizations (CSOs) adapted to shifts in their external environment that threatened their survival. Specifically, the study considered how CSOs in Turkey were responding to growing authoritarianism and citizens’ demands for a voice and openness. Moreover, the study sought to explain why organizational responses varied across organizations operating in the same field and the challenges CSO leaders confronted as they implemented changes in response to this environment. These pressures, both authoritarian regimes and citizens’ demands for a voice in these organizations, reflect the democratic crisis in many countries and the overall distrust in institutions. In this respect, considering the consequences of both of these pressures for the legitimacy of CSOs simultaneously is both timely and necessary. This study blended theoretical insights from neo-institutional theory and resource dependency theory as well as strategic management literature and civil society literature to fill this theoretical gap. I argue that competing external pressures created conflicting logics by providing different stipulations about how CSOs had to be managed and that CSOs developed differentiated strategies by adopting some features of each logic. I grouped these responses into two main categories: survival and mission-related responses. I demonstrated that competing institutional logics pass through the organizational field and then they are filtered by the following organizational attributes: organizational form, stance toward government, risk tolerance and organizational capacity. Tensions and paradoxical situations resulting from selected practices created various management challenges for CSO leaders. These findings offer new perspectives to the literature on civil society under authoritarian regimes by pointing out the link between outside threats confronting CSOs and significant organizational management issues, thus illustrating how political regimes constrain CSOs’ capacity to contribute to democratic processes and perform internal democracy through soft and hard repression tools.
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    Military Counterterrorism Measures, Civil–Military Relations, and Democracy: The Cases of Turkey and the United States
    (Taylor and Francis, 2018) Satana, Nil S.; Demirel-Pegg, Tijen; Political Science, School of Liberal Arts
    This study examines how military counter-terrorism (CT) measures affect the quality of democracy by altering civil-military relations (CMR) and focuses on civil-military relations as the main causal mechanism. We argue that the use of a military approach in counter-terrorism jeopardizes democracy at the societal level by increasing the belief that only the military is equipped to deal with the threat at hand. Therefore, erosions of civil liberties are tolerated in exchange for security. Second, we argue that military CT measures change the balance between the military and executive powers in procedural and liberal democracies. While the military’s executive power increases in procedural democracies, the civilian ruler’s control of the military power increases in liberal ones. Case studies of the U.S. and Turkey show that a military counter-terrorism approach affects CMR in these countries, which generate a similar tradeoff between security and the quality of democracy, albeit via different causal mechanisms. While that tradeoff is less severe in the U.S., Turkey is more vulnerable to erosion of democracy.
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    The Slow Work of Democracy: Resisting Reductionist Views of Women and Children
    (Lewis & Clark, 2017) Serriere, Stephanie C.
    In her research article "State your defense!": Children negotiate analytic frames in the context of deliberative dialogue," Hauver offers important contributions to the field of elementary civic education that illuminate how young people apply various analytical frames to make collective decisions. First, I highlight significant contributions of her work, namely children's capabilities to build perspective-taking through dialogue, which I suggest can be more solidly grounded in a sociocultural framework, not a developmental one. Second, I offer suggestions toward such a theoretical framework that loosens determinism for children's development and offers a less deterministic framework for women. My review seeks to amplify Hauver's important findings by suggesting more theoretical cohesion as well as more contemporary and critical frameworks. [For "'State Your Defense!' Children Negotiate Analytic Frames in the Context of Deliberative Dialogue," see EJ1162608.]