Southern democracy
Southern democracy is term used in political science to describe systems of government which are functionally more than nominally democratic, but which are characteristically illiberal, with significant power in government being wielded by those outside the democratic system. The "southern" descriptor in the term refers to how the model is most prevalent in the global south, but also more specifically, the south of Coius.
The term was first coined and applied by Albert Kavagamu, a Dezevauni political theorist, author and later leader of the Liberal Party, in his book The End of Politics. He capitalised it as "Southern democracy", but since then, it has been more common (including in his own works) to leave the term uncapitalised, as in "southern democracy". The term has found some currency in media outside of academia.
Classification
Kavagamu, in The End of Politics, published in 1999, attempted to classify extant political and governmental systems into types. Of democracies, he said there were primarily three stable varieties: liberal, council-socialist and "Southern". The terms "liberal democracy" and "council-socialist" were not novel in his publication; he gave Estmere, Gaullica and Halland as examples of the former, and Kirenia and Dezevau as examples of the latter. "Southern democracy" was, however, a new term, and he applied it to countries such as Senria and Shangea. He justified his choice of the term as an attempt to avoid coining something unintuitive, prescriptive, or vague.
According to him, Southern democracies had a democratic-republican system of politics at their core; they were ruled by politicians whose power was essentially legitimised by popular approval generally expressed through elections, and their power was not absolute, but beholden at least in minor or specific ways, either legally or culturally, to institutions such as courts, civil services, the media or subnational governmental entities. However, these democracies were neither liberal either culturally or economically, nor did they tend to have decentralising and radically egalitarian tendencies as socialist democracies did. He proposed that characteristics of a Southern democracy included:
- Authoritarianism
- Social conservatism (in particular, a lack of pluralism)
- Nationalism (or other sources of localised or exclusionary identification, such as religion)
- Political power being held in non-democratic, domestic, hierarchical institutions such as militaries and bureaucracies
- Policies which emphasised stability.
These characteristics, he said, could be tied together in the way that they reflected a conception of the country as a united, largely homogeneous community. Democracy was necessary in these systems to reflect the will of the people, but unlike in liberal or socialist democracies, the will of the people was seen to be ideally unanimous, and unchanging over long periods of time; hence, Southern democracies tolerated, even encouraged, conservative and anti-pluralist measures. Politics in a Southern democracy, according to his theory, is only the tool by which politicians or relatively minor aspects of policy may be changed; the underlying assumption is that the singular national will can be and always is being elucidated by enduring cultural and political institutions and policies, even where they are not democratic per se.
Asase Lewa
While most political observers classiified the Asalewan political system as merely an example of a Council republic with an especially powerful Section of the Workers' International, in their 2000 book A Dream Unfulfilled: the Promise of Bahian Democracy, the [Insert Euclean liberal here] political scientist [Insert Name Here] instead identified the Asalewan political system as a "relatively novel system, difficult to classify in a single category," and a hybrid of a Council republic and Southern democracy. While [Insert Name Here] identified Asase Lewa as most closely resembling a Council republic, thanks to its Council-based form of government, socialist and participatory economy, and extensive tradition of mass politics and participatory democracy, [Insert Name Here] also identified several features of Asalewan politics as most closely resembling the countries Albert Kavagamu classified as Southern democracies rather than other Council republics.
Most notably, [Insert Name Here] classified the entrenched power of the Asalewan Section of the Workers' International, and the closely affiliated military and bureaucracy, as equivalent to the entrenched power of dominant parties and militaries in countries such as Senria and Shangea. [Insert Name Here] classified the Asalewan Section's ability to restrict political candidates for public office, especially, as equivalent to the strict limits on political pluralism found in more traditional Southern democracies. [Insert Name Here] also classified the largely clientelistic, depoliticized, and consensus-oriented political culture of Asase Lewa at the time as similar to the political cultures of Southern democracies, particularly because this political culture further limited political pluralism in Asase Lewa.
Subsequent to [Insert Name Here]'s publication, the Anti-Revisionist Revolution from 2014 to 2016, a legally-formalized state of exception which involved the temporary direct intervention and rule of the Asalewan Section of the Workers' International in domestic affairs and the Section Center expelling opposing Section members, has caused scholars to further debate to what extent Asase Lewa can be meaningfully considered a Southern democracy. Most scholars have argued that the Anti-Revisionist Revolution represented a case of democratic backsliding and thus further strengthened [Insert Name Here]'s thesis; the Anti-Revisionist Revolution was undemocratically imposed from above, weakened inter-party democracy within the Section itself, and after the event, the Section's role in Asalewan domestic politics remained stronger than before.
However, a minority of scholars—especially prevalent in the socialist world, including Asase Lewa itself—have argued that the Anti-Revisionist Revolution actually had a democratizing effect on Asalewan politics in the long-term, weakening the argument that Asase Lewa ought to be considered a Southern democracy. These scholars argue that the event had a repoliticizing effect on Asalewan society that reintroduced moderate levels of political pluralism and polarization to Asalewan society. Subsequent to the Anti-Revisionist Revolution, these scholars argue, the main political camps in Asalewan politics became increasingly ideologically-identified by debating the event's legacy, and the event reopened debates on issues previously considered out of bounds in Asalewan politics, most notably uneven development between urban and rural areas and the Lowlands and Highlands.
Sabaw
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At the time of the publishing of Kavagumu's book, Sabaw was experiencing a period of parliamentary democracy that had been ushered in since the fall of one-party Taydemtist rule in 1984. As such Kavagumu did not initially list the contemporary state of Sabaw as falling under the definition of a southern democracy but did include brief references towards Taydemtist Sabaw's relationship with democracy and its fall stemming from the government's unexpected defeat in the 1980 Sabawi constitutional referendum. Taydemtist Sabaw was also noted as an early example of a southern democracy by Kavagumu who cited it as fulfilling his characteristics of a southern democracy, he cited the abnormally high electoral threshold of 15%, well documented instances of electoral fraud, political violence and intimidation as well as the lack of a free and independent media as examples in his characterisation. In a speech at the University of Takhenanet in 2006, Kavagumu listed the rule of Azenzâr Farid as a state transitioning towards a southern democracy in the likes of Zorasan. Farid's ousting in the midst of the Sabaw Crisis and the ushering in of the Presidency of Bekathen Sadek caused Kavagumu to list Sabaw as a southern democracy in 2019. When Bekathen Sadek was imprisoned between 2015 and 2018 over charges of corruption, his wife and then Deputy President of Sabaw Yamina Sadek took office in what was widely seen domestically and internationally as a means to ensure the former's influence during his imprisonment. This was largely confirmed after Yamina did not seek a full term in office and instead supported her husband's re-election campaign in 2018. Yamina Sadek launched an investigation into the impartiality of the judiciary shortly after taking office that ended with the removal of most supreme court justices and dozens of other lower level judges, most of whom were replaced by figures with sympathies towards the government. The centralisation of television media under the Sadek aligned Beshara Media Group and the renewed enforcement of anti-defamation laws to shut down opposition journalists has substantially eroded media freedom in Sabaw which was also cited.
Foreign and domestic commentators have noted the apparent failure of the Sadek's rule to maintain a solid grip on the country as evidenced by Bekathen Sadek's imprisonment and the results of the 2022 election in Sabaw. Journalist Yaghut Guler assessed the state of Sabaw in 2023 as a 'state moving away from a period of southern democracy against the wishes of the establishment'. In his work, Guler cited high youth unemployment rates as well as the secular and religious political divide in Sabaw as some of the key factors in Sabaw's gradual move away from southern democracy. He also cites continued eastern influence particularly from the Sabawi diaspora in Estmere as another example of this trend.
Senria
Kavagamu pointed to Senria as "an archetypal Southern democracy" in The End of Politics. He noted that the country "transparently exhibited" all the characteristics of a Southern democracy, including a history of authoritarian strongman rule (particularly exemplified by Katurou Imahara and Takesi Takahata); a strong emphasis on nationalism in politics; the outsized political influence held by the bureaucracy of the Senrian state, the Aikokutou's party structure, and the Senrian Republican Armed Forces; and an opposition to political and ethnic pluralism. He additionally noted that many of the traits of Southern democracy—particularly nationalism and a non-pluralist republicanism—were "codified" in Imaharism, the guiding ideology of the ruling Aikokutou, in a way they were not in many other Southern democracies. He also noted, though, that Senria seemed to be moving away from this in some areas under Kiyosi Haruna, citing the country's increasing political liberalisation, concessions to ethnic minorities, and the reduction of the military's political power.
Zorasan
At the time of writing The End of Politics, Zorasan had been governed by successive liberal and reformist governments that sought to remove from its political system, many if not all the qualifiers of a southern democracy. In his book, Kavagamu applauded Zorasan as an example of a successful transition from southern democracy, subject mostly to the will and influence of the military in Zorasan's case, to a nascent liberal pluralistic democracy. By 1999, Zorasan had repealed many of its founding laws that enforced censorship, authoritarianism and deeply exclusionary policies toward its religious and ethnic minorities.
However, six years after writing, Zorasan underwent a period of political upheaval, known as the Tufan, which overthrew the liberal-reformist period and in the 2005 Zorasani general election, saw the return of both authoritarian-nationalist blocs to government and unrestrained military involvement in politics. In 2008, a new constitution was adopted which granted the military unparalleled executive and legislative powers, while new measures aimed at combating pluralism were also adopted, though democratic elections would continue to provide popular mandates.
Alternative terms
Proposed alternative terms include Coian democracy, proposed by University of Cuanstad professor Levell Boone in 2006.
Response
In political scientific academia, the term has been sometimes criticised for giving a geographical appellation to something that is not necessarily delimited by region of the world. More often, it has been criticised for typecasting and exoticising democracy in the developing world, with critics pointing to <x> as an Eastern country which could be classified as a southern democracy.
In global politics, the term has also sometimes been employed or disavowed.