Political participation under conditions of (democratic) duress
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395719863646 |
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395719863646
Politics
2020, Vol. 40(2) 154 –169
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395719863646
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Political participation under
conditions of (democratic)
duress
Lien Pham
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Ance Kaleja
University of Heidelberg, Germany
Abstract
Drawing on Amartya Sen’s concept of agency and capability, this article explores political
participation in three dimensions: individual dispositions, opportunities for participation, and
processes of participation. It presents an analytical approach that examines these dimensions in
relation to practices of participation as interactions between the State and citizens within and
outside of political institutions. Two examples are used to illustrate the utility of this approach
in states where democratic institutions are deficient. The first example historically traces the
evolution of tribal informal institutions in Jordan to demonstrate how and why they mediate
people’s participation in the public sphere. The second example uses narrative inquiry to explore
community activists’ aspiration for and commitment to political expression through social media
in Vietnam. Both examples suggest that a country’s political institutions and its rule of law may
shape political cultures and societal values of participation, but it is the individuals’ recognition
and response to these structures that ultimately create their motivations and the opportunities
for them to participate. The article emphasises the importance of understanding the contexts
in which the respective tradition of political participation takes place in order to understand
the outcomes as well as the conditions for participation, especially in contexts that theoretically
qualify as authoritarian.
Keywords
authoritarianism, civil society, Jordan, political participation, political regime, Vietnam
Received: 11th November 2018; Revised version received: 14th May 2019; Accepted: 21st June 2019
Introduction
In an age of globalisation, increasing inequality, emerging power of autocratic states, and
their rising economic dominance, the world has experienced a sharp escalation of new
Corresponding author:
Lien Pham, Graduate Research School, University of Technology Sydney, 15 Broadway, Ultimo, NSW 2007,
Australia.
Email: lien.pham@uts.edu.au
863646POL0010.1177/0263395719863646PoliticsPham and Kaleja
research-article2019
Article
Pham and Kaleja 155
forms of political ideologies and representation reflecting variably on people’s political
participation. While existing autocracies continue posing challenges to their citizens’
opportunities to enact political change, scholars have recently drawn attention to how
democratic norms and institutions may be eroded from within seemingly democratic poli-
ties (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018), even alerting to a ‘third wave of autocratisation’ on the
way (Lührmann and Lindberg, 2019), creating new and more sophisticated forms of
autocracy. Given these trends, it becomes even more crucial to study and understand
political participation in contexts where democratic forms of governance may be under
duress. In this article, we propose a novel approach that draws attention to the specific
circumstances in which people come to understand traditions of political participation
and take choices to participate. We argue that it is important to understand the contexts of
political participation because contexts create conditions for and eventually outcomes of
participation, which may take numerous forms and may be disguised as individual or col-
lective action aimed at bringing about political change, but not necessarily changing the
political regime itself. A pluralistic approach towards political participation can help to
appreciate the significance of such practices for people living under democratic duress,
where formal channels of participation are often denied or incapable of adequately reflect-
ing people’s preferences.
A pluralistic approach to political participation
As noted by Pippa Norris (2002), contemporary interpretations of political participation
tend to understand the notion solely in terms of free and fair electoral voting, voting turn-
outs, or citizens’ attitudes towards their political systems (Bennett and Robert, 2000).
Such an approach is problematic because the aforementioned dimensions of political par-
ticipation are underscored by values and institutional formations stemming primarily
from ‘Western’ political systems and their history of political experience. It would be
erroneous to assume that these dimensions would operate in ways that suggest political
agency anywhere. Diamond and Gunther (2001) have noted that globally, there has been
a dramatic increase of elections, free or not, with an increasing number of states adopting
seemingly democratic electoral institutions, yet this is not necessarily a sign of demo-
cratic triumph. Often, instead of providing credible checks on the power of the ruling elite
or symbolising citizens’ political agency, the presence of elections may strengthen the
existing regime (Gandhi and Przeworski, 2007; Geddes et al., 2014) amounting to ‘elec-
toral’ or ‘competitive autocracies’ (Levitsky and Way, 2010), or various kinds of ‘hybrid
regimes’ where democratic and non-democratic institutions coexist producing results
favourable to political elites.
Participation in various civil society organisations is likewise often interpreted as evi-
dence of political participation. Union membership, community groups, and voluntary or
professional associations are commonly avenues for mobilising people’s political activ-
ism, yet the political influence of these institutions are significantly different across the
globe. In many cases, labour unions, professional syndicates, or even political parties are
incorporated within the system of state corporatism (Gohar, 2008; ILO, 2018; Wrest,
2017) and function as the basis of state-sponsored and state-controlled political participa-
tion (Albrecht, 2005). In fact, state-sponsored corporatism is often carried out to legiti-
mise the existing regime by organising participation activities aligned with the State’s
policies (Pham, 2019). Viewing civil society groups as somewhat autonomous from the
state overlooks that the state-society relations are often intertwined and overlapping, and
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