When politicians fail: Zombie democracy and the anthropology of actually existing politics

Koch, Insa

doi:10.1177/0081176917693550

Cited by 19 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Simply holding elections is insufficient since there is no guarantee that citizens will actively consider their interests and the issues-or that they will vote. There are therefore often concerns that ''zombie''-like elections could be held characterized by apathy and disengagement (Koch 2017). Emergencies can, however, fundamentally undermine opportunities for deliberation since they depend on information and news content from independent journalists.…”

Section: Opportunities For Deliberationmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Is It Democratic to Postpone an Election? Elections During Natural Disasters, COVID-19, and Emergency Situations

James

Alihodžić

2020

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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Holding regular elections is an essential feature of democratic practices. The case for postponing elections is often made during emergency situations, however. Despite the critical nature of the issue for democracy, peace, and security, there has been sparse academic literature on election postponement. This article provides a new typology of reasons why elections might be delayed to disentangle the causal factors and normative rationale. It distinguishes the humanitarian case for temporary postponements during natural disasters. It then argues that substantive concepts of democracy and electoral integrity, rather than existing international/national laws and standards, should be used to inform decisions about postponement by relevant stakeholders, be it an electoral management body (EMB), government, parliament, or the judiciary. The possible effects of natural disasters on electoral integrity are traced through a comparative analysis of past cases. The article holds that variations in context and the ability of actors to strategically adapt to situations will make the effects contingent. Nonetheless, holding elections during natural disasters will often lead to severely compromised opportunities for deliberation, contestation, participation, and election management quality. There is therefore a strong, democratic case for time-limited postponement. However, the postponement will break institutional certainty, which could pose threats of democratic breakdown-especially in presidential systems. The best available safeguards for electoral integrity during natural disasters include the introduction or expansion of low-tech solutions such as early voting, strengthened risk management, but also transparency and inclusivity in decision making. Overall, there are important lessons for the broader scholarship and practice of democracy during emergency situations.

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Section: Opportunities For Deliberationmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Is It Democratic to Postpone an Election? Elections During Natural Disasters, COVID-19, and Emergency Situations

James

Alihodžić

2020

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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“…This, I argue, is grounded in ideological notions that conceive individuals as interdependent and relational subjects responsive towards others' needs (Held 2006:135). I also follow recent work in the sociology of care that argues for a relational understanding of personhood (Skeggs and Loveday 2012) and shows how ideas of care are central to the ways in which people on the margins accrue value in the face of precarity (Gillies 2007;Koch 2017;Lawler 2000;Reay & Lucey 2000;Skeggs 2004). Likewise, I join scholarship in human geography that explains how care ethics highlights the centrality and public character of care activities and so reframes responsibility.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

‘Te lo tienes que currar’: Enacting an Ethics of Care in Times of Austerity

Garza

Paola²

2020

Ethnos

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Amid austerity policies that have retracted welfare programmes and have affected the livelihood of people in Spain, this paper describes how various local practices of care among members of the PAH (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages) work to recuperate social relations morally and practically. I seek to understand the relationship between people's perceptions of social justice and notions of fairness on the one hand and ideas about deservingness on the other. I am interested in exploring who gets to choose and allocate, and how people in the PAH use the collective notion of care to justify their choice. I analyse the conundrums of a movement that struggles to find a balance between individual judgments and the collective good; I aim to show the dilemmas and contradictions of the struggle for social justice.

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“…The question of how to respond to threatened community places has long preoccupied social scientists, who have traced the historical transformations of urban (de)industrialisation in postwar Britain, generating rich insights into the interrelations of community, place and loss (Lewis, 2016). While theorists of globalisation have framed the destruction of community in terms of processes of individualisation and privatisation, burgeoning ethnographic work has focused on the creative affordances of places in strengthening social ties (Degnen, 2016; Koch, 2017; Lewis, 2016). Here, a key debate has focused on the capacity of communities to survive and regenerate under conditions of deindustrialisation, ruination and the erosion of the welfare state (Koch, 2017; Lewis, 2016; Mah, 2012; McKenzie, 2015).…”

Section: Substitutable Buildings? Grammars Of Austerity and The Langumentioning

confidence: 99%

Witnessing loss in the everyday: Community buildings in austerity Britain

Robinson

Sheldon

2018

The Sociological Review

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This article is concerned with what happens to precarious community buildings in times of austerity. It responds to a landscape of capitalist realism, in which instrumental, economic forms of value are mobilised to justify the closure of ordinary buildings whose survival is not identified as a political priority. We focus on two London cases of a library and an elderly day centre under threat of closure, and trace how grammars of austerity rendered these buildings substitutable. Considering how abstract sociological conceptions of value/s can struggle to break into the embedded common sense of austerity, we explore how ethnographic practices of collaboration and attentiveness can help amplify alternative expressions of the meanings of these buildings for their communities. Enacting a form of ethnographic witnessing, which learns from Wittgenstein, we highlight the creative, vernacular registers and gestures of library users and day centre members, and we show how these were anchored in the buildings themselves. In this way, we supplement noisier, more hyperbolic accounts of the violence of austerity by amplifying quotidian responses, which express how ordinary buildings and the forms of life they sustain, matter.

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When politicians fail: Zombie democracy and the anthropology of actually existing politics

Cited by 19 publications

References 41 publications

When Is It Democratic to Postpone an Election? Elections During Natural Disasters, COVID-19, and Emergency Situations

When Is It Democratic to Postpone an Election? Elections During Natural Disasters, COVID-19, and Emergency Situations

‘Te lo tienes que currar’: Enacting an Ethics of Care in Times of Austerity

Witnessing loss in the everyday: Community buildings in austerity Britain

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