The pedagogy of global development: The promotion of electoral democracy and the Latin Americanisation of Europe

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 163-179

  Teivainen, Teivo ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI   (Finland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRACY; DEMOCRATIZATION; DEVELOPING WORLD; ELECTORAL SYSTEM; EUROPEAN UNION; NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONS; POWER RELATIONS;

EURASIA; EUROPE; LATIN AMERICA;

EID: 59049093918     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: 13602241     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590802622458     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. A Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York: International Publishers, 1971, p 351.
2. See T Teivainen, Pedagogía del poder mundial: Relaciones internacionales y lecciones del desarrollo en América Latina, Lima: Cedep, 2003.
3. See P Freire, Pedagogia da indignação: Cartas pedagógicas e outros escritos, Sã o Paulo: UNESP, 2000.
4. The views expressed in this contribution do not in any way represent the opinions or beliefs of these election observation missions.
5. One codi.cation of this heritage can be found in European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), Code of Good Practices in Electoral Matters: Adopted Guidelines and Draft Explanatory Report, Strasbourg 9 October 2002, Opinion no 191/2002:eL. While the document was produced under the auspices of the Council of Europe, it is also often used by experts from EU election observation missions.
6. For a good critique of the idea that Europe has a deeply rooted democratic heritage, see M Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth-Century, London: Allen Lane, 1998.
7. Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission on EU Election Assistance and Observation, Brussels, 11 April 2000, COM(2000) 191 final.
8. See D Mathieson & R Youngs, Democracy Promotion and the European Left: Ambivalence Confused? FRIDE Working Paper 29, Madrid, December 2006.
9. La Razón, 8 June 2006.
10. The complexities of the colonial context also became evident during conversations between the EU EOM and representatives of the National Electoral Court. Apart from (the European colonial language of) Spanish, the EU mission's lea.ets and stickers used (the non-European indigenous languages of) Quechua, Aymara and Guaraní. For the main electoral authority of the country, using indigenous languages in written materials was not helpful because most of the people who could not speak Spanish were also illiterate. This had been based on the EU mission's belief that, apart from technical communication considerations, the right to receive electoral information in one's own language, especially in contexts such as Bolivia where signi.cant parts of the population speak an indigenous language, should be considered a fundamental right. These and other notes on the EU Election Observation Mission in Bolivia are based on my experiences as Deputy Chief Observer of the mission.
11. The Chief Observer was a well known advocate of drug policy reform and, at the time, a member of the European Parliament.
12. During the months leading up to the 2006 elections the Bolivian opposition systematically claimed that the Morales government's programme of issuing new identity cards was fraudulent. The EU mission repeatedly stated that, because of the small number of new cards issued before the closing of voter registration, the programme would have little impact on the electoral results, even if it had certain elements of fraud (which, according to the mission, was not the case). The government, for its part, claimed that the voter register was systematically rigged by the National Electoral Court, whose members were perceived to be sympathetic to the opposition. According to the EU EOM's stance on this issue, it should have been relatively straightforward for the government representatives to provide evidence of the alleged irregularities and, since they were unable to do so, their claims could not be deemed credible. When the representatives of the governing party officially withdrew their complaint on the irregularities on the eve of election day, it became clear that the insistence of the EU mission was one of the factors contributing to the withdrawal.
13. WI Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
14. L Diamond, Can the Whole World Become Democratic? Democracy, Development, and International Policies, Paper 03-05, Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California Irvine, 2003.
15. MT Berger, The Battle for Asia: From Decolonization to Globalization London: Routledge, 2004, pp 183-188.
16. A Quijano, 'Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina', in E Lander (ed), La colonialidad del saber: Eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales - perspectivas latinoamericanas, Buenos Aires: CLASCO, 2000.
17. On Latin America as a hybrid space, see N Garcí a Canclini, Culturas híbridas, Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2000.
18. T Teivainen: 'Latinoamericanización de Finlandia y los desafí os de aprender juntos', in Jussi Pakkasvirta & Jukka Aronen (eds), Cafécon tango: Las relaciones entre América Latina y Finlandia, Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 1999, pp 256-262.
19. S Amin, 'The issue of democracy in the contemporary Third World', in Barry Gills, Joel Rocamora & Richard Wilson (eds), Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order, London: Pluto Press, 1993, pp 59-79.
20. This does not mean that one should regard the content of the decisions as irrelevant to the realisation of democratic ideals. For example, a decision that aims at redistributing the material resources available to a given population in a relatively equal way can be an important factor in empowering the population to participate more equally in democratic processes.
21. Freire, Pedagogia da indignação; and Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Little.eld, 1998.
22. H Patomä ki & T Teivainen, A Possible World: Democratic Transformation of Global Institutions, London: Zed Books, 2004.
23. It needs to be noted that global democratisation should not be reduced to the application of the 'one country, one vote' principle. In our book we also explore the possibilities of creating transnational and global democratic arrangements based on the 'one person, one vote' principle and on various ideals of more direct citizen participation.