democratization

This art icle was downloaded by: [ Professor Paul C. Mocom be] On: 14 February 2014, At : 07: 13 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Democratization Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions f or aut hors and subscript ion inf ormat ion: ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ f dem20 Decentring the West: the idea of democracy and the struggle for hegemony Paul C. Mocombe a a West Virginia St at e Universit y/ The Mocombeian Foundat ion, Inc. , USA Published online: 11 Feb 2014. To cite this article: Paul C. Mocombe , Democrat izat ion (2014): Decent ring t he West : t he idea of democracy and t he st ruggle f or hegemony, Democrat izat ion, DOI: 10. 1080/ 13510347. 2013. 870159 To link to this article: ht t p: / / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 13510347. 2013. 870159 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Taylor & Francis m akes every effort t o ensure t he accuracy of all t he inform at ion ( t he “ Cont ent ” ) cont ained in t he publicat ions on our plat form . However, Taylor & Francis, our agent s, and our licensors m ake no represent at ions or warrant ies what soever as t o t he accuracy, com plet eness, or suit abilit y for any purpose of t he Cont ent . Any opinions and views expressed in t his publicat ion are t he opinions and views of t he aut hors, and are not t he views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of t he Cont ent should not be relied upon and should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources of inform at ion. 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Mocombe] at 07:13 14 February 2014 Decentring the West: the idea of democracy and the struggle for hegemony, edited by Viatcheslav Morozov, Surrey and Burlington, VT, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013, 207 pp., US$99.95 US (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4094-4970-6 The book Decentring the West: The Idea of Democracy and the Struggle for Hegemony is a series of essays edited by Viatcheslav Morozov that explores the concept and phenomenon of democracy within the phenomenon of the contemporary capitalist world-system. The work, using a theoretical framework intersected between poststructuralist theory of hegemony and postcolonial studies within the framework of an overarching Wallersteinian capitalist world system, attempts to demonstrate how democracy in theory is an empty signifier that is hegemonically constituted and controlled in practice, on the one hand, by the West as representative democracy, liberalism, and capitalism, and the institutions that allow for the aforementioned processes to thrive. On the other hand, outside of the Western core, in the semi-periphery nations of Turkey, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Russia, and China, it is a focus of counter-hegemonic discourses associated with popular democracies, socialism, and all sorts of liberating movements, which either opposes the democratic concepts and practices of the West or attempts to convict it for not identifying with its democratic claims and values. Essentially, the work seeks to offer “the possibility of a global democratic discourse that would keep a critical distance from both the Western project of democracy promotion and the cynical instrumental use of pro-democracy rhetoric by certain non-Western leaders” in semi-periphery nations (1). The short introduction written by Viatcheslav Morozov highlights the crux of the work, examining the struggle raised in the debate about democracy all over the world between its Western conception and practice and its decentred understanding in the postcolonial semi-peripheral world (10). The nine subsequent chapters reveal the contradictions of democracy as both a concept and as a phenomenon in the West and elsewhere. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 explore the possibility of an international democracy in theory and praxis. Chapter 4 investigates how Turkey in trying to democratize in the image of the West solidifies both Western notions of democracy and their hegemonic status. Chapter 5 compares and contrasts the positions of Russia and Latin America in this structural setting where the countries of the latter are simply focused on justice and the former, Russia, on freedoms within and using the discourse of the West to convict them of not identifying with its values, concepts, and practices. Chapters 6 and 7 explore the counter-hegemonic democratic discourses of Bolivia, Venezuela, and Brazil Downloaded by [Professor Paul C. Mocombe] at 07:13 14 February 2014 2 Book review respectively. The author suggests that the former, Bolivia, is more promising than the latter two because of its infusion of indigenous cosmology into its discourse in order to offer an alternative to Western conceptions of democracy, which Venezuela simply attempts to convict for not identifying with the values of its discourse, while the Brazilian position, like Turkey, synthesizes its global economic and political ambitions within the hegemony of the West. Chapter 8 addresses the case of China, which attempts to define democracy as a universal value within its discourse of communist ideology/state capitalism. Chapter 9 uses the case of Estonia to demonstrate how its othering of Russia within the West decentres European and Western identities and democracy. The book concludes with a summary of its contents. Decentring the West deserves praise for staking out a bold theoretical agenda on the concept and phenomenon of democracy within the phenomenon of the capitalist world-system. While this book shows clear strengths with its dialectical thinking, it also suffers some shortcomings. First, the work spends too much time (Chapter 1) focusing on demonstrating the relatively slight distinction between post-colonial theory and the strict use of poststructuralism, which the editor realizes is an insignificant distinction (5 – 6), and not enough time on framing the approach more in terms of the “dynamics of power and resistance” within capitalist relations of production of the contemporary world-systems framework. In other words, there is no need for the editor to introduce the languages of post-structuralism and post-colonialism to frame the argument of the work while the language of world-systems theory, which frames the phenomenon within which the democratic processes highlighted by the texts are taking place, is more than sufficient. Be that as it may, the theoretical and methodological chapter of the work could have been condensed or eliminated for more analysis of Immanuel Wallerstein’s capitalist world-system as a concept and phenomenon, and the agential struggles of core, semi-periphery, and periphery nations within it. That is to say, more space should have been devoted to not only analysing the dynamics of power and resistance in semi-periphery nations to the hegemonic position of the West core in the capitalist world-system, but for drawing a comparative analysis between the struggles of the semi-periphery nations vis-à-vis certain periphery ones such as Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, etc. With the exception of the Bolivian case, which is different from the other five empirical case studies by the mere fact that it introduces indigenous cosmology into the resistance to Western hegemony, the other cases more readily highlight the liberal struggle of the semi-periphery nations for equality of opportunity, recognition, and redistribution with the West. The work would have given more validity to its title, underlying thesis, and theoretical basis had it comparatively conceptualized and contextualized the liberal orientation of the semi-periphery vis-à-vis other social positions of power and resistance within the periphery, and how they differ theoretically and historically from the former and core nations. Although, like any book, Decentring the West: The Idea of Democracy and the Struggle for Hegemony is not able to engage every relevant issue regarding Book review 3 democracy discourses in the contemporary world-system, its morality, readability, and pedagogical utility make it worthwhile as a sharply critical take on democracy in the contemporary capitalist world-system. Downloaded by [Professor Paul C. Mocombe] at 07:13 14 February 2014 Paul C. Mocombe West Virginia State University/The Mocombeian Foundation, Inc., USA [email protected] # 2014, Paul C. Mocombe https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2013.870159