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By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

I think he is a war criminal, President Joe Biden said Wednesday of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden was responding to a reporters question following a White House event. Earlier, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, ruling on a complaint filed by Ukraine, directed Russia to immediately suspend the military operations that it commenced on 24 February 2022 in the territory of Ukraine. The vote on the court was thirteen in favor, with Russia and China against. On the same day, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan visited Poland and Ukraine as part of his investigation into possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine. His investigation bypassed the usual months-long authorization process at The Hague after 39 member nations of the ICC requested expedited action.

The Rome Statute, the UN treaty that governs the ICC, has 123 signatory nations, but neither Russia nor the United States is among them, rejecting the courts jurisdiction. Ukraine is also not a party to the ICC, but has allowed it to investigate events within its territory from November, 2013 onward, encompassing the violent Euromaidan protests and the ensuing armed conflict in the Donbas region.

I wish to send a clear message, ICC Prosecutor Khan said in a statement. If attacks are intentionally directed against the civilian population: that is a crime that my Office may investigate and prosecute. If attacks are intentionally directed against civilian objects, including hospitals: that is [also] a crime.

Accounts of the staggering brutality of the invasion increase daily. In Mariupol, a maternity and childrens hospital was bombed last week. This week, also in Mariupol, the Donetsk Regional Theater of Drama was hit. Hundreds of civilians, including children, were sheltering there. The Russian bombardment of Ukrainian civilians has been wanton and relentless, and has included the use of cluster bombs. Overall deaths among the civilian population are estimated well into the thousands. More than 3 million people have fled the country, with UNICEF estimating that the war has created one child refugee per second.

Shortly after Biden called Putin a war criminal, his administration walked back the statement. State Dept. spokesperson Ned Price and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden was speaking from the heart, while the official U.S. government process to assess war criminality was ongoing.

There is good reason for Washington officialdom to be circumspect with accusations of war crimes. If a man in the Kremlin can be charged with war crimes for ordering an illegal invasion, what is to stop the same charges from being levied against a man in the White House for doing the same thing? Former President George W. Bush did just that in 2003. Bush said in a statement on February 24th, I join the international community in condemning Vladimir Putins unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine.

Historian Andrew Bacevich knows a thing or two about war. He was a U.S. Army officer in Vietnam. His son, also an Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007.

Not for an instant would I want to minimize the horrors that are unfolding in Ukraine today and the deaths and the injuries inflicted on noncombatants, Bacevich said recently on the Democracy Now! news hour. But lets face it, the numbers are minuscule compared to the number of people that died, were displaced, were injured as a consequence of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistanin the vicinity of 900,000 deaths resulted from our invasion[s]. I understand that Americans dont want to talk about that, dont want to remember that, the political establishment wants to move on from that. But there is a moral dimension to the Ukraine war that should cause us to be a little bit humble about pointing fingers at other people.

Indeed, Bidens own Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, had to edit her March 2nd remarks to the General Assembly. She said, We have seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield. That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs which are banned under the Geneva Convention.

The phrase, which has no place on the battlefield was struck from the transcript, reflecting the U.S. refusal to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The U.S. used cluster bombs in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq and as recently as 2009 in Yemen in an attack that killed 55 people.

If international law is to count for anything, it must be enforced equally. No one, in Russia, the United States or elsewhere, is above the law. The United States should join the civilized world and sign the international treaties on the ICC, cluster munitions, and landmines.

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War Criminals Must Be Held Accountable, Whether in Russia, the U.S. or Elsewhere - Democracy Now!

InDigital Technology and Democratic Theory, editorsLucy Bernholz, Hlne Landemore and Rob Reich bring together contributors to explore how new digital technologies are reshaping our understanding of democracy and democratic theory. This original and important contribution promotes cross-disciplinary scholarship on questions of democracy in the digital age, writesRahel S.

Digital Technology and Democratic Theory. Lucy Bernholz, Hlne Landemore and Rob Reich (eds). University of Chicago Press. 2021.

How do new digital technologies shape and reshape our understanding of democracy and democratic theory? Current discussions about the domination of global platforms reveal the need to engage with this question more thoroughly. By any measure, the edited volume Digital Technology and Democratic Theory is an important contribution to a field previously overlooked by democratic theorists. In an age in which digital environments create new barriers to equal rights and political participation, the volume carefully assembles an array of cross-disciplinary perspectives and asks the question: is there a need for a digital democratic theory?

Much has been written about the democratic challenges brought by new digital technologies. While scholars of race and technology studies, media studies and critical algorithms studies have been researching the effects for some time, the silence of democratic theorists is puzzling. The urgency and directness of Digital Technology and Democratic Theory edited by Lucy Bernholz, Hlne Landemore and Rob Reich attempts to end this silence. The central aim of the volume is threefold: firstly, exploring the political consequences of digital technologies; secondly, enriching our understanding of the limits and possibilities of the deployment of digital technologies in the political realm; and thirdly, investigating how democratic governance might support the design of new technological objects and infrastructures.

Digital Technology and Democratic Theory is an original work, covering a range of different concepts and practices with notable precision. While some scholars aspire to use digital technologies to enhance e-voting or move beyond the nation state to globalise democratic governance, others underscore the need for online deliberation and the crowdsourcing of civic expertise and judgment. Still others promote the ideas of technologically empowered forms of non-elected democratic representation or regulative reforms such as open-data and transparency initiatives, a data tax and democratic currencies.

Photo byROBIN WORRALLonUnsplash

Conceptually, the book hovers between a Habermasian paradigm of deliberative democracy, a pragmatists lineage, the Schumpeterian model of democracy and participatory and direct forms of democracy. Some contributors to the volume analyse the intersection between democratic theory and digital technology mostly through the lens of procedural fairness while others emphasise the importance of outcome quality. Others again focus on the informational conditions of a healthy digital public sphere or aspire to (re-)define citizenship beyond the sporadic activation of citizens as voters.

The volume dwells longest on the possibility of a digital public sphere. Following the footsteps of Jrgen Habermas, in their chapter Democracy and the Digital Political Sphere Joshua Cohen and Archon Fung, for example, characterise the overarching political problem as an erosion of reason in public life. The ideal of democratic society which combines mass democracy and public reasoning (27) becomes undermined, they claim, by powerful private corporations, online harassment, censorship, affective polarisation and homogeneous information spaces. As suggested by the authors, attempts at building a more democratic digital public sphere must be attentive to regulating speech and powerful private corporations; the productions of high-quality information, privacy and security; and the creation of a civic culture of responsible, democracy-reinforcing behaviour (43).

In Chapter Two, Open Democracy and Digital Technologies, Landemore makes a strong point of asking how representative democracy could be reinvented with the help of new digital technologies (65). What interests her primarily is the question of how the key institutional principles of her new model of open democracy can be facilitated using digital technologies. While her idea of openness refers to citizens having general access to power, the key principles of open democracy comprise participatory rights, deliberation, the majoritarian principle, democratic representation, and transparency (7). For Landemore, digital technology can advance open democracy because those technologies (namely, augmented reality tools) can enable much larger meetings of disembodied or reembodied (using pseudonym or avatars) individuals (73). It can further facilitate so-called mini-publics that gather a random sample of the entire demos (74) for deliberative exchanges.

In the chapter Democratic Societal Collaboration in a Whitewater World, David Lee, Margaret Levi and John Seely Brown convincingly explore the potential of digital technologies for scaling collaborative problem-solving. Seen through the lens of John Deweys model of democratic experimentalism, they understand civil society as a collective problem-solving endeavor and democracy as a form of self-governance (223) that enhances opportunities for civic learning and crowdsourced problem-solving.

Although the editors are right to point out that Digital Technology and Democratic Theory is just the beginning of a scholarly conversation, there is a significant problem with the volume. How power is embedded in new digital technologies is understudied. Though the volume hints at the ways digital technologies might affect the balance of power, for example, between experts and others as well as corporations and the state, it could have benefitted from more nuanced exploration of power dynamics. Lacking therefore is any sense of what the democratic problem in the digital age entails beyond concerns of transparency, accountability and legitimacy.

Undoubtedly, much excellent work has been conducted by the contributors to the volume on the deployment of new digital technologies in the political realm. While rendering digital technologies accountable and legible has come to be seen as the most efficient means of re-establishing democratic control, validating truth and the public good, the volume overlooks forms of power that constitute those technologies in their ownership, design and control. According to Cohen and Fung, for example, internet companies should help users behave as citizens by designing their platforms to foster participants democratic orientation (50).

While there is much to recommend in what deliberative and regulative strategies can and ought to achieve, privacy regulations and increased participation in the creation of data and processes of datafication dont go far enough. Democratic theorists also need to engage with the social and technical conditions under which digital technologies emerge and operate. The key task of scholarly work cant be limited to exploring the informational conditions of a healthy public sphere and infrastructure of civil society, as suggested in the introduction to this volume. Given that democracy and new digital technologies are twin objects of deep, though ambivalent, attachment in the contemporary liberal imagination, the task for democratic theorists must also expand in two ways: firstly, by understanding both terms democracy and digitalisation through the other; and secondly, by asking how liberal ideas shape and limit the way we think of both democracy and digitalisation.

Liberal democrats imagine digital technology through their understanding of democracy, and increasingly understand democracy through their encounter with technology. For example, scholars imagining digital technologies as democratic often raise the question of how those technologies can help in realising democratic ideals of inclusion and equality. What gets insufficient attention in Digital Technology and Democratic Theory, however, are the ways that those ideals are lodged within a long history of violence and exploitation. Thus, instead of turning a blind eye to the limits of democratic ideals, any call for designing democratic norms directly into algorithmic systems must come to terms with the ways those norms have often served to legitimise specific political settlements granting a certain freedom to those who are well-represented by those norms, while eradicating the experiences of others.

To conclude, Digital Technology and Democratic Theory is an important contribution to a rapidly emerging field. The original potential of the volume lies in promoting cross-disciplinary scholarship on questions of democracy in the digital age. Thus, for scholars and students of a variety of disciplines including media studies, social science and the humanities, as well as engineers, the volume is essential reading.

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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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Rahel S LSERahel S (@RahelSuess) is a political theorist and a postdoctoral visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the founding director of the Data Politics Lab (Humboldt-University of Berlin) and the founder of the journal engage.

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Book Review: Digital Technology and Democratic Theory edited by Lucy Bernholz, Hlne Landemore and Rob Reich - London School of Economics

The beauty of Korean democracy - Korea Times National 2022-03-1915:34 The beauty of Korean democracy By David A. TizzardMany of us take democracy for granted, believing it to be the natural state of man or the logical progress of all and every society and culture around the world. Such beliefs, however, do not always conform to reality. Backsliding, single-party states, dictators and a whole host of other factors demonstrate that democracy is a variable rather than a fixed phenomenon. What was considered democratic practice in the past is no longer held so today. In the current age, states also differ in their degree of democracy. So how do we measure democracy? How do we know if we are living in a democratic society today? How and when did South Korea transition from a feudal slave society, through colonization and authoritarian military rule, to a country that has some of the OECD's finest democratic practices today in just over a century? It's an important yet obviously very difficult question. Nevertheless, while platitudes and stereotypes remain somewhat ingrained in many, I would suggest that in 2022 South Korea's democracy is a marvelous thing and now superior in "some" ways to even that of its erstwhile political and economic supporter, the United States. First, what is democracy? One of the most important characteristics of democracies is that rather than power, it is the protection of rights that is of prime concern: freedom of speech and the press, freedom of religion and conscience, freedom of assembly and association and the right to due process and fair trial. There also has to be competition for government positions and fair elections carried out without force. Citizens should participate in selecting their leaders. Those elected must then be responsive and accountable to the citizens. Civil and political liberties must exist to ensure safety and integrity. How does democracy come about? Why, for example, is South Korea a democracy and North Korea not? And China? Russia? First, the historical period in which the transition comes as well as the type of regime it replaces matters. Early democratization took place in capitalist economies in which the rich (rather than other social groups) held power. Research also confirms that richer countries are "more likely" to be democratic. Some scholars, influenced by Marx, believe that the middle class is the carrier of democracy: "No bourgeoisie, no democracy." But it is not necessarily wealth that brings about democracy; instead, economic development reduces the likelihood of democratic breakdown. Beyond this, there is a correlation between education and democracy. Culture and the effects of colonialism play a role. As does the presence (or absence) of natural resources. Democratic neighbors and participation in international organizations can also help.Why is South Korea a democracy? There is no simple answer to this, but broadly one could point to three factors: 1) Civil society and public consciousness expanding; 2) economic development and the rise of the middle class; and 3) the international environment and historical circumstance. This narrative includes, but is not exclusive to, the class conscious rise of the "minjung," the importance of Gwangju, the millions of people that took part in 1987 demonstrations moving the narrative from beyond students and activists to middle class workers, and the 88 Olympics which brought international attention. Women, workers, students, journalists, Christians and professors. Moreover, it was not always peaceful or achieved solely by candles. People rallied behind the symbols of Park Jong-cheol and Lee Han-yeol in their pursuit of freedom. There was suffering, violence, and death. Disruptive tactics in protests played a big role in the 1980s. The point is to suggest that you need people capable of democracy, a state ready for democracy, and an environment in which it can take place.That's why I would respectfully disagree with former President Kim Dae-jung who once argued in his influential piece in Foreign Affairs that democracy was Korea's destiny. He got much else correct in that piece but his argument that South Korean democracy was inevitable does not quite sit right with me personally. It was hard fought and made ever more beautiful considering the periods of darkness from whence it arose, but it was not the only possibility this country faced. The people of South Korea have brought about democracy and a host of factors have contributed. Considering the country to north of the DMZ is yet to experience democracy, one might think of what particular aspects of South Korea's rise have not taken place there yet. Is it the lack of a middle class? The lack of a figure behind which to rally? The lack of consciousness, education, or political opposition? As late as the mid-1990s, the streets of Seoul could be seen filled with tear gas and flaming Molotov cocktails as protestors and riot police engaged in violent clashes. Today, whatever your thoughts of the political candidates, South Korean politics is carried out without such dangers. Moreover, power changes hands (relatively) peacefully between opposition parties who have diametrically opposed views on North Korea and other issues. The voter turnout in the recent presidential election was over 77 percent. The young, the old, the rich, the poor, women and men, all turned out in great numbers. There was no apathy or stepping away from democracy believing it to be useless. People demonstrably believed in the process and the fairness. Automatic registration, early voting, national holiday, and polling places everywhere made it easy for people to vote rather than try to prevent them from doing so. Now that the results are in, with some groups vocally unhappy about the winner, there is no narrative that the opposition's victory was not fair or legal. The process is being respected, as it should.Professor Ra Jong-il wrote a fabulous Korean-language piece recently in which he asserted that one's political opponents should not be seen as one's enemy. Instead, they are co-workers or colleagues with whom you disagree but nevertheless must work with in order to make the lives of the citizens better. The focus should never be solely on one's own party nor on working to hinder the progress of the opposition: it should be on the people. When the parties fight, the people suffer. If they can somehow work together despite their differences, the people will benefit. South Korea is not a perfect society. It has many faults and flaws. But its democracy is beautiful. And so is its cleanliness, infrastructure, public transport, health system and, most importantly, its people. People that share different ideas, values and beliefs but who all live by the democratic process. An alternative to this, no matter how much you might disagree with others, would be tragic in my estimation. Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.

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The beauty of Korean democracy - koreatimes

While law enforcement agencies and a congressional committee work to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, subsequent efforts seek to undermine the norms and structures that have given Americans basic confidence in elections and in the peaceful transfer of power.

Meanwhile, from statehouses to the U.S. Supreme Court, bitter debates rage over voting rights, access and security.

The University of Michigans Democracy in Crisis series will feature four award-winning journalists sharing their insights into the forces threatening and protecting democratic structures and systems.

It also will explore the current state of journalism and the role of the press in upholding democratic institutions at a time of demagogic attacks on the media and dramatic shifts in media ownership and independence.

Events include:

Here in the United States, and in many countries around the globe, democracy is being threatened, and journalists are standing up to raise the alarm. This series will help our community and the broader public understand whats at stake, and what they can do about it, Barr said.

Strong, free and open, ethical journalism is essential to a well-functioning democracy, LSA Dean Anne Curzan said. The series offers an opportunity to learn about the state of U.S. democracy as well as the state of political journalism from an insiders perspective.

Diminishing the role and work of journalists is a key tactic in undermining democracies, she said. Bringing visibility to the work of journalists is a necessary antidote to those efforts.

We look forward to giving our community a chance to engage with these experienced reporters in a way that cuts through the noise to prompt thoughtful civic engagement.

The series is a partnership of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Wallace House and U-M Democracy & Debate 2021-22, and is co-hosted by the Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation.

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Democracy in Crisis series features insights from journalists | The University Record - The University Record

Despite the many horrors we have witnessed since the Covid-19 pandemic began, there have been some positive developments, the most pertinent being the growing role of women in strengthening the political and civic life of democracy in South Asia. At the global level, much has already been written about the superior performance of women leaders, such as Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand), Tsai-Ing Wen (Taiwan), Sanna Marin (Finland) and KK Shailaja (Kerala), in handling the pandemic. Likewise, the highly effective contributions of local-level panchayat sarpanches and health officials such as Roorkees Daljit Kaur, Singhwahinis Ritu Jaiswal and the mayor of Chandannath municipality in Nepal, Kantika Sejuwal, among many others, have been justly exalted. One must not, however, turn a blind eye to the more systemic and ground-level realities of women, which are fraught with various contradictions, contestations, and quiet calamities. Therefore, for a proper appraisal of the relations between gender and democracy, we ought to examine the links between violence, representation, and the political participation of women.

Historically, one of the peculiar paradoxes of South Asian democracy has been the continued presence of strong women leaders at the executive centre coupled with a generally appalling condition of women in society at large. South Asia has had the largest number of women heads of state including Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Chandrika Kumaratunga, Indira Gandhi, Khaleda Zia, Sheikh Hasina, and Benazir Bhutto of any region in the world till recently. However, this seemingly empowering image is disproved when we take a broader view of the electoral representation and social condition of women in the region. While women have played very visible and important roles at the higher echelons of power and at the grassroots level in social movements, they have been under-represented in political parties as officials and as members of key decision-making bodies.

In electoral representation, India, for instance, has fallen several places in the Inter-Parliamentary Unions global ranking of womens parliamentary presence, from 117 after the 2014 election to 143 as of January 2020. India is currently behind Pakistan (106), Bangladesh (98) and Nepal (43) and ahead of Sri Lanka (182). Prior to the 2019 election, scholars such as Carole Spary and S M Rai have estimated that it would take another 40 years to have 33 per cent women in the Lok Sabha, based on historical election trends and assuming that no gender quota is introduced, such as the heavily undermined and ignored the Womens, Reservation Bill.

However, there are two main points to be noted here. In India, women currently make up 14.6 per cent of MPs (78 MPs) in the Lok Sabha, which is a historic high. Although the percentage is modest, it is remarkable because women barely made up 9 per cent of the overall candidates in 2019. BJP women candidates won at a strike-rate of 73 per cent as opposed to their male counterparts at 66 per cent. Additionally, 27 of 41 women MPs were able to retain their seats as well. Similarly, of the 50 women candidates fielded by the Trinamool Congress in last years West Bengal Assembly elections, 40 won. This proves that the winnability (the basis on which political parties claim to give tickets) of women is much higher than of men.

In terms of electoral quotas, there were two outstanding exceptions in the 2019 general elections. West Bengal under Mamata Banerjee and Odisha under Naveen Patnaik opted for voluntary parliamentary quotas, fielding 40 per cent and 33 per cent women candidates, respectively.

Interestingly, in countries such as India and Bangladesh, the presence of women may be more powerfully felt as voters than as candidates. In 1962, the male voter turnout in India was 16 percentage points higher than for women. Six decades later, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, womens participation exceeded that of men for the first time. This suggests an increasing assertion of citizenship rights among women. The growing turnout of women voters could influence political parties programmatic priorities and improve their responsiveness to women voters interests, preferences, and concerns, including sexual harassment and gender-based violence.

The TMC ran and highlighted many women-centric schemes that potentially played a central role in their victory. Schemes such as Swasthya Sathi, which issued health cards in the name of female heads of the family, and Kanyashree Prakalpa and Rupashree Prakalpa, which provided financial support for girls education and marriage respectively, proved immensely popular.

Likewise, the central government must be commended for its achievements in two areas in particular: Its DBT schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Vaya Vandana Yojana and the Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan, due to which maternal mortality rate has reduced from 167 (2011-13) to 113 (2016-18). The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2017 is another landmark achievement that extended the paid maternal leave to 26 weeks from the existing 12 weeks.

The extent to which parties represent women and take up their interests is closely tied to the health and vitality of democratic processes. However, the strength of civil society initiatives is not entirely dependent on the strength of political institutions a case in point would be the Aurat marches in Pakistan. Another is the Shaheen Bagh protest that proved remarkably active in mobilising women.

The BJP must use its parliamentary majority to finally pass the Womens Reservation Bill, as was promised in their 2014 election manifesto. Until that happens, the initiative taken by the governments of Banerjee and Patnaik to increase womens parliamentary presence must serve as an inspiration to other Indian states. At this crucial juncture, to cherish our democratic values, we will need to sympathise with the voice of the 15th century Bengali poet, Ramoni, a low-caste washerwoman, who sang, Ill not stay any longer in this land of injustice/ Ill go to a place where there are no hellhounds.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 8, 2022 under the title A democracy for her. The writer is former chief election commissioner of India and the author of An Undocumented Wonder The Making of the Great Indian Election.

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More women in politics will strengthen democracy - The Indian Express