openDemocracy

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• Goodbye Charter 88: a new epoch for democratic resistance has begun, Anthony Barnett

  20 novembre 2011, par Anthony Barnett — OurKingdom, OurKingdom, Ideas, Democracy and government, Civil society, England, Scotland, UK, For England's Sake!, Anthony Barnett
  A new epoch of democratic reform in Britain is needed to respond to the transformation of the British state, the disintegration of the old constitutional order and the rise of corporate power, now that hope of a Labour Lib Dem alliance for democracy is over. The pure but totalising strategy of the UK's Charter 88 conceived 25 years ago is buried by its first co-ordinator.

  Recently Unlock Democracy, the organisation that incorporates Charter 88, surveyed its members.

  One of the issues that came through very strongly in response to the survey was that people felt that there are a wide range of institutions from financial corporations, transnational institutions such as the EU and the IMF as well as the media, that impact greatly on our daily lives but that are not accountable, there is no democratic oversight of what they do. There was also concern about how these institutions are interlinked. For example, corporate influence on the EU affects our laws. The media, dominated by corporations, has generally pursued a low regulation, pro-corporate agenda.

  I was the Co-ordinator of the original Charter 88 from 1988 to 1995, when it was an influential campaign for a novel programme  of constitutional change: a Bill of Rights, Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, Freedom of Information, fair voting, replacing the hereditary Lords, all combined together in a call for a democratic written constitution. In British terms it demanded a democratic revolution. We got about half the specific demands but not their revolutionary integration. Now, the editor of Unlock Democracy’s print magazine asked me to reflect on the issue of corporate power raised by the survey.

  The issue is critically important for democratic reformers in Britain. Our agenda must indeed now encompass corporate power if it is to be taken seriously, let alone become at all popular again. My argument to Unlock Democracy, which I will spell out a bit more clearly here, is that such a call - to make commercial, financial and media power democratically accountable - cannot be an ‘add-on’ to the traditional list of demands for reform put forward across the last quarter century.

  On the contrary, it calls for a different strategy. The Charter 88 approach is now a dead parrot. In the 1990s, demanding constitutional reforms that could link up into a new settlement for the UK released energy. Even when a reform was frustrated, political growth took place. One could still, arguably, hope this would be the case up to this year and the AV referendum, though I had my doubts. But no longer.

  There are two key reasons for this: the object of reform, the British state itself, has changed fundamentally; and the strategy of reform had at its heart a political alliance hope of which has been extinguished.

  Of these perhaps the most important reason is that the state itself has changed, and in two decisive ways, since 1988:

  An incoherent state

  First, thanks to those parts of the Charter 88 agenda that are now implemented the old centralised state has been broken. The Charter was a riposte to the unambiguous triumph of Thatcherism and her ‘elective dictatorship’. Her success was built upon the unity of Britain’s traditional state and its elite culture, which she bent to her political will. In response democratic reformers wanted to match Thatcher’s will with our own energy, only we wanted a plural, constitutional democracy to be the outcome. The unspoken premise was that the political system retained the coherence to undertake such a deep renewal.

  Today, the British regime Thatcher inherited and exploited no longer exists even while her economic legacy is being intensified. The entire nature and rhythm of politics in Scotland today, for example, is now distinct from England – it has a popular centre-left government, it does not have riots, its NHS is not under assault. To seek a new British constitution in these circumstances would mean attacking Scottish democracy and its growing autonomy. The same would be true for Wales. Unless, that is, the move towards a British constitution is based on holding an open popular constitutional convention. But any such genuine process would lead to the English question being resolved by… the English. This is the last thing any Westminster politician or civil servant looks forward to.

  In 1988 national democracy within the UK was something that could be given voice to by demands for British-wide reform originating in Westminster. Now any such procedure threatens to silence national democracy. Before the SNP gained its outright majority in the Edinburgh parliament this year, Scottish politics was still just about under the control of Westminster. Today, it is becoming clear that by no longer controlling Scotland it is also losing control of England (currently symbolised by the rise of UKIP). To succeed democratic reform must always recruit patriotism to its side – the more civic and pluralist the better. If indeed the moment for a renewed British patriotism orchestrated by Whitehall has passed then so too has the appeal of British democracy.

  A parallel breakdown can be observed with respect to the role of the judiciary now that Human Rights have been spatchcocked into our law. As John Jackson spelt out some time ago here in OK, parliament’s supremacy is no longer coherent. This can be witnessed in the recently established Commission on a Bill of Rights. The introduction to its launch Discussion Paper includes a simply ludicrous and incredible description of the constitution. Ever since Labour introduced the Human Rights Act, attempts have been made to turn it into an inappropriate aspirational substitute for the uplifting values of a constitution proper. At the same time the Act backed into the undemocratic status of the European Union in a way that is utterly toxic. The heart of any working constitutional order (this was certainly true of Britain’s uncodified one when it was functioning) is a good relationship between the judiciary, the executive and the legislature. By good I mean open and mutually understood so that the resolution of differences is accepted as legitimate. This is no longer a description of the UK.    

  Or take a third example of the crippling impact on the old regime of the partial implementation of the Charter 88 agenda: Freedom of Information. This was lobbied for brilliantly by the Campaign for Freedom of Information, which ensured that resistance was overcome and FoI was legislated, if in a weaker form than the Campaign wished. Even so, in the hands of Heather Brooke, it blew up the Houses of Parliament far more effectively than a dozen leftist groups and campaigns. After the expenses scandal, how can the public now trust MPs with the constitution? Their all-important moral claim to absolute sovereignty has been shattered (and, indeed, they are no longer trusted even to look after their own financial affairs).

  We no longer have a political establishment that believes in the old order. But the organising principle of the old order was self-belief, and a very powerful one at that. Its loss is mortal.

  To preserve itself if only as a remnant, the political class is drawing up its wagons into a laager by seeking, amusingly enough, to codify its unwritten powers as if the Empire was built upon a manual. Apart from such an exercise being, as I noted in the Guardian, a democratic atrocity, it turns constitutional reform into something… deeply conservative.

  The lost moment

  Back at the start of 1993, the then recently appointed Labour Leader John Smith asked me if he could give a Charter 88 lecture. Called ‘A Citizen’s Democracy’ and delivered in March he called for human rights to be incorporated into our law and a new constitutional settlement. He was a lawyer who believed in rights. He was a Scot who wanted devolution within a new overall framework. He was an able MP who had become thoroughly disenchanted with the experience of the Commons. Tony Blair sat in, as I did, on some of the planning sessions for the speech. It was Smith’s specific commitments that Blair inherited after Smith died in 1994, and felt obliged to deliver in office.

  This was the last moment that the old British state could have democratised our constitution within its singular procedures. Ironically, the proof of this is the far-reaching individual reforms that were in fact legislated. But in terms of their overall strategy for change, Blair and his colleagues embraced corporate globalisation instead of domestic democracy. They rejected the idea of a new democratic settlement in the UK as a whole, and instead pinned their overall approach to that of a new world order. Blair and company finally and ruthlessly broke the old regime and its restraints – but only to enjoy, with absolute cynicism, its now unchecked supremacy. “After us, the deluge”, Blair once joked to his chief of staff Jonathan Powell.

  It is no longer credible to ask the broken vessel of a state to reform itself as a whole. It is no longer whole. At the all-important pan-national level, in terms of the relations between executive, legislative and judicial authority, and with respect to the moral claims to sovereignty, the inheritance of a historic order has been shattered. 

  Broken but also sold

  There is a second reason why the call for traditional constitutional reform Charter 88-style no longer has democratic traction on the British state. In terms of privatisation, marketisation and the corporate penetration of the state machine itself, Blair and Brown piled a new Labour Pelion on Thatcher’s Ossa. To debate liberty today, as compared to 1991 (from when the Charter 88 poster pictured above dates), means confronting the wholesale creation of the database state and the surveillance society - and also the corporate forces and corporate thinking that is still constructing them. 

  The evidence that the administration of the government and police have been bent to corporate technology and methods is less than half of it. In his ‘Corporate and Financial Dominance in Britain’s Democracy’, David Beetham has mapped the influence of a new oligarchy for the Democratic Audit. UKuncut and False Economy have demonstrated the attractions of a popular approach to challenging the economic order, rightly so. Examples are everywhere. Take Clare Sambrook’s devastating investigation of child detention. It immediately ran up against G4S, “The world's leading international security solutions group”. Who are these people? They are our government….

  That loss of self-belief I referred to above has been accompanied and reinforced by a pathetic transfer of affection to the methods of the private sector, selling-off of the state itself, of which PFIs are a notorious example.

  How democrats deal with corporate and financial power must now be central to any programme for change. And it can be. One symbol of the new possibilities is the fall of Rupert Murdoch. He was the single most powerful figure to operate continuously across UK politics right through the period from the 1980s to this summer. He was, of course, a brutal opponent of principled constitutional reform. Hackgate has done more than bring him down. As I argued in After Murdoch, it has exposed the complicity of corporate power with the executive, its corruption of the police and its intimidation of parliament and confirmed the emergence of a grasping ‘political class’ that has replaced a wider ‘Establishment’. These are no longer conspiratorial allegations … they are facts. The integrity of an all-British state, on which the coherence of a unified campaign for constitutional democracy depended, has not just been broken, it pieces are being snapped up by corporate power as well.

  The unconsummated alliance

  If reason number one why a purely constitutional reform approach can no longer provide a dynamic strategy of change is that it is no longer appropriate to the doubly altered nature of the British state, reason number two is that the energy unlocked by the promise of reform came from a chain-reaction caused by bringing together the latent radicalism of Labour’s and the Lib Dem’s different democratic traditions. At the heart of this was the joint embrace of the need for a fair, democratic voting system. The crushing defeat of the AV referendum in May has surely dealt a terminal blow to all hopes of such an alliance.

  It is not just that the vote was lost, but the way it was lost and the responsibility of the Lib Dems who were, supposedly, its main advocates. Nick Clegg stated unambiguously that whatever the outcome the issue would be settled for the foreseeable future. Earlier he justified without remorse the removal of any PR option from the ballot. Principled support for a genuinely fair democratic system, whatever the consequences, was a raison d’etre of Lib Demery. Their claim to distinction was that they were not just like the other parties. The lure of an alliance with them was that it would add principle to Labour’s populism.

  All this is now over. It saw its brightest moment with the rise of the purple people of Take Back Parliament who burst onto the scene on Saturday 8 May, two days after the general election in 2010. Charter 88 had held large monthly vigils on the steps of St Martins-in-the-Fields, massive conventions and we invented ‘Democracy Days’. But it had never summoned into existence a sizable public street demonstration commanding the national media. The demonstrators gathered in Trafalgar Square and then, led by Billy Bragg, marched to Smith Square where the Lib Dem negotiators were meeting. Clegg came out and said:  "I never thought that in my wildest imagination I would see this. The fact you are here out on the streets in support of electoral reform is absolutely wonderful." A little warning bell went off in my mind when I heard him shouting this through the megaphone: if even in his wildest imagination he never harboured the idea democrats might take to the streets… what kind of politician was he?

  Now we know. His party’s sell-out marked the end of a campaign for fair votes that began before Charter 88 and then took the form of a call for a referendum in 1993, after John Smith, who personally opposed PR, became Labour leader (I played a direct role in his agreeing to a referendum, precisely to ensure there was not a split in the budding alliance of Labour and Lib Dems, how is another story.)

  The campaign was always about two things: achieving some form of PR for its own sake, and bringing the Lib Dems and Labour together as the ‘agent of change’ in an anti-Tory combination that could deliver a new democratic settlement, which no one party could do on its own.

  Lib Dem integrity was central to the idea of an alliance with Labour in creating a liberty-loving democracy. With their integrity shot to pieces and their fundamental cry of fair votes abandoned who would put any effort into campaigning for such an alliance today? And this is without considering the complicity of the Lib Dems in a  government that defends the values and interests of the City. 

  From empire state to neo-liberal state and now...

  The impact and partial success of the Charter 88 reform movement after 1988 came from a combination of its purity of purpose and its radical emphasis on the totality – a linked set of demands culminating in a new constitution. It could not be sidelined as traditionally left, or ignored as just well-meaning liberalism, and it campaigned to succeed. Its support was limited but novel, energetic and cultural. Its surprising challenge expanded the call to modernise Britain. As is well known, the most powerful ideologies are those that exercise their hegemony by denying their existence and thus cannot be challenged. The nature of British rule and its constitution was a good example. It was supposedly ‘outside’ politics and of ‘no interest’ to people. Charter 88 broke the silence of its hegemony forcing the nature of British rule itself into the 1992 election and making the system part of the argument thereafter.

  The pathetic tragedy of New Labour was that instead of embracing this form of modernisation it did the opposite. It was obliged to implement what it promised: Scottish and Welsh parliaments, a Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information. It did so with contempt and indifference towards the old constitutional order with which these reforms were, and are, clearly incompatible. Yet it refused a new democratic settlement. Instead it built on Thatcher’s direction; it took her support for the market much further, embraced Clinton style globalisation and developed what I called in 1999 a manipulative, “corporate populism”.

  It was because I saw democracy as something one could no longer understand, let alone campaign for, on a solely national basis that I then worked with others to create openDemocracy.

  But so long as the possibility of a ‘progressive alliance’ remained, and Gordon Brown blew his hot air onto its embers, reformers might still hope for a ‘joining of the dots’ to achieve dynamic reform where achieving one goal makes others more likely. The energy of the purple people was the final flare of this dying sun as the Coalition agreement consigned PR to the dustbin.

  A thirty-year epoch that began with the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the ascendency of market fundamentalism has come to an end. In Britain, it saw the creation of what Gerry Hassan terms the ‘neo-liberal state’ replacing Great Britain’s empire state. The Charter 88 agenda was an attempt to prevent this outcome. It failed, although given the odds it didn’t do too badly. Certainly it helped to ensure that a partial decentralisation (to the nations and London), democratisation (in terms of FoI), and judicialisation (human rights) of the empire state also occurred.

  One consequence is that the neo-liberal state has been unable to secure a seamless transition from Anglo-Saxon imperialism to Anglo-American globalisation. It has lost the immense authority of the empire state’s unity, inner self-belief and Mandarin autonomy. Of course, that state with its insufferable complacency had to go. Its coherence did not. It could have been replaced by a constitutional, democratic settlement. Instead it has become a dangerous, morally broken entity, refusing principled reform while using the financial crisis to impose, in England, the values of market fundamentalism on education, despite deep popular disapproval.

  Democracy still awaits Westminster and Whitehall and remains badly needed. But the route to achieving it now lies with the external forces once tamed by its traditional parties and procedures - in Scotland’s leaving, in England’s rising, in the City falling, in the young occupying, in trade unions becoming popular, and with the media crashing.

  None of these may happen, of course. My point is that different kinds of alliances and organisation are needed to release positive energy. Corporate power has to be confronted. The crippled nature of the political system has to be addressed. The impact of the web and a networked economy and society on politics needs much more understanding and experimentation.  Both state and agency are changing fast in the maelstrom of the financial crash while democracy itself needs to be far more direct, participative and deliberative if any forms of representation are to command popular support.

  All these are issues I hope to start to address in my Raymond Williams lecture next week, they will need many others to correct and answer.

  Country or region: 

  UK

  Scotland

  England

  Topics: 

  Civil society

  Democracy and government

  Ideas

• Economic and social good sense requires the UK to target a lower exchange rate, John Mills

  20 novembre 2011, par John Mills — openEconomy, OurKingdom, openEconomy, Equality, Economics, England, Financial crisis, John Mills
  The exchange rate is the most important single price in the economy: it determines the price of goods for export and the real value of foreign-owned debt. The UK needs a more competitive external sector and can achieve it by much greater quantitative easing

  When inflation took off in the 1970s and monetarism became fashionable, almost everyone agreed that getting inflation down was the top economic policy priority. As a result, all the available weapons were brought into play. Interest rates were raised. The money supply was tightened. Credit was restricted. Unemployment rose – and inflation fell back. Unfortunately, almost no-one was concerned with what all these policies did to the exchange rates both in the UK and elsewhere in the West compared to the Pacific Rim countries. China, which was just moving into the trading world, was barely at the time on any western economic policy maker’s radar screen.

  Forty years later, keeping inflation down is still the top economic priority. The Bank of England’s target is 2%. The European Central’s Bank’s is even lower. The US Fed’s is about the same. The theory is that low inflation keeps interest rates down and will lead to economic growth. But this is not what has happened. Growth rates in the West are far below those in the East. By far the biggest reason why this has happened is that the exchange rates between West and East which were established in the 1970s have never changed significantly. Concentrating on inflation and ignoring the exchange rate has been a catastrophic policy error for the UK and for the West.

  This is because it is the exchange rate which determines, more than anything else, what any economy charges the rest of the world for the output it sells to it. Any country with a low exchange rate – like China – will have four massive advantages over any country - like the UK - with a high one. These are:

  • A The competitive economy’s manufacturing base will grow more rapidly than the world average and it share of world trade will rise.
  • B It is much easier to achieve productivity gains in manufacturing than in most of the service sector, so that any economy with exceptionally competitive exports will grow more rapidly than the world average.
  • C Highly competitive economies benefit from a better spread of employment opportunities both geographically and in socio-economic terms than if they depend very heavily on services.
  • D Countries with highly competitive exports are very unlikely to find the economic policies constrained by balance of payments problems.

  World trade consists partly of commodities, partly services, but far the largest component - about 60% for most modern diversified economies - is manufactured goods. If any country – like the UK – has a weak manufacturing base, it will therefore tend to have problems paying its way in the world – and indeed we do. In 2010, for example, the deficit on the UK’s current account payment balance was about £40bn. This sum has to be raised either by selling assets or by borrowing. It is an accounting identity that any current account deficit has to be matched pound for pound by an exactly equivalent amount of capital receipts.

  There is also another crucial problem about a foreign payments deficit. If what we sell to the world is less than we buy, purchasing power gets sucked out of the economy - £40bn worth of it in the UK in 2010. There are three ways in which this can be counteracted, to avoid this gap depressing the economy. Either consumers have to spend more than their incomes or the government has to spend more than its revenues or businesses have to invest more than they save. At the moment corporate investment is low and their savings are high, so all the gap and more has to be filled by consumer and government borrowing. There is thus a direct causal link between the exchange rate and borrowing. If the exchange rate it too high it leads to a current account foreign payments deficit. The only way then to maintain demand in the economy is by consumer and government debt increasing.

  Does this matter? Yes, indeed it does, especially if, to keep plugging the deficits in the country’s, the consumers’ and the government’s expenditure, more and more debt has to be created in relation to the borrowers’ capacity to repay. Provided lenders are satisfied that, in the last analysis, the debts owing to them will be honoured and in the meantime interest on them will be paid, borrowing can go on going up and up – as it does, for example, to growing and profitable companies. Unfortunately, however, neither countries with weak payment balances nor their consumers and nor their governments generate the sorts of income flows which are produced by profitable investments. Very significant constraints on borrowing then come into play.

  When the sums owed both by consumers and the government begin to look uncomfortably large, lenders get increasingly unsure about lending to them. They also start to worry about the country’s capacity to meet its obligations. To stop the country’s current account payments deficit getting too substantial, the economy therefore cannot be run at full stretch because this would widen the payments gap to an unsustainable extent. A weak balance of payments position thus makes it impossible to run the economy at full throttle. The cumulative effect of this constraint explains why unemployment, running at about 2.6m in the UK during the autumn of 2011, is so high. Actually, however, the headline unemployment figure grossly underestimates the real total number of people who would be willing to work if there were sufficient jobs available that paid a reasonable wage. Surveys show that the total number of missing jobs is nearer 4m than 2.6m.

  As deflationary polices bite harder and growth stalls, constraints tighten still further. If any economy has a borrowing requirement which is rising more slowly than the economy is growing – like India does at the moment – lenders can remain reasonably confident that their debts will be repaid. If the debts are rising faster than the growth rate – which is now the position in the UK and much of the rest of the West – as soon as it becomes apparent that this is the case lenders start getting much more nervous. Their reaction then is to try to cut down the amount of borrowing needed, but this can very easily turn into a self-defeating policy. The less borrowing there is to make up the demand deficiency, the more slowly the economy will grow and the less debt servicing capacity the economy will have. Meanwhile the need for borrowing may not go down. If consumers’ incomes drop more rapidly than their spending and claims on government expenditure rise faster than before as unemployment goes up, the need for more debt may go up rather than down.

  This is the bind in which the UK government now finds itself. Labour advocates reflation, but clearly with a substantial risk that such a policy will cause the creditworthiness of the country to be downgraded. Interest charges would then rise as the lending risks increased, and expansion of the economy would be unsustainable. The Conservative/Lib Dem Coalition is trying to cut expenditure to satisfy lenders that borrowing can be kept under control, but with the heavy risk that growth will disappear completely while more borrowing is still needed. Neither policy looks viable. If we carry on the way we are at the moment, at best we will suffer from years of slow or quite possibly negative growth, rising unemployment, stagnant or falling real incomes, and cut backs in government expenditure. At worst, our capacity to go on borrowing the money we need to plug the unending deficits with which we will be confronted will lead to lenders losing patience with us. Our ability to borrow more money on any viable terms will then disappear, and a really major crisis will be precipitated.

  Is there a solution to these problems? There is but only if our economic policy priorities are radically changed. We need to cease trying to fight inflation as our major objective. Instead, we need to get the exchange rate right. If we can do this, we can get rid of our weak balance of payments position which, in turn, is the only long term way to stop the country, its consumers and its government needing to borrow more and more money with less and less chance of being able to pay it back. It will also enable us to have a much more prosperous future. In addition, it will avoid our position in the world sliding downhill as a result of our inability to run our economy effectively. It will also strengthen our capacity to help solve some of the world’s longer term problems from a position of strength and confidence rather than weakness and decline.

  What would we have to do with the exchange rate to get our economy functioning much better? Some fairly easy calculations provide the order of magnitude of the devaluations which would need to be made to deal with various different objectives, starting from where we are now. The results are as follows:

  • A To eliminate the payments deficit, leaving the economy capable of growing at about 2% per annum but with still large levels of unemployment, a devaluation of between 10% and 15% would be needed.
  • B To eliminate the payments deficit and to provide enough leeway to allow the economy to be run with a much higher level of demand, producing a cumulative growth rate of about 4% per annum – the world average – a devaluation of between 20% to 25% would be required.
  • C To enable the UK economy to move over a transitional period to the growth rates experienced by countries such as Germany and Japan after World War II, or China now – i.e. with a growth rate of about 8% per annum – the pound would need to fall in value on the exchanges by 40% to 50%.

  It is important to realise that these parity changes need to be on a trade weighted basis to be effective. If other countries were to devalue at the same time as the UK then even larger devaluations against the non-devaluing countries would be required. The magnitude of the changes need is, however, an important testament to the enormous lack of competitiveness particularly with many of the Pacific Rim countries, to which Britain is currently exposed.

  What would need to be done to get the exchange rate down? There would have to be a major reversal of the policy objectives which policy makers in the UK have long strived to attain. The authorities would need to make it clear that a much lower pound was not only what they wanted to see but what they were determined to achieve. The Bank of England could be instructed to sell sterling and buy foreign currencies. More quantitative easing could be introduced. The government could deliberately increase its deficit to widen the payments deficit unless the parity of the currency fell. The nationalised banks could be instructed to lend more money to businesses, accepting the risk that there might be more bad loans. Portfolio inward investment could be discouraged instead of being welcomed, as it has been. If the credit rating agencies threaten downgrades, they should be ignored because these would help to bring the pound down. All of this is technically feasible but there would be two major obstacles in the way. One would be the attitude of the countries against whom we were devaluing and the other would be the entrenched views on economic policy within the UK and most other western countries too.

  Countries like China may well object to losing some of their competitiveness but on mature reflection they may realise that they have little to lose and much to gain from countries such as the UK being in better shape. It is not in China’s interest for there to be a massive debt crisis in the West, undermining the prosperity of the world economy generally and the prospects for Chinese exports in particular. Nor is it in China’s long term interest to run its present large balance of payments surplus, especially if the foreign exchange thus generated is lent to countries which are never likely to be able to pay it back. China’s very rapid growth rate would only be impacted if the UK and other western countries adopted very deep devaluations, which would be much more difficult to achieve than smaller ones. For depreciations of anything up to about 25% against the Chinese renmembi, there would not be much erosion, if any, to China’s huge manufacturing capacity. Furthermore, if no international consensus was forthcoming there would still be nothing to stop the UK taking the unilateral actions described earlier. It may be better to achieve some measure of agreement, if this can be done, but in the last analysis, it is not essential.

  Much larger objections’ however, are likely to come from everyone in the UK who is inured to different policy objectives. Politicians and civil servants, who have fought for low inflation and ignored the significance of the exchange rate for decades, supported by the media and academia, are unlikely to change their minds quickly. Importers are bound to oppose devaluation and so will all those who regard cheap foreign holidays as a prize not to be foregone. The City has always tended to favour a strong pound, as have pensioners and others who fear that the accommodating monetary policy and low interest rates which go with low exchange rates may adversely affect them. There is also the fear that a big devaluation will lower everyone’s living standards, although there is no evidence that in practice this would be likely to happen.

  So if there is no change of economic policy priorities away from inflation and towards achieving a competitive exchange rate, we can expect the response to further worsening of our debt position to be exactly the reverse of what is really needed. There will be more cuts, more unemployment and no growth. Unfortunately, however, the need for borrowing will not go down. On the contrary it is likely to increase as neither the country, nor consumers nor the government can make ends meet. This is not a sustainable position. It cannot go on for ever, and it won’t. Sooner or later there will be no lenders.

  When this happens, the exchange rate will fall uncontrollably. The choice before us, therefore, is not whether we are going to have a much lower exchange rate at some stage. We will. The choice is whether we engineer this in time for the transition to be done in reasonably good order or whether, by fighting a losing battle to the bitter end, we waste huge additional amounts of time and money before the inevitable outcome overtakes us.

  Country or region: 

  England

  Topics: 

  Economics

  Equality

• The spread of female Islamic leadership, Hilary Kalmbach and Masooda Bano

  21 novembre 2011, par Hilary Kalmbach and Masooda Bano — 50.50, 50.50, Equality, Gender, 50.50 Editor's Pick, Religion Gender Politics, Masooda Bano, Hilary Kalmbach
  As increasing numbers of articulate women use Islamic sources to defend varying ways of life, they are challenging western feminist models, at least in name and quite often in substance, making detailed study of the full range of female Islamic leadership crucial, say Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach

  Visible growth of conservative female Islamic movements in both Muslim-majority countries and western Muslim-minority communities in the West has brought the apparent tension between women’s rights and Islam to the fore. There has been outright rejection of certain Islamic practices and symbols in particular communities, as shown by the banning of the niqab in France and inside Syrian government schools. Furthermore, the high participation of youth, and especially young women, in the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ led some to argue for a post-Islamist turn. Still, many of those protesting actively argue  for future democracies to take inspiration from Islam rather than the secular norms. The active participation of Muslim women in Islamic movements, now aimed not only at increasing individual piety but also political reform, presents a serious challenge to the claims to universality made by western feminist and women’s rights discourses. 

  These female Islamic movements are attracting attention due to recognition that a growing number of women choose to live by Islamic precepts not out of habit or tradition, but as a result of active engagement with Islamic teachings and practices in formal study circles led by female instructors. Female study groups  have emerged in communities across Middle East, Africa, South, East and Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America.  These study groups take different forms, such as madrasa classes in South Asia, mosque-based study circles in the Middle East, or Muslim associations and youth networks among Muslim diaspora communities in the West. Furthermore, the female preachers and teachers leading these groups and their followers come from across the socio-economic spectrum, and advocate a much wider variety of positions on the social role of women than is normally recognized. Yet despite their diversity, almost all present a challenge to western feminist models, at least in name and quite often in substance.

  Women, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority (Brill, 2012) explores the diversity of female religious activities in Muslim communities and the women who lead them, and traces similarities in the factors leading to their emergence, their growing appeal, and the implications they have for shaping of Muslim societies. The expansion in female religious leadership in the latter half of the twentieth century is especially significant because it represents a major shift in structures of Islamic authority; specifically a curtailment of male domination of religious leadership in core religious spaces such as the mosque and madrasas, spaces that have long been central to the establishment and exercise of religious authority within Muslim communities. The book's authors analyse the ways in which these women construct their authority as leaders whose legitimacy is recognized by those around them -  including their audiences, female peers, and male religious authorities -  and discuss the full spectrum of female religious leadership, from the conservative women active in male-dominated contexts, to women in North America and Europe actively furthering gender parity in textual interpretation and religious leadership. 

  Muslim women have established themselves in a variety of religious leadership roles ranging from instructors of mosque and madrasa lessons to (re)interpreters of texts, leaders of prayer, and even heads of women-only mosques. These women base their claims to authority on the knowledge acquired through at least some – and occasionally quite a lot of – formal religious training, and supplemented by experience as a religious instructor or volunteer. Other factors that can feature in their claims to authority include a pious reputation, a charismatic style, family ties to religious leadership or education, and demonstrated commitment to religious outreach work. While many are active in longstanding religious spaces such as mosque and madrasa, others have built followings using alternative physical and virtual spaces – such as television and internet, participant’s homes, flats rented by religious associations, or community centres – in order to circumvent the limitations placed on some mosque and madrasa spaces, or to reach audiences beyond regular mosque attendees.

  The forces behind this expansion in female Islamic leadership are complex. Female Islamic leadership has important historical precedents , yet its  emergence in the twentieth century can often be linked more directly to, first, the changes in women’s status brought about by early twentieth-century women’s movements, and, second, the expansion of religious revival movements beginning in the 1970s. Active encouragement of male ‘ulama and movement leaders has often played a key role. In some contexts, the emergence of female preachers and study groups is also linked to the active involvement of the state, either (as in Turkey and Morocco) through the state’s introduction of state-trained and sponsored female preachers, or (as in Saudi Arabia) through state-enforced gender segregation of all public spaces. In Muslim communities in Europe, the rise of female study groups is often closely intertwined with identity politics, both with respect to women’s active search for legitimate ways of being both Muslim and European, and their engagement with non-Muslim communities and media as communal representatives. The creation and expansion of space for female Islamic leadership highlights the roles of external factors – chiefly invitation from the state or male religious authority – as well as the role played by women themselves – often in institutions or spaces distinct from those used by state or long-established (male) authorities.    

  The extent of the authority exercised by these women varies. In many countries, preachers with different profiles reach out to followers from diverse backgrounds; their collective reach is therefore not necessarily limited to economically-marginalized or uneducated women, but instead often includes significant representation from middle and upper income groups, especially among professional women working in urban contexts.  In many cases, the authority of female mosque and madrasa instructors is limited and subordinate to men; however, in several notable but exceptional cases  female leaders call for a radical re-conceptualisation of women’s roles by arguing for seemingly-controversial practices such as female leadership of mixed congregations.

  Focusing on the construction of the authority of female leaders helps explain the differences between the influence and impact of these various leaders. Most interestingly it shows that women whose leadership largely conforms to the norms and structures established by male scholars are better able to win popular following among Muslim communities than those who actively confront the gender biases in textual interpretation and leadership, for instance, in the case of Amina Wadud, arguing for  a woman’s right to lead a mixed congregation in prayer. 

  It is also important to recognize that even in contexts where female mosque and madrasa instructors are supported by male ‘ulama and promote traditional roles for women, their teachings have the potential to enhance the socio-political standing of their female students. Islamic knowledge can provide women living within conservative communities with argumentative tools that increase their assertiveness, their activities within the public sphere, and their awareness of the rights vis-à-vis the male members of the family granted to them by even relatively conservative interpretations of Islam. This raises the possibility that women seen publically defending traditional Islamic precepts could be engaged behind the scenes in renegotiating their rights and asserting more autonomy in day-to-day family affairs.

  The growing number of female preachers on the conservative side of the spectrum nonetheless poses a critical challenge  to claims of universal appeal of western feminism, a challenge that has led to the increasing dominance of explicitly Islamic arguments in discourse on the rights of women in Muslim communities.  Many preachers and followers from the conservative side of the spectrum are educated and economically-empowered women, who by choice find Islamic formulations of gender relationships more convincing than those presented by liberal western feminism; while others choose to argue for reinterpretation of Islamic  texts on gender-specific issues. The growth of these movements shows that in the future there will be more articulate women coming forward, within both Muslim-majority countries and Muslim diaspora communities in Europe, using Islamic sources to defend varying ways of life. At the same time, a closer look at these movements suggests that the impact some of these leaders have on their followers – especially in terms of empowering them vis-à-vis established authority structures in the society – has more in common with western feminism than is normally recognized. 

  Studying the full range of female Islamic leadership is thus crucial because it not only enhances our understanding of the appeal and spread of various religiosities, but also enables us to understand the role female leaders – both conservative and liberal – play in moulding the place of women within their communities.  Scholarship along these lines is made all the more important given the likelihood that the challenge posed by these women to western feminism will continue to grow in future. 

  This is the first in a series of articles stemming from Women, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, edited by Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach, and published by Brill (December 2011)

  To read more articles in openDemocracy 50.50's Religion Gender Politics dialogue click here

   

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  Equality

• Why I am boycotting Egypt's election, Tarek Shalaby

  21 novembre 2011, par Tarek Shalaby — Arab Awakening, You tell us, Egypt, Revolution, elections 2011, Tarek Shalaby
  With millions of Egyptians set to head to the polls on November 28, one blogger and activist argues that the only way to protect the ideals of the revolution is to boycott the election. A boycott is a vote against Egypt's military rulers and an important step in the road to democratic reform.

  Finally, after nine months have past from the promised six-month transitional period, we are about to embark on the road to democracy with a handful of elections carrying us through till early 2013 (that’s right; the six-month transitional phase will translate to about two years).

  On November 28, millions of Egyptians (including those abroad) will queue up in front of local schools to take part in what seems to be the first free and fair elections in the nation’s history. Ballots will be counted in districts all over the republic to determi the country’s first batch of democratically elected members of parliament. Looks like the struggle is paying off after all.

  That is why we need to boycott the upcoming elections.

  There are many reasons why I think that, just as March’s referendum was a vote for or against SCAF, boycotting November’s elections is supporting the continuation of the revolution, while partaking, regardless of the chosen candidate/party, is opting for reform.

  The people demand the downfall of the regime

  The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) appear to have been in power since February 11, but the army, as an entity, has enjoyed overwhelming power since the coup d’etat of 1952, in fact it has long been an economic giant. Whether one points to its vast lands, factories in the different industries, manpower forced to work at little or no cost, there is plenty to prove that SCAF has enjoyed more than the average share of the power pie. More importantly, it has always been an integral part of the old regime. I won’t go into why I’m against SCAF, that’s beyond this argument.

  The issue here is that SCAF is putting together this limited infrastructure of ‘democracy’ for us to play in. While we fight on whether we want Egypt to be secular or Islamist, SCAF is happy with the conditions that accompany the 1.3bn dollar package from the US. While we prepare for free and fair elections, SCAF detains activists to add them to their list of 12,000 civilians tried by the military.
The fact of the matter is, taking part in the elections would be collaborating with SCAF to ‘overcome’ the current phase and start working towards a democracy. While there is nothing wrong with working with the army in transition, taking part in the elections would give legitimacy to SCAF and their actions. We would be saying that everything they have done so far, although not perfect, is acceptable. On January 25th we took the streets to completely overhaul the corrupt, inhumane regime. This means settling for nothing less than a real change. If the entire army remains as it has been for 60 years, then we need to clarify that we deserve better. Thus, boycotting. Power to the people.

  It is comforting to believe that the army will hand over the power to a representative government as soon as we see the elections through. That is very naive, to say the least.
 We can only predict SCAF’s behaviour by studying their past. That, and their motives. But given how the SCAF leaders have always been an integral part of the old regime, and that unveiling any of their activities would be a direct threat to each of them, it is rather obvious that they would like to protect the status quo.

Thanks to the army, Egypt has remained a military dictatorship for 60 years. The emergency law has always existed in different shapes or forms, and while it is easiest to blame the police for abusing it, it is really the army that controls it. In fact, by the end of the Mubarak era, press had opened up to allow direct criticism of government officials and indirect bashing of the president himself. However, it was dangerously frowned upon to mentioned anything relating to the military. In conclusion, if it wasn’t for the army’s backing, Mubarak’s regime would’ve lost its grip.

Since February 12, an argument has been ignited in which some have exposed SCAF’s blatant efforts to protect the status quo, while most were blinded by the fairy tale of a knight in shining armour looking to take Egypt forward. Evidently, the following have proved otherwise:

  • About 12,000 civilians have been forced to go through military trials, most of whom are unjustly behind bars as we speak.
  • One of the SCAF officials admitted to having conducted ‘virginity tests’ against a group of female protesterss in Tahrir Square. In countries without military dictatorships, that is called sexual assault…it’s a pretty big deal.
  • Media censorship has been horrendous, to say the least. Independent papers like Al Masry Al Youm and Shorouk showcase disgusting propaganda headlines on their front pages. Journalists get called in at the military prosecution‘s whim for questioning practically anything relating to SCAF. TV owners are pressured to fire their presenters for criticizing the military, just to stay out of trouble. It’s so bad, that Yosri Fouda had to resign in protest in order to bring attention to the issue. If that’s not enough, if your channel’s caught filming any of the protests with a military presence, you can be shut down, or put up with this:
  • But censorship on its own is not enough. That is why SCAF makes sure to publish communiques against the revolutionaries, or make TV announcements to turn the people against Christian protesters:
  • No matter how peaceful the protest is, as soon as the numbers grow, the army immediately uses force to break it up and detain those involved. Beating we can handle, army vehicles on the other hand…
  • No SCAF personnel in the right state of mind would transfer all of the power and authority to a civil, democratic government. There is absolutely nothing to suggest they are willing to collaborate, all to the contrary. SCAF, fully backed by the United States, has been the biggest counterrevolutionary force hindering our efforts. How on earth can we justify accepting their offer for elections once their intentions became so crystal clear?

  Bread, freedom and social justice

  If it’s unrealistic to believe that the revolutionary demands can be met, then it is a cracking joke to think that things can remain the way they are.
We simply cannot build a new regime when we’re nowhere near done overhauling the old one. The ‘political game’ at the voting booth is played when we’ve achieved our basic demands. Diplomacy, especially when carried out via a government that has very limited power, will never bring change. It will be basic reform at best. And I didn’t take to the streets to make some amendments here and there.
 If all we were after were free and fair elections, why did we remain at the square after Mubarak’s second speech? He had clearly indicated that he would not be running, nor would his son, and after everyone had seen the effect of taking to the streets the elections would have most probably been valid. And if it’s about taking Mubarak to court, that could’ve easily happened with our first democratic government. We remained at the square because the regime had lost all legitimacy. We remained because we wanted to take matters into our own hands and wanted no favours from anybody. We remained because we weren’t asking for much, and we weren’t going to be appeased by anything short of it. That is why the struggle continues.

 We are not in a weak position, and there’s absolutely no reason to give up and think we should hang on to whatever we can get. We took to the streets seeking bread, freedom and social justice – is this too much to ask for? Why settle for any less? What do citizens of the ‘developed’ world have that gives them the right to demand basic rights, while we scrap for whatever SCAF are kind enough to let us have?

 When you assume, you make an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me’. Assuming SCAF will transfer all power to the government is going to leave us all looking like asses. It’s naive and completely unfounded.

  When will I be willing to vote?

  We all want to be able to take part in proper elections. If SCAF were to do the following, I’d be the first in line to take part:

  • Release those unjustly detained and put the rest through civil prosecution
  • Bring an end to any sort of censorship imposed on the different media outlets, as well as indictment propaganda against any critical voices
  • Allow protests to take place without the use of force
  • Vow to become but another entity in a government led by an elected president and legislated by a parliament representing the people, and in no way a separate entity. This would eventually mean complete transparency. (I’d take their word for it and give them the benefit of the doubt)

  If we allow SCAF to exit the spotlights before any of the above demands have been met, we would be letting them slip away and hide behind a powerless government in no way responsible for the real damage (a la Essam Sharaf now). That is absolutely unacceptable.

 Not to mention…

  Just as we thought SCAF wouldn’t dare dodge free and fair elections:

  • Remaining figures from the old regime are running in districts all over the republic, with enough money and power to help them win
  • As opposed to having small constituencies that better represent the people, different areas that might not even be adjacent have been merged together to dilute political representation
  • No one has a clue where to vote, how to vote, how the lists vs independent candidates system works, or anything at all. These are probably the most confusing elections in recent history
  • No actions have been taken to assure proper monitoring, avoid rigging, protect voters from harassment, and prevent bribes and the deployment of thugs.

  Weak. Very weak.



  Common criticism

  I’ve recently come under fire for openly opposing the participation in the upcoming elections. The following are some of those points put forward, with my answer to each one.


  If you don’t vote, you will allow Feloul (remnants of the old, defeated regime) to win

  This is based on the assumption that the elections are legitimate, which they’re not. It doesn’t matter what happens since SCAF will continue in its attempt to protect the status quo

  If you don’t win, Islamists will gain control

  First of all, unlike many around me, I don’t get the image of American-portrayed Taliban whenever the word ‘Islamists’ comes up. More importantly, I’ll save my reaction for when we have real elections where the members of parliament aren’t useless jackasses like Essam Sharaf

  Boycotting marginalizes your voice. Vote to be heard

  Boycotting means voicing my disagreement with the current regime and how it is running things. My voice would only be wasted if it went to a party that doesn’t stand a chance of winning against an ex-NDP who will give SCAF all the leeway necessary. Or an honourable and respectable candidate who finds himself in a completely powerless position and takes decisions equivalent to changing Egyptian timing, leaving all calls related to foreign policy in the hands of SCAF

  If you boycott, you won’t make a difference. If you vote, you will

  If one vote of mine is insignificant when I abstain, why does it suddenly become a deal-breaker if I were to vote? It is one vote either way, and this is how I choose to make a difference

  It’s too late to boycott

  It’s too soon to have elections. No one has a clue what on earth is going on anyway. I doubt anyone knows who they’re going to vote for, so it’s fine to decide to boycott now (not to mention that I had decided to boycott a couple of months ago)

  You can’t have everything, let’s get what we can

  This defeatist argument is completely beyond me. Why the hell did we all take to the streets, with many of us dying in the process, if we didn’t think we can go all the way? And we’re not after ‘everything’. In fact, it is extremely easy to meet the revolution’s basic demands and grant the Egyptians basic human rights. And don’t be naive enough to think that any significant change will happen from within after elections. 
What difference will it make? Just take part and don’t choose a candidate.

  There’s a fine for those who abstain.

  If I participate but vote blank, I would be legitimizing SCAF’s elections but voting against the candidates themselves. While I’m not exactly fond of many of those running for seats in the parliament, my main objection is with the system itself. And if I’m forced to pay a fine for abstaining, then I’ll do it: it’s a very small price to pay for doing what I believe in (now’s not the time to battle for my right to abstain)

  Take part, and then join demonstrations and strikes

  Who would I be demonstrating against? It doesn’t make much sense to collaborate with SCAF, vote in their elections, and then take to the streets complaining of how they’re handling matters. After elections, we will have people who are powerless, yet for some reason accountable for all of our problems. It will be their responsibility to face the music when SCAF inevitably makes the decisions that are in no way favourable towards the people

  Boycotting, if not by a majority, is useless

  On a personal level, I would never forgive myself for legitimizing SCAF and their fake elections, even if I were the only one to do so. Generally speaking, any voice abstained reduces the participation and gives more credit to the subsequent argument against the system.

  We took to the streets seeking change, and that is our only option. The revolution continues, and justice will inevitably prevail. Y hasta la victoria siempre!

  Tarek was arrested and held for several days in May by the Egyptian Army for taking part in anti-junta protests. He maintains a regularly updated blog.

• Nicaragua's secret election, Sergio Ramírez

  21 novembre 2011, par Sergio Ramírez — International politics, Democracy and government, Nicaragua, latin america, democracy & power, Sergio Ramírez
  The official results in Nicaragua's election on 6 November 2011 found that Daniel Ortega was re-elected president by a clear margin. But the procedures surrounding the vote leave Sergio Ramírez in no doubt that a great fraud - and a great farce - was perpetrated.

  Luis Yáñez-Barnuevo led the European Union mission to observe the elections in Nicaragua on 6 November 2011. He told me that he had once been invited to fulfill a similar role in one of the republics that had emerged from the disintegration of the Soviet Union. There, the party's longstanding supreme leader was now wearing the costume of a presidential candidate: playing the democrat in the new era.

  The day of the vote, Luis visited a rural area fairly distant from the capital to see how the process was going. He approached a school that was serving as a poling-station where a teacher, head of the local electoral scrutineers, denied him entry. Luis showed his credentials, and insisted on his right to inspect the proceedings. The teacher resisted, then suddenly grabbed the sole ballot-box and carried it into a nearby office, locking the door. When Luis managed to open it, the teacher had scattered all the voting-slips on the floor. The man, holding the empty ballot-box, looked at Luis with a triumphant expression.

  The scene was a better illustration of the fate of democracy in that country than any technical report could hope to be. It seems redundant to add that the old-new leader won the election, and was later succeeded by his son. The electoral officers no doubt continued to flee, carrying the ballot-boxes like booty to where they could be safely emptied and refilled.

  In any work of literature, a character who runs away with a stuffed ballot-box would be a comic one - though with a tragic undertone in that his action embodies the real story, gives it a face and a meaning. It is an image worthy of Gogol or Pirandello. It is also a profound illumination of what happened in Nicaragua on 6 November.

  There too, the official party carried off the ballot-boxes full of votes and locked itself away, alone, threw the ballot-papers on the floor and began to count them without witnesses. Any observer who managed to open the door and catch sight of the fraudulent task could only have laughed.

  The ghostly vote

  In thousands of Nicaraguan polling stations the votes were counted in isolation, according to a deliberate and substantial plan concocted from well before the election to exclude the opposition’s representatives. The latter were denied credentials through all manner of tricks; in rural communities where it was impossible to prevent the opposition's scrutineers joining others, the trick was simply not to open the polling stations.

  In response, thousands of citizens laid siege to the electoral offices where their identity-cards had been retained, blocking roads in the process. In a few cases they even stormed the offices and seized the cards, which they then handed to a priest to distribute to their legitimate owners. In mid-drama the scene switched from a Pirandello play to a Berlanga movie.

  The identity-cards were withheld in areas where the official party was afraid of losing; in parallel, the party delivered cards to their own supporters at their home. Moreover, thousands of the deceased (back to Gogol, and Dead Souls) were listed on the electoral roll, which people were obliged to consult to discover where they should go to vote. In Matagalpa, a humble voter called Jacinto Villalta López read the name of his daughter Claudia Carolina Villalta Cano, who had died of cancer in 1999 at the age of 20. She had already voted from the other side, or rather somebody had voted on her behalf. There was nothing left but to weep.

  Roberto Courtney is the director of Ética y Transparencia (Ethics and Transparency, a prestigious institute that has observed and evaluated previous elections in Nicaragua but which was refused such a role in this one. He says that of the thirteen international rules that serve to measure the transparency of elections, Nicaragua's latest broke twelve. In other words, the elections have zero credibility. Roberto Bendaña McEwan, president of Hagamos Democracia (Let’s Do Democracy) - another organisation dedicated to observing elections that was denied the right to participate in Nicaragua's - came to the same conclusion. He described the process as an embarrassment.

  There were 12,000 polling stations in these elections; in 4,000 of them, the official party counted the ballots alone, at its pleasure. In places where no opposition representative was present, the voters were faced with the instructions of election officials either from or affiliated with the official party; with officials from the official party; and with election police nominated by the ministry of governance (that is, by the official party).

  And in all the other structures involved in the election, from top to bottom, the official party was present with its many hands and thousands of faces - right up to the Consejo Supremo Electoral (supreme electoral council), composed entirely of magistrates from the official party or those faithful to it.

  This theatrical performance was one where all the principal and supporting actors and actresses, stagehands, directors, producers, writers, and librettists without exception belong to the official party. A great production; a great farce.

  By such means, Comandante Daniel Ortega - whose candidacy was illegal in any case, because consecutive re-election is banned under the constitution - was declared the winner with more than 60% of the votes (and more than 70% in Managua). He is well on the way to the unanimity he will doubtless one day achieve - not least as the number of deputies awarded to the official party in the same elections is enough to change Nicaragua's constitution in the direction of unlimited re-election. A parallel process will instal a political regime of direct democracy ruled by "civic-power committees", an obsolete dream already taking flesh.

  Did Comandante Daniel Ortega win these elections? How many votes did he really get? How many votes did his opponent, Fabio Gadea Mantilla, really get? It seems we shall never know.

  At the end of the performance, the lights fall on the face of the solitary man who counts the votes, seated on the floor after emptying the ballot-box with which he absconded.

  This article was translated by Isabel Hilton
  
  

  Sideboxes

  'Read On' Sidebox: 

  Sergio Ramírez

  María Haydée Brenes, Sergio Ramirez, testigo de la historia (La brújula, 29 June 2009)

  La Voz del Sandinismo
  

  Revista Envío

  Leslie E Anderson & Lawrence C Todd, Learning Democracy: Citizen Engagement and Electoral Choice in Nicaragua, 1990-2001 (Chicago University Press, 2005)

  Nica Gazette

  The Sandinista Revolution (Vianica)

  NicaNet

  Elizabeth Dore, Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua (Duke University Press, 2006)

  Ética y Transparencia

  Latin American Herald Tribune

  Hagamos Democracia

  La brújula

  The Nicaragua Dispatch

  Katherine Hoyt, The Many Faces of Sandinista Democracy (Swallow Press, 1997)

  Sidebox: 

  Sergio Ramírez is a Nicaraguan writer. He was vice-president of the country from 1984-90 during the period of Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government. In 1995 he broke with the FSLN to form the Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista (MRS). His many books include El reino animal (Alfaguara, 2006), Adiós muchachos (Alfaguara, 2007), Cuando todos hablamos (Alfaguara, 2008) and El cielo llora por mí (Alfaguara, 2009)

  Sergio Ramírez was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993, and was awarded the Medalla Presidencial by the Chilean government to mark the centenary of Pablo Neruda's birth in 2004. In 2005 he was a member of the jury granting the Lettre Ulysses award for the art of reportage, and in 2008 was president of the jury granting the XI Premia Alfaguara de Novela. His website is here

  Related stories: 

  Nicaragua's hijacked democracy

  Nicaragua: between revolution and democracy

  Daniel Ortega’s second coming

  Nicaragua: through the abyss

  Don’t forget Nicaragua

  After Herty Lewites: a crossroads for Nicaragua

  Nicaragua’s broken polity

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  Nicaragua

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