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About Me

I am a Political Science student with an active interest in the quality of democracy and Central and Eastern Europe. I like comparing things, despite the supposedly odious nature of the act itself, which is why if you get me started on democracy indexes, you'd better make yourself comfortable for a while. Outside my field of expertise, I am interested in European history, feminism and, increasingly, education technology. I recently returned to Romania after finishing my studies abroad, and I'm looking for ways to become involved in activism and education encouraging political participation. I also have over five years experience as an English-Romanian translator.

Location:
Romania, Bucharest
Gender:
Female
Areas of expertise:
Quality of Democracy, democratization, Central and Eastern Europe, Political Science and History, Comparative Research
I am:
Atheist, Concerned citizen, Job-seeker, Student
Languages:
Romanian, English, French, Italian
Universities:
University of Helsinki, National School of Political and Administrative Studies , Bucharest
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  • A reply on Conversation: Are governments interested in keeping us 'dumb'?

    Mar 27 2013: Of course it's debatable precisely how efficient democracy is in practice, whether many countries claiming to be democratic truly are and so on. I understand what you mean.

    The reason I referred to democratic governments in my question is that often authoritarian governments do, in fact, want to keep their citizens ignorant for many reasons and have a system in place to achieve that. With democratic governments, if this is indeed the case, it's far less obvious.
  • +2

    A comment on Conversation: Should we force democracy?

    Mar 26 2013: I think it’s not so much a question of ‘should’ (‘should’ and ‘force’ don’t go well together in pretty much any context, so an immediate response would be: no, of course not.) Rather, it’s a question of ‘can’.

    Two points:

    1. There is this tendency to depart from the various definitions of democracy and say that a political system, however flawed, is a democracy because it does not meet enough criteria to be called an authoritarian regime. When you consider things strictly from the point of view of this dichotomy, of course people will readily agree that democracy, while imperfect, is better. And while ‘forcing’ and ‘democracy’ seem like mutually exclusive terms, what you would be doing in effect is giving people more personal freedom, expanding their rights, encouraging participation and so on. However, the problem is that you can assist them in building democratic institutions, but you cannot ‘export’ a ready-made institutional system without considering the local context (and without exporting said system’s flaws along the way.)

    2. Democracy is not defined by one single thing, or even one single category. It is not simply a collection of rights associated with citizenship (i.e., voting, freedom of expression, political participation etc.) It is an interaction of different categories, such as electoral processes, civil rights, institutional accountability, socio-economic context and the international environment. This is a complex system that involves a lot of variables. As an external agent, you are not bringing (or forcing) democracy on a country, but impacting on 1-2 of these categories.

    I would argue that it’s not possible to force democracy on a country, but not because ‘forcing’ is an uncomfortable term. Instead, because it simply wouldn’t work as expected. You can assist in democracy building, you can offer expertise, involve said country’s citizens in the process or facilitate financial aid. But you cannot give them democracy as a full package.

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