Keystone Institutions of Democratic Governance Across Indigenous North America
Keystone Institutions of Democratic Governance Across Indigenous North America
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北美原住民民主治理的基石机构
DOI：
10.3389/fpos.2022.840049
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发表时间：
2022
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
C. Grier
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Jacob Holland;V. Thompson;J. Birch;C. Grier
在非西方背景下定义和考察民主是一个概念上的挑战。这在很大程度上是因为人类学之外的当代政治制度学者除了西方的民主表达之外，无法设想其他替代途径。这种想法阻碍了我们对过去乃至未来民主制度的理解。在本文中，我们认为，没有所谓的“民主”，而是有促进民主治理的机构。更具体地说，我们认为，在土著北美“基石机构”促进了复杂的制度安排和广泛参与的公民在权力和权威的分配。虽然这些特征定义了西方的民主制度，如雅典议会，冰岛议会，或美国国会，我们认为，类似的基石机构的治理可以在整个土著北美。为了说明这些观点，我们提供了一系列案例来证明民主基石制度可能采取的形式的可变性。我们特别关注与每个机构促进的参与规模和范围相关的可变性轴、机构公平分配权力的程度，以及关键机构所维持的制度安排的复杂性和正式性。重要的是，我们认为，作为一种分析工具，寻求民主形式的治理的出现和作用的基石机构的概念超越了二分法的类别，如西方/非西方或国家/非国家，限制生产性的比较框架和列入非传统的民主案例研究在全球对话的效用。
Defining and examining democracy in non-Western contexts is a conceptual challenge. This is largely because scholars of contemporary political systems outside of anthropology can envision no alternative pathways other than Western expressions of democracy. Such thinking inhibits our understanding of past, and indeed future, democratic systems. In this paper, we argue that there is no such thing as a “democracy, ” but rather there are institutions that facilitate democratic governance. More specifically, we argue that in Indigenous North America “keystone institutions” facilitated complex institutional arrangements and broad participation by a citizenry in the distribution of power and authority. While these characteristics define such Western democratic institutions as the Athenian assembly, the Icelandic Althing, or the U.S. Congress, we argue that comparable keystone institutions of governance can be identified across Indigenous North America. To illustrate these points, we provide a series of cases that demonstrate the variability in the forms that democratic keystone institutions might take. We specifically focus on axes of variability related to the scale and scope of participation facilitated by each institution, the degree to which the institutions distribute power equitably, and the complexity and formality of the institutional arrangements held together by the keystone institution. Importantly, we argue that the concept of the keystone institution as an analytical tool for seeking out the emergence and role of democratic forms of governance transcends the utility of dichotomous categories such as Western/non-Western or state/non-state that limit productive comparative frameworks and the inclusion of non-traditional case studies of democracy in global conversations.