Gretchen Helmke

Bio: Gretchen Helmke is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 17 citations.

Constituents Before Assembly: Participation, Deliberation, and Representation in the Crafting of New Constitutions

Abstract: Under what circumstances do new constitutions improve a nation's level of democracy? Between 1974 and 2014, democracy increased in seventy-seven countries following the adoption of a new constitution, but it decreased or stayed the same in forty-seven others. This book demonstrates that increased participation in the forming of constitutions positively impacts levels of democracy. It is discovered that the degree of citizen participation at the 'convening stage' of constitution-making has a strong effect on levels of democracy. This finding defies the common theory that levels of democracy result from the content of constitutions, and instead lends support to 'deliberative' theories of democracy. Patterns of constitutions are then compared, differentiating imposed and popular constitution-making processes, using case studies from Chile, Nigeria, Gambia, and Venezuela to illustrate the dynamics specific to imposed constitution-making, and case studies from Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, and Tunisia to illustrate the specific dynamics of popular constitution-making.

Explaining democratic divergence : the impact of elite political culture and political institutions on the democratic performance of Colombia and Venezuela

Abstract: The aim of this thesis is to explain and assess, from a comparative perspective, the drivers behind the process of democratic divergence experienced by Colombia and Venezuela from the mid-1990s until 2010. This thesis claims that in order to understand this phenomenon it is necessary to study this observed occurrence from two complementary perspectives. First, it introduces the ‘Circular Causality Model’ as an alternative theoretical framework to explain the opposite democratic paths taken by these cases. It critically argues that traditional strands of literature such as modernisation theory, resource curse theory, institutional theory, and political culture theory cannot, individually, provide compelling answers to explain divergence. Instead, it claims that the best explanation to be offered lies in combining, or merging, two important and contested theories; namely, institutional and political culture theories. Hence, it argues that not only structural factors, but also agency ones are important to fully understand this phenomenon. Therefore, it groups together elite political culture, the enactment of new constitutions and electoral system as the independent variables to explain democratic divergence. The causality offered by this circular model is one in which the renewal of political elites (agency) – which occurred during the 1990s in both countries- has effects over the functioning of the mentioned key subset of political institutions (structures) which taken together will help explain democratic divergence. The second part of the thesis introduces a multivariate regression model to assess the statistical significance of the independent variables included in the theoretical Circular Causality Model to explain divergence. By building from the scratch an entirely new dataset, seven different empirical models offer a rather new approach to operationalise and measure the independent variables contained in the theoretical model. The estimation of the regression model proves that the independent variables that make up the theoretical model are statistically significant and correctly predict the opposite democratic path followed by Colombia and Venezuela during the ‘divergence period.’

Will Beauty Save the World? A historical context study of the Miss Venezuela pageant as a conceivable contributor to communication for development.

Abstract: In recent years, old-hand development scholars, in the category of Dan Brockington, have expressed their concern over academia’s neglect of the significance of celebrities in the field. As has been the case of an outturn hereof, namely beauty pageants. In the last six decades, Venezuela has positioned itself not only as one of the world's largest exporters of oil but also as one of the leading engenderers of titleholders in international pageantry. The latter, which has resulted in Venezuelans regarding the pageant as a fundamental cultural undercurrent in their collective identity, seems to be a ceaseless manifestation in spite of the country’s worrisome current socio-economic status. Rather than adopting a condescending paradigm towards the Miss Venezuela pageant, it is precisely this vertex of ambiguity that opens the avenue for an interesting development question. After all, if celebrity beauty queens from Venezuela are deemed as part of the nation’s identity, could the pageant, in the same breath, be deemed as a contributor to communication for development? While espousing historical context as an analysing method and in pursuit of David Hulme’s CelebrityDevelopment nexus and Elizabeth McCall’s four strands of communication for development, this paper presents a qualitative study in which hands-on experts are given a platform. The findings show the evolution of a beauty pageant from a, nearly, nationalist device into a system that is grounded in the Millennium Development Goals and that aims to forge socially responsible beauty representatives that are competent enough to herald purposeful messages.

Sociedades rentistas: Claves para entender la crisis venezolana

Abstract: Rentier societies: keys to understand the Venezuelan crisis The consequences of natural resource dependency remain a controversial topic in Development Studies. Generally, the debate focuses on the economic and political effects of natural resource-dependency, framing the debate in a curse versus blessing dichotomy. This article presents in the first part a critical reexamination of this debate and introduces the ‘rentier society’ concept, which includes social and sociocultural issues. Rather than judging these societies based on Eurocentric criteria, the approach aims to understand the particularities of natural-resource dependent societies. In the second part of the article the analytical model will be applied to the case of Venezuela. In this vein, the article offers tools permitting a better understanding of rentier societies in general and the Venezuelan reality in particular. Resumen Las consecuencias de la dependencia de recursos naturales siguen siendo un tema polemico en los estudios de desarrollo. Generalmente el debate en esta area se centra en los efectos economicos y politicos de la dependencia economica de recursos naturales, poniendo el foco en la dicotomia de una maldicion frente a la bendicion de los recursos naturales. Este articulo presenta en la primera parte un analisis critico de este debate e introduce el concepto de la sociedad rentista, que incluye tambien factores sociales y socioculturales y que busca entender las particularidades de las sociedades dependientes de recursos naturales en vez de juzgarlas en base a criterios eurocentricos. En la segunda parte del articulo se aplica el modelo de analisis al caso venezolano. De esta manera, el articulo ofrece herramientas que permiten entender, por un lado, las sociedades rentistas y, por otro lado, la realidad venezolana.

Beyond a Pragmatic Account of the Aesthetic in Science Education

Abstract: This paper argues that pragmatist philosophies and theories of science, education and art have dominated our understanding of aesthetics in science education in ways that overshadow other important and pertinent aspects of aesthetic experience. For all its strengths, a pragmatist account of science education and aesthetics remains vulnerable to a kind of instrumentalism that reduces the objects, practices and persons in science education to mere beings: the source and subject of a reductive objectification of experience. This paper proposes a counter-balancing perspective that both respects and also adds to that offered by pragmatism. It does so with reference to Heidegger’s ontological difference: the one side of which is concerned with pragmatic, scientific, reflective thinking and the other with a meditative and phenomenological way of thinking that draws out our unmediated experiences of the world. Moreover, it argues that the latter is accessible in science classrooms by approaching objects and practices as works of art.