Chapter 1 from Book Manuscript Democracy on Retreat: Crisis, State-Society

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Chapter 1 from book manuscript Democracy on Retreat: Crisis, State-Society

Relations, and the Recurrence of Autocracy in the Interwar Years

Agnes Cornell

Assistant Professor, PhD

Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

Bartholins Allé 7

8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

E-mail: [email protected]

Jørgen Møller

Professor, PhD

Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

Bartholins Allé 7

8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

E-mail: [email protected]

Svend-Erik Skaaning

Professor, PhD

Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

Bartholins Allé 7

8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

E-mail: [email protected]

Chapter 1: Patterns of Democratic Breakdown Revisited: A Crisp Perspective

Introduction

Since the advent of modern democracy there has only been one large-scale democratic rollback if we measure this as an absolute fall in the tally of democracies (Møller & Skaaning 2013: Chapter

5). This rollback took place in a hugely interesting context, namely the interwar period. It is therefore unsurprising that the issue of democratic breakdown and survival in the interwar period has been subjected to a number of comparative studies (see Berg-Schlosser & Mitchell 2003;

Bermeo 2003; Capoccia 2005; Gusy 2008; Karvonen 1993; Luebbert 1991; Overy 1994;

Rueschemeyer et al. 1992). However, these comparative studies have been hamstrung by the poor quality of cross-national data on regime change. Possible the best illustration of this is the fact that scholars disagree vehemently about which countries were democratic during the interwar period – and, ipso facto, about the number of instances of democratic breakdown and democratic survival.

This can be illustrated by comparing the extant attempts to score interwar spells of democracy based on categorical differences between democratic survival and breakdown. Presently, four general democracy datasets do this (see Bernhard et al. 2001; Boix et al. 2013; Marshall et al.

2013; Vanhanen 2003).1 On top of these general datasets, In Table 1 and 2 we include two more

1 Bernhard et al.’s (2001) scoring is premised on Dahl’s (1971) two dimensions of democracy (polyarchy), i.e., competitiveness and inclusiveness. It therefore includes four criteria: that the political regime is characterized by competitive elections without vote fraud affecting the general outcome; the absence of extensive or extreme violence that inhibits voters from expressing themselves; that there is no banning of political parties representing a substantial portion of the electorate; that suffrage is extended to at least fifty percent of adult citizens. Boix et al. (2013) identifies years where the executive is directly or indirectly elected in popular elections and is directly responsible to voters or to an elected legislature; where the legislature (or the executive if elected directly) is chosen in free and fair elections; and where a majority of adult men has the right to vote. The Polity IV dataset (Marshall et al. 2013) builds on indicators on executive recruitment, political competition, and executive constraints that reflect the presence of institutions and procedures through which citizens can express effective preferences about alternative policies and leaders, on the one hand, and the existence of institutionalized constraints on the exercise of power by the executive, on the other hand. It follows from these requirements that Polity IV disregards the extent of suffrage. On this basis, a 21-point polity scale, ranging from -10 to 10, is constructed. We use the standard procedure, suggested by the people behind the Polity 2

qualitative overviews of democratic breakdown and survival in Europe and Latin America, respectively, constructed by Bermeo (2003: 23) and Mainwaring et al.’s (2008).2 We follow Lipset

(1959) in sorting our cases into two categories: Europe and British settler colonies on the one hand and Latin American countries on the other hand.

[Table 1 about here]

With respect to the former category, we find quite some agreement across the different datasets. As illustrated in Table 1, virtually all the “old” democracies of Northwestern Europe and the British settler colonies produce little in the way of incongruities. Only France and Switzerland stick out in the data provided by Bernhard et al. and this is solely because they did not introduce universal

(female) suffrage until after World War II. Moreover, a number of “new” democracies, such as

Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Poland, and Ireland, are scored in consistent ways across the five accounts that cover Europe.3

However, in a large minority of European cases, there is no consensus about whether democratic breakdowns occurred at all. The most conspicuous disagreements concern the scoring of

measure, to distinguish between democracies and non-democracies, i.e., a polity scoring of at least 6 on the polity scale is considered democratic. Vanhanen’s (2003) measure is a fine-grained scale, constructed by multiplying the ratio of opposition seats in parliament with the level of electoral participation. We use Vanhanen’s own suggestion for a threshold to make a distinction between democracies and autocracies. To qualify as democratic, a case needs to score at least 30 percent on the Competition indicator, at least 10 percent on the Participation indicator, and at least 5 on the Index of Democracy. 2 Bermeo, who largely bases her overview on Berg-Schlosser and Mitchell (2003), does not link her coding to an explicit definition of democracy or particular coding criteria so it is difficult to establish whether disagreements with her overview are due to differences in the definitions of democracy. But her overview is almost identical to those provided in other comparative overviews of democratic breakdowns in the interwar years, such as those of Capoccia (2005), Guzy (2008), Lee (1994), and Overy (1994). Regarding Mainwaring et al. (2008), we list the country-years identified by them as either semi-democratic (competitive) or democratic. 3 The small differences we find are mainly due to the fact that some datasets score countries based on the status at the beginning of a year whereas others choose the ending of a year to categorize. The year of a democratic transition or a democratic breakdown therefore sometimes differs. The first point can be exemplified by the Polish case where some dataset code 1918 as the first democratic year whereas others op for 1919. Similarly, in the Czechoslovak case some datasets identify 1938 as the year of breakdown with others opting for 1939. 3

six countries: Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Bermeo considers all of these six countries as democratic at some point in the interwar period. The other accounts only assign a democratic status to some of these cases and, for several of the cases, the years tallied as democratic differ. On top of this, Spain and Finland also stand out because the Polity IV scores indicate that they experienced democratic breakdowns in 1923 and 1930, respectively, while the other accounts only identify a democratic collapse in Spain at the time of the civil war (1936-39) and score the Finnish case as a democratic survivor throughout the period.

[Table 2 about here]

Table 2 shows that the disagreement is even bigger with respect to Latin American countries.

According to Bernhard et al., only Uruguay 1934-39 can be considered democratic in the interwar period. At the other end of the spectrum, we find Mainwaring et al.’s account, according to which there were no less than 19 democratic spells in 14 Latin American countries. The three other datasets can be situated along this spectrum – but with a tendency to align more with Bernhard et al. than with Mainwaring et al. Polity IV identifies only two democratic spells in two Latin American countries whereas Boix et al. recognize five spells in four countries, and Vanhanen eight spells in seven countries.

If we disregard the very restricted scoring of Bernhard et al. and Polity IV, we can note that the Southern Cone countries of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay are those most consistently highlighted as democratic, at least for part of the interwar period. On top of this, there is general consensus that Costa Rica was democratic for the entire interwar period. Next, there is some agreement that Columbia, Nicaragua, and Honduras had democratic spells. But other than that, the disagreements are rampant.

The need to set the record straight

The inconsistencies in Table 1 and 2 are somewhat surprising considering that most of the included measures are based on a crisp distinction between democratic breakdown and survival. One would imagine that the relatively modest ambitions of these datasets make for high validity and reliability.

To be sure, some of the incongruities are due to the fact that the distinctions are based on different conceptions of democracy, particularly with respect to suffrage criteria. Most importantly, Bernhard et al.’s conceptualization of democracy is more demanding than that of the other datasets on this point which is reflected in a more restricted scoring. That said, different suffrage criteria are obviously not the sole reason for the disagreements as indicated by the fact that Polity IV is one of the most restrictive datasets even though it does not take the extension of suffrage into account.

Moreover, Bernhard et al. consider Bulgaria 1919-1920 as democratic, which the other indices do not.

It is therefore clear that some of these cases must simply have been miscoded in some of the datasets. The suspicion about miscoding is supported by the relatively long democratic spells that we find in almost all columns of Table 1 and 2. Apart from the Italian democratic breakdown in

1922, there is only one instance of a short post-World War I democratic spell in Europe, namely

Bernhard et al.’s aforementioned scoring of Bulgaria 1919-1920 as democratic. This runs counter to an established point in the historiography of especially East-Central Europe between the wars, namely that a virtually ubiquitous, genuine democratic competition in the immediate aftermath of

World War I was repeatedly suffocated when popularly elected governments began to threaten elite interests (see Palmer 1970; Rothschild 1974). In Latin America, the picture is rather similar. Here we do have one dataset that identifies a number of shorter spells, namely Mainwaring et al. But this is completely out of tune with the other datasets, where few or none such short spells are identified.

Much therefore indicates that present datasets have been biased towards identifying longer spells of either democracy or non-democracy, thereby ignoring either short term democratic breakthroughs or temporary fallbacks into authoritarianism. If correct, this would indicate that many datasets have been too quick to either deem most of the 1920s a democratic spell or as undemocratic through and through, instead of appreciating the possibility of shorter democratic spells discontinued or interspersed by undemocratic spells.

The disagreements among the extant datasets are not small potatoes. Just to single out one striking incongruity, two of the five accounts we surveyed in Table 1 do not count Italy as a democracy in the period 1919-1922 and one codes the period until 1925 as democratic, meaning that Mussolini’s takeover of power in 1922 did not represent a democratic breakdown according to any of these three accounts. Italy is obviously an influential case (Gerring & Seawright 2008) for many theories of democratic breakdown in the interwar period and the lack of consensus therefore does little to strengthen our confidence in some of the extant findings. More generally, due to the low N much of what we know about the causes (and consequences) of interwar regime change is likely to be fragile to even smaller changes in codings.

In this chapter, we revisit the interwar period in order to set the record straight. Our reassessment is based on a thorough review and discussion of the qualitative, country-specific accounts of historians and social scientists working on interwar Europe, the British settler colonies, and interwar Latin America – with the extant datasets as a frame of reference. Instead of merely scratching the surface – as many coders of cross-national datasets have done due to the large number of cases that had to be coded – we establish a more valid scoring of disputed cases based on a deeper acquaintance with the relevant historiography. In this connection, we identify a number of shorter spells of democracy, sometimes interspersed with undemocratic spells, which are ignored by extant datasets.

An added value Chapters 1 is that we put some flesh on the empirical developments that are to be explained in this book in the form of short narratives of the key political developments in Europe and the British settler colonies and Latin America from 1918 up until World War II.

However, as the main aim of the chapter is to present systematic codings of democratic spells we place most emphasis on the instances where extant datasets disagree most. The appendix to Chapter

1 includes longer discussions of the codings of these disputed cases.

The Schumpeterian baseline criterion

Our vantage point here is a minimalist, Schumpeterian definition where democracy is solely equated with competition among leadership groups that vie for a relatively broad electorate’s approval during recurring elections (see Schumpeter 1974 [1942]). Thus, our scoring is not premised on fully free and fair elections, high respect for the political liberties of freedom of speech and association, and equal and universal suffrage (Dahl 1989). All that is required to pass the bar is genuine competition over political power based on elections which are regularly repeated

(Przeworski et al. 2000, 16-18; Møller & Skaaning 2013). This can be translated into two more particular requirements:

 With respect to elections, what matters is whether violations reach a level where competition –

the potential possibility of incumbents losing the elections to opposition parties and the powers-

that-be accepting the results – is absent, i.e., whether what Przeworski et al. (2000, 16) term ex

post uncertainty and ex ante irreversibility are a reality or not.

 With respect to the designation of government, what matters is whether executive power is

either directly responsible to the electorate or indirectly responsible via approval in parliament.

There are two virtues of using such a minimalist definition. First, and theoretically, it arguably captures the most important distinction between different political regimes, that is, the distinction between regimes were power is accessed via genuine competition based on recurring elections with contending parties and regimes where no such genuine competition exists, whether or not there are recurring elections and contending parties. A number of scholars have identified this as the crucial distinction both with respect to causes and consequences of democracy (see, e.g., Schumpeter 1974

[1942]; Svolik 2012; Przeworski et al. 2000; Boix et al. 2013). Second, and empirically, all else equal the difficulty of categorizing an empirical case correctly increases as the definition is augmented with additional attributes. The more minimalist the definition, the lesser the risk that we miscode particular cases and thereby establish erroneous similarities or differences across cases

(Sartori 1970; Møller 2015).

The purpose of this chapter is to identify all countries which at some point in the interwar period qualified as democratic in a minimalist sense. To set the record straight, we have perused the historiography on all the countries included in Table 1 and 2 in order to resolve their democratic credentials. As mentioned in the Introduction, we follow Lipset (1959) in sorting the cases that are relevant for understanding patterns of interwar democratic stability into two categories: Europe and British settler colonies on the one hand and Latin American countries on the other hand. However, we further subdivide each group based on the dominant patterns of regime change in the interwar period.

The “three” Europes

Michael Mann (2004: Chapter 2), surveying interwar regime change, find “two Europes” (see also

Luebbert 1991; Payne 1996: 129-31). On the one hand, there were the “old” democracies in

Northern Europe and along the Atlantic Seaboard (Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, the

Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) which entered the interwar period with a substantial pre-War democratic legacy and were democracy survived the interwar crises. To this group can readily be added the old democracies in the British settler colonies

(Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and USA). Together this group might be termed “Northwestern

Europe and the British Settler Colonies”, and across extant datasets and historical descriptions there is a basic consensus that in these countries we find no democratic breakdown over the interwar period. On the other hand, there were the “new” democracies in Southern, Central, and Eastern

Europe. With respect to this cluster of countries, we find some stark incongruities both among the extant datasets and when comparing these to other attempts to provide general accounts of interwar regime change (see Table 1).

Our new codings of the European countries are presented in Table 3 below. Based on these codings and on the more general literature on interwar Europe, we argue that the “new” democracies – Mann’s “second Europe” – can be subdivided into two clusters: i) West-Central and

Southern Europe and ii) East-Central and Eastern Europe. The first zone was relatively more socio- economically developed and also had a longer tradition for liberal rights and elections than the second zone. This was reflected in relatively longer democratic spells, which mostly came to the end following the economic world crisis in the 1930s. The second zone was less developed – both politically and economically – and it is here that we mainly find the shorter democratic spells of the interwar period, a general political instability, and democratic breakdowns in the 1920s.

[Table 3 about here]

We proceed by briefly describing developments in “Northwestern Europe”, including the British

Settler Colonies. After that, we turn our attention to the more challenging issue of how the countries

in “West-Central and Southern Europe” and “East-Central and Eastern Europe” fare on our

Schumpeterian measure. We spend most efforts on the countries where prior measures disagree and furthermore include an appendix with extended narrative discussions of the coding of these cases.

Northwestern Europe and the British Settler Colonies

One of the most glaring aspects of the democratic resilience of the “old” democracies was the ability of the conventional parties to channel the frustration of the repeated interwar crisis episodes.

In Northwestern Europe and the British settler colonies political radicalization was kept at a minimum, at least in comparison with what we find in the new democracies in Continental Europe.

Indeed, in the British settler colonies, with their two-party systems, we find little in the way of political radicalization, at least within the parliamentary arena. Established political parties such as

Roosevelt’s Democrats proved adept at channeling the frustration that followed from e.g. economic crisis and were further bolstered by the returns to scale intrinsic to the first-past-the-post system.

Meanwhile, in Northwestern Europe where proportional systems made it easier for smaller on the fringes parties to gain representation, earlier class-based parties developed into broader people’s parties that were by and large capable of covering the flanks to both the left and the right, thereby hindering a substantial mobilization from outside of the ranks of the established parties. For instance, in Sweden the Social Democratic Party transformed itself from a party representing the working class to one representing broader segments of the population (Berman

1996). Likewise, the British conservative party was able to broaden its appeal so that no niche was created to its right (Ertman 2010). The result was that “extremist” parties were few and often failed to win representation in parliament. And when crisis struck, the established parties deliberately presented a uniform front to avoid popular frustration paving the way for political radicalization.

This occurred in both Scandinavia and the Netherlands during the Great Depression of 1929-1933

(Lindström 1985). The development in the Netherlands is especially striking as support for the fascist party that did have political representation in the Dutch parliament was much reduced during the economic crisis (Aarebrot 2000).

However, this description fits some of the countries in the group better than others.

Two countries in Northwestern Europe, in particular, stand out as more crisis-prone and more affected by political radicalization than the others: Belgium and France. In Belgium, the fascist- inspired Rexist movement won a sizeable representation in parliament in 1936 and in France the so- called far-right leagues (ligues d'extrême droite) were also hugely influential politically in the 1930s

– as was the extremist leftwing (Berg-Schlosser and De Meur 2000; France-chapter in Berg-

Schlosser). But this does not alter the fact that none of the two countries experienced genuine democratic breakdown. At the end of the day, what mattered was that the established parties did not radicalize and also proved capable of combating the forces of extremism.

Finally, there is the small country of Ireland which differs from the others in the group for two reasons. First, because it only became independent in 1922. Second, because independence was followed by a brief civil war between those opposing the terms of the independence treaty and those accepting it (and hence accepting that Northern Ireland remain part of the United Kingdom).

The latter group generally supported the party Fine Gael, they won the brief civil war, and they dominated Irish politics for the next decade. However, the election in 1932 demonstrated that democratic competition was genuine. The party Fianna Fáil, which had been formed by the civil war’s losers won and took power peacefully.

In spite of being born in blood, Ireland thus quickly conformed to the Northwestern pattern of interwar democratic stability. In general, the “old” democracies were islands of political stability in a sea of political turbulence throughout the war. We accordingly code the entire interwar period as democratic spells in this group.

West-Central and Southern Europe

We now turn to the “new” democracies. Here matters become more turbulent and more complicated. We start with what we term West-Central and Southern Europe, i.e., Austria,

Czechoslovakia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.

The first breakdown in this zone occurred in 1922 in Italy. It took place in a context where the principle of cabinet responsibility to the parliament had been the guiding rule of the political system since 1848 (Bartolini 2007: 346-348). At least until the establishment of universal suffrage in 1913, elites had been able to manipulate elections (Payne 1995: 88). However, the elections that occurred between 1919 and the fascist takeover in 1922 were clearly genuinely competitive. The immediate post-war period exhibits several government turnovers, in each case based on the loss of support in parliament (see Tarchi 2000; Seton-Watson 1967: 509, 536, 547-

550, 559). In fact, observers highlight the November 1919 elections as the freest in Italy’s history.

The Nitti government, which conducted the elections, “declined to use the government’s traditional electoral weapons and had ordered his prefects to remain impartial” (Seton-Watson 1967: 549). The competitiveness was reflected in the result, as the “pre-war parties” lost out to the two new mass parties, the Socialists and the Catholic Popolari. The Nitti government was able to remain in power but only by securing Popolari support. The 1921 election, conducted by Giolitti’s government, was characterized by attempts to use some of the old (pre-war) tactics to secure votes, especially in the

South. But the general outcome of the election virtually mirrored that of 1919, a strong evidence of the existence of genuine competition (Seton-Watson 1967: 587-588). We therefore code Italy as democratic from the first postwar elections of September 1919 up until Mussolini’s takeover in

1922.

The next democratic breakdown in this Western zone is also the most important one in the entire interwar period, namely Hitler’s Machtergreifung in January 1933. The prelude to this is to be found in the economic crisis after 1929. German “Weimar democracy” had been stable in the

1920s but it became crisis-prone after the onset of the Great Depression. In 1930 president

Hindenburg began the practice of designating chancellors without parliamentary backing, first

Heinrich Brüning, then Franz von Papen and finally Kurt von Schleicher. After the election in 1933, it was Hitler who was designated chancellor. The rest, as they say, is history. Some scholars have argued that German democracy already broke down in 1930 but as Hindenburg was elected and had the constitutional right to designate the chancellor we code 1933, where Hitler curtailed the power of the parliament, as the year of breakdown.

The Austrian breakdown followed in the wake of the German. In the years after World

War I, Austria had had a well-structured party system with a bipolar competition between the social democrats and the conservatives. The two parties had initially formed a coalition government but after the October 1920 election, the conservatives rules alone on the national level, while the social democrats controlled “Red Vienna”. Both camps established their own paramilitary organizations, the Republikanischer Schutzbund and the Heimwehr, respectively, and several confrontations occurred, including one in 1927 where the Ministry of Justice was torched and hundreds of demonstrators killed or wounded by the police and the Heimwehr. Nonetheless, democracy continued until March 1933 where Chancellor Dolfuss curtailed the powers of parliament.

Two years later, Greece experienced democratic breakdown. The countries had led a turbulent life in the years after World War One, including the lost war with Turkey 1919-1922, and it was only in 1926 that the country had democratized. But democracy proved very unstable as two political grouping – the “Venezilian parties” led by Eleftherios Venizelos and the “anti-Venezilian parties” led by Panagis Tsaldaris – combated each other in the political arena. This polarized

political competition continued until 1935 where the Venezilians first attempted a coup and then boycotted the parliamentary election, which therefore resulted in a landslide for the anti-Venezilian side. The army then intervened and took power under General Kondylis. The next year, a new military government was under General Metaxas curtailed the powers of parliaments, suspended part of the constitution, and created a dictatorship. We code 1935 as the year of breakdown.

In Spain, we find a democratic breakdown in 1936 but to understand the Spanish case some background is needed. There had been a semi-democratic episode between 1918 and Primo de

Rivera’s putsch in 1923. We do not code this as democratic because the king retained considerable political powers, for instance over the appointment of governments. What is more, the conservatives and the liberals colluded to manipulate election results as they took turns at the helm of government

(Carr 2000: 223). The dominant parties were basically “called to office by the king in order to

‘make’ elections for themselves and guarantee themselves a parliamentary majority for several years” (Payne 1993: 10). What is more, in the national elections in 1923, 146 of 409 seats were assigned without election because there were no official competitors in these electoral districts, and republicans were only ‘allowed’ to hold a maximum of 4 percent of the seats in the legislature

(Payne 1993: 11). Even though elections slowly became more contested in the larger cities, and third parties were increasingly allowed to participate, elections and governments before 1931 never came to meaningfully reflect the political will of the voting citizens (Bernecker 2000: 402). This means that Spain cannot be considered even a minimalist democracy from 1918 to 1923. However, we do find a genuine interwar democratic episode beginning in 1931. This paved the way for years of political instability and ultimately the civil war, which broke out in 1936 and ended the democratic episode.

The Western zone also included two democratic survivors. The first is Czechoslovakia where democracy was surprisingly stable during the interwar years, considering that this was a new

stat with salient ethnic cleavages. Tomáš Masaryk, a professor of philosophy, was president until his death in 1935, after which he was followed by his political ally Edvard Beneš. Both of them were backed by a coalition consisting of five moderate parties called “Petka”, which succeeded in barring radical parties from access to power. However, the radicals grew stronger, both in the

German speaking Sudetenland where The National Socialists mobilized and in Slovakia where

Slovak nationalist did the same. Czechoslovak democracy survived until Hitler’s march into the

Sudentenland in October 1938. After this, there occurred increasing repression and curtailment of political rights and we therefore code this year, rather than 1939 where the German occupied the remainder of the countries, as the year of democratic breakdown (Bugge 2007).

The second survivor in West Central and Southern Europe is Finland. Here, some scholars argue that democracy broke down with the anti-communist laws of 1930 or the subsequent clamp-down on the Lapua Movement in 1932 – for instance, Polity IV only scores Finland as a democracy in the period 1918-1930. However, based on our reading there is little reason to disqualify Finnish democracy in the 1930s. The majority view – both among extant measures and in the case-specific literature – is that Finnish democracy survived throughout the interwar period.

Genuine electoral competition between contending political camps thus survived both the 1930 and

1932 occurrences and – among the parties that remained legal – the parliamentary principle decided who would take charge of government. Furthermore, this occurred in the context of high electoral integrity, a consolidated party system, and equal and universal suffrage (Alapero & Allardt 1978;

Karvonen 2000; see also Capoccia 2000).

The final country in the ‘Western’ zone of new democracies is Portugal. Many extant datasets score this country as democratic in the period 1919-1926. However, based on our perusal of narrative sources, we differ. This period saw a general political instability as Liberal and

Democrat cabinets oscillated (Payne 1973: 568-570; Wheeler 1978: Chs. 11-12). Multiple parties

competed in the elections, there was no king to interfere with government formation, cabinet turnover was extremely high, different parties assumed government responsibility, the otherwise dominant republican Democratic Party lost the parliamentary election in 1921 and did not achieve a clear majority in 1922, and the president from 1919 to 1923 was not a Democrat.

However, the multiparty system that we find in the period 1918-1926 was one that revolved around a single dominant party, i.e., the Democratic Party. This party had inherited the pre-war Republican Party electoral machine and it normally held sway of government. This gave it a string of key electoral advantages. First, its closeness to the state apparatus made it the main supplier of patronage, especially in rural areas. Second, it was the only party with a strong and reasonably stable national party structure. This facilitated not only its attempt to secure votes during elections but also its ability to arrange extra-parliamentary street protests – often marked by systematic violence – which were conducive to bringing down presidents or governments not to its liking (Costa Pinto 2000: 364). It is telling that the only elections lost by the Democratic Party where characterized by the Liberal government abusing its grip on the administration to secure an electoral victory through manipulation (Wheeler 1978: 203).

The upshot of these things was that fair elections were never held in interwar Portugal.

Via its formidable political machinery, the Democrats were adept both at silencing opposition parties using threats and violence and at buying votes via local patronage networks (Wheeler 1978:

227; Schmitter 1978: 150). This pattern was especially pronounced in rural areas, where Democrats controlled local administration and patronage (Costa Pinto 2000: 364-365). The only genuine threat to the Democrats hold on power was therefore political intervention by the armed forces (Payne

1973: 571). Needless to say, these repeated acts of intervention do not enhance the democratic status of Portugal in 1918-1926. On this basis, we code the entire period 1918-1926 – and hence the entire interwar period – as undemocratic.

East Central and Eastern Europe

We now turn to East Central and Eastern Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,

Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia). There is consensus in the literature that we find no democratic spells in three of these countries: Albania, Hungary, and the Soviet

Union.

With respect to the other countries, the democratic episodes were generally shorter in this Eastern zone of the new democracies. The first democratic breakdown in this area occurred as early as 1920 in Romania. Here, universal suffrage for men had been introduced in the first

Romanian national election after the war, which was held on November 8, 1919. The most influential of the old Romanian parties, the Liberals under Bratianu, conducted the election but lost the vote. Based on the electoral results, a coalition government headed by the Transylvanian

Nationalist Vaida-Voevod and incorporating the Peasant Party of the Old Kingdom was formed.

After a mere four month, King Ferdinand ousted this government over the issue of land reform.

Ferdinand first installed a caretaker government under General Averescu, which conducted – and handily won – the election of May 1920. In December 1921, Averescu fell out with the king and was dismissed. New elections were conducted by the Liberal Party in March 1922, the result of which was a landslide victory for Bratianu. The Liberals then dominated Romanian politics – at times heading government, at other times hiding behind frontmen such as General Averescu – until the end of 1928. But on November 10, 1928, the regency (King Ferdinand had died in July 1927) dismissed Bratianu and appointed a National-Peasant government under Iuliu Maniu. New elections took place on December 12, 1928, with Maniu the clear victor. During his spell in government,

Maniu accepted the return of Prince Carol who became king in June 1930. Later in 1930, Maniu and Carol fell out, Maniu was dismissed, and Carol proceeded to appoint a new government under

the academician Iorga. This caretaker government conducted – and won – new elections on June 1,

1931. After this point in time, Carol was the dominating force in Romanian politics and all subsequent elections were clearly arranged to suit the wishes of the monarch.

Coding the Romanian case is not easy (see the extended discussion in the appendix).

The evidence we have processed agrees that most interwar Romanian elections were arranged (see

Palmer 1970: 197-200; Rothschild 1974: 296-305; Fischer-Galati 1970: 35-47; 2000: 390-393;

Hitchens 1994: 377-414; Dogan 1987). However, two genuinely democratic episodes are repeatedly singled out in the country-specific literature: the 1919 election and the subsequent Vaida-Voevod cabinet and the 1928 elections and the subsequent Maniu cabinet. Even though the hitherto dominant Liberals seemingly planned to steal the 1919 elections, they were unable to follow through on this design because the administration in Bucharest did not have sufficient infrastructure to control newly incorporated Transylvania (the electoral stronghold of Vaida-Voevod’s Romanian

National Party) (Hitchins 1994: 406). Moreover, “[t]he king was not prepared to risk an open clash with the western powers, and he thus refused to support the Liberals in the elections of autumn

1919, which were thus subject to little official interference” (Polonsky 1975: 82). Hence, the elections were – against the design of the ‘incumbents’ – characterized by genuine competition as

“the government’s administrative apparatus had failed to deliver an absolute majority to the party running the elections” (Hitchins 1994: 406; see also Palmer 1970: 174; 197). Next, the elections of

December 12, 1928 are also repeatedly singled out as “genuinely free” (Rothschild 1974: 301; see also Palmer 1997: 200; Fischer-Galati 1970: 41; Hitchins 1994: 414; Polonsky 1975: 84). Against this background, we opt for coding both the 1919-1920 and the 1928-1930 spells as democratic.

The next democratic breakdown in the Eastern zone occurred in Bulgaria later in

1920. With the sole exception of Bernhard et al. (2001), extant datasets scores this country as undemocratic throughout the interwar period. However, this verdict cannot be corroborated based

on narrative sources. Competitive elections were held in Bulgaria in the immediate aftermath of

World War I. The outcome was a clear defeat for the “bourgeois” parties that had dominated pre- war Bulgarian political life and a corresponding victory for the leftwing anti-war parties. More particularly, Alexander Stamboliski’s Agrarian Union won 85 of 236 mandates, followed by the

Communist with 47 seats, and the Socialists with 38 seats. Stamboliski formed a coalition government but already in 1920 called new elections based on compulsory voting (to bring out the peasant vote). The Agrarians increased their vote share dramatically – to 38 percent – but still fell short of a majority. Stamboliski proceeded by annulling the election of thirteen opposition mandates on technical grounds, turning the Agrarian share into a slim majority of 110 versus 106. New elections were called for again in April 1923 and this time the Agrarian won a large majority (212 out of 245 seats in the legislature). However, this result – in conjunction with Stamboliski’s increasingly aggressive anti-elite policies – drove his enemies, including the Military League of army officers, IMRO (a Macedonian terrorist organization), and the National Alliance (consisting of the old, hitherto dominant parties) to carry out a coup d’état on June 9, with the tacit blessing of tsar

Boris.

In the sources we have surveyed there is no evidence that the 1919 elections were systematically violated by the state apparatus. To the contrary, the old regime parties that before the war had been wont to rely on substantial election manipulation were routed. A compelling piece of evidence here is that the Broad Socialists, controlling the Interior Ministry and as a consequence 52 out of 84 police districts only came in third in the election. Before the war, holding sway of this position would surely have been capitalized to secure a better outcome (Kostadinova 1995: 44).

However, from the 1920 election onwards we no longer find a genuine electoral competition

(Berend 2011: 130-131; Chary 2011: 59; Galunov 2009: 130-136; Bell 1997: 224; Chary 2011: 59;

Berend 2001: 130-131; Rothschild 1974: 335; Crampton (2007: 224).

Stamboliski’s electoral authoritarian regime was cut short by the coup in June 9 1923.

A multi-party electoral authoritarian regime soon followed with elections, which were not genuinely competitive, held in November 1923 and again in 1927 (Kostadinova 1995: 56-64;

Poppetrov 2001: 385-388). However, in 1931 an undemocratic government under Lyapchev had to call an election after having lost support in Parliament. The new elections took place before a new government was appointed, making it more difficult for a particular party to “arrange” the elections.

The sources we have perused agree that the election of 1931 was open (Crampton 2007: 241) and

“inaugurated the only peaceful and constitutional governmental transition that Bulgaria was to experience in the interwar period” (Rotschild 1974: 347; see also Kostadinova 1995: 65; Todorov

210: 354). Tsar Boris accepted the outcome and a coalition government under the Democratic leader Malinov formed a cabinet on June 29, 1931. This democratic spell was terminated by a second coup d’état on May 19 in 1934 and in 1935, Tsar Boris took power himself. After this, there were to be no more democratic experiments in interwar Bulgaria. Accordingly, in the case of

Bulgaria we consider 1919-20 and 1931-1934 as democratic episodes.

In 1926, we again find democratic breakdowns in two neighboring countries in the

Eastern zone, namely Poland and Lithuania. Polish democracy broke down with Marshal

Pilsudski’s coup d’etat in spring 1926, following several years of political chaos and economic crisis (Rothschild 1966). The years 1919-1926 had seen a large number of political parties combine to form a series of unstable coalition governments. Pilsudski put an end to this political turbulence with his coup. The coup was not initially followed by harsh repression. There existed “a general national craving to demonstrate that the reborn Poland was, despite the coup, sufficiently mature to emulate successfully the Western model of constitutional parliamentary government” (Rothschild

1974: 61). Pilsudski created an instance of what we would today term ‘electoral authoritarianism’, headed by a series of technocratic governments, designed to place national interests over partisan

ones. As opposed to the fascist regimes, Pilsudski imposed political passivity rather than mobilization upon the population, and he expressly avoided making analogies to fascism (Holzer

2003: 350; Rothschild 1974: 59-61).

Turning to Lithuania, we also find a democratic episode until 1926. The Christian

Democratic Party dominated Lithuanian politics in the years after independence. However, it mostly shared government responsibility with other groups – both when it had a majority in 1920-1922 and after it lost this majority in the national elections in October 1922. In May 1926 the party finally had to relinquish government power when a number opposition parties won the national elections and formed a coalition government (Hellmann 1967: 161-164; Vardys 1979: 324-325). The literature we have processed gives a clear impression of competitive elections and cabinet responsibility in the period from the election of the constituent assembly in 1920 to the coup in

December 1926 (Verdys 1979; Lopata 2001; Hellmann 1967: 161-164; von Rauch 1974: 79, 120;

Rotschild 1974: 377-381).

The next democratic breakdown in the Eastern zone took place in Yugoslavia in 1929.

In the first two years after the creation of the new Yugoslav state, the Serbian core was fully in charge of government. The only lip-service paid to democracy was the creation of a Provisional

National Assembly (March 1919-November 1920), which was unrepresentative. For instance, it did not include the strong Croatian Peasant Party. Elections to a Constituent Assembly were held on

November 28, 1920. This assembly proceeded to create the so-called Vidovan Constitution of June

28, 1921, which was to be the formal-institutional framework for the political life of Yugoslavia up until the royal coup d’état in 1929. The Constituent Assembly doubled as the first elected parliament. Under the Vidovan constitution, further elections were held in 1923, 1925 and 1927.

The dominant datasets disagree as to whether we find democracy in this period

(compare also Palmer 1970: 190; Rothschild 1974: 213-235; Dragnich 1983: Chs. 2-3; Sekelj 2001:

507-508; 2008: 55-56; Lampe 1996: 136; Rothschild 1974: 124). All elections were characterized by irregularities, especially in the Southern parts of the country, and these irregularities seem to have increased from election to election. On top of this, the Communist Party, which had done well in the 1920 elections, was outlawed on August 2, 1921. Finally, King Alexander played an active part in political life throughout the period but especially after the election of 1925 and the subsequent death (in December 1926) of the Radical leader Pasic (Rotschild 1974: 227).

However, the irregularities of the 1920 election notwithstanding, the result bear testimony to the existence of genuine competition. First, and most generally, no political camp received anything in the way of a working majority, the Croatian and Slovene parties swept the

Northern district in spite of their opposition to the old Serbian regime in Beograd, and the

Communist party also did well, receiving 12.4 percent of the vote. Second, and more particularly,

Pasic’s Radical party, which had dominated the Provisional National Assembly and the interim government, did worse than its main Serbian competitor, the Serbian Democrats (receiving 17.7 percent of the popular vote against 19.9 for the Democrats). This testifies to the nonuse or the inability of the state apparatus to seriously twist electoral outcomes, at least outside of Montenegro and Macedonia, probably due to the ethnic and religious cleavages which tended to create regional bastions for different parties. Furthermore, the clear norm in the entire “Vidovdan” period of 1920-

1929 was that the shifting governments rose and fell as a consequence of their ability to gain support in parliament (see, e.g., Dragnich 1983: 28-29, 30-31, 42, 45-48). For instance, in 1924 government rotated between the Radicals and the Democrats (the latter buttressed by the Slovene

People’s Party, the Bosniak Muslims, and in a period supported by the Croat Peasant Party), after the king had refused Pasic’s wish for new elections in the summer of 1924 (Rothschild 1974: 221).

On this basis, we code the entire period 1920-1929 as democratic.

The last democratic breakdowns in East Central and Eastern Europe occurred in 1934 as yet another duo of neighboring countries saw regime change. In both Estonia and Latvia, there had been genuine democratic competition for power ever since World War One. Indeed, the political developments in these countries might be said to resemble those in West Central Europe and Southern Europe more than in the turbulent Eastern zone of new democracies. But in the early

1930s, and especially after the Hitlerite Machtergreifung in Germany in 1933, the political scene became more charged as a significant right-wing mobilization occurred. In Estonia it was the radical Freedom Fighters and in Latvia the equally radical Thunder Cross that went from strength to strength. The democratic breakdowns in Estonia and Latvia took form of centrist forces making preemptive coups in the face of this fascist-inspired mobilization to their right (Rothschild 1974:

372-7). The leader of the Estonian peasants party, Konstantin Päts, justified his coup with reference to the danger of the Freedom Fighters and in Latvia president Ulmanis justified his authoritarian turn with reference to the threat from the Thunder Cross.

Latin America

Table 2 shows that prior datasets are also differ in significant ways with respect to Latin American democratic spells in the interwar period. Once again, we set out to set the record straight based on country-specific sources. Table 4 below reports how we have coded the cases where we have identified democratic spells. The rest of the chapter is devoted to providing narrative descriptions of these country trajectories. To organize the discussion, we once again introduce a general division of countries, which is both based on geography and reflects differences in interwar democratic developments. The dividing lines are not as crisp as in Europe but seen from the higher ground there are two groups. On the one hand the relatively “new” and socio-economically more developed settler colonies in The Southern Cone, on the other hand, the “older”, more indigenous, and less

socio-economically developed colonies in The Andes and Central America (see Acemoglu et al.

2001; Mahoney 2003).

[Table 4 about here]

The Southern Cone

The Southern Cone comprises Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. Most of these countries had become minimalist democracies before World War I, and most of them experienced democratic breakdowns in the interwar period. But two of them also re-democratized before 1939. In general, the democratic credentials of this group were relatively impressive, at least in comparison with what we find in the rest of Latin America.

In Argentina, the democratic transition can be dated to the Sáenz Peña Law of 1912.

Thereafter, a bipolar democratic competition took place between the conservative party and the radical party. A series of reforms to increase workers' rights fueled the conservative opposition against the radical president, Hipólito Yrigoyen. This opposition grew even stronger after Argentina was hit by the onset of the Great Depression. On September 6, 1930, a military coup led by the pro- fascist general Uriburu overthrew Yrigoyen's government. This military coup inaugurated the so- called Infamous Decade in Argentine history (Remmer 1984; Rock 1975). We accordingly identify the years 1918-1930 as democratic.

In Brazil, the period after World War One were characterized by a political duopoly between elites from São Paulo and Minas Gerais, who took turns in the so-called Política do Café com Leite (São Paulo was dominated by coffee producers and Minas by milk producers). There was no genuine democratic competition for power in this period. The two camps fell out after the presidential election in 1930, which paved the way for a coup. Getúlio Vargas became president and

established a dictatorship that lasted until 1945; after 1937 this state of affairs came known as the

Estado Novo (Skidmore 1967). We thus find no democratic spells in interwar Brazil.

Chile is an altogether different story. It had and unbroken tradition of contested multi- party elections going back to the early 1890s. But in 1924, a military coup put an end to Chilean democracy. The coup-makers justified their act with reference to deadlock between a radical president and a conservative parliament. Although elections were reintroduced, military influence continued and free elections for both president and parliament did not take place again until 1932.

Hereafter, democracy lasted throughout the period (Remmer 1984; Collier & Slater 1996). We therefore find two Chilean democratic spells in the interwar period: 1918-1924 and 1932-1939.

Political life in early interwar Uruguay revolved around the Colorado Party and the

National Party. These parties shared power through a collective executive arrangement (colegiado) inspired by Switzerland. The elections were free. However, in 1933, the president, Terara, carried out a self-coup, taking dictatorial powers. In 1938, democracy was reintroduced with relatively free executive and legislative elections (Lindahl 1962; Fitzgibbon 1966). We therefore find two interwar democratic spells: 1918-1933 and 1938-1939.

The Andes

We use this term to denote the North-Western part of South America (Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador,

Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela). Generally speaking, these countries experienced a lot of political instability during the interwar period. All of them had spells with multi-party elections but only a few of them experienced genuinely free elections – and in each of those cases only once during the entire period 1919-1939.

Bolivia is one example of the instability of the Andes. In this small landlocked country in Western Latin America there were frequent multi-party elections and changes in

government in the interwar years. However, most elections were fraudulent and a series of coups took place: in 1920, 1930, 1934, 1936, and 1937. We find a genuinely democratic spell beginning in

1931, when the military junta relinquished power and the three major parties agreed about a common candidate for president and to hold competitive congressional elections. In 1934, opponents of the Chaco War with Paraguay carried out a coup. However, our reading of the narrative sources indicates that Bolivian democracy already broke down the year before, in 1933, when president Daniel Salamanca used his presidential powers to manipulate the congressional elections (Klein 1969: 179). We therefore only code 1931-1933 as a democratic spell.

In Colombia, the conservative party had a strong – nondemocratic – grip on political power until it split in 1930. This paved the way for a fairly free presidential election. For the first time a liberal, Enrique Herara, won. Herara basically replaced the Hegemonía Conservadora with

Hegemonía Liberal as he and his party manipulated the following year’s legislative elections. There was therefore no second round of free legislative elections in Colombia during the interwar period

(Posada-Carbó 1998; Martz 1997). We code the entire period as undemocratic.

Ecuadorian politics in the early interwar years was characterized by fraudulent elections and a coup in 1925. Velasco Ibarra, a candidate not affiliated with the major liberal and conservative parties, won the presidency in an open election in 1933 and was inaugurated in 1934.

However, he soon started to repress his opponents. After a confrontation with Congress, he decided to dissolve it and take dictatorial powers in 1935. The military disapproved of Ibarra’s self-coup, seized power, and send him into exile. Free elections were not reintroduced in the interwar period

(Lauderbaugh 2012). We identify 1934-1935 as a short democratic spell.

Paraguay had no less than 12 different presidents during the interwar years. But this was not a sign of free political competition. It merely reflected political instability, including a civil war in 1922, due to internal strife in the dominant Liberal Party. Tellingly, all of the presidents but

one general, who held power from 1936 to 1937 after the so-called February Revolution, represented this party (Lewis 2009). We therefore identify no democratic spells in Paraguay.

In the early interwar years, Peru was ridden by fraudulent elections and coups occurred in 1919 and 1930. In 1931, Sánchez Cerro won a relatively open and peaceful election.

The leading opposition party, APRA, sought to gain power though unconstitutional means but did not succeed and its members of parliament were prosecuted in February 1932. In 1933, president

Cerro was assassinated. The Constituent Assembly appointed general-in-chief, Benavides, as provisional president. Rather than holding new legislative elections, Benavides assumed full powers and stayed in charge until 1939 (Dietz & Tanaka 2002; Masterson 1991). We code 1931-1933 as a democratic spell.

Venezuela is a clear case of dictatorship during the interwar period. Its political life was more stable than what we find elsewhere in the Andes. The dictator Gómez ruled Venezuela from 1908 to 1935. Following retirement, he appointed his minister of war, Contreras, as his successor. Contreras was to hold office until 1941 (Tarver & Frederick 2006)

Central America

Our last group of countries is Central America, which includes Mexico and the Caribbean.

Generally the countries in this group experienced a lot of political turmoil in the interwar period, including uprising, coups, and US interventions. Multi-party elections were frequently held in most countries but were seldom free. Nonetheless, short democratic spells occurred in most cases.

However, with Costa Rica as the sole exception, strongmen had taken power when World War Two began.

Costa Rica is the democratic overachiever of interwar Latin America. It was under military rule from the outset of the interwar period. General Federico Tinoco had taken power in a

coup in 1917 but he lost power again in 1919, after which electoral competition for political power returned. The elections were not totally clean and the country experienced several oppositional uprisings throughout the period. Nonetheless, Costa Rican politics saw a number of government turnovers, and the elections were generally characterized by genuine competition and thus uncertainty about the outcome (Lehoucq & Molina 2002; Bulmer-Thomas 1987). We therefore code the entire period 1920-1939 as democratic.

From 1916 to 1924, the U.S. military occupied and governed the Dominican Republic.

In 1924, Vásquez won the presidential elections in rather orderly and free executive and legislative elections. However, in 1927 his term was unconstitutionally extended by a constitutional assembly, which had been appointed using questionable electoral practices. Vásquez was succeeded in 1930 by Trujillo who ruled the country with dictatorial means until 1961 (Munro 1974; Pons 2010). We identify a short democratic spell from 1924-1927.

In El Salvador, incumbent governments headed by the Meleéndez-Quiñónez dynasty controlled politics – and arranged elections – until 1931, when the incumbent president, Bosque, insisted on clean elections. The result was a very short democratic spell. A democratically elected congress and president (Araujo) was a complete anomaly for the country and the government was removed by coup directed by general Martínez later the same year. Martínez then ruled the country until 1944 (Dunkerley 1988; Grieb 1971; Bulmer-Thomas 1987). We solely identify 1931 as a democratic spell.

The long-ruling Guatemalan dictator, Cabrera, lost power in 1920. Thereafter Orellana took office after fraudulent elections, and when he died from a heart attack in 1926, he was followed by another general, Chacón, who held the office until 1930. While the political scene was fragmented and chaotic under these presidents, more stability was introduced when yet another general, Obico, and his supporters in the Progressive Liberal Party ran unopposed for the

presidential and legislative elections in 1931. Thereafter, Obico tightened his hold on power and fiercely repressed all kinds of opposition during his rule that lasted until 1944 (Dunkerley 1988).

We find no democratic spell in interwar Guatemala.

In Honduras, the early interwar years where characterized by manipulated elections or violent seizures of power. However, president Barahona presided over rather free elections in 1928, which were won by an opposition candidate, Colindres. Colindres assumed power in 1929, and the subsequent elections in 1932 were also free. However, the new president, Carías, soon began to crack down on the opposition, and he manipulated the legislative elections from 1934 and onwards.

Carías stayed in power through continuous extensions of his mandate by the Congress until 1948

(Dunkerley 1988; Euraque 1996; Bulmer-Thomas 1987). We therefore only code 1929-1934 as democratic.

Mexico differs from the rest of Central America due to its general political stability.

As is well known, the Mexican Revolution 1910-1920 inaugurated a very stable electoral authoritarian regime, only interrupted by the Cristero War in 1926–1929. The first presidents were

Northern revolutionary generals and after 1929, the National Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled until it finally relinquished power in 2000 (Meyer et al. 2003). We therefore find no democratic spells in interwar Mexico.

The situation in early interwar Nicaragua was characterized by electoral fraud, violent seizures of power, civil wars, and frequent US interventions. In 1927 the leading Nicaraguan parties and the US signed the Pact of Espino Negro, which ended a civil war. It was followed by competitive presidential and legislative elections from 1928 to 1934. The first president to win free presidential elections (supervised by US forces) was Moncada, who took office in 1929. He was followed by Sacasa from the major opposition party. In his first year in office, he appointed Somoza

(who was married to his nice) as head of the National Guard. This move turned out to be fateful, as

Somoza gradually acted more and more independently and finally forced Sacasa to resign in 1936, when the US relaxed its embargo on de facto regimes. Thereafter Somoza installed a de facto autocracy (with a democratic façade) and ruled until he was assassinated in 1956 (Bulmer-Thomas

1987; Dunkerley 1988; Munro 1974). We code the period 1929-1936 as democratic.

In the aftermath of World War One, Panama was ruled by a narrow elite, which used manipulated elections and US support to stay in power. However, in 1931, a group called Acción

Comunal launched a successful coup. A transitional government kept its promise to hold relatively free elections. These elections – in 1932 – were won by Harmodio Arias and his party. But already in the following presidential and legislative elections in 1936, the incumbent used his powers to harass the opposition and undermine electoral integrity (Pearcy 1998; Jorden 1984). We therefore only identify a short democratic spell from 1932-1936.

Conclusions

The point of departure of this chapter is the fact that extant datasets covering the interwar period code democratic spells in strikingly different ways in the extant datasets. To resolve these disagreements, we have employed a crisp, Schumpeterian minimalist definition which only emphasizes genuine competition for political power via competitive elections.

On this basis, we have included general descriptions of political developments in both disputed and undisputed cases of interwar democracy. In Europe, some of the disputed cases –

Finland, Lithuania, Italy, and Spain – turned out to be relatively easy to code on this basis. Not so with Bulgaria, Portugal, Romania, and Yugoslavia. As with beauty, whether these cases were democratic is very much in the eye of the beholder. However, we have made it clear how we think these disputed cases should be coded.

In Latin America, the disagreement between extant datasets is even more pronounced.

Here, too, we have tried to set the record straight via a review of narrative sources. As in the

European part of the sample, we identified a large number of short democratic spells. We also found evidence that the most democratic region was the relatively developed countries in the Southern

Cone. But even here democracies often broke down. Latin America therefore contains no equivalent to the stable democracies of Northwestern Europe and the British Settler Colonies.

The short democratic spells of the interwar period, discontinued by or interspersed with undemocratic spells, are virtually ignored by all extant datasets. In fact, Mainwaring et al.’s overview of Latin America is the only genuine exception. Prior attempts to measure interwar regime change thus seem to have been biased towards capturing longer spells. This also means that there has been attempt to theorize the causes of these oscillations which were pronounced in the immediate aftermath of World War I in Europe and from the late 1920s onwards in Latin America.

Several of our cases highlight the difficulty of a crisp scoring of democracy, even based on minimalist Schumpeterian criteria. This is probably the place to present some more general considerations about what we have learned with respect to drawing boundaries after having surveyed the disputed European and Latin American cases. How do we know democratic competition when we see it in the interwar period? In the cases we have examined, the only clear evidence is this: opposition parties not favored by the head of state (in Europe normally the king, in

Latin America presidents) and not in charge of conducting the elections win. The problem is that it is much more difficult to tell when regime-supported parties prevail based on actual competition rather than on stolen elections. The Romanian election of 1928 is one among several examples of this conundrum, the Yugoslav election of 1925 is another. In this situation, additional evidence is necessary.

Table 1: Democratic Spells in Europe and Former British Settler Colonies, 1918-1939,

According to Extant Datasets

Country Bernhard et al. Boix et al. Polity IV Vanhanen Bermeo Australia 1919-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 n.a. Austria 1919-1933 1920-1933 1920-1933 1919-1934 1919-1933 Belgium 1920-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 -1939 Bulgaria 1919-1920 1919-1923 Canada 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 n.a. Czechoslovakia 1920-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 1920-1939 -1938 Denmark 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 -1939 Estonia 1919-1934 1919-1934 1919-1933 1919-1934 1919-1934 Finland 1919-1939 1918-1939 1918-1930 1918-1939 -1939 France 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 -1939 Germany 1919-1933 1919-1933 1919-1933 1919-1934 1919-1933 Greece 1926-1936 1926-1936 1926-1936 1924-1936 1926-1936 Ireland 1922-1939 1922-1939 1921-1939 1922-1939 -1939 Italy 1919-1922 1919-1925 1919-1922 Latvia 1922-1934 1920-1934 1920-1934 1920-1934 1920-1934 Lithuania 1920-1926 1920-1926 1920-1926 1920-1926 Netherlands 1919-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 -1939 New Zealand 1919-1939 1918-1939 1919-1939 1918-1939 n.a. Norway 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 -1939 Poland 1919-1926 1918-1926 1918-1926 1919-1926 1919-1926 Portugal 1918-1926 1918-1926 1919-1926 Romania 1919-1938 Spain 1931-1936 1931-1937 1918-1923, 1931-1939 1931-1936 1931-1939 Sweden 1919-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 -1939 Switzerland 1918-1939 1918-1939 1919-1939 -1939 United Kingdom 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 -1939 USA 1920-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 1918-1939 n.a. Yugoslavia 1921-1929 1920-1929 1920-1929

Table 2: Democratic Spells in Latin America, 1918-1939, According to Extant Datasets

Country Bernhard et al. Boix et al. Polity IV Vanhanen Mainwaring et al. Argentina 1918-1930 1937-1939 1928-1929, 1918-1929 1937-1939 Chile 1918-1924, 1918-1923, 1934-1939 1925-1926, 1932-1939 Colombia 1937-1939 1930-1933 1919-1939 Costa Rica 1918-1939 1928-1939 1920-1939 Cuba 1920-1923 Dominican Rep. 1924-1927 Ecuador 1934 Guatemala 1926-1930 Honduras 1928-1935 1929-1934 Nicaragua 1928-1935 1929-1935 Panama 1918-1927, 1932-1939 Peru 1918, 1939 Uruguay 1934-1939 1919-1933 1919-1931 1918-1932, 1938-1939

Table 3: Interwar Democratic Spells in Continental Europe and the Anglo-Sphere, 1918-1939

Northwestern Democratic West-Central Democratic East-Central Democratic Europe and spell and Southern spell and Eastern spell Anglo-Sphere Europe Europe Australia 1918-39 Austria 1920-33 Albania None Belgium 1918-39 Czechoslovakia 1920-38 Bulgaria* 1919-20, 31-34 Canada 1918-39 Finland 1919-39 Estonia 1919-34 Denmark 1918-39 Germany 1919-33 Hungary None France 1918-39 Greece 1926-35 Latvia 1920-34 Ireland 1922-39 Italy 1919-22 Lithuania 1920-26 Netherlands 1918-39 Portugal* None Poland 1919-26 New Zealand 1918-39 Spain 1931-36 Romania* 1919-20, 28-30 Norway 1918-39 Soviet Union None Sweden 1918-39 Yugoslavia* 1920-29 Schwitzerland 1918-39 UK 1918-39 USA 1918-39 *Countries with significantly disputed democratic spells.

Table 4: Interwar Democratic Spells in Latin America, 1918-1939

Middle America Democratic Andes + Democratic Southern Cone + Democratic spell spell Paraguay spell Brazil Costa Rica 1920-39 Bolivia* 1931-33 Argentina 1918-30 Cuba None Colombia* None Brazil None Dominican Rep.* 1924-27 Ecuador* 1934-35 Chile 1918-24, 32-39 El Salvador* 1931 Paraguay None Uruguay 1918-33, 38-39 Guatemala None Peru* 1931-33 Honduras* 1929-34 Venezuela None Mexico None Nicaragua* 1929-36 Panama* 1932-36 *Countries with significantly disputed democratic spells.