DRG LEARNING, EVALUATION, AND RESEARCH (DRG-LER) ACTIVITY
USAID DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNANCE PRIMER SERIES
TASKING N053
Contract No. GS-10F-0033M/AID-OAA-M-13-00013
March 2018
This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by NORC at the University of Chicago. Author views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. CONTENTS
1. DEMOCRACY, PEACE, AND CONFLICT
2. DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
3. AUTOCRATIC RESILIENCE
4. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL REQUISITES FOR DEMOCRACY
5. WHAT IS DEMOCRACY
6. WHY PREFER DEMOCRACY
7. POLITICAL CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY
8. DEMOCRATIC TRANSITIONS Democracy, Peace, and Conflict
This primer summarizes the state of the research on democracy, peace, and conflict. It provides an evidence-driven basis for assessing how democratic values and institutions affect the prospects of war and peace.
Key Points . No two established democracies have ever . Genocide and mass political killings are rare waged war with one another. in democracies, but terrorism is not unusual. . Democracies do, however, have a significant . Governments of partially democratized history of war and conquest against non- countries seeking to consolidate their democracies. domestic authority sometimes invoke nationalism and engage in war mongering. . Democracies are more reliable military allies, and are more likely to win wars, than non- . Democracy brings many pacific benefits democracies both internationally and domestically, but a sudden process of democratization could . Civil war is a risk where state capacity is increase violence if it weakens state weak, whether the regime is democratic or institutions and leaves a vacuum of state not. power
International and Domestic absence of war may overlook other kinds of hostility Dimensions between states.
Democracy generally reduces domestic conflict and Internal Violence it significantly contributes to the peaceful resolution If democracy is a political system whereby of international disputes. Both of those empirical competing interests peacefully arrive at widely trends, however, are contingent upon important accepted and binding decisions, then there are good qualifiers that may not reflect the conditions in reasons to expect it to reduce domestic levels of countries where USAID works and should not violence. However, the relationship between obscure related conflict risks. For example, democracy and conflict depends on the type of democracies rarely perpetrate mass atrocities. But violence concerned, the stage of the country’s they are no less likely than dictatorships to democratic development, and exacerbating experience civil war, and they are much more likely circumstances such as post-conflict conditions. to experience terrorism. Moreover, other types of Since autocrats often justify their heavy-handed rule violence related to electoral competition, citizenship for presumed advantages in generating stability, it is rights disputes or informal security actors may fall important to parse out this complex relationship. below the threshold of war but still generate political In terms of civil war, democracy does little to uncertainty, trauma and institutional instability. deter its onset. Research shows that after Similarly, the finding that countries do not go to accounting for national income levels, democracies war against each other only holds if they are and non-democracies are equally likely to established democracies. The evidence for this experience civil war. Rather than the political regime, “democratic peace” is robust. But the reasons for it a state’s institutional capacity—which can be strong remain a subject of ongoing debate, and the
Democracy, Peace, and Conflict
or weak in both democratic and autocratic compared to other predictors of massacre such as contexts—better predicts the onset of civil war. education, culture, ethnicity, race, religion, and Consistent with this argument, civil wars are most economic development.7 Further research finds that frequent in mixed and unconsolidated political while the collapse of government generally produces regimes rather than in strong autocracies or genocide, state breakdown in the authoritarian democracies.1 A surprising number of these wars, context is three and a half more times likely to spur estimated at about one third since World War II, mass political murder.8 David Hamburg, one of the have been blamed on clashes between domestic leading scholars on preventing mass violence, and migrants seen as outsiders and “sons of the soil” co-chair of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing with a claim to local indigeneity.2 Countries with Deadly Conflict, argues that democracy is a crucial poorly defined or discriminatory citizenship rights are institutional pillar for preventing genocide and other thus vulnerable to such conflicts.3 forms of mass violence.9 When it comes to terrorism, democracies seem to be at a disadvantage. A seminal study found that The Rocky Road to Democracy terrorist groups were 3.5 times more likely to be Democracy generates domestic and international 4 present in democracies. Such symptoms of peace, but the process of democratization might not extremism or feelings of disenfranchisement do so. For example, there is a risk of civil war in undermine democratic institutions. For example, transitions from autocracy to democracy if state there is evidence that political parties become more institutions break down. Overall, civil wars are more ideologically polarized, and that terrorist attacks likely under weak state institutions than under either increase just prior to elections as terrorists seek to strong autocratic or democratic rule. 5 influence or deter voters. Democracies with Similarly, governments of newly democratizing legislatures elected through proportional countries with under-developed political institutions representation have fewer terrorist groups since the (for example, unstable elections, weak multiparty electoral system promotes the participation of competition, and restricted press freedoms) often minority views. “Majoritarian” models (where a single have an incentive to consolidate their domestic party controls the cabinet) that impede the formal popularity by initiating nationalistic wars.10 These participation of those viewpoints in governments violent conflicts can actually lead to terrible loss of seem to contribute to alienation and then human life and delay future progress toward 6 radicalization. Outside of Europe, the United States, consolidated democracy. The original formulation of Israel and a handful of other countries, research with this theory is buttressed by a range of quantitative large cross-national samples remains limited though. and qualitative historical evidence. A critique of one Democracy does shield innocent civilians from leading study argues that the statistical relationship mass killing by the government. Rudolph Rummel between incomplete democratization and war shows that large-scale political killings are most disappears after removing a set of cases relating to clearly associated with totalitarian government, even
...... 1 James Fearon and Laitin 2003: 84-85. 2 Fearon, James D., and David Laitin. 2011. "Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War." World Development no. 39 (2): 212-220. 3 Keller, Edmond J. 2014. Identity, citizenship, and political conflict in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 4 Enders, Walter, and Todd Sandler. 2012. The Political Economy of Terrorism. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 5 Berrebi, Claude, and Esteban F Klor. 2008. "Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? Direct Evidence from the Israeli Electorate." American Political Science Review no. 102 (3): 279-301; Aksoy, Deniz. 2014. "Elections and the Timing of Terrorist Attacks." The Journal of Politics 76 (4): 899-913. 6 Aksoy, Deniz, and David B. Carter. 2014. "Electoral Institutions and the Emergence of Terrorist Groups." British Journal of Political Science no. 44 (01): 181-204. 7 Rudolph Rummel 1995. 8 Barbara Harff 2003, 66. 9 David Hamburg, 2010. 10 Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder 2005.
2 Democracy, Peace, and Conflict
the Ottoman Empire prior to World War I.11 A non-democracies.17 Furthermore, fully-fledged rejoinder by the original authors argues that the democracies are even unlikely to engage in violent Ottoman cases should not be removed and that the conflict short of full-scale war. sum total of evidence still demonstrates that partial Evidence for the democratic peace is multifold democratization breeds nationalistic wars.12 and draws from statistical analyses, historical A positive correlation between democratic studies, and experiments embedded in public institutions and peace can also be corrupted where opinion polls.18 Nevertheless, it is not without its democracy remains incomplete, or where “hybrid” critics. One prominent view is that the democratic regimes mix formalities of democracy with practices peace is actually a “capitalist peace,” though the such as limits on freedom of the press or party evidence for this alternative perspective is registration. In an influential book, Paul Collier contested.19 Drawing on the economic tradition, the argues that holding elections in these illiberal capitalist peace proponents argue that economic countries at all risks violence.13 Another study found development, financial and economic integration in that 19 percent of all elections globally result in the global economic and similar interests, decrease violence, with riots and protests accompanying 14 wars and militarization.20 Another view is that the percent. Democracies with less experience and pacific effects of democracy are actually the result of weak guarantees of electoral integrity are especially a “territorial peace”: countries with stable borders are prone.14 more likely to democratize and avoid war, while the Similar complications arise in post-conflict relationship between democracy and peace is settings. Flores and Noorudin argue that elites fear happenstance.21 the uncertainty generated by democratic institutions. While most scholars agree that there is a Elections for example disrupt the distribution of democratic peace, they disagree on the reason why power and foment tensions between societal groups. that peace exists, and this debate has important This is particularly the case in post-conflict countries implications for policy makers. To explain the striking since they have less experience with elections. lack of conflict among democracies, some authors Without mature institutions, leaders are less likely to point to shared values. Citizens of democratic commit to democracy.15 countries who identify with liberal principles and eschew violence in domestic politics externalize The Democratic Peace such norms in their conduct with other 22 The democratic peace is the proposition that democracies. A second view is that electoral democracies are more peaceful in their foreign institutions that incorporate mass participation in relations than non-democracies.16 A robust body of politics compel leaders to avoid recklessly costly research shows that countries with mature wars but to dedicate more resources once they democratic norms and institutions never wage war commit to fighting. This implies that fighting a with one another, though they do fight wars with democracy is costly, and so a democratically elected
...... 11 Vipin Narang and Nelson 2009. 12 Mansfield and Snyder 2009. 13 Collier, Paul. 2009. Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. New York: Harper. 14 Norris, Pippa. 2014. Why Electoral Integrity Matters: Cambridge University Press. 15 Edward Flores and Irfan Noorudin. “The Effect of Elections on Postconflict peace and Reconstruction”, in Journal of Politics 74 (2) 2012, 558-570. 16 The intellectual lineage of the democratic peace traces back to Kant 1991[1796]. Essays compiled by Doyle 2011 provide much of the theoretical basis for the contemporary democratic peace research program. 17 For example, Chan 1984; Russett 1993; and Ray 1995. 18 Michael Tomz and Weeks 2013. 19 See Gartzke 2007 for the “capitalist peace.” See Dafoe 2011 for a rebuttal. 20 Erik Gartzke. “The Capitalist Peace” in American Journal of Political Science 51(1) 2007, 166-191. 21 Douglas Gibler 2012. 22 Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett 1993; Rise Risse-Kappen 1997.
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leader seeking to avoid such cost would avoid waging war against another democracy.23 A third Do Democratic Countries Make Better explanation focuses on the role of information. Military Allies? These theories observe that war stems from a lack of transparency in the information environment and Democracies are likely to be better military allies in the inability of governments to keep their promises two respects: first, they are more reliable. In terms of and threats.24 Fearon, for example, asserts that reliability, studies show that democratic countries are information conveyed by leaders regarding the more likely to honor their military alliances than domestic and international costs of conceding and autocratic countries, even in the face of changing 27 information on the costs of the crisis itself, signals political leadership and geopolitical conditions. information about a country’s resolve to fight a war Second, democracies are more likely to win the versus conceding. Democracies are able to provide wars they fight because they enjoy an advantage in information about their intentions better than warfare. Contrary to the old wisdom, elected leaders authoritarian states, which resolved the security are not constrained by fickle and weak-willed publics dilemma between democracies. From this view, or “inferior” fighters who lack motivation. Echoing open political competition and the free flow of theories on the democratic peace, democratically information—two key features of a mature elected governments enjoy an “advantage” in democracy—solve the information and credibility warfare because they are better at choosing problem that hampers non-violent diplomacy and winnable wars, recruiting military allies, and 28 thus help democracies avoid war.25 sustaining war finance. The main critique of the If the democratic peace is a result of well- democratic advantage argument is that a country’s developed norms and values, then the “simple” military size and quality, rather than its political 29 installation of competitive, multiparty elections might system, explain its ability to win wars.
be insufficient to achieve peace. Countries must additional undergo cultural change that entrenches Conclusion adherence to liberal democratic norms. After all, it is Ultimately, democratic government instills pacific the culture and ideas embedded in liberalism that benefits for both the international system and the sustain the democratic peace.26 On the other hand, lives of citizens residing in those democracies. the institutional and information perspective Democracies do not go to war with one another and suggests that free and fair elections, competitive do not commit large-scale atrocities against their politics, and an open political system (with relative own people. But they do experience high rates of press freedom) will constrain leaders, facilitate terrorist attacks and electoral violence is common, diplomacy, and remove the need and desire for war especially in regions such as Africa where multiparty among democracies, even if the society has not competition is recent by historical standards.30 internalized liberal democratic values. Moreover, where state institutions breakdown or Despite various critiques and the ongoing where hybrid regimes mix illiberal politics with debate about why advanced democracies do not democratic formalities, conflict often coincides with wage war against each other, the democratic peace democracy. remains one of the most robust and consequential findings in political science research.
...... 23 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999. 24 James Fearon 1995. 25 James Fearon 1994; Schultz 2001. 26 John Owen 1994. 27 Leeds, Mattes, and Vogel 2009; Risse-Kappen 1996. 28 David Lake 1992; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999; Reiter and Stam 2002; Schultz and Weingast 2003 29 Michael Desch 2008. 30 Burchard, Stephanie M. 2015. Electoral Violence in sub-Saharan Africa: Causes and Consequences. Boulder, Colorado: First Forum Press, A Division of Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
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Annotated Bibliography
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith. 1999. “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace.” American Political Science Review 93 (4): 791-807. . Provides an institutional argument for why a democratic peace exists. Argues that the fact that democratically elected leaders need to please a larger proportion of the citizenry to stay in power leads those leaders to avoid excessively costly wars and to commit more resources to win the wars they fight. This implies that democracies are costlier to fight, and thus cost-wary democratic leaders will avoid warring with one another. . Method/Evidence: game theoretic model. Chan, Steve. 1984. “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…Are Freer Countries More Pacific?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28 (4): 617-648. . One of first studies to show that democracies are only peaceful with other democracies, but not with other regime types like autocracies. Dafoe, Allan. 2011. “Statistical Critique of the Democratic Peace: Caveat Emptor.” American Journal of Political Science 55 (2): 247-262. . Refutes Gartzke (2007) and argues that the democratic peace still exists even after accounting for international economic factors. It shows the “capitalist peace” might be an artifact of inappropriate statistical model choice. Desch, Michael C. 2008. Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. . Critiques the argument that democracies are better at winning wars. Offers an alternative explanation rooted in military effectiveness. . Method/Evidence: statistical analysis and case studies. Doyle, Michael W. 2011 Liberal Peace: Selected Essays. New York, NY: Routledge. . A collection of essays that includes foundational theoretical work on the democratic peace. Fearon, James D. 1994. “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes.” American Political Science Review 88 (3): 577-92. . An argument on why democracies are able to make more credible threats than their autocratic counterparts: democratic leaders incur audience costs for reneging on their threats while autocratic leaders do not. This could explain why democracies can avoid war with each other—they are able to credibly communicate their demands and threats, and thus avoid a breakdown in peaceful diplomacy. . Method/Evidence: game theoretic model. Fearon, James D. 1995. “Rationalist Explanations for War.” International Organization 49 (3): 379-414. . A seminal paper on why countries go to war. It treats war as a breakdown in bargaining and argues that even rational countries might go to war because (1) countries have imperfect information about each other’s demands and capabilities, and have an incentive to hide that information; (2) countries could have difficulty in making credible commitments to the deals they make; (3) countries might fight over spoils that are not divisible. . Method/Evidence: game theoretic model. Fearon, James D. and David Laitin. 2003. “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.” American Political Science Review 97 (1): 75-90. . Neither a country’s ethnic diversity nor its political regime (democracy) explains its likeliness to experience civil war. . State capacity/strength is the most robust predictor of civil war onset. . Method/Evidence: statistical analysis. . Additional evidence from 25 case studies available at: https://web.stanford.edu/group/ethnic/Random%20Narratives/random%20narratives.htm Flores, Edward and Irfan Noorudin. “The Effect of Elections on Postconflict Peace and Reconstruction”, in Journal of Politics 74 (2) 2012, 558-570. Gartzke, Erik. 2007. “The Capitalist Peace.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (1): 166-91. . Argues that the democratic peace is actually better explained by a capitalist peace among countries with open trade and a liberal economic order. . Method/Evidence: statistical analysis.
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Gibler, Douglas M. 2012. The Territorial Peace: Borders, State Development, and International Conflict. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hamburg, David. 2010. Preventing Genocide: Practice Steps Toward Detection and Effective Action. New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. . Distills years of work by the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. . Identifies the drivers of genocide and key institutional pillars and international initiatives that could prevent genocide and other forms of mass violence in the future. . Identifies democracy as an important institutional pillar for preventing mass violence. . Method/Evidence: Historical case studies. Harff, Barbara. 1995. “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955.” American Political Science Review 97 (1): 57-73. . Assesses a variety of predictors of genocide from 1955 to 1997. The predictors of genocide are: prior political upheaval, prior genocide, elite ideology, political regime/autocracy, ethnic rule, and economic closeness. . Method/Evidence: statistical analysis. Kant, Immanuel. 1991 [1796]. Kant’s Political Writings, 2nd edition. Edited by Hans S. Reiss. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. . Kant’s essay, Perpetual Peace, is the classic statement of conditions that create a liberal peace among nations. Lake, David A. 1992. “Power Pacifists: Democratic States and War.” American Political Science Review 86 (1): 24- 37. . Provides a rent-seeking theory for why democracies rarely go to war with one another but win the wars they do fight. . Method/Evidence: statistical analysis. Mansfield, Edward D., and Jack L. Snyder. 2005. Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. . Governments of democratizing countries with weak political institutions have incentives to make nationalist appeals and initiate wars with other countries as a way to consolidate domestic political support. . Method/Evidence: statistical analysis and case studies. Mansfield, Edward D. and Jack Snyder. 2009. “Pathways to War in Democratic Transition.” International Organization 63 (2): 381-90. . A rebuttal to Narang and Nelson (2009) that defends Mansfield and Snyder (2005)’s argument that partial democratization can prompt war. Maoz, Zeev and Bruce Russett. 1993. “Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946-1986.” American Political Science Review 87 (3): 624-38. . Analyzes the democratic peace and argues that is a result of normative rather than structural factors. Narang, Vipin, and Rebeca M. Nelson. 2009. “Who Are These Belligerent Democratizers? Reassessing the Impact of Democratization on War.” International Organization 63 (2): 357-79. . A critique of Mansfield and Snyder (2005). Shows that the statistical relationship between partial democratization and war does not exist after removing a cluster of Ottoman Empire cases from the pre-World War I period. Owen, John M. 1994. “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace.” International Security 19 (2): 87-125. . Gives a theoretical argument for the democratic peace rooted in liberal values. Contrasts with institutional explanations of the democratic peace. Ray, James Lee. 1995. Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. . A sweeping review of the democratic peace literature up to the early 1990s. Reiter, Dan and Allan C. Stam. 2002. Democracies at War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. . Argues that democracies win wars because they only start wars they are likely to win and that they benefit from better leadership and initiative. The democratic advantage is not a result of economic or alliance factors. . Method/Evidence: statistical analysis and case studies.
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Risse-Kappan, Thomas. 1995. Cooperation among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. . Ties the cooperation among democracies to shared liberal democratic values, norms, and identities. Risse-Kappan, Thomas. 1996. “Collective Identity in a Democratic Community” in The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. . Argues that the persistence of NATO after the Cold War is best explained by factors such as ideas and cannot be explained by geopolitics. Rummel, Rudolph J. 1995. “Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 39 (1): 1995: 3-26. . Shows that autocratic rule is associated with genocide and mass murder. . Method/Evidence: statistical analysis. Russett, Bruce. 1993. Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. . One of the earliest and most comprehensive books on the democratic peace and analyses pairs or “dyads” of countries to understand the nature of the democratic peace. . Method/Evidence: statistical analysis of contemporary and historical periods, and case studies. Schultz, Kenneth A. 2001. Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. . Because of their open and competitive political system, democracies are better able to demonstrate resolve and wisely select the wars they fight. This argument explains why democracies rarely fight with one another (democratic peace), and why democracies tend to win wars (democratic advantage). . Method/Evidence: game theoretic models, statistical analysis, and case studies. Schultz, Kenneth A., and Barry R. Weingast. 2003. “The Democratic Advantage: Institutional Foundations of Financial Power in International Competition.” International Organization 57 (1): 3-42. . Democracies are more likely to win protracted wars because their institutions allow for more efficient war financing. . Method/Evidence: game theoretic model and case studies. Tomz, Michael R., and Jessica L. Weeks. 2013. “Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace.” American Political Science Review 107 (4): 849-65. . The American and British public are less supportive of going to war with another democracy than an otherwise identical autocratic country. They view attacking a fellow-democracy to be immoral, and also perceive democratic countries to be less threatening than non-democracies. . Method/Evidence: experiments embedded into several public opinion polls conducted in the U.S. and United Kingdom.
7 Democracy and Economic Growth
This primer summarizes the state of the research on democracy and economic growth. It provides an evidence-driven basis for assessing how democratic values and institutions affect the prospects of economic growth. Key questions include, do democracies tend to grow faster than autocracies? Why do democracies promote economic growth and is the evidence of a uniform relationship?
Key Points . Evidence for a positive effect of democracy . Some dictatorships benefit from natural on economic growth remains mixed, though resources or other revenue that contributes recent studies find a stronger relationship. to high growth rates, even though other . Rather promoting economic growth through economic indicators may be inferior. a “direct” effect, democracy instead has . The relationship between democracy and significant intermediate effects by economic growth tends to vary across promoting human capital investment and regions and countries with divergent public goods provision. institutional backgrounds. It also varies across time periods, with the end of the cold war marking an important inflexion point.
The Theoretical Debate Scholars such as Przeworski challenge these claims, arguing that democracies neither generate There is an enduring debate in political science about pressures for downward redistribution to the poor nor whether democracies or autocracies have an upper weak incentives for savings.5 Moreover, with limited hand in generating economic growth. Studies noting accountability through elections and uncertainty the potential adverse effects of democracy stress about succession, property rights are theoretically certain advantages of authoritarian regimes. First, less secure under dictatorship – a point readily democracies supposedly face pressures for illustrated by cases such as Zimbabwe and redistribution of wealth, which weakens private Venezuela.6 property rights and discourages private investment.1 Another possible set of disadvantages stems Closely related, democracies are responsive to from the idea that democracies have more veto popular demands of immediate consumption at the players – collective actors such as parliaments or cost of investment, while autocracies are better able individuals such as presidents who have the power to to suppress wages and force savings for investment, prevent policy change. Electoral institutions such as which accelerates economic growth.2 In addition, proportional representation also disperse power by democracies – especially established ones –may be facilitating coalition governments in which several captured by vested interest groups that make fiscally political parties might hold a veto. A dispersion of unsustainable demands,3 while authoritarian regimes power increases policy stability by limiting can insulate themselves from social pressures and opportunities for policy change.7 While this is maintain the autonomy to implement growth- conducive to economic growth where countries need enhancing policies.4 to increase policy credibility, for example to attract
Democracy and
Economic Growth
investment, it may also block or slow down the Early research offered mixed findings shaped in decision-making process when handling an part by this global context of the cold war with fewer economic crisis. By contrast, regimes with fewer veto democracies.13 For instance, an analysis of up to 125 players can make and implement policies quickly and countries during 1960–1985 reveals a negative but divert economic resources to productive uses. Veto statistically insignificant effect of democracy on players are a useful concept for measuring policy economic growth.14 A seminal study of up to 135 commitment or for locating different centers of countries from 1950 to 1990 fails to find a clear political leverage. But very few studies examine veto statistical relationship between democracy and the players in dictatorships, making comparisons across economic growth rate.15 Another study based on a regimes difficult.8 sample of 100 countries between 1960 and 1990 Scholars arguing that democracies do offer an reports that the overall effect of democracy on advantage in generating economic growth highlight economic growth is weakly negative. This is largely several lines of reasoning. The first argument is that because of statistical results showing that democracy democratic institutions constrain the arbitrary power increases economic growth at the initial stage of of rulers and thus constitute a check against democracy but it inhibits growth once a moderate predatory behavior, leading to secure property rights amount of democracy has been reached.16 Additional and economic growth.9 The second rationale is that exploration of 154 countries from 1950 to 2000 democracies are more responsive to the public and demonstrates that new democracies (within the first thus better able to deliver public goods such as five years of democratization) have a positive effect education and health care, thereby increasing the on economic growth, whereas the effects of accumulation of human capital and enhancing democracy on growth more than five years after economic growth.10 In addition, democracies provide democratization varies greatly.17 mechanisms to moderate social conflicts and Many of these studies also point out, on maintain political and economic stability.11 Finally, normative and empirical terms, that material well- democracies are more likely to facilitate technological being should not be the only basis for evaluating progress and encourage innovation.12 Open societies government performance: democracies are less with freedom of speech are instrumental for repressive and generally provide a better quality of generating and disseminating new ideas, which life, arguing against modernization theory’s rationale encourage innovation. for achieving economic development first. More recent studies tend to lend support to the The General Pattern: Do Democracies democratic advantage in promoting economic growth on Average Grow Faster than especially, in the long term. One study based on a Autocracies? sample of about 150 countries over the period 1960 to 2000 presents evidence that democracy is The robust debate about whether democracies associated with a 0.75 percentage point annual generate superior rates of growth remains unsettled. increase in economic growth.18 In a similar fashion, Notably, a primary motivation of early research was an analysis of up to 166 countries during the 1960– to refute or test “modernization theory” formulated in 2003 period shows that democratic transitions are the 1960s, which argued that democracy first associated with an increase of one percentage point required economic development. This implied that in annual GDP per capita growth, and the effect is participation would often need to be held back during relatively larger in “partial democratizations”19 and in political transitions – a view based on fear that the medium and long run.20 Drawing on a sample of communists in the developing world would capitalize 175 countries from 1960 to 2010, a research team on instability. Before countries such as India, Benin employs various methods and consistently finds that and Brazil democratized, there were few cases that democratization increases GDP per capita by even anecdotally suggested that poor nations could approximately 20 percent in the long run (more than achieve meaningful democracy. 25 years).21 In other words, the GDP per capita of the typical authoritarian regime would be 20 percent
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Economic Growth
higher today had it democratized 25 years ago. on economic growth. However, the settings where Furthermore, the effect of democratic institutions is democratic institutions operate vary considerably cumulative in the sense that democratic stock—a across the world and throughout the history. During country’s democracy history—is found to be robustly 1960 to 2000, compared to autocracies, democracies associated with economic growth rates.22 experienced slower economic growth in Latin American and Asian countries but exhibited better Plausible Mechanisms: Why Do economic performance in African continent.29 One Democracies Promote Economic plausible explanation is that democracies in Latin Growth? America and Asia were less able to fend off the demands for redistributive policies than their In addition to estimating the overall effect, scholars authoritarian counterparts, who could focus have attempted to explore some plausible channels exclusively on economic growth, whereas through which democracy may affect economic democracies to some extent allowed the public to growth. A review of 84 published studies reveals that check or evict corrupt officials in African patrimonial democracy has positive indirect effects on economic states. Also, these African states were at lower levels growth through increasing human capital, lowering of development and thus experienced fewer inflation, maintaining political stability and promoting redistributive pressures than Latin American states. 23 economic freedom. One recent study finds that Global trends had a large impact too. Africa’s democracy can promote investment, promote growth in the post-independence decade of the education, facilitate economic reforms, increase 1960s was higher than Asia’s. But its economies public goods provision, and reduce social unrest, all actually contracted on average in the 1990s during 24 of which lead to economic growth. the initial years of post-cold war democratization.30 A burgeoning body of literature on the Notably, the rise of more democratic governments relationship between democracy and public policies and the implementation of more sensible economic seems to corroborate some plausible channels. policies constituted crucial factors for emerging Empirically, compared to autocracies, democracies African countries to achieve rapid economic growth are better able to provide education and healthcare, between 1996 and 2008. By and large, these 25 resulting in higher levels of human capital. The democracies and near-democracies have performed empirical evidence from several recent studies much better economically than the autocracies of suggests that democratic regimes are conducive to Africa, even controlling for oil and other natural implementing economic reforms, which in turn resources.31 Several other empirical studies have reduce economic distortions and improve economic also documented a positive effect of democratization 26 efficiency. More crucially, democracies are more on economic growth rate in in Sub-Saharan Africa.32 likely to provide secure property rights and reduce Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the effect of 27 expropriation risk. With secure property rights, democratization is not uniform across newly economic actors arguably have more incentive to democratized countries in Sub-Saharan Africa: invest and innovate, thereby fostering economic Democratic transitions produced a higher economic 28 growth. Taken together, there are multiple growth rate in some countries such as Mali, but had channels—including the provision of public goods, little or negative effect on economic performance in the adoption of economic reforms and secure others such as Zambia and Madagascar, although property rights—through which democracy boosts we should note that these states were more weakly prosperity. democratic.33 By the middle of the twentieth century, many Regional Variations: Is There a Uniform Latin American countries had established democratic Relationship? regimes but pursued an import substitution industrialization (ISI) model.34 In the 1960s and The previous discussion focuses largely on the 1970s, several countries such as Brazil and average or uniform effect of democratic governance Argentina witnessed the breakdown of democracies
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Economic Growth
and the rise of bureaucratic authoritarianism in market-oriented reforms unfolded.41 The relationship response to economic problems at the end of initial between democracy and economic growth is positive phase of industrialization.35 During 1960-1980, in the new member states of the European Union, democracies performed better than traditional largely because the imposed membership dictatorships but worse than bureaucratic- conditionalities compelled these states to adhere to authoritarianism regimes.36 Starting from the 1980s, both democratic governance and market-oriented a new wave of democratization has swept Latin reforms.42 In the 1990s, compared to post- American countries. In the 1980s, democracies Communist authoritarian regimes, democracies proved no better than authoritarian regimes in carried out more fundamental reforms and recovered economic performance.37 In the 1990s, democratic more quickly from initial recession.43 In the 2000s, institutions and procedures allowed several countries the relationship started to change in that post-Soviet such as Chile, Argentina and El Salvador to push states had high levels of economic growth during the forward market-oriented reforms and improve early 2000s but no democracy. 44 However, economic economic growth prospect, although other countries growth in several of the fastest-growing economies only achieved modest economic growth.38 like Russia and Kazakhstan was largely driven by A close examination of Asian countries reveals high oil revenues. that the effect of democracy on economic growth depends largely on the structure of political institutions. Put concretely, fast-growing economies Conclusion have tended to be either authoritarian regimes with Authoritarian regimes theoretically face fewer strong state capacity and commitment to pressures to redistribute wealth to the poor or to give development or consolidated democracies with in to popular demands for government spending ample state capacity (dating back to an earlier non- rather than saving. On an impressionistic level, cases democratic era).39 On the other hand, kleptocratic such as Chile and Singapore validate these claims. Asian regimes like Myanmar and Cambodia have not However, democracies deter state predatory performed well economically at all. While South behavior, and better protect property rights, which is Korea grew faster under a democratic regime than it important for attracting investment and inspiring did under late authoritarian rule, Thailand and technological innovation. Indonesia experienced some economic slowdown Empirically, recent research finds that after democratization. democracy generally contributes to higher rates of Finally, the post-communist transitions are economic growth. This seems especially true over valuable for understanding the relationship between the long term as democracies spend on education democratic transitions and economic development. and health care – investments in human capital that Over the 20 years of transition period, there is no contribute to economic growth. However, the debate clear relationship between democracy and economic continues due to strong regional effects, variance growth.40 Democracy exerted a negative effect on depending on the decades examined, and economic performance during the early transition authoritarianism’s supposed advantages in period (1991-1995) and had a positive effect as implementing politically unpopular but economically “rational” market-based reform.
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Endnotes
10 1 Milton Friedman, (1962). Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph University of Chicago Press; Allan Meltzer and Scott Richard, Siverson and James Morrow, (2003). The Logic of Political (1981). “A rational theory of the Size of Government,” Journal Survival. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Matthew Baum and of Political Economy 89(5): 914–927; Carles Boix, (2003). David Lake, (2003). “The Political Economy of Growth: Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge: Cambridge Democracy and Human Capital,” American Journal of Political University Press; Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Science 47(2): 333–347. (2006). Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New 11 Dani Rodrik, (2000). “Participatory Politics, Social York: Cambridge University Press. Cooperation, and Economic Stability,” American Economic 2 Samuel Huntington, (1968). Political Order in Changing Review 90(2): 140-144 Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 12 Morton Halperin, Joe Siegle, Michael Weinstein, (2005). The Samuel Hungtinton and Joan Nelson, (1976). No Easy Choice: Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity Political Participation in Developing Countries. Cambridge, and Peace. New York: Routledge; Helen Milner, (2006), “The Mass., Harvard University Press; Atul Kohli, (2004). State- Digital Divide: The Role of Political Institutions in Technology Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in Diffusion,” Comparative Political Studies 36(2): 176–199 the Global Periphery. New York: Cambridge University Press; 13 For a review, see: Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, Dani Rodrik, (1999). “Democracies Pay Higher Wages,” (1993). “Political Regimes and Economic Growth,” Journal of Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (3), 707-738 Economic Perspectives 7(3): 51-69; Hristos Doucouliagos and 3 Mancur Olson, (1982). The Rise and Decline of Nations. Mehmet Ali Ulubaşoğlu, (2008). “Democracy and Economic Economic Growth, Stagflation and Social Rigidities. New Growth: A Meta-Analysis,” American Journal of Political Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Science 52(1): 61-83 14 4 Chalmers Johnson, (1982). MITI and the Japanese Miracle: John Helliwell, (1994). “Empirical Linkages between The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975. Stanford, CA: Democracy and Economic Growth,” British Journal of Political Stanford University Press ; Stephan Haggard, (1990). Science 24(2):225-248 Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the 15 Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, José Antonio Newly Industrializing Countries. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, (2000). Democracy and Press; Peter Evans, (1995). Embedded Autonomy. States and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, Industrial Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University 1950-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Press 16 Robert Barro, (1996). “Democracy and Growth,” Journal of 5 Przeworski, Adam. 2010. Democracy and the Limits of Self- Economic Growth 1(1): 1-27 Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 17 Dani Rodrik and Romain Wacziarg, (2005). “Do Democratic Przeworski, Adam, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, Transitions Produce Bad Economic Outcomes,” American and Fernando Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Economic Review 95(2): 50-55 Political Institutions and Material Well-being in the World, 1950- 18 Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, (2006). “Democracy 1990. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. and Development: The Devil in the Details,” American 6 Corrales, Javier, and Michael Penfold-Becerra. 2011. Dragon Economic Review 96(2): 319–324 in the Tropics: Hugo Chavez and the Political Economy of 19 “Full” democratization is coded when both the Polity indicator Revolution in Venezuela. Washington, D.C.: Brookings is greater than +7 and the FH status characterization is “free”. Institution Press; Godwin, Peter. 2010. The Fear: Robert All remaining democratization countries are coded as “partial”. Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe. New York: Little, 20 Brown and Company. Elias Papaioannou and Gregorios Siourounis, (2008). 7 “Democratization and Growth,” The Economic Journal 118 George Tsebelis, (2002). Veto Players: How Political (October):1520–1551 Institutions Work. Princeton: Princeton University. 21 Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, Pascual Restrepo and Press; Francis Fukuyama, (2015). Political Order and Political James A. Robinson, (forthcoming). “Democracy Does Cause Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Growth,” Journal of Political Economy Democracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 22 8 John Gerring, Philip Bond, William Barndt and Carola Haggard, Stephan, and Mathew McCubbins. 2001. Moreno, (2005). “Democracy and Economic Growth: A Presidents, Parliaments, and Policy, Political Economy of Historical Perspective,” World Politics 57(3) : 323-364; Torsten Institutions and Decisions. Cambridge and New York: Persson and Guido Tabellini, (2009). “Democratic Capital: The Cambridge University Press; LeVan, A. Carl. 2015. Dictators Nexus of Political and Economic Change,” American Economic and Democracy in African Development: the Political Economy Journal: Macroeconomics 1(2), 88–126 of Good Governance in Nigeria. New York, NY: Cambridge 23 University Press. Hristos Doucouliagos and Mehmet Ali Ulubaşoğlu, (2008), “Democracy and Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis,” 9 Douglass North, (1990). Institutions, Institutional Change and American Journal of Political Science 52(1): 61-83 Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University 24 Press; Douglass North and Barry Weingast, (1989). Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, Pascual Restrepo and “Constitutions and Commitment: The Institutions Governing James A. Robinson, (forthcoming). “Democracy Does Cause Public Choice in Seventeenth Century England,” Journal of Growth,” Journal of Political Economy Economic History 44(4): 803–832; Mancur Olson, (1993). 25 David Lake and Matthew Baum, (2001). “The Invisible Hand “Democracy, Dictatorship and Development,” American of Democracy: Political Control and the Provision of Public Political Science Review 87(3): 567–576. Services,” Comparative Political Studies 34 (6): 587–621; David Brown and Wendy Hunter, (2004), “Democracy and
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Human Capital Formation: Education Spending in Latin Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1982-2012” The Oxford America.” Comparative Political Studies 37 (7): 842–64; David Handbook of Africa and Economics: Volume 1: Context and Stasavage, (2005). ‘‘Democracy and Education Spending in Concepts Edited by Célestin Monga and Justin Yifu Lin. Africa,’’ American Journal of Political Science 49 (2): 343–58; Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robin Harding and David Stasavage, (2014). “What 33 Daniel de Kadt and Stephen Wittels, (2016). Democracy Does (and Doesn’t Do) for Basic Services: School “Democratization and Economic Output in Sub-Saharan Fees, School Inputs, and African Elections,” The Journal of Africa,” Political Science Research and Methods (online first) Politics 76(1): 229–245; Timothy Besley and Masayuki 34 Import substitution industrialization (ISI) had been applied in Kudamatsu, (2006). "Health and Democracy," American most Latin American countries until around 1980s. As a Economic Review 96(2): 313-318; Simon Wigley and Arzu development strategy, ISI aims at replacing imports with Akkoyunlu-Wigley, (2011). “The Impact of Regime Type on domestic production and fostering a domestic market, thereby Health: Does Redistribution Explain Everything?” World Politics reducing one country’s foreign dependency through the local 63(4): 647-677 production of industrialized products. 26 Paola Giuliano, Prachi Mishra and Antonio Spilimbergo, 35 O’Donnell puts forward a theory of bureaucratic (2013). “Democracy and Reforms: Evidence from a New authoritarianism: As the consumer-goods phase of Dataset,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics industrialization was completed, a series of problems emerged 5(4):179–204; Martin Rode and James D. Gwartney, (2012). and needed to be solved. In the meantime, with the “Does Democratization Facilitate Economic Liberalization?” industrialization and social differentiation, the technocrats- European Journal of Political Economy 28(4), 607–619; including military and civilian bureaucrats-became increasingly Pauline Grosjean and Claudia Senik, (2011).“Democracy, important and had a low level of tolerance for the political and Market Liberalization, and Political Preferences,” The Review economic crisis. As a result, the frustrated technocrats formed of Economics and Statistics 93 (1): 365–381 a coup coalition and established repressive bureaucratic- 27 Christopher Clague, Philip Keefer, Stephen Knack and authoritarianism to end the crisis. See: Guillermo O'Donnell, Mancur Olson, (1996). “Property and Contract Rights in (1973). Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Autocracies and Democracies,” Journal of Economic Growth Studies in South American Politics. Berkeley: Institute of 1(2): 243–276; David Leblang, (1996).“Property Rights, International Studies, University of California. Democracy and Economic Growth,” Political Research 36 John Sloan and Kent Tedin, (1987). “The Consequences of Quarterly 49(1): 5-26; Alícia Adserà Carles Boix Mark Payne, Regime Type for Public-Policy Outputs,” Comparative Political (2003). “Are You Being Served? Political Accountability and Studies 20(1): 98–124. Quality of Government,” Journal of Law, Economics, and 37 Karen Remmer, (1990). “Democracy and Economic Crises: Organizations 19(2): 445-490; Carl Henrik Knutsen, (2011). The Latin American Experience,” World Politics 42(3): 315–335 “Democracy, Dictatorship and Protection of Property Rights,” 38 Journal of Development Studies 47(1): 164-182. Jorge Domínguez, (1998). “Free Politics and Free Markets in Latin America,” Journal of Democracy 9(4): 70-84 28 Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, 39 (2001). “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Michael Rock, (2009). “Has Democracy Slowed Growth in Empirical Investigation,” American Economic Review 91 (5): Asia?” World Development 37(5): 941–952 1369–1401; Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, (2005). 40 Thomas Apolte, (2011). “Democracy and Prosperity in Two “Unbundling Institutions,” Journal of Political Economy 113(5): Decades of Transition,” Economics of Transition 19(4): 693– 949-995 722; Dawid Piatek, Katarzyna Szarzec and Michał Pilc. (2013). 29 Jonathan Krieckhaus, (2006). “Democracy and Economic “Economic Freedom, Democracy and Economic Growth: A Growth: How Regional Context Influences Regime Effects” Causal Investigation in Transition Countries,” Post-Communist British Journal of Political Science 36(2): 317-340 Economies 25(3): 267–288 41 30 Ndulu, Benno J., and Stephen O'Connell. 2008. "Policy Plus: Jan Fidrmuc, (2003).“Economic Reform, Democracy and African Growth Performance, 1960-2000." In The Political Growth during Post-Communist Transition,” European Journal Economy of Economic Growth in Africa, 1960-2000, edited by of Political Economy 19: 583–604 Benno Ndulu, O'Connell, Robert Bates, Paul Collier and 42 Mitchell Orenstein, (2009). “What Happened in East Chukwuma Soludo, 3-75. Cambridge and New York: European (Political) Economies? A Balance Sheet for Cambridge University Press. Neoliberal Reform,” East European Politics and Societies 31 Steven Radelet, (2010). “Success Stories from ‘Emerging 23(4): 479-490. Africa’”, Journal of Democracy 21: 87–101 43 Stephen Fish, (1997). “The Determinants of Economic 32 Robert Bates, Ghada Fayad, Anke Hoeffler, (2012). “The Reform in the Post-Communist World,” East European Politics State of Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa,” International Area and Societies 12(1): 31–78. Studies Review 15(4) 323–33; Takaaki Masaki and Nicolas van 44 Fn. 39 de Walle, (2015). “The Impact of Democracy on Economic
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Annotated Bibliography
Acemoglu, Daron and Simon Johnson. 2005. “Unbundling Institutions,” Journal of Political Economy 113(5): 949-995. . Uses an instrumental variables approach to study the effects of property rights institutions and contracting institutions on economic growth. . Finds that property rights have strong effects on economic growth, investment, and financial development Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. 2001. “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” American Economic Review 91 (5): 1369–1401. . Attributes the modern institutional landscape of states to colonial legacies. . Argues that colonies that were more conducive to settlement were more likely to form inclusive institutions while less habitable colonies (due to diseases, for instance) developed extractive institutions. Acemoglu, Daron, Suresh Naidu, Pascual Restrepo and James A. Robinson, (forthcoming). “Democracy Does Cause Growth,” Journal of Political Economy. . Empirically evaluates the relationship between growth and democracy. . Finds that democracy increases GDP per capita through increased investment, education, economic reforms, public goods provision, and reduced social unrest. Acemoglu, Daron and James Robinson. 2006. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. . Book treatment on the relationship between economic development (and especially economic inequality), autocratic stability, democratization, and democratic stability. Adserà, Alícia, Carles Boix, Mark Payne. 2003. “Are You Being Served? Political Accountability and Quality of Government,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations 19(2): 445-490. . How well any government functions hinges on how good citizens are at making their politicians accountable for their actions. Political control of public officials depends on, first, free and regular elections that allow citizens to discipline politicians. . Second, and equally important, the degree of citizen information curbs the opportunities politicians may have to engage in political corruption and management. The presence of a well-informed electorate in a democratic setting explains between one-half and two-thirds of the variance in the levels of governmental performance and corruption. Apolte, Thomas. 2011. “Democracy and Prosperity in Two Decades of Transition,” Economics of Transition 19(4): 693–722. . This article revisits the relationship between democracy, liberalization and prosperity in transition countries, using a panel of 25 countries over 20 years. While earlier studies found political and economic liberalization to be positively correlated, the relationship between political liberalization and prosperity remained unclear. . In this article, the results are ambiguous regarding the relationship between democracy indicators by Freedom House and the Polity Project on one hand and growth on the other. . The findings suggest that basic constitutional rights and constraints on the government rather than political competition as such may be conducive to both economic liberalization and prosperity in the transition countries. Barro, Robert. 1996. “Democracy and Growth,” Journal of Economic Growth 1(1): 1-27. . Argues that democracy has a weakly negative effect on economic growth. . Suggests that, initially, democracy improves growth, but becomes a barrier once a moderate level of democracy has been attained. Bates, Robert, Ghada Fayad, Anke Hoeffler, 2012. “The State of Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa,” International Area Studies Review 15(4) 323–33. . Uses panel data to empirically support the claim that democracy leads to economic growth. . However, suggests that levels of democracy are too high relative to income in Africa and this may have contributed to democratic “backsliding.”
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Baum, Matthew and David Lake. 2003. “The Political Economy of Growth: Democracy and Human Capital,” American Journal of Political Science 47(2): 333–347. . Statistical analysis of the direct and indirect effects of democracy on growth. . Find no evidence of a direct effect of democracy on economic growth. . Instead, the authors find that democracy affects growth indirectly through increases in life expectancy and secondary school attainment. Besley, Timothy and Masayuki Kudamatsu. 2006. "Health and Democracy," American Economic Review 96(2): 313- 318. . This article considers the relationship between health and democracy by looking at panel data across countries and finds that there is a significant relationship between life expectancy and democracy. Findings suggest that health policy interventions are better in democracies. Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Boix argues that transition to democracy is more likely in a relatively equal society because elites will not agree to a redistributive system otherwise. . However, when shocks weaken elites, mobilization increases the cost of repression and, at low levels of inequality, elites will choose to make concessions. Brown, David and Wendy Hunter. 2004. “Democracy and Human Capital Formation: Education Spending in Latin America.” Comparative Political Studies 37 (7): 842–64. . This article examines the relationship between democratic representation and spending on education in Latin America. . The authors test whether democratic governments allocate a greater share of resources to primary education, the level that benefits the largest segment of the electorate and that is most critical for human capital formation in developing countries. . Using time-series cross-sectional analysis, the authors find that democracies devote a higher percentage of their educational resources to primary education and that they maintain higher absolute spending levels on education in the aggregate, thereby enhancing the prospects of human capital formation Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, Alastair Smith, Randolph Siverson and James Morrow. 2003. The Logic of Political Survival. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. . Presents a “selectorate” theory of politics, in which the size of the “winning coalition” determines a leader’s policy choices. . Offers explanation for why leaders remain in power despite “bad” policies. Clague, Christopher, Philip Keefer, Stephen Knack and Mancur Olson. 1996. “Property and Contract Rights in Autocracies and Democracies,” Journal of Economic Growth 1(2): 243–276. . Claque et al., test a new theory of property and contract rights. . Any incentive an autocrat has to respect such rights comes from his interest in future tax collections and national income and increases with his planning horizon. . They find a compelling empirical relationship between property and contract rights and an autocrat's time in power. In lasting -- but not in new -- democracies, the same rule of law and individual rights that ensure continued free elections entail extensive property and contract rights. . Also, the age of a democratic system is strongly correlated with property and contract rights. Corrales, Javier, and Michael Penfold-Becerra. 2011. Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chavez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. . Corrales and Penfold provide an account of how the Chávez regime revamped the nation, with a particular focus on its political transformation. . Taking issue with conventional explanations, they first argue persuasively that liberal democracy as an institution was not to blame for the rise of chavismo. . Second, they assert that the nation's economic ailments were not caused by neoliberalism. Instead they look to other factors, such as dependence on oil, which caused macroeconomic volatility; political party fragmentation, which triggered infighting; government mismanagement of the banking crisis, which led to more centralization of power; and the Asian crisis of 1997, which devastated Venezuela's economy at the same time that Chávez ran for president.
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. While the authors do not dispute that dependence on oil can generate political and economic distortions—the "resource curse" arguments— assert that oil alone fails to explain Chávez's rise. Instead they emphasize weaknesses in checks and balances that created power asymmetries. De Kadt, Daniel and Stephen Wittels. 2016. “Democratization and Economic Output in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Political Science Research and Methods (online first). . Asking does democratization increase economic output, the authors employ a new empirical approach, the synthetic control method, to study the economic effects of democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1975– 2008. . The method produces case-specific causal statistics, which show that political reform associated with the “third wave” of democracy had highly varied yet important effects in Africa. In some countries democratization adversely affected economic output while in others it exerted an analogous positive effect. Domínguez, Jorge. 1998. “Free Politics and Free Markets in Latin America,” Journal of Democracy 9(4): 70-84. . Domiquez argues that Latin Americans in the 1980s and 1990s discovered unexpectedly, the utility of democratic politics to improve the workings of a market economy. . Latin American dictatorships failed to provide for economic growth in the 1970s and presided over economic collapse in the early 1980s. Discovering their autocracies were bankrupt, Latin Americans found that key elements of democratic political systems could better shape the foundations for market economies and foster prosperity. Doucouliagos, Hristos and Mehmet Ali Ulubaşoğlu. 2008. “Democracy and Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis,” American Journal of Political Science 52(1): 61-83. . Meta-analysis of 84 previous studies on democracy and growth. . Shows that democracy does not have direct effects on economic growth, but has positive indirect effects on growth through increasing human capital, lowering inflation, maintaining political stability and promoting economic freedom. Evans, Peter. 1995. Embedded Autonomy. States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. . Evans uses the concept of “embedded autonomy” to define a successful developmental state. In his description, the state needs to be autonomous in that it is a coherent bureaucratic apparatus, capable of directing the market, but it must also be embedded in the relational networks of society, which means that people must buy into the idea of the state and its development project. . Rather than focus on interventionist versus non-interventionist states, Evans looks at the motivation behind state intervention, contrasting the developmental state with the predatory, or rent-seeking, state. . Evans further breaks down the, potentially overlapping, roles of the developmental state into custodian (or regulator), demiurge (or producer), and uses the concepts of husbandry or midwifery to explain the relationship between the state and the private sector. In these various roles, the state takes different approaches to facilitate growth and development of domestic industry. Evans refers to this approach as “constructed comparative advantage,” in contrast with Ricardian models of comparative advantage (and specifically the Hecksher-Ohlin factor-endowments model) upon which neoliberal ideas of free trade rest. Fidrmuc, Jan. 2003. “Economic Reform, Democracy and Growth during Post-Communist Transition,” European Journal of Political Economy 19: 583–604. . This paper explores interactions between growth, economic liberalization and democratization during transition. . Essentially, liberalization has a strong positive effect on growth during transition. . Democracy facilitates economic liberalization. . Because of its effect on liberalization, democracy has a positive overall effect on growth. Nevertheless, the marginal effect of democracy is negative during early transition. . The progress in democratization in turn depends on past economic performance in a surprising manner-the relationship between past growth and subsequent democracy appears negative. . Economic performance is an important determinant of electoral outcomes and, in particular, of support for reforms.
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Fish, Stephen. 1997. “The Determinants of Economic Reform in the Post-Communist World,” East European Politics and Societies 12(1): 31–78. . The paper addresses the issue of the determinants of economic reform by examining the extent of reform; . He tests the influence of political institutions, culture, and economic factors. . The study finds that the outcome of initial elections is key. Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Allan. . How can we balance the promise of government and protection of individual freedom? . In this classic, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement which stresses the need for competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom. Fukuyama, Francis. 2015. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. . Explores the origins of the modern state and conditions that have led to decay in developed democracies. . Argues that political success can be explained by the strength of state institutions, the rule of law, and democratic accountability. Gerring, John, Philip Bond, William Barndt and Carola Moreno, (2005). “Democracy and Economic Growth: A Historical Perspective,” World Politics 57(3): 323-364. . Considers countries’ historical experience with democracy to show that democratic institutions have a cumulative effect on economic growth rates. Giuliano, Paola, Prachi Mishra and Antonio Spilimbergo. 2013. “Democracy and Reforms: Evidence from a New Dataset,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 5(4):179–204. . This paper studies the effect of democracy on the adoption of economic reforms using a new dataset on reforms in the financial, capital and banking sectors, product markets, agriculture, and trade for 150 countries over the period 1960-2004. . Democracy has a positive and significant impact on the adoption of economic reforms but there is scarce evidence that economic reforms foster democracy. Godwin, Peter. 2010. The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe. New York: Little, Brown and Company. . A personal account of a people laid waste by a despot and, armed with nothing but a desire to be free, their astonishing courage and resilience. Grosjean, Pauline and Claudia Senik. 2011. “Democracy, Market Liberalization, and Political Preferences,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 93 (1): 365–381. . The authors estimate the impact of market development and democratization on subjective political preferences. They rely on the specific situation of frontier zones and regional variations in culture and economic development in the countries of the former socialist bloc for identification. . Using a survey conducted in 2006, they find a positive and significant effect of democracy on support for a market economy, but no effect of market liberalization on support for democracy. . Hence, in contrast with the conventional wisdom concerning the sequencing of political and economic reforms, democratization may become a necessary condition to obtain public support for further economic liberalization. Haggard, Stephan. 1990. Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. . Evaluates the political and economic rationales for industrialization strategies in NICs, through case studies of Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Brazil. Haggard, Stephan and Mathew McCubbins. 2001. Presidents, Parliaments, and Policy, Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. . Edited volume, which explores the question how and when do political institutions affect policy outcomes? Halperin, Morton, Joe Siegle, Michael Weinstein. 2005. The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace. New York: Routledge. . Empirical review of 40 years of data on democracy and development. . Argues that poor democracies outperform poor autocracies in life expectancy, infant mortality, girls' education, and other measure of development.
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Harding, Robin and David Stasavage. 2014. “What Democracy Does (and Doesn’t Do) for Basic Services: School Fees, School Inputs, and African Elections,” The Journal of Politics 76(1): 229–245. . Explores whether and how democracy improves government provision of basic services, particularly focusing on African primary education. . Finds that democracies have higher primary school attendance, largely due to abolition of school fees. . Suggests that provision of public goods, when outcomes reasonably seem to be within an elected official’s control, increases likelihood of reelection (i.e. school fees influence voter decision, but school quality does not). Helliwell, John. 1994. “Empirical Linkages between Democracy and Economic Growth,” British Journal of Political Science 24(2):225-248. . Analysis of 125 countries from 1960–1985 finds a negative but statistically insignificant effect of democracy on economic growth. Huntington, Samuel. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. . Highlights the role of political institutions in keeping political order, rather than the role of democracy-autocracy. Huntington, Samuel and Joan Nelson. 1976. No Easy Choice: Political Participation in Developing Countries. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. . Book covers the nature of political participation, its relationship to goals of elites, organizations and individuals, the interaction of socio-economic issues and political participation. Johnson, Chalmers. 1982. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. . Johnson explains the developmental state as a ‘third system,’ along with capitalism and socialism; a dirigiste system wherein the primary objective of the state is to achieve development, usually through industrialization. . Johnson’s notion of the developmental state builds from a nationalist commitment to growth. Using post-war Japan as his primary case, Johnson stipulates that for a developmental state to succeed, a nationalist desire for economic progress generates societal cohesion and willingness to sacrifice personal gain in pursuit of national achievement Knutsen, Carl Henrik. 2011. “Democracy, Dictatorship and Protection of Property Rights,” Journal of Development Studies 47(1): 164-182. . The article investigates how political regimes influence property rights, reviewing arguments for and against the hypothesis that democracy enhances property rights protections. . Results, based on date from 1984-2004 for over 120 countries, finding that democracy does enhance property rights protections. Kohli, Atul. 2004. State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery. New York: Cambridge University Press. . Kohli argues that some states are more successful than others at achieving industrial development because of variations in colonial history, the way state power is organized, and state capacity. . Includes case studies of South Korea, Brazil, India, and Nigeria. Krieckhaus, Jonathan. 2006. “Democracy and Economic Growth: How Regional Context Influences Regime Effects” British Journal of Political Science 36(2): 317-340. . This article explores the relationship between regional specificities and regimes. Lake, David and Matthew Baum. 2001. “The Invisible Hand of Democracy: Political Control and the Provision of Public Services,” Comparative Political Studies 34 (6): 587–621. . Argues that democracies have higher levels of public service provision because democracy constrains the monopoly power of the state. . “When barriers to exit and costs of participation are low, as in a democracy, the state will produce as a regulated monopoly, provide relatively larger quantities of goods at relatively lower prices, and thereby earn fewer supernormal profits or monopoly rents.” Leblang, David. 1996. “Property Rights, Democracy and Economic Growth,” Political Research Quarterly 49(1): 5-26. . Using data from 59 countries, the author explores the effects of institutional factors on economic growth during the 1980s and 1990s. Democratic freedom and property rights are associated with economic growth, which suggests that national income in poor countries can gain from efforts to install institutions.
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LeVan, A. Carl. 2015. Dictators and Democracy in African Development: the Political Economy of Good Governance in Nigeria. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. . What are the conditions for good governance in Africa, and why do many democracies still struggle with persistent poverty? Drawing on a historical study of Nigeria since independence, Levan argues that the structure of the policy-making process explains variations in government performance better than other commonly cited factors, such as oil, colonialism, ethnic diversity, foreign debt, and dictatorships Masaki, Takaaki and Nicolas van de Walle. 2015. “The Impact of Democracy on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1982-2012” The Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics: Volume 1: Context and Concepts Edited by Célestin Monga and Justin Yifu Lin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meltzer, Allan and Scott Richard. 1981. “A rational theory of the Size of Government,” Journal of Political Economy 89(5): 914–927. . Meltzer and Richard’s median voter hypothesis stipulates that in more unequal societies, since the median income will be lower than the mean income, the median voter is likely to be worse off than the mean and thus favor redistribution. This would encourage those in the lower income strata of unequal societies to mobilize for democracy in order to institute redistribution. Milner, Helen. 2006. “The Digital Divide: The Role of Political Institutions in Technology Diffusion,” Comparative Political Studies 36(2): 176–199. . Explores the role of political institutions in the diffusion of technology, specifically the spread of the internet. . Argues that democracy make the diffusion of the internet easier, relative to autocracies. Ndulu, Benno J., and Stephen O'Connell. 2008. "Policy Plus: African Growth Performance, 1960-2000." in The Political Economy of Economic Growth in Africa, 1960-2000, edited by Benno Ndulu, Stephen O'Connell, Robert Bates, Paul Collier and Chukwuma Soludo, 3-75. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. North, Douglass. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Explores how institutions—which North defines as manmade constraints on political, economic and social behavior, or the “rules of the game”— affect economic performance. . Argues that institutions can reduce uncertainty by providing information and lowering transaction costs. . Suggests that the path dependence of institutions can sometimes produce suboptimal outcomes. North, Douglass and Barry Weingast. 1989. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth Century England,” Journal of Economic History 44(4): 803–832; . Study of institutional evolution in 17th century England. . New institutions at the time, which placed limits on confiscatory government, strengthened property rights and also increased trust in the government. . Improved perceptions of the government’s likelihood to honor agreements led to an increase in loans made to the government, which the authors argue was important for financial solvency and economic growth. O'Donnell, Guillermo. 1973. Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California. . A collection of essays on authoritarianism in Latin America and is explored through the lens of the interaction of modernization with political systems. Olson, Mancur. 1982. The Rise and Decline of Nations. Economic Growth, Stagflation and Social Rigidities. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. . Olson explains why economic succumb to the British disease. . The longer society enjoys political stability, the more likely it is to develop special interest lobbies that make economies run more inefficiently. Olson, Mancur. 1993. “Democracy, Dictatorship and Development,” American Political Science Review 87(3): 567– 576. . Olson argues that the conditions necessary to sustain economic development, namely secure property rights and contract enforcement, are the same as those necessary to ensure a stable democracy . Argues that people are willing to sacrifice some of their autonomy and conform to institutions in exchange for protection against unpredictable looting (this trade-off is conceptualized as a distinction between roving and stationary bandits.)
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Orenstein, Mitchell. 2009. “What Happened in East European (Political) Economies? A Balance Sheet for Neoliberal Reform,” East European Politics and Societies 23(4): 479-490. . This article offers a mixed assessment of the results of neo-liberal economic reforms in East Europe and questions the compatibility of democracy and radical reform. Papaioannou, Elias and Gregorios Siourounis. 2008. “Democratization and Growth,” The Economic Journal 118 (October):1520–1551. . Analysis of 166 countries from 1960–2003 shows that democratic transitions are associated with a one percentage point increase of in annual GDP per capita growth. . The effect is relatively larger in “partial democratizations” and in the medium and long run. Persson, Torsten and Guido Tabellini. 2006. “Democracy and Development: The Devil in the Details,” American Economic Review 96(2): 319–324. . Study of 150 countries from 1960-2000 finds that democracy is associated with a 0.75 percentage point annual increase in economic growth. Piatek, Dawid, Katarzyna Szarzec and Michał Pilc. 2013. “Economic Freedom, Democracy and Economic Growth: A Causal Investigation in Transition Countries,” Post-Communist Economies 25(3): 267–288. Przeworski, Adam. 2010. Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Assesses the relationship between democracy and development through a study of up to 135 countries from 1950-1990. . Argues that wealth does not generate democracy, but democracies are more likely to survive in wealthy societies. Przeworski, Adam, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Material Well-being in the World, 1950-1990. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. . Is economic development conducive to political democracy? Does democracy foster or hinder material welfare? These two questions are examined by looking at the experiences of 135 countries between 1950 and 1990. . The book finds that economic development does not generate democracies, but democracies are much more likely to survive in wealthy societies. Przeworski, Adam and Fernando Limongi. 1993. “Political Regimes and Economic Growth,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7(3): 51-69. . Argues that the relationship often observed between development and democracy is actually a product of rich countries being more politically stable than poorer countries. . Concludes that economic development is more likely to prevent democracies from ‘backsliding’ than to induce a transition to democracy. Radelet, Steven. 2010. “Success Stories from ‘Emerging Africa’”, Journal of Democracy 21: 87–101. . The articles discusses successful transitions to democratization in six countries representing “emerging Africa.” . The paths of the six countries that comprise "emerging Africa" are characterized by five characteristics: democratic and accountable governments; the implementation of more sensible economic policies; the end of the decades-long debt crisis, and with it, major changes in Africa's relationship with the international community; the spread of new technologies that promote political accountability and create fresh business opportunities; and the emergence of a new generation of policy makers, activists, and business leaders. Remmer, Karen. 1990. “Democracy and Economic Crises: The Latin American Experience,” World Politics 42(3): 315–335. . The findings suggest that the conventional wisdom about democracy and economic crisis in Latin America exaggerates the relationship between political regime characteristics and policy choice, and fundamentally misconstrues the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democratic forms of governance. Rock, Michael. 2009. “Has Democracy Slowed Growth in Asia?” World Development 37(5): 941–952. . Rock examines whether democracy has actually contributed to a slow-down in economic growth in Asia. Rode, Martin and James D. Gwartney. 2012. “Does Democratization Facilitate Economic Liberalization?” European Journal of Political Economy 28(4), 607–619. . The author asks whether democratization promotes economic liberalization or is the opposite the case?
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Rodrik, Dani. 1999. “Democracies Pay Higher Wages,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (3), 707-738. . Finds a significant positive relationship between a country’s level of democracy and manufacturing wages. Rodrik, Dani. 2000. “Participatory Politics, Social Cooperation, and Economic Stability,” American Economic Review 90(2): 140-144. . Argues that democracy improves economic stability by mitigating social conflict and facilitating cooperation. . In a democracy, cooperation is induced by (1) deliberation, which can shift mindsets from self-interest to common good, (2) restricting feasible redistributions, which incentivizes cooperation, and repeated interaction among political groups. Rodrik, Dani and Romain Wacziarg. 2005. “Do Democratic Transitions Produce Bad Economic Outcomes,” American Economic Review 95(2): 50-55. . Finds positive short run effects of democracy on economic growth and reduced growth volatility following democratic transitions. Stasavage, David. 2005. ‘‘Democracy and Education Spending in Africa,’’ American Journal of Political Science 49 (2): 343–58. . The study finds that democratically elected African governments spend more on primary educations, while universities are unaffected by democratization. Sloan, John and Kent Tedin. 1987. “The Consequences of Regime Type for Public-Policy Outputs,” Comparative Political Studies 20(1): 98–124. . The authors explore the impact of regime type on public policy outputs in Latin America. Tsebelis, George. 2002. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work. Princeton: Princeton University Press. . In analyzing political outcomes, the author using game theory argues that real distinctions in outcome is a function of the extent to which political actors have veto power over policy choices. Wigley, Simon and Arzu Akkoyunlu-Wigley. 2011. “The Impact of Regime Type on Health: Does Redistribution Explain Everything?” World Politics 63(4): 647-677. . Finds that democracy improves life expectancy through both distributive and non-distributive channels.
14 Explaining the Persistence of Authoritarian Rule
Wealthy democratic governments with well-educated publics rarely collapse, but the factors that explain the survival of non-democracies are more multi-faceted. This primer assesses several factors that sustain autocratic rule, focusing on four families of explanations: wealth and natural resource endowment, political values and ideology, identity and structure of elite rule, and global context. In explaining the persistence of non-democracies, it is important to recognize that the factors that lead to the collapse of authoritarianism do not necessarily foster democracy. Cognizant of this, a final section investigates what happens when autocracies fall.
Key Points . Overall national wealth can both help and . Single-party, monarchical, and hybrid or hinder the survival of authoritarian rule, but electoral autocracies are relatively stable, extreme inequality of wealth tends to be an especially compared to governments under important precondition that allows for the military rule, which tend to be short lived. breakdown of authoritarianism. . Personalistic dictatorships can be fairly . There is a strong association between long-lived, but they often end in violence and abundant petroleum and dictatorship but it leave an institutional vacuum unfavorable to varies by region, and the relationship is democracy. weaker if oil is discovered during a . When democracy dominates world politics, democratic regime. autocratic survival suffers (e.g. post-Cold . There is no evidence that Islamic or Asian War). values are intrinsically incompatible with . Foreign aid often—but not inevitably— democracy. reinforces autocratic rule. . Party-based autocracies born out of . The collapse of autocracy does not ideological (often communist or socialist) necessarily bring meaningful democracy. violent or revolutionary struggle are often very durable.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 accelerated a authoritarianism has since emerged to explain why global expansion of democracy begun in the early and how dictatorships survive. Regime typologies 1970s. However, it also generated a surplus of are a part of this research, but more importantly, it optimism about the fragility of dictatorships, has empirically established some patterns over time oversimplified the relationship between free markets while specifying some regional and structural and democracy,1 and often presumed that transitions exceptions. This primer focuses on four families of imply eventual democratization. A recent explanations for the persistence of autocratic rule: comparative (and corrective) literature on wealth and natural resource endowment, political
...... 1 Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press.
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values and ideology, identity and structure of elite rule. By contrast, resource wealth in highly unequal rule, and global context. societies will eventually provoke demands for redistribution and perhaps democratization.5 A large Wealth and Natural Resources literature review of existing research found that oil The strong association between dictatorship and oil undermines democracy more than other types of wealth is striking. Countries that derive most of their natural resources, while noting variation in its effects national income from natural resources are depending on the region: oil buttresses overwhelmingly long-lasting autocracies.2 However, authoritarianism in the Middle East and in Sub- the political effects of natural resources are also Saharan Africa, but it tends to have democratizing 6 influenced by the overall level of economic inequality effects in Latin America. Haber and Menaldo use and whether natural resource exploitation began data dating to the 1800s and claim that there is no under dictatorship. resource curse. Some countries might enjoy a The robust relationship between oil wealth and “resource blessing,” especially if the state already authoritarianism is known as the “resource curse.” In has established a capacity to govern. For example, this literature, natural resources prolong and fortify countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, non-democratic rule through several mechanisms. and Papua New Guinea remained democratic during 7 Elites in such countries can secure money and other resource booms. This seems consistent with recent political rents without having to levy taxes. This cases where oil was discovered after weakens the bonds between representation and democratization. For example, Ghana has resource allocation decisions.3 This implies that demonstrated some “structural immunity” to the citizens have less political leverage and a smaller resource curse, even if though the benefits of its 8 stake in countries where the government asks little newfound oil have yet to be translated into growth. of them. Moreover, since oil needs a small number Autocratic stability is also shaped by overall of workers to generate a large share of national wealth levels and the rate of economic growth. wealth, there is a weaker basis for mass Considering only non-democracies, historical trends mobilization. Authoritarian governments can further show that the poorest and richest autocracies tend prolong their rule if they provide public goods or to persist, while those at middling levels of wealth social welfare programs, though rulers are much lack regime stability and thus face the likelihood of 9 more likely to do so if succession crises are unlikely transition. The experience of post-communist states because this enables them to formulate policies with offers a potential explanation: economic reforms and a long “time horizon.”4 growth were “essential for regime maintenance,” but Several lines of research attempt to ascertain could also “challenge communist rule by creating whether resources really are a “curse.” One study groups not incorporated into the existing political 10 finds that resource wealth is conditional, with lower system.” levels of economic inequality buoying authoritarian In short, wealth seems to stabilize democratic rule, but it may undermine dictatorships. One study
...... 2 Diamond 2008, Table 3.3; Diamond and Mosbacher 2016. 3 Mahdavy 1970; Huntington 1991, 65; Ross 2001. 4 Clague, Christopher. 1997. Institutions and Economic Development: Growth and Governance in Less-Developed and Post- Socialist Countries. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press; Huber, Evelyne, Thomas Mustillo, and John D. Stephens. 2008. "Politics and Social Spending in Latin America." The Journal of Politics 70 (2): 420-436. 5 Dunning 2008. 6 Ahmadov, Anar K. 2013. "Oil, Democracy, and Context: A Meta-Analysis." Comparative Political Studies 47 (9): 1238-1267. 7 Haber, Stephen and Victor Menaldo. 2011. “Do Natural Resources Fuel Authoritarianism? A Reappraisal of the Resource Curse,” American Political Science Review 105 (1): 1-26. 8 Kumbah-Abiwu, Felix. 2017. “Democratic Institutions, Natural Resource Governance, and Ghana’s Oil Wealth,” Social Sciences 6(1): 21. 9 Przeworski et al. 2000, 92-4. 10 Dimitrov 2013, 6.
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finds that greater national income increases the a democracy,” but only 30% of millennials say so. likelihood of democratic transition, implying that Great Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, wealth erodes authoritarian rule.11 Other research and a startling range of cases have experienced shows that equality gaps between elites and citizens comparable declines in generational support for tend to create a pre-condition that leaves democracy.14 By contrast, in parts of the developing authoritarian regimes susceptible to revolution and world, notably Africa, trends are moving in the other downfall.12 Specifically, in unequal societies, direction, with growing support for democracy over economic and political shocks could activate citizen other forms of rule. Many citizens do not see their grievances, inspiring people to revolt and demand countries as democratic though, pointing to a gap political reform. between demand and supply.15 Attitudes should not be equated with cultural Political Beliefs, Ideology, and Values values, and they only offer a proxy, or a substitute There is some evidence that political beliefs and for more direct measurement. But such cross- values contribute to the persistence of autocratic national data has vastly improved our ability to government. For example, some argue that Islamic compare different understandings of good values are incompatible with democracy. Islam’s governance and to gauge sympathy at the national- supposed aversion to secular government level for autocratic rule. undermines tolerance of minorities, and cultural Political ideology can also help sustain practices marginalizing women, perpetuate autocratic rule. Party-based authoritarian authoritarianism. In Asia, Confucianism has been governments that forged strong ideological ties (e.g. associated with deference to authority, and therefore socialism or communism) through revolution and linked to tolerance of dictatorship. However, armed conflict are extremely resilient to economic evidence from an array of studies and public opinion crises and shocks to regime power as illustrated by polls show otherwise: majorities of citizens from North Korea and Cuba. The formation of party many Muslim-majority countries express support for ideologies at these key moments in history, borne democracy—and in some cases for specific from violent struggle, promotes cohesion among democratic values—even at levels comparable to elites and creates a legitimizing set of values and 16 people from western countries.13 The mass protests history that can perpetuate public acquiescence. and calls for democracy in the Arab Spring (and This might explain why autocracies under one-party before that, the Green Movement in Iran) suggest rule like China tend to be long lasting. Zimbabwe that citizens do not intrinsically prefer authoritarian provides another example, where the ruling party rule. Findings from cases such as Myanmar, Taiwan, constructed a narrative around its role in the armed and Hong Kong are similar, suggesting that “Asian” struggle to end white minority rule, sustaining Robert values are not somehow conducive to Mugabe in power from 1987 to 2017.
authoritarianism. Some recent research suggests that Who are the Elites and How Do They democratic values can deteriorate, even in stable Rule? democracies. For example, 72% of Americans born Political parties, along with legislatures and before World War II say that it is “essential to live in elections, are important examples of institutions that
...... 11 Boix, Carles. 2011. Political Order and Inequality : Their Foundations and Their Consequences. New York : Cambridge University Press. 12 Acemoglu and Robinson 2006. 13 Reviewing the evidence, see Diamond 2008, 34-38. 14 Foa, Roberto Stefan, and Yascha Mounk. “The Signs of Deconsolidation.” Journal of Democracy 28 (1) (January 2017). 15 Bratton, Michael and Richard Houessou, “Demand for Democracy is Rising in Africa, But Most Political Leaders Fail to Deliver,” Policy Paper (Afrobarometer, April 23, 2014). 16 Way 2011; Levitsky and Way 2012. One set of studies focuses on Communist Regimes, including the role of ideology (Dimitrov 2013, especially p. 24-29).
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enhance the durability of authoritarianism. They Yet, there are circumstances under which structure authoritarian politics and elite rule in authoritarian elites can be prevented from rigging important ways. They allow – or sometimes compel elections, even when they have control over strong – autocrats to effectively share power. Institutions militaries. Magaloni, for example, finds that also facilitate clientelism, co-opt opposition groups, opposition unity, whether it is elite-driven or voter- and create a way for political opponents to express driven, as well as the threat of widespread civil their frustrations with the regime without resorting to disobedience can compel incumbent leaders to hold violence.17 Regimes with legislatures are especially clean elections. This is even more likely if armed durable for such reasons.18 forces split over the benefits of liberalization. The While elections were once the hallmark of business sector may also facilitate opposition democracy, regimes ranging from civilian coordination by funding parties, if they no longer see dictatorships like Singapore, military juntas like the incumbent government advancing their Burma’s (prior to 2012), and even monarchies like interests.22 Jordan and Morocco, use multiparty elections to Dictators relying on military rule tend to be short prolong their tenure. For example, Mexico’s PRI lived, as professionalized military elites tend not to persisted for decades thanks to its strategic use of see their place as political leaders.23 Furthermore, electoral and multiparty institutions to shore up the path to military autocracy generally involves a political support and deter opposition.19 Since the coup, but such an illegitimate entry into politics has 1960s, countries like Singapore and Malaysia have the effect of inviting or legitimizing additional also used a superficial multiparty political seizures of government power.24 Some governments competition to legitimize their regimes and thus adopt “coup proofing” policies such military marginalize political enemies. Elections help to promotions and increased defense spending as secure public and global legitimacy. Autocrats since deterrents.25 Military regimes may also seek to the 1990s find it difficult to justify their rule without establish legitimacy by transitioning to a temporary, engaging in elections (however flawed), as holding civilian government only to relapse back into military elections has become the dominant international rule (e.g. Pakistan and Thailand).26 norm for choosing political leaders.20 Elections are Rulers in monarchical regimes such as Jordan, most likely to backfire as a survival strategy if the Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates enjoy regime already allows for some democracy and long tenures, as they do not need to justify their political competition, and as elections are repeated place as heads of states.27 One study found that over time. This appears especially true for regimes monarchy insulated such regimes from popular since the 1990s.21 movements during the Arab Spring because security
...... 17 Magaloni 2006; Gandhi 2008; Boix and Svolik 2012. 18 Haggard, Stephan, and Robert R. Kaufman. 2016. Dictators and Democrats: Masses, Elites and Regime Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 19 Magaloni 2006. 20 Levitsky and Way 2010; Schedler 2010. Data from Magaloni, Chu, and Min 2012 show that multiparty autocracy has become the most common form of dictatorship after 1990. 21 Lindberg, Staffan I. 2009. "When and Where do Elections Matter? A Global Test of the Democratization by Elections Hypothesis, 1900–2010." In Democratization by Elections: A New Mode of Transition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; Edgell, Amanda B, Valeriya Mechkova, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, and Staffan I Lindberg. 2017. 22 Arriola, Leonardo. 2013. Multi-ethnic Coalitions in Africa: Business Financing of Opposition Election Campaigns. New York: Cambridge University Press. 23 Huntington 1957; Geddes 2003. 24 Cheibub, Jose Antonio. 2007. Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 25 Powell, Jonathan. 2012. “Determinants of the Attempting and Outcome of Coups d’état.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56 (6): 1017-1040. 26 Chu and Min 2013. 27 Geddes 2003; Magaloni 2008.
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services felt bound to the loyalty of the king.28 In pressures for democracy.33 Importantly though, response to the Color Revolutions in the former Levitsky and Way also find that find that attempts to Soviet States and the Arab Spring, another study impose democracy through “leverage” (such as found that authoritarian regimes may fortify conditionalites or sanctions) usually fail, and regimes themselves by engaging in “diffusion proofing,” resist democratization if they have a strategic patron preventing the geographical spread of revolutionary providing aid. ideas by controlling information and raising the costs The impact of foreign aid on democracy is the of dissent.29 subject of much research. Economic assistance and remittances in most cases extend the longevity of International Factors: World System both autocrats and democrats—it essentially and Foreign Aid prolongs the status quo.34 In the long run, however, international aid helps dictators most because they In a world system ruled by dictatorship or by a can stockpile the aid for a “rainy day” in which the mix of political regimes, autocracy enjoys greater resources can be deployed to buy off or repress stability.30 Autocratic superpowers prefer smaller opposition groups. Indeed, unearned foreign income countries to be likewise autocratic, as such societies lengthens the lifespan of dictators by decreasing the make better client states and are less likely to likelihood of government turnover, regime collapse, promote democratic uprisings. As the Cold War era and the outbreak of mass political discontent.35 In demonstrates, autocracy also benefits from a global this sense, unconditional foreign aid may function as system of both autocratic and democratic a rough equivalent to natural resource wealth— superpowers. In such an environment, authoritarian providing one more source of rents to sustain elites hegemons still prefer other governments to be who are not accountable to their people. These autocratic, while democracies often support non- issues are especially severe if dictators can channel democracies in the interest of stability. military aid to repress their political opponents. In contrast, autocratic survival suffers under a 31 democracy-dominated global context. The period After Autocracy following the Soviet Union’s fall illustrates this trend. In a path breaking study, Steven Levitsky and Lucan The downfall of autocracy does not necessarily Way show that post-Cold War competitive usher in meaningful democracy. Many single-party authoritarian governments with strong linkages to and military regimes have transitioned into hybrid, the west tended to collapse and democratize.32 electoral autocracies rather than becoming fully Among such cases, even countries whose ruling democratic. Geddes et al. find that half of all regime parties enjoyed long tenures, like Mexico and transitions are from one dictatorship to another, with Taiwan, rapidly transitioned into democracy in the other transitions continuing the same regime (with a 1990s. Communication, trade, and cultural ties such new ruler) or moving to democracy. Regimes based as tourism facilitate the linkages that promote on a cultish following of the leader are not only democracy. Technologies such as social media difficult to sustain. Any road to democracy following could also foster transnational networks of the collapse of such “personalist” regimes is very democracy activists that accelerate grassroots difficult precisely due to the lack of institutions or
...... 28 Brownlee, Jason, Tarek Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds. 2015. The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform. New York: Oxford University Press 29 Koesel, Karrie and Valerie Bunce, “Diffusion-Proofing: Russian and Chinese Reponses to Waves of Popular Mobilization against Authoritarian Rulers,” Perspectives on Politics 11(3): 753-68. 30 Boix 2011. 31 Boix 2011. 32 Levitsky and Way 2010. 33 Dobson 2012. 34 Kono and Montinola 2009. 35 Ahmed 2012.
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organizations to mediate different views, thus Conclusion increasing instability and uncertainty.36 A recent After an initial global wave of democratization in the study of the Arab Spring found that ideas and 1990s, the return to authoritarianism and the rise of institutions both played a role in the likelihood of a hybrid regimes are striking trends from the last 15 democratic transitions after regime collapse. The years. Autocrats possess a vast repertoire of failure of citizens to collectively articulate a sense of survival strategies shaped by domestic factors such national identity, and “sticky” institutions captured by as resource wealth, economic inequality, and elites, both helped sustain authoritarianism after institutional context. International factors influencing regime collapse.37 survival include aid levels, the prevalence of The death of dictatorship might lead to no democracy regionally, and global norms for regime transition at all: state collapse could bring elections. Contemporary authoritarian regimes have anarchy. Somalia’s experience in the 1990s speaks proven surprisingly resilient, and their institutional to this possibility. Effective democratization does not adaptation is an important trend since the optimistic just require the breakdown of authoritarianism, but expectations of the 1990s. the existence of a “useable state,” which includes
state institutions and bureaucracy necessarily for any form of governance.38
...... 36 Geddes, Barbara, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz. 2014. "Autocratic breakdown and regime transitions: A new data set." Perspectives on Politics 12 (2): 313-331. 37 Cook, Steven. 2017. False Dawn: Protest, Democracy and Violence in the New Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press. 38 Huntington 1968; Stepan and Linz 1996.
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Annotated Bibliography
Acemoglu, Daron and James A. Robinson. 2006. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. . Book treatment on the relationship between economic development (and especially economic inequality), autocratic stability, democratization, and democratic stability. . Method/evidence: case studies, formal/game theoretic models, statistical studies. Ahmed, Faisal Z. 2012. “The Perils of Unearned Foreign Income: Aid, Remittances, and Government Survival.” American Political Science Review 106 (1): 146-65. . Claims that unearned foreign income fuels autocratic survival. . Autocratic governments will be more likely to increase spending on patronage in the presence of unearned foreign income. . Ahmed argues that these effects operate like a resource curse by propping up autocratic governments but not requiring them to be accountable to their citizens Ahmadov, Anar K. “Oil, Democracy, and Context: A Meta-Analysis.” Comparative Political Studies 47 (9) (August 1, 2014): 1238–67. . Ahmadov attempts to adjudicate between claims of a resource curse or a resource blessing in a meta-analysis of existing studies of oil and democracy. . He finds that oil is more strongly associated with authoritarianism than are mineral resources; there is regional variation in the presence of a resource curse, with a negative relationship between oil and democracy in MENA and sub-Saharan Africa, but a positive relationship in Latin America; and oil primarily affects democracy through declines in educational attainment. Arriola, Leonardo. 2013. Multi-ethnic Coalitions in Africa: Business Financing of Opposition Election Campaigns. New York: Cambridge University Press. . This study explains how the business-state relationship can influence coalition bargaining among opposition politicians representing different ethnic groups. It combines cross-national analyses of African countries with in- depth case studies of Cameroon and Kenya to show that incumbents actively manipulate financial controls and institutions in order to prevent members of the business community -- the main funders of parties in poor countries -- from supporting their opposition. . It demonstrates that opposition politicians are more likely to build multiethnic coalitions once incumbents have lost their ability to blackmail the business sector through financial reprisals. Boix, Carles. 2011. “Democracy, Development, and the International System.” American Political Science Review 105 (4): 809-28. . Authoritarian hegemon increases authoritarian resilience; Democratic hegemon tilts regime transitions in favor of democracy—Haiti; Iraq; East Timor and other external regime changes that disrupt authoritarian rule; bipolar system favors authoritarianism because democracies favor stability Boix, Carles. 2015. Political Order and Inequality. Cambridge University Press. . Combining ethnographical material, historical cases, and statistical analysis, Boix describes the foundations of stateless societies, why and how states emerge, and the basis of political obligation. . As a result of this inquiry, he explains the economic and political roots of inequality, describes the causes of the stagnation of the preindustrial world, and explores what led to the West's prosperity of the past two centuries. Boix, Carles and Milan W. Svolik. 2013. “The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government: Institutions, Commitment, and Power-Sharing in Dictatorships.” Journal of Politics 75 (2): 300-16. . Institutionalized power sharing increases the lifespan of dictatorships. . The existence of either a legislature or a party has a large, positive, and statistically significant negative effect on the risk of coups Bratton, Michael, and Richard Houessou. “Demand for Democracy Is Rising in Africa, But Most Political Leaders Fail to Deliver.” Policy Paper. Afrobarometer, April 23, 2014. http://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Policy%20paper/ab_r5_policypaperno11.pdf. . Analyzes Afrobarometer survey data from 34 countries in Africa and shows a gap between supply and demand for democracy. . Data show that 71% of respondents prefer democracy but only 46% exclusively prefer it over all forms of autocracy. 7 Explaining the Persistence of Authoritarian Rule
. Perceptions of democracy in these countries are largely shaped by assessments of previous elections. If elections are viewed as free and fair, citizens are more likely to describe the country as democratic. . Bratton and Houessou claim that this is evidence of political institutionalization, wherein the public has begun to judge the quality of governance by the quality of elections (institutions), rather than the behavior of the president (characteristics of personalist rule). Bratton, Michael, Robert Mattes, and E. Gyimah-Boadi. 2005. Public Opinion, Democracy, and Market Reform in Africa. Cambridge University Press. . Review of public opinion data from Afrobarometer on demand for democracy and perceived supply in sub- Saharan Africa. Brownlee, Jason, Tarek Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds. 2015. The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform. New York: Oxford University Press . Explores how institutional and structural factors affect the outcome of uprisings. Cheibub, Jose Antonio. 2007. Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. . Conventional wisdom among political scientists points to the incentives generated by the form of government itself; the independence of the executive and legislature that defines presidentialism generates incentives that are not conducive to the consolidation of democracy. . Using a data set for all democracies between 1946 and 2002, this study finds that this is not the case: the incentives generated by presidentialism are as conducive to the consolidation of democracy as the ones generated by parliamentarism. . What hurts presidentialism is the fact that it exists in countries where democracies of any type are not likely to survive. Chu, Jonathan and Eric Min. 2013. “Explaining Military Relapse.” Working Paper, Stanford University. Available at: http://ericmin.com/research/. . Makes the observation that some countries seem to fall into a pattern of rapid alternations between military and civilian rule. . Argues that this fluctuation is a function of mutual distrust between civilian and military elites. Draws from cases of Myanmar and Chile. Clague, Christopher. 1997. Institutions and Economic Development: Growth and Governance in Less-Developed and Post-Socialist Countries. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cook, Steven A. 2017. False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East. Oxford University Press. . Cooks tries to understand what conditions in Arab Spring countries allowed for the reproduction of authoritarianism rather than transitions to democracy. . The book’s central argument is that ‘sticky’ institutions, which reflect the interests of the powerful, and national identity crises present obstacles to democratic transitions. . Despite uprisings in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, which ousted autocratic rulers, elites and power structures remained intact. In the aftermath of the uprisings that unseated autocrats, citizens were unable to collectively define a national identity; Cook specifically discusses debates between Islamic and secular identities, as well as economic nationalism versus globalization. Diamond, Larry. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. . The book asks whether democracy is something that can exist only in rich and educated countries, those with a strong middle class. Do all people actually want democracy, or do some believe that a form of authoritarianism is the best way to run a country? . To answer this question, Diamond, in a large survey of countries around the world, examines the forces that contribute to democracy, from the internal influences that give rise to civil societies to the impact of peaceful outside pressures like diplomatic persuasion or, in some cases, economic sanctions.
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Diamond, Larry and Jack Mosbacher. 2016. “Petroleum to the People—Africa’s Coming Resource Curse and How to Prevent it.” In Search of Democracy, author: Larry Diamond. New York, NY: Routledge. . The authors consider Africa’s impending oil boom are argue that the resource curse is not inevitable . African countries can take steps to avoid the resource curse, suggesting an oil-to-cash plan that would distribute benefits to the population rather than to only elites. Dimitrov, Martin K. 2013. Why Communism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe. Cambridge University Press. . The study asserts that when regimes are no longer able to implement adaptive change, contingent leadership choices and contagion dynamics make collapse more likely. . By conducting paired comparisons of the European and Asian cases and by developing arguments that encompass both collapse and resilience, the author offers a new methodological approach for studying communist autocracies. Dobson, William J. 2012. The Dictator’s Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy. Toronto, Canada: Double Day. . Today’s authoritarians are not like the static regimes of Burma and North Korea. . They are ever-changing, technologically savvy, and internationally connected, and have replaced more brutal forms of intimidation with subtle coercion. . The book explains this dynamic and provides crucial insight into the challenge for democracy. Dunning, Thad. 2008. Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. . Examines the conditions under which oil can hurt or hamper autocratic stability or inhibit democratization. . Argues that oil stabilizes authoritarian regimes when their societies have high income equality, but does not buttress autocracy when the society has high income inequality. Edgell, Amanda B., Valeriya Mechkova, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, and Staffan I. Lindberg. “When and Where Do Elections Matter? A Global Test of the Democratization by Elections Hypothesis, 1900–2010.” Democratization, September 7, 2017, 1–23. . Edgell et al. find that successive multiparty elections are associated with positive improvements on the liberal and deliberative components of democracy, though less so on the egalitarian component. . Claims that repeated elections can facilitate social learning for opposition parties, citizens, and civil society organizations and can lead to improvements in engagement, accountability, and coordination. Foa, Roberto Stefan, and Yascha Mounk. “The Signs of Deconsolidation.” Journal of Democracy 28 (1) (January 2017). . Drawing on public opinion data from the World Values Survey and various national polls, the authors show that the success of anti-establishment parties and candidates is not an exception, but rather a reflection of growing popular disaffection with liberal-democratic norms and institutions, and of increasing support for authoritarian interpretations of democracy. . The record number of anti-system politicians in office raises uncertainty about the strength of supposedly “consolidated” liberal democracies and highlights the need for further analysis of the signs of democratic deconsolidation. Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press. . Observing the collapse of the cold war in 1989 and fall of the Soviet Union, in this seminal work, Fukuyama argues that we may be witnessing the end of all ideological conflict. Gandhi, Jennifer. 2008. Political Institutions under Dictatorship. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. . Examines the role of various political institutions—legislative, multiparty competition, etc—in the context of authoritarianism. . Shows how autocrats use these institutions to hold onto power. Geddes, Barbara. 2003. Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press. . The most relevant pages are pages 50-88. . Shows that military regimes are shorter lived than party-based regimes.
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Geddes, Barbara, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz. “Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set.” Perspectives on Politics; Cambridge 12 (2) (June 2014): 313–31. . Using a new dataset on autocratic breakdown, Geddes et al. posit three potential paths a country can take after the fall of an autocratic leader: transition to democracy, continuation of the same autocratic regime with a new leader, or transition to a new autocratic regime. . Half of all regime changes are from one autocracy to another. . Claims that a country’s transition path is contingent on prior regime type. Haber, Stephen, and Victor Menaldo. “Do Natural Resources Fuel Authoritarianism? A Reappraisal of the Resource Curse.” The American Political Science Review 105 (1) (2011): 1–26. . Haber and Menaldo claim that, rather than being a curse, resource wealth can sometimes increase democratization. . They find no evidence of a resource curse, but instead claim that weak state capacity jointly predicts authoritarianism and resource reliance. Thus, the resource curse is conditional on a priori institutional context and state capacity. Haggard, Stephan, and Robert R. Kaufman. 2016. Dictators and Democrats: Masses, Elites, and Regime Change. Princeton University Press. . Haggard and Kaufman claim that, among authoritarian regimes, those with legislatures are more durable because institutions manage intra-elite rivalries and provide power-sharing and coup-proofing mechanisms. . Legislatures also supply constructive avenues for dissent, making protest and civil disobedience less likely. Huber, Evelyne, Thomas Mustillo, and John D. Stephens. 2008. "Politics and Social Spending in Latin America." The Journal of Politics 70 (2): 420-436. Huntington, Samuel. 1957. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. . A classic on civil-military relations, especially with regards to the U.S. Looks at the centrality of military corporate culture. Huntington, Samuel. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. . Highlights the role of political institutions in keeping political order, rather than the role of democracy-autocracy. . Chapter 4 sheds light on military authoritarian rule. Huntington, Samuel. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. . Discusses the “Third Wave” of democracy after the Cold War. . Looks at factors that might explain prospects for democracy in the future. Jensen, N., and L. Wantchekon. “Resource Wealth and Political Regimes in Africa.” Comparative Political Studies 37 (2004): 816–41. . Uses empirical evidence to show a negative relationship between size of resource sector and level of democracy. . Claims that resource abundance has negative effects for both democratic transition and democratic consolidation in Africa. Koesel, Karrie J., and Valerie J. Bunce. “Diffusion-Proofing: Russian and Chinese Responses to Waves of Popular Mobilizations against Authoritarian Rulers.” Perspectives on Politics 11 (3) (2013): 753–68. . Claims that authoritarian leaders engage in “diffusion-proofing” to prevent the spread of revolutionary ideas to their countries. . Strategies can include controlling information about uprisings or negatively reframing them, demobilizing or coopting opposition groups or civil society organizations, and implementing punitive measures for protest and dissent. Kono, Daniel Yuichi and Gabriella R. Montinola. 2009. “Does Foreign Aid Support Autocrats, Democrats, or Both?” Journal of Politics 71 (2): 704-18. . To survive in office, dictators need to be able to credibly commit to share power with and not abuse their ruling coalition.
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Kopiński, Dominik, Andrzej Polus, and Wojciech Tycholiz. “Resource Curse or Resource Disease? Oil in Ghana.” African Affairs 112, (449) (October 1, 2013): 583–601. . Claims that by having political institutions in place at the time of oil discovery, Ghana may have “structural immunity” to the resource curse. Levitsky, Steven and Lucan A. Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. . Studies why certain competitive authoritarian regimes or hybrid regimes democratized after the Cold War while others did not. . Hybrid regimes with strong western ties democratized, while others may or may not democratize depending on elite cohesion and external intervention. Levitsky, Steven and Lucan A. Way. 2012. “Beyond Patronage: Violent Struggle, Ruling Party Coalition, and Authoritarian Durability.” Perspectives on Politics 10 (4): 869-89. . Argues that access to power and benefits does not guarantee elite cooperation during crises in party-based authoritarian regimes. Cohesion is instead driven by identities, norms, and organizational structures that emerge through conflict. . Case studies of Zambia, Kenya, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. Londregan, John B. and Keith T. Poole. 1990. “Poverty, the Coup Trap, and the Seizure of Executive Power.” World Politics 42 (2): 151-83. . Military coups can legitimize subsequent coups, leaving countries in a “Coup trap.” Lindberg, Staffan I. 2009. Democratization by Elections: A New Mode of Transition. Johns Hopkins University Press. . Argues that elections (even when flawed) promote democratization by establishing institutions. . More likely in partial democracies rather than strong authoritarian regimes or liberal democracies (i.e. countries in the middle of the spectrum, rather than either end). . The decisive factors for democratization by elections include competitiveness and repetition. Linz, Juan J. and Alfred Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. . An important book that examines the pathways and prospects for how nondemocratic regimes transition into democracy. Lust-Okar, Ellen. 2009. “Legislative Elections in Hegemonic Authoritarian Regimes: Competitive Clientelism and Resistance to Democratization.” In Democratization by Elections: A New Mode of Transition, edited by Staffan I. Lindberg. Johns Hopkins University Press. . Lust-Okar argues that elections may have a democratizing effect in competitive authoritarian regimes but not hegemonic authoritarian regimes, where elections are held as a form of “competitive clientelism.” . Elections in this context are about access to resources, which candidates cannot provide unless they work with the existing regime. Magaloni, Beatriz. 2008. “Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule.” Comparative Political Studies 41 (4/5): 715-41. . To survive in office, dictators need to be able to credibly commit to share power with and not abuse their ruling coalition. . In order of shortest to longest lived regimes are: military regimes (Burma before 2012), hegemonic regimes (Mexico under the PRI), monarchies (Jordan), single-party regimes (China’s PRC), and then democracies. Magloni, Beatriz, Jonathan Chu, and Eric Min. 2013. Autocracies of the World, 1950-2012 (Version 1.0). Dataset, Stanford University. Available at: http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/research/autocracies_of_the_world_dataset. . A country-year level data set that classifies different governments’ types of political regimes (e.g. single-party, monarchy, military, and democracy). Mahdavy, Hussein. 1970. “The Patterns and Problems of Economic Development in Rentier States: the Case of Iran.” In Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East, ed. M.A. Cook. London, UK: Oxford University Press. . One of the first to make the argument that oil inhibits democracy and props up autocracy. Powell, Jonathan. 2012. “Determinants of the Attempting and Outcome of Coups d’état.” Journal of Conflict Resolution no. 56 (6): 1017-1040. . Empirically tests the effectiveness of coup-proofing strategies. 11 Explaining the Persistence of Authoritarian Rule
Pzeworski, Adam, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. . Assesses the relationship between democracy and development. Argues that wealth does not generate democracy, but democracies are more likely to survive in wealthy societies. . Sections cited in this briefing are more specific to autocratic stability. Ross, Michael. 2012. The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. . Assesses the history of the oil curse and its economic and political implications. Ross, Michael L. “Does Oil Hinder Democracy?” World Politics 53, no. 3 (2001): 325–61. Schmierer, Richard J. “False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East.” Middle East Policy 24 (3) (September 1, 2017): 176–79. . Analyzing cross-national data from 113 countries between 1971 and 1997, finds that oil impedes democratization. . Finds some support for three causal mechanisms: a rentier effect, a repression effect, and a modernization effect. Schedler, Andreas. 2010. “Authoritarianism’s Last Line of Defense.” Journal of Democracy 21 (1): 69-80. . Looks at how authoritarian governments use multiparty and “democratic” institutions to retain power. Svolik, Milan W. 2012. The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. . A comprehensive treatment on the politics of authoritarian rule, drawing from formal modeling, statistics, and case studies. Way, Lucan A. 2011. “The Lessons of 1989.” Journal of Democracy 22 (4): 13-23. . Applies lessons from the revolutions after the Cold War to argue that the revolutions of the Arab Spring will have difficulty in producing democratization because they seek to topple deeply embedded revolutionary ideologies, which favor authoritarian stability. Wright, Joseph. 2009. “How Foreign Aid Can Foster Democratization in Authoritarian Regimes.” American Journal of Political Science 53 (3): 552-71. . Foreign aid can promote democratization if it is made conditional on democratization and the existing ruling party expects to retain power in an electoral system.
12 Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
This primer summarizes research exploring whether there are economic and social requisites of democracy. While economic development correlates with democracy, poor countries can democratize. However, inequality, and indirect effects of economic growth through factors such as education, illustrate how the relationship between development and democracy is complex.
Key Points . Most evidence points to a strong, positive . With economic conditions, it is important to relationship between economic distinguish between what leads to development and democracy. Explanations democracy, and what might sustain it. for this correlation differ though, and some . Education and changes in peoples’ values question whether democracy depends facilitate the emergence and consolidation of prerequisites. democracy. . The impact of wealth on democracy is more . Civil society is also important for the ambiguous when one factors in inequality: emergence and sustainability of democracy, higher levels do not necessarily increase though its role varies by region and many demand for democracy nor do they countries have limited freedoms to associate generate the conditions to mobilize for it. or organize.
Does Democracy Have Prerequisites? research specifies how economic conditions such as inequality, the type of wealth (such as land or income), Ever since 1959, when Seymour Martin Lipset’s or vulnerability to shocks impacts the relationship. pioneering work demonstrated a statistical correlation Finally, studies focused on social requisites highlight between economic development and democracy, this how education or particular values are conducive to relationship has constituted one of the most democracy, exploring how broader changes in political thoroughly researched topics in political science. In culture are linked to economic shifts. the most widely cited example of “modernization
theory,” he argues that “the more well-to-do a nation, Economic Development and Democracy the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy.”1 Modernization theory proposes that various However, the explanations for this strong dimensions of economic development contribute to relationship and the question of whether development the emergence and sustenance of democracy. must precede democracy have significantly evolved. Lipset’s early work found that among European, This is especially true since the 1990s, when poor English-speaking, and Latin American countries, the countries such as Benin and El Salvador average level of national wealth, degree of democratized. The statistical correlation has been industrialization, level of urbanization and education is studied first by examining of overall levels of wealth or much higher for more democratic countries. A national income, often challenging Lipset’s intuition literature review by Larry Diamond of the quantitative that development precedes democracy. Other evidence for this theory, published in the 1990s,
Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
concludes that virtually all available studies over three may contribute to higher levels of democracy in the decades found a strong, positive relationship between medium-term (10 to 20 years).8 higher levels of economic development and A variety of other factors appear to condition any democracy. Diamond thus finds support for Lipset’s hypothesized relationship between development and thesis, and then reformulates it as, “The more well-to- democracy, thus indicating that causality moves in do the people of a country, on average, the more likely both directions. For example, after accounting for they will favor, achieve, and maintain a democratic historical characteristics such as religion or date of system of their country.”2 independence, the positive relationship between per Many scholars from the developing world question capita income and levels of democracy no longer modernization theory’s underlying assumption that exists.9 Similarly, differences in European colonization development is a linear process, progressively moving strategies prompted colonial societies to embark on toward a uniformly similar outcome of democracy.3 divergent political-economic development pathways: Another important critique, which forms a significant Some countries emerged as relatively prosperous and ongoing debate in the literature, concerns the direction democratic, while others were relatively poor and of causality. For example, one study of over 100 undemocratic at the time of their independence.10 countries from 1960 to 1995 reveals that higher levels The effect of per capita income on democracy of democracy (measured in terms of electoral rights or also appears to be conditional upon factors such as a civil liberties) is positively associated with country’s stage of economic development or the improvements in the standard of living measured by structure of the international system. An analysis of all per capita GDP, primary school attainment, and the sovereign countries since the early 18th century gap between male and female primary schooling.4 But shows per capita income accelerates democratization as discussed in Primer No. 2, the evidence of in countries at the middle stages of development. But democracy’s superior economic performance is mixed income growth does not increase the likelihood of a (and it depends on the type of economy). A recent transition to democracy beyond a certain income review of 33 different studies finds no statistically threshold.11 In other words, as countries become significant relationship between income and richer, further economic development has little impact democracy, for example.5 on the likelihood of democratization. As for the Different findings regarding the causal relationship international system, it mediates the effects of income between democracy and economic development also by advancing or undermining the conditions for arise from research that differentiates democratization democracy through foreign policy. In the Cold War as a process from democratic survival. One viewpoint era, both the Soviet Union and the United States to evidence that democracy is more likely to survive in supported friendly authoritarian governments across developed countries. A seminal study of 135 countries the world.12 between 1950 and 1990 argues that income level cannot predict democratic transitions. But once a Inequality and Income Distribution transition has taken place, democracies are more Democratic transition and consolidation are not only 6 likely to survive in wealthier countries. Another view contingent upon the level of wealth, but also upon the claims that democracies are more likely to emerge as distribution of the wealth, and as some studies note, countries reach higher levels of economic the type of wealth. As detailed in Primer No. 3 on development. To this end, a study of up to 135 “Autocratic Resilience,” for example, natural resource countries during 1850 to 1990 presents evidence that income – especially from oil – increases national economic development increases both the probability wealth but usually impedes democracy.13 of democratic transitions and the likelihood of A classic conservative school of thought sees 7 democratic stability. A more recent study points out democracy as the outcome of distributive conflict. It that increased levels of economic development departs from the reasonable idea that in unequal stabilize authoritarian regimes. But if the incumbent societies, the mean income exceeds the median dictator does leave office, these economic conditions income. Since the median voter is poor, she has a lot to gain by taxing the rich. This leads to demand for
2 Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
redistribution in unequal societies politically popular.14 If inequality is instead manifest in income, some Boix argues that authoritarian regimes with high levels studies find that higher levels of inequality are of economic inequality are less likely to become associated with less democratic regimes; this can be democracies because elites fear wealth due to the availability of “fixed assets” such as natural redistribution.15 Popular demand for regime change is resources.24 However, the evidence increasingly of equal importance. The relationship between suggests that more unequal income distribution is inequality and democratization should follow an more likely to promote democratization. This is inverted U-shaped curve. At low levels of inequality, because as a wealthy class emerges, they have more the demand for democracy is limited because the to lose from dictators who cannot credibly commit. gains from redistribution are small. At high levels of That new class therefore prefers democracy as a inequality, the cost of redistribution exceeds that of means of protecting their property rights through repressing the demands for redistribution; at institutions.25 intermediate levels of inequality, redistribution is Haggard and Kaufman’s recent study in the appealing to the masses and is less costly for elites bargaining tradition makes a seminal contribution by such that the probability of democratization reaches its challenging much of the distributive conflict and peak.16 median voter research. They find first that military and An important weakness of the median voter model one party regimes are more vulnerable to distributive is that it makes strong assumptions about voters’ conflicts, compared to those with legislatures or preferences for redistribution. For example, some mechanisms to manage elite rivalries. Repression occupations, such as farmers, care less about contributes to distributive conflicts. Second, they link redistribution.17 Moreover, evidence for the theorized mobilization for democracy to widespread voluntary shape of the relationship between inequality and associations.26 Overall, these two findings mean that democracy is mixed, appearing non-linear as an regime characteristics and the social capacity for inverted U-shape18 or even nonexistent.19 collective action are more important than inequality in An alternative to the median voter model is to predicting democratic transitions. view democratization as the result of a bargain or an intra-elite conflict between power holders and Political Culture economic groups instead of elite-mass conflict over Studies of political culture examine societal norms, the 20 redistribution. With economic development, rising sources of values, their means of transmission, and wealthy groups have the incentive to protect their their effects on politics. One tradition of this research, property rights by seeking guarantees, through laws or inspired by Lipset, considers education in the other assurances, against expropriation of their development of democratic values. Another tradition 21 income and assets. Thus the generation of new updates modernization theory by establishing a wealth may be a bigger threat to the regime than connection between economic shifts such as the inequality by itself. decline of industrialization and new values. A third However, the effects of “credible commitments” school of thought, compatible with the others, (as the literature refers to guarantees against emphasizes civil society as the basis for spreading expropriation) on democratization vary. They depend democratic values. Each of these schools are on the type of wealth in question. For example, land addressed below. inequality sustains autocracy. When land is distributed equally, there are more freeholders concerned with Education taxation and expropriation, increasing the demand for According to Lipset, education generates a crucial a democratic government. If there is stark land channel through which economic development drives inequality, the empirical results are mixed. Early democratic emergence and persistence. Economic studies found that greater land inequality boosts development leads to an increase in educational democracy, 22while more recent work demonstrates attainment, which in turn enables citizens to that equal distribution of land is conductive to “understand the need for norms of tolerance, restrains democracy.23 them from adhering to extremist and monistic
3 Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
doctrines, and increases their capacity to make development of a civic culture sustained by rational electoral choices.”27 With higher levels of democratic values are important conditions for education, individuals are more likely to believe in democracy. The shift from materialist to self- democratic values and espouse democratic practices, actualization values, moreover, suggests that thereby becoming good citizens. In developing modernization is broadly related to democratization.33 countries, these effects may be less pronounced Some research suggests natural resources because an increase in wealth can have similar weaken the cultural changes that accompany political consequences.28 occupational specialization, urbanization and Civic education, as a specific form of education education associated with modernization.34 Research that has corresponded with the rise of democracy from Asia also casts doubt on post-materialism. For promotion and foreign aid in recent decades, example in Hong Kong, such values declined if there highlights potential links between education and were perceived threats to order.35 In China, the new democracy in a different way. One study for example middle class tends to support the non-democratic contrasts youthful demands for democracy in Poland regime since it has benefitted from state-led with sympathy for authoritarianism in Hungary, development.36 attributing the differences to civic education models Civil Society adopted in the 1990s.29 There is also some evidence A vibrant and robust civil society plays a crucial role in that voter education reduces the likelihood of electoral cultivating and sustaining democracy. Civil society is violence, which is common in newer democracies.30 “the realm of organized social life that is open, This is important given the increased role of donors in voluntary, self-generating, at least partially self- elections since the 1990s. supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by Modernization and Post-Industrial Change a legal order or set of shared rules.”37 A newer variant of modernization theory argues that In Spain, civil society gradually emerged and democracy does require certain cultural prerequisites, developed before the death of Franco in 1975.38 It which are linked to social-economic development. provided fertile soil for democracy: “democratic Drawing on four rounds of data from as many as 81 crafters and supporters inherited a civil society already countries from 1981 to 2001, these studies argue that robust and reasonably differentiated.”39 Similarly, civil societal values change in response to economic society and labor unions in particular, destabilized modernization in two phases. First, industrialization authoritarian regimes by triggering elite divisions in pushes people to abandon “traditional” ways of Latin America.40 In many Central and Eastern thinking in favor of more secular and rational (or European countries, civil society advanced democracy scientific) values. This is accompanied by by checking state power and aggregating interests bureaucratization, hierarchy, centralization of under new political systems.41 In Africa, civil society authority, and a decline in faith-based explanations for was in the forefront of mobilization against the world. Next, the shift to a post-industrial economy authoritarian rule and pushed forward the democratic promotes feelings of individual autonomy as well as transition.42 In Asian countries such as Philippines and “self-expression” values. As people to worry less South Korea, civil society mobilization challenged about food, shelter and “materialist” needs, they seek authoritarian legitimacy and forced dictators to freedom from authority.31 Values such as tolerance, embrace democratic demands.43 life satisfaction, and liberty stem from increased These histories are important today because non- material resources, enhanced intellectual skills, governmental organizations (NGOs) are under expanded social connections, all of which are the attack.44 A broad range of countries have sought to product of modernization. These self-expression limit foreign funding, place new constraints on values have a significantly positive impact on registration of NGOs, or impose limits on the freedom democracy: 80 percent variance in effective of association that is necessary for civil society to democracy can be explained by the levels of self- flourish.45 expression values.32 Essentially, education and the
4 Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
Endnotes
15 1 Seymour Martin Lipset, (1959). “Some Social Requisites of Carles Boix, (2003). Democracy and Redistribution. Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. American Political Science Review 53(1): 69–105. 16 Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. (2006). Economic 2 Ibid. Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New York: Cambridge 3 Grimm, Sonja, and Julia Leininger. "Not all good things go University Press. 17 together: conflicting objectives in democracy Stephan Haggard, Robert Kaufman, and James Long (2014). promotion." Democratization 19 (3) (2012): 391-414. “Income, Occuptation and Preferences for Redistribution in the 4 Robert Barro, (1999). “Determinants of Democracy,” Journal of Developing World,” Studies in Comparative and International Development 48 (2): 113-40. Political Economy 107(6): 158-183. 18 5 Broderstad, Troy Saghaug. 2017. "A meta-analysis of income Ross Burkhart, (1997). “Comparative Democracy and Income Distribution: Shape and Direction of the Causal Arrow,” Journal and democracy." Democratization: 1-19. of Politics 59(1): 148–64. 6 Przeworski, Adam, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, 19 Kenneth Bollen and Robert Jackman, (1985). “Political and Fernando Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Material Well-being in the World, 1950- Democracy and the Size Distribution of Income.” American 1990. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Sociological Review 50(4): 438–57. 20 7 Carles Boix and Susan Stokes, (2003). “Endogenous During the third wave democratization from 1980 to 2000, just Democratization,” World Politics 55(4): 517-549 over half of transition cases are related to distributive conflict. 8 See: Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman (2012) “Inequality Daniel Treisman, (2015). “Income, Democracy, and Leader and Regime Change: Democratic Transitions and the Stability of Turnover,” American Journal of Political Science 59(4): 927–942 Democratic Rule,” American Political Science Review 106(3): 9 James Robinson, (2006). “Economic Development and 495–516. Democracy,” Annual Review of Political Science 503–27; Daron 21 Ben Ansell and David Samuels, (2010). “Inequality and Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James Robinson, and Pierre Yared, Democratization: A Contractarian Approach,” Comparative (2008). “Income and Democracy,” American Economic Review Political Studies 43 (12): 1543–74; Ben Ansell and David 98(3): 808–842; Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James Samuels, (2014). Inequality and Democratization: An Elite- Robinson, Pierre Yared. (2009). “Reevaluating the Competition Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Modernization Hypothesis,” Journal of Monetary Economics 56: Robert Bates and Donald Lien, (1985). “A Note on Taxation, 1043–1058. Development, and Representative Government,” Politics and 10 Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff, (1997). “Factor Society 14(1): 53-70; Margaret Levi, (1988). Of Rule and Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press; Douglass among New World Economies: A View from Economic North and Barry Weingast, (1989). “Constitutions and Historians of the United States.” In How Latin America Fell commitment,” Journal of Economic History 49(4): 803-832. Behind: Essays on the Economic Histories of Brazil and Mexico, 22 Manus Midlarsky, (1992). “The Origins of Democracy in 1800-1914, ed. Stephen Haber, 60–304. Stanford, CA: Stanford Agrarian Society: Land Inequality and Political Rights,” Journal University Press; Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James of Conflict Resolution 36(3): 454–77. Robinson, (2001). “The Colonial Origins of Comparative 23 Ben Ansell and David Samuels, (2010). “Inequality and Development: An Empirical Investigation,” American Economic Review 91(5): 1369–1401; Daron Acemoglu and James Democratization: A Contractarian Approach,” Comparative Robinson, (2012). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Political Studies 43 (12): 1543–74; Ben Ansell and David Samuels, (2014). Inequality and Democratization: An Elite- Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown Business. Competition Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 11 Carles Boix, (2011). “Democracy, Development, and the 24 Edward Muller, (1988).“Democracy, Economic Development, International System,” American Political Science Review 105 (4): 809-828. The estimated effect of per capita income on and Income Inequality,” American Sociological Review 53(1): democracy is positive and large for countries with a per capita 50–68; Edward Muller, (1995). “Economic Determinants of Democracy,” American Sociological Review 60(6): 966–82; income over $3,000 (in constant dollars of 1996), is positive and very small for countries with a per capita income over $6,000, Carles Boix, (2003). Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carles Boix and Susan Stokes, but becomes negative for countries with a per capita income over $10,000. (2003). “Endogenous Democratization,” World Politics 55(4): 12 517–49; Robert Barro, (1999). “Determinants of Democracy,” Ibid. Journal of Political Economy 107(6): 158–83. 13 For a review, see: Michael Ross, (2015). “What Have We 25 Ben Ansell and David Samuels, (2010). “Inequality and Learned about the Resource Curse?” Annual Review of Political Democratization: A Contractarian Approach,” Comparative Science 18: 239-259; Anar Ahmadov, (2014). “Oil, Democracy, Political Studies 43 (12): 1543–74; Ben Ansell and David and Context: A Meta-Analysis,” Comparative Political Studies Samuels, (2014). Inequality and Democratization: An Elite- 47(9): 1211–37. For studies questioning the resource cruse, Competition Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. see: Stephen Haber and Victor Menaldo, (2011). “Do Natural 26 Resources Fuel Authoritarianism? A Reappraisal of the Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman, Dictators and Democrats: Masses, Elites and Regime Change (Princeton: Resource Curse,” American Political Science Review 105(1): 1- 24 Princeton University Press, 2016). 27 Seymour Martin Lipset, (1959). “Some Social Requisites of 14 Allan Meltzer and Scott Richard, (1981). “A Rational Theory of the Size of Government,” Journal of Political Economy 89 (5): Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” 917–27. American Political Science Review 53(1): 69–105.
5 Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
37 Larry Diamond, (1999). Developing Democracy: Toward 28 Eduardo Alemán and Yeaji Kim (2015). “The Democratizing Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Effect of Education,” Research & Politics 2 (4) (October): 1-7. See also: Larry Diamond, (1994). “Toward Democratic 29 Florin Fesnic (2016). “Can Civic Education Make a Difference Consolidation,” Journal of Democracy 5(3): 4-17 for Democracy? Hungary and Poland Compared,” Political 38 Victor M. Perez-Diaz, (1993). The Return of Civil Society: The Studies 64 (4) (December): 966-78. Emergence of Democratic Spain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard 30 Collier, P., & Vicente, P. C. (2014). Votes and violence: University Press. evidence from a field experiment in Nigeria. The Economic 39 Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, (1996). Problems of Democratic Journal, 124(574). Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, 31 Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, (2005). Modernization, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development University Press. P.113. Sequence. New York: Cambridge University Press. 40 Ruth Berins Collier and James Mahoney, (1997). “Adding 32 To mitigate the concern of reverse causality, this study shows Collective Actors to Collective Outcomes: Labor and Recent that self-expression values have a significantly positive effect on Democratization in South America and Southern Europe,” subsequent levels of effective democracy when controlling for Comparative Politics 29(3): 285-303 the level of democracy measured before self-expression values. 41 Michael Bernhard, (1993). “Civil Society and Democratic Nevertheless, one recent study finds that a country’s experience Transition in East Central Europe,” Political Science Quarterly with democracy enhances self-expression values and not the 108(2): 307-326. other way around. See: Sirianne Dahlum and Carl Henrik 42 Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, (1996). " Civil Society in Africa,” Knutsen, (2017). “Democracy by Demand? Reinvestigating the Journal of Democracy 7(2): 118-132 Effect of Self-expression Values on Political Regime Type,” 43 British Journal of Political Science 47(2): 437-461 Larry Diamond, (1999). Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press: 33 Christian Welzel and Ronald Inglehart, (2008). “The Role of pp.235-236 Ordinary People in Democratization,” Journal of Democracy 44 19(1): 126-140. Chris van der Borgh, NGOs under Pressure in Partial Democracies. Springer (2014) 34 Michael Ross, (2001). “Does Oil Hinder Democracy?” World 45 Politics 53(3): 325–61. Darin Christensen and Jeremy Weinstein, “Defunding Dissent: Restrictions on Aid to NGOs,” Journal of Democracy 24 (2) 35 Ming Sing, “Explaining Mass Support for Democracy in Hong (April): 77-91) Kong,” Democratization 17 (1) (February 2010): 175-205. 36 Wen-Chin Wu, Yu-Tzung Change, and Hsin-Hsin Pan, “Does China’s Middle Class Prefer (Liberal) Democracy?” Democratization 24 (2) (February 2017): 347-66.
6 Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
Annotated Bibliography
Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, James A. Robinson, and Pierre Yared. 2008. “Income and Democracy.” The American Economic Review 98 (3): 808–42. . Acemoglu et al. find no evidence that the relationship between income and democracy is causal. . They argue that, at critical junctures, countries set themselves on institutional trajectories that affect both political and economic development. . They test this theory by using fixed effects to control for country-specific historical factors that might have shaped both political and economic institutions. Acemoglu, Daron, S. Naidu, P. Restrepo, and James Robinson. 2015. “Democracy, Redistribution, and Inequality.” Handbook of Income Distribution 2: 1885–1966. . The authors explore the relationship between democracy, redistribution and inequality. . They test the idea that democracies increase redistribution, and explore why this expectation may fail when democracies cater to the middle class or open opportunities to other population segments previously excluded, thereby exacerbating inequality. Acemoglu, Daron, and James Robinson. 2002. “The Political Economy of the Kuznets Curve.” Review of Development Economics 6 (2): 183–203. . Claims that at low levels of inequality mobilization will be too costly, but at high levels of inequality elites will not make concessions because costs will outweigh benefits. . In societies that are not highly unequal, mobilization can lead to democracy as a means of institutionalizing redistribution. Acemoglu, Daron and James Robinson. 2006. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. . Democratization is the result of elite-mass conflict. Elites are winners under dictatorships and thus oppose taxation and redistribution, while citizens will be better off under democracies because of their interest in redistribution. . The relationship between inequality and the democratization prospect would follow an inverted U-shaped curve: At intermediate levels of inequality, redistribution is appealing to the masses and is less costly for elites such that the probability of democratization reaches its peak. Alemán, Eduardo, and Yeaji Kim. 2015. “The Democratizing Effect of Education.” Research & Politics 2 (4): 1–7. . Aleman and Kim find that education has a greater marginal effect in less developed countries, because higher income levels can promote some of the same social changes as education. Ansell, Ben and David Samuels. 2014. Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . With economic development, rising wealthy groups have the incentive to protect their property rights by struggling for credible commitment against expropriation of their income and assets. . Land inequality sustains autocracy whereas income inequality fosters democratization: When land is distributed equally, there would be more freeholders concerned with taxation and expropriation, increasing the demand for a democratic government; the emergence of a wealthy class—who have more to lose and prefer a democratic regime to protect their property rights—is associated with increased income inequality. Balderacchi, Claudio. 2017. “Political Leadership and the Construction of Competitive Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America: Implications and Prospects for Democracy.” Democratization 25 (3) (October 23, 2017): 504-523. . Claims that charismatic leadership combined with democratic discourse has allowed democratic, or partially democratic, regimes in Latin America to become competitive authoritarian regimes. . Leaders use democratic discourse and the promise of improved democracy, rather than outright attacks on democracy or radical policy shifts, to undermine democratic institutions and concentrate power. . Case studies of Honduras, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. Benstead, Lindsay J. “Why Do Some Arab Citizens See Democracy as Unsuitable for Their Country?” Democratization 22 (7) (November 10, 2015): 1183–1208. . Uses Arab Barometer data to show that most Arab citizens support democracy (60%), but are concerned about its consequences. . Particularly countries have experienced upheaval or instability after holding elections (e.g. Algeria 1991, Palestine 2006, Egypt 2011). 7 Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
. Benstead argues that democratic preferences are shaped not only by assessments of the current regime, but by an evaluation of the potential political, economic, and religious consequences of democratization (i.e. stability, security, and safeguarding from Western influence). . Suggests that sectarianism, and not Islam, may predict preferences (or lack thereof) for democracy; particularly with regard to perceptions of the consequences for minority rights and protections. Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge University Press. . Boix, though, argues that transition to democracy is more likely in a relatively equal society because elites will not agree to a redistributive system otherwise. . However, when shocks weaken elites, mobilization increases the cost of repression and, at low levels of inequality, elites will choose to make concessions. Boix, Carles and Susan Stokes. 2003. “Endogenous Democratization,” World Politics 55(4): 517-549. . Economic development increases both the probability of democratic transitions and the probability of democratic survival. . With economic development, incomes become more equally distributed. The rich are more willing to embrace democracy. Borgh, Chris van der. 2014. NGOs under Pressure in Partial Democracies. Springer. . Borgh examines the extent to which NGOs face constraints in partial democracies. Broderstad, Troy Saghaug. 2017. “A Meta-Analysis of Income and Democracy.” Democratization, 25 (2) (August 25, 2018): 293-311. . Meta-analysis of 33 studies finds no statistically significant relationship between income and democracy Christensen, Darin, and Jeremy M. Weinstein. 2013. “Defunding Dissent: Restrictions on Aid to NGOs.” Journal of Democracy 24 (2): 77–91. . Assesses explanations for government restriction on foreign funding to NGOs. . Domestically, governments may impose restrictions because of electoral incentives; when donors are unpopular, shutting them out can increase support for the government (e.g. anti-American sentiments in Egypt); perception of an NGOs ability to destabilize the government; and, following the push for “bottom up” or locally-driven development, aid dependent governments may place restrictions on foreign funding to prevent diversion of funds to NGOs that once would have been channeled through the government. . At the international level, decision-makers have to take into consideration international pressures and the costs they are likely to face if they place restrictions on foreign funding. Diamond, Larry. 1994. “Toward Democratic Consolidation,” Journal of Democracy 5(3): 4-17 . The functions of civil society: (1) limit state power; (2) stimulate political participation; (3) promote democratic values; (4) articulate, aggregate, and represent interests; (5) generate a wide range of interests that may cross- cut; (6) recruit and train new political leaders; (7) democracy-building purposes such as deterring fraud and enhancing governmental accountability; (8) disseminate information; (9) facilitate economic reform that typically requires the support of political coalitions in society and the legislature; (10) improve the ability of the state to govern, and to command voluntary obedience from its citizens. Fesnic, Florin N. 2016. “Can Civic Education Make a Difference for Democracy? Hungary and Poland Compared.” Political Studies 64 (4): 966–78. . Fesnic argues that the quality of civic education accounts for the democratic variation in Poland and Hungary. . Differences in students’ civic education (classroom openness, pedagogy, and curriculum) has a lasting effect on civic values and suggests following best practices in civic education can have positive impacts for democracy. Foweraker, Joe, and Dolores Trevizo. 2016. Democracy and Its Discontents in Latin America. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Gradstein, M., and B. Milanovic. 2004. “Does Libertè = Egalité? A Survey of the Empirical Links between Democracy and Inequality with Some Evidence on the Transition Economies.” Journal of Economic Surveys 18: 515–37.
8 Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
Haggard, Stephan, and Robert R. Kaufman. 2016. Dictators and Democrats: Masses, Elites, and Regime Change. Princeton University Press. . The authors investigate the distributive conflict model of democratic transition and argue that regime characteristics and social capacity for collective action are more important than inequality in predicting democratic transitions. . More repressive regimes are more likely to experience distributive conflict than less exclusionary regimes; military and one-party regimes are particularly vulnerable. . Authoritarian regimes with legislatures are more durable because they can manage intra-elite rivalries, they possess mechanisms to enable power-sharing, and offer constructive avenues for dissent. Distributive conflict transitions occur when there is no other outlet for participation or expression of grievance. . Associations are essential for mobilization from below because they provide opportunity structures and organizational resources, which can overcome barriers to collective action. Moreover, organizations are capable of sustained engagement, which is more likely to result in regime change, as opposed to short-lived protests that lead to reversible concession. . Elite-led transitions are more common in less repressive contexts, and may be the result of intra-elite conflict, elites miscalculating their ability to win in democratic systems, or can occur through incremental changes. Haggard, Stephan, Robert R. Kaufman, and James D. Long. 2014. “Income, Occupation, and Preferences for redistribution in the Developing World.” Studies in Comparative International Development 48 (2): 113–40. . Haggard et al. claim that some occupations have higher preferences for redistribution than others. Harms, P., and S. Zink. 2003. “Limits to Redistribution in a Democracy: A Survey.” European Journal of Political Economy 19: 651–68. . In this paper, the authors review arguments that explain limited redistribution as an outcome of the political process. The contributions are classified into two categories, according to whether it is the properties of the political process that prevent the poor from politically implementing their will, or whether it is in the self-interest of the poor to refrain from radical redistribution. Inglehart, Ronald. 2009. “Cultural Change, Religion, Subjective Well-Being, and Democracy in Latin America.” In Religious Pluralism, Democracy, and the Catholic Church in Latin America, edited by Frances Hagopian. University of Notre Dame Press. . Inglehart argues that Latin America has higher self-expression values than would be expected based on income levels, which is driven by high levels of subjective well-being. . Feelings of well-being derive from a sense of autonomy, or control over one’s life. Inglehart suggests, in Latin America, high religiosity provides a sense of stability and security, which produces subjective well-being. Inglehart, Ronald and Christian Welzel. 2005. Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. New York: Cambridge University Press. . Societal value changes in response to economic modernization in two phases. Industrialization makes people shift from traditional to secular-rational values and brings about bureaucratization, hierarchy, centralization of authority, secularization. Post-industrial transformation promotes individual autonomy and self-expression values, ultimately leading to “emancipation from authority”. . Self-expression values are found to have a significantly positive impact on levels of “effective” democracy. Koesel, Karrie J., and Valerie J. Bunce. 2013. “Diffusion-Proofing: Russian and Chinese Responses to Waves of Popular Mobilizations against Authoritarian Rulers.” Perspectives on Politics 11 (3): 753–68. . Claims that authoritarian leaders engage in “diffusion-proofing” to prevent the spread of revolutionary ideas to their countries. . Strategies can include controlling information about uprisings or negatively reframing them, demobilizing or coopting opposition groups or civil society organizations, and implementing punitive measures for protest and dissent. Kostenko, Veronica V., Pavel A. Kuzmuchev, and Eduard D. Ponarin. 2016. “Attitudes towards Gender Equality and Perception of Democracy in the Arab World.” Democratization 23 (5) (June 26, 2015): 862–891. . Using Arab Barometer data, finds a low association between support for democracy and gender equality. . 30% of respondents support democracy or gender equality, but not both. . The most progressive group is educated, middle-aged women. Unlike other parts of the world, the older cohort is more supportive of gender equality.
9 Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
. People who support democracy but not gender equality are more likely to be uneducated young men. The least progressive group is also mostly young men, but with slightly higher education than those who support democracy but not gender equality (inconsistent with the predictions of modernization theory). Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53(1): 69–105. . The author advances a general argument that “the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy.” . The general income level matters: “there is enough wealth in the country so that it actually does not make too much difference if some redistribution does take place.” . High levels of education are conducive to democracy in the sense that “education presumably broadens men’s outlooks, enables them to understand the need for norms of tolerance, restrains them from adhering to extremist and monistic doctrines, and increases their capacity to make rational electoral choice.” Meltzer, Allan H., and Scott F. Richard. 1981. “A Rational Theory of the Size of Government.” Journal of Political Economy 89 (5): 914–27. . Meltzer and Richard’s median voter hypothesis stipulates that in more unequal societies, since the median income will be lower than the mean income, the median voter is likely to be worse off than the mean and thus favor redistribution. This would encourage those in the lower income strata of unequal societies to mobilize for democracy in order to institute redistribution. Milanovic, Branko. 2010. “Four Critiques of the Redistribution Hypothesis: An Assessment.” European Journal of Political Economy 26: 147–54. . The reformulation of the median voter hypothesis and its testing proposed in Milanovic (2000) has been criticized from four different perspectives. . The critiques are discussed and assessed. Przeworski, Adam. 2010. Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . This study addresses central issues in democratic theory by analyzing the sources of widespread dissatisfaction with democracies around the world. With attention throughout to historical and cross-national variations, the focus is on the generic limits of democracy in promoting equality, effective participation, control of governments by citizens, and liberty. . Although some of this dissatisfaction has good reasons, some is based on an erroneous understanding of how democracy functions. Przeworski, Adam and Fernando Limongi. 1997. “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” World Politics 49(2): 155-183. . The relationship between economic development and democracy has two possible reasons: Either democracies are more likely to emerge as countries develop economically or democracies are more likely to survive in developed countries. . The authors’ empirical analysis supports the latter scenario: Democracies are likely to emerge at any level of economic development, but they are more likely to survive once the country has reached a certain threshold of development. Ross, Michael. 2012. The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. . Oil wealth leads to more authoritarian governments and more frequent civil wars. . Oil wealth is associated with low participation of women in labor markets in the Middle East and North Africa. Rutzen, Douglas. 2015. “Civil Society under Assault.” Journal of Democracy 26 (4): 28–39. . Rutzen claims that international support for CSOs was high until 9/11, after which an increasing number of restrictions were places on CSO activity, motivated by fears of terrorism and foreign interference. . Governments have offered a range of justifications for these restrictions including foreign interference, transparency and accountability, aid effectiveness, national security. . International financial support for CSOs is protected under international law, but under certain circumstances, where countries can claim they have credible concerns, restrictions are also legally permissible.
10 Economic and Social Requisites of Democracy
Sing, Ming. 2010. “Explaining Mass Support for Democracy in Hong Kong.” Democratization 17 (1) (January 15, 2010): 175–205. . Evaluates support for democracy in Hong Kong through a mass values approach and a perceive performance approach. . A mass values approach looks at post-materialist values, respect for authority, tolerance, and interpersonal trust. . Claims declines in post-materialism are contextual and responsive to perceived immediate threats (i.e. threats to order are associated with a decline in post-materialism, while threats to freedoms increase post-materialism). . Evaluation of perceived performance shows expectations about political consequences of democratization are more important than perceived economic consequences. Teorell, Jan. 2010. Determinants of Democratization: Explaining Regime Change in the World, 1972-2006. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Comprehensive review and analysis of theories of democratization. Timmons, J. F. 2010. “Does Democracy Reduce Economic Inequality?” British Journal of Political Science 40: 741– 57. . Timmons addresses whether democracy actually reduces income inequality. Wu, Wen-Chin, Yu-Tzung Chang, and Hsin-Hsin Pan. 2017. “Does China’s Middle Class Prefer (Liberal) Democracy?” Democratization 24 (2) (June 14, 2016): 347–66. . Finds that China’s middle class supports features of democracy—like representation, free press, competitive multiparty elections—while simultaneously supporting the regime. . Inverted U-shaped relationship between class and preference for democracy, where the middle class has a higher preference for democracy than upper or lower classes. . Suggests that China’s middle class supports the regime because they have benefited from state-led development.
11 What is Democracy?
This primer summarizes the state of thinking about how to define democracy and distinguish it from other regime types, as well as the quality of democracy and thus the components of “liberal” or high-quality democracy.
Key Points . In the most minimal sense, democracy is a . A liberal or high-quality democracy consists system of government in which the people of three dimensions: the purely democratic can choose and replace their leaders in one of popular sovereignty (or majority rule), regular, free, fair and competitive elections. the liberal one requiring extensive freedom . For electoral competition to be free and and political equality, and the republican one fair, many criteria must be met, including of good (non-corrupt) government under a the presence of multiple competing rule of law. political parties, a relatively level playing . These three dimensions exist somewhat in field that allows for electoral uncertainty tension with one another; the “will of the over time, some significant freedom and majority”, for example, may at times conflict pluralism in civil society and the mass with minority rights and the rule of law. But media, and neutral, professional the nine different dimensions of democratic administration of the electoral process, quality are also in many ways mutually from registration to voting, counting, and reinforcing. adjudication of conflict. . It is now widely accepted that there are many hybrid or “competitive authoritarian” regimes that have the superficial structure of regular multiparty electoral competition but that fall short of the minimal standards of democracy because of institutional distortions that grossly advantage the ruling party and incumbent elites.
Minimalist Definitions of Electoral overwhelming majority of the actual population, Democracy including women, foreigners, and slaves. In modern history, at the level of any large-scale political The modern word “democracy” stems from the system, including all nation-states, democracy has ancient Greek term “demokratia”, which means “rule only proved possible through the use of by the people.” However, genuine and direct “rule by representative mechanisms, in which “the people” the people” is only possible in a very small-scale elect representatives to make laws and exercise political system, and even in ancient Athens, “the governing authority. Thus, modern democracy can people” who were considered entitled to participate be seen, in the words of the influential Austrian-born in the process of decision-making excluded the
What is Democracy?
economist Joseph Schumpeter, simply as a system information.7 In other words, even a minimal “for arriving at political decisions in which individuals “electoral” democracy cannot exist without some acquire the power to decide by means of a broader degree of freedom in society. competitive struggle for the people’s vote.”1 Synthesizing these various approaches, we can Schumpeter’s “minimalist” conception of say that democracy is a political system in which democracy heavily influenced the thinking of people can choose and replace their leaders at subsequent political scientists, such as Seymour regular intervals in free, fair, and meaningful Martin Lipset and Samuel Huntington, who stressed multi-party elections. “Regular” means typically no competitive elections between contending political longer than every four or five years. Some parties as the essence of democracy.2 Przeworski presidential systems recognized as democracies and his colleagues follow Schumpeter in defining (such as the Philippines and Mexico) elect democracy as “a regime in which those who govern presidents to a single, non-renewable six-year term, are selected through contested elections,” with the but this is generally regarded as rather too long a proviso that contestation be real, and thus that the period to enable democratic accountability, and no opposition have some meaningful chance of parliamentary democracy grants the parliament a winning, as evidenced by the fact that at some point term of longer than five years. “Meaningful” means over an extended period of time, the ruling party that elections have consequences, that they confer loses power.3 Thus, “democracy is a system in real power to rule, and thus that elected officials are which [incumbent] parties lose elections.”4 not superseded in their governing authority by the Meaningfully competitive elections must involve superior formal or informal power of a monarch as some degree of uncertainty about the outcome in (in Morocco, Jordan, or Kuwait), religious authorities advance, “irreversibility” once the outcome is cast— (as in Iran), the military (as in Pakistan), or other so that winners can take office and exercise power— hidden oligarchies.8 and finally, “repeatability”, which enables losers in The terms “free” and “fair” entail a number of one election to come back and eventually become other specific conditions that, when weighed winners.5 seriously, can be seen as constituting a rigorous set Robert Dahl extends the minimalist definition of standards even for “electoral democracy.” further. He uses the term “polyarchy” to denote the “Elections are ‘free’ when the legal barriers to entry minimal conditions of electoral democracy: into the political arena are low, when competing opposition (that is, organized contestation through candidates, parties, and their supporters are free to regular, free, and fair elections) and participation campaign, and when people can vote for whom they (the right of virtually all adults to vote and contest for want without fear and intimidation.”9 And as Dahl office).6 But Dahl goes on to insist that to be noted decades before, freedom in the electoral meaningful, contestation and participation must arena can’t be easily separated from the broader provide some significant civil liberty, in the form of context of freedom to speak, publish, criticize, freedom to form and join organizations, freedom of organize, assemble, and obtain information. expression, and access to alternative sources of
...... 1 Schumpeter 1947: 269. 2 Lipset, 1981, 27; Huntington, 1991: 5-13. 3 Przeworski et al, 2000: 15. 4 Przeworski, 1991, 10. 5 Przeworski et al, 2000: 15-18. 6 Dahl, 1971. Dahl reserves the term “democracy” for “a political system one of the characteristics of which is the quality of being completely or almost completely responsive to all of its citizens—in other words an ideal type, even well beyond the threshold of high-quality or “liberal” democracy specified below. 7 Ibid, pp. 2-3. 8 Collier and Levitksy, 1997; Valenzuela, 1992: 64-66; Schmitter and Karl, 1991: 81; Linz and Stepan, 1996: 3-5. 9 Diamond, 2008, 24.
2 What is Democracy?
Electoral fairness entails not only classic elected officials.12 Since elections occur only requirements such as ballot secrecy, universal intermittently and “only allow citizens to choose franchise, and impartiality of the police, military, and between the highly aggregated alternatives offered courts, but also a number of more recent and by political parties,” democracy requires other technical dimensions. These include: management channels of interest articulation and representation of the process by a politically neutral and as well.13 administratively competent body; reasonably fair In the past two decades, political scientists have access to the media for contending candidates and done a great deal of work to identify the properties of parties; limits on gerrymandering and mal- hybrid regimes14—which have been variously termed apportionment so that the drawing of district “semi-democracies,” “pseudo-democracies,” or boundaries does not effectively prevent the “competitive authoritarian” regimes. In pseudo- opposition from winning control of parliament; democracies, “the existence of formally democratic provisions to allow vote monitoring and transparent institutions, such as multiparty electoral competition, vote counting; and transparent and impartial masks (often in part to legitimate) the reality of procedures for resolving election disputes.10 authoritarian domination.”15 There have long been Freedom House takes a similar but more authoritarian regimes that held elections and even succinct approach to defining electoral democracy allowed some limited pluralism of information and by specifying four criteria: a competitive multiparty organization.16 And there have also been one-party system; universal adult suffrage; “regularly contested regimes that banned opposition parties but elections” with ballot secrecy, ballot security, and nevertheless allowed real competition within the “the absence of massive voter fraud,” yielding ruling party for parliamentary seats (sometimes even “results that are representative of the public will;” allowing independents), as in post-independence and significant public access of major parties to the Kenya and Tanzania, and Taiwan in the 1960s voters through the media and open campaigning.11 through mid-1980s. But the defining feature of hybrid or authoritarian-pluralist regimes in the post- How Democracy Differs from Hybrid or Cold War era is that they allow opposition parties to Competitive Authoritarian Regimes register, compete, and even win a non-trivial share of seats in parliament. They may even allow the Minimalist definitions of democracy emphasizing opposition to capture some positions of subnational competitive elections as the core element came to (local or provincial) administration. But they do not be criticized during the 1980s and 90s for committing allow a level playing field in which the opposition what Terry Karl called “the fallacy of electoralism.” would have a plausible chance of winning control of This critique stresses the importance to democracy the national government, by anything close to the of non-electoral mechanisms of political expression standards of free and fair elections mentioned and mobilization, and it sees the minimalist above. conceptions as ignoring the degree to which Recent scholarly analysis has thus increasingly multiparty elections (even if they are competitive and converged around the use of the term, introduced by uncertain in outcome) may exclude significant Levitsky and Way, “competitive authoritarianism” to portions of the population from contesting for power describe “civilian regimes in which formal democratic or defending their interests, or may leave significant institutions exist and are widely viewed as the domains of state power beyond the control of
...... 10 Elklit and Svensson, 1997. 11 Freedom House, 2013: 827. Also at https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2012/methodology2012/methodology. 12 Karl, 1990 and 1995. 13 Schmitter and Karl, 1991, 78. 14 Diamond, 2002; Levitsky and Way, 2002. 15 Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, 1995: 8. 16 Robert A. Scalapino termed the Asian variety of these regimes “authoritarian-pluralist.” See Scalapino, 1997: 152-153.
3 What is Democracy?
primary means of gaining power, but in which competition, participation, vertical accountability, and incumbents’ abuse of the state places them at a responsiveness; the liberal element that defends significant advantage vis-à-vis their opponents.” individual rights and ensures at least a minimum of These regimes are always multi-party and often political equality; and the republican dimension of quite competitive, “but they are not democratic good government under a rule of law, which requires because the playing field is heavily skewed in favor that the exercise of government power be faithful to of incumbents.” Competition for power is thus “real” the public interest, rather than corruptly serving the but systematically and, even if subtly, seriously interests of office-holders and their families or allies. unfair.17 These three elements provide the scaffolding for a While the distinction is conceptually clear, in multidimensional conception of liberal democracy, practice the boundary between electoral democracy and they contain a contradiction. It is impossible to and competitive authoritarianism can be hard to maximize all of these elements of liberal democracy distinguish. The effort to categorize regimes that fall simultaneously. around this boundary represents one of the most Democracy cannot achieve high quality unless contentious problems for political scientists, the purely “democratic” element (popular assessment organizations, diplomats, and aid sovereignty) is constrained by constitutional officials. provisions and norms that limit the scope of authority of elected officials. Liberal democracy thus contains Liberal Democracy and the Quality of a dualism and constant tension between Democracy empowerment of the majority that emerges through electoral competition (and more broadly, interest We can think of democracy as a dichotomous representation and opinion formation) and the variable—either a country is a democracy or it isn’t. limitation of that power in order to protect individual And much social science research rests on this and minority rights and uphold the rule of law. Pure empirical distinction. But we can also think of democracy “knows of no valid limits or distinctions democracy as a continuous variable that extends between a private and public sphere.”20 Liberal from total absence (think North Korea) to the most democracy vigorously defends the boundary fulsome presence (generally, by most measures, the between private and public interests, and punishes Nordic countries rank highest). Liberal democracy even democratically elected leaders who violate that represents a higher standard of democracy than boundary. The ideal balance among these three simply meaningful, free and fair elections, however dimensions is more a matter for political philosophy crucial those may be. It entails as well many other than empirical analysis, but since the founding of the dimensions of institutional structure and American republic, and particularly in recent performance. decades, the predominant view among constitutional Diamond and Morlino have delineated a designers and theorists has been that a good framework for assessing the quality of democracy democracy requires a strong rule of law, explicit which enables comparison of different democratic provisions to protect individual liberties, and regimes by standard criteria, as well assessment of elaborate mechanisms to monitor and check the overall health and depth of democracy in any executive power, what O’Donnell called “horizontal individual country.18 Following Guillermo accountability.”21 O’Donnell,19 we can think of liberal democracy as The purely democratic dimension stipulates consisting of three elements: the democratic who will rule—“the people,” or at least the majority of element of popular sovereignty that involves political
...... 17 Levitsky and Way, 2010: 5. 18 Diamond and Morlino, 2004 and 2005. 19 O’Donnell, 1999. 20 Ibid, p. 32. 21 O’Donnell, 1999.
4 What is Democracy?
them, as revealed through processes of political requires freedom to form and join parties and trade competition and participation. Democracies vary unions.22 In a liberal democracy most of these rights considerably in quality on these measures alone. are not absolute, but they are only constrained by Competitiveness is high to the extent that there are very strict standards specifying when the exercise of low barriers to entry for new parties and candidates; any of these rights conflicts with the rights of other there are low to minimal distortions of the electoral individuals or the safety and security of the public at playing field as a result of gerrymandering or other large (for example, in the explicit advocacy of rules and provisions that favor a particular party or violence or terrorism). Equality will never be perfect; type of candidate; and there is open and fair access even in a very high-quality democracy, there will to the mass media and to campaign finance for inevitably be some significant inequalities of wealth contending parties and candidates. Participation is and income. But a high-quality democracy high to the extent that most citizens turn out to vote; sufficiently attenuates socioeconomic inequality so that no citizens are legally or practically excluded that all or nearly all citizens have the education and from voting and running for office; that there is broad at least sufficient minimum income to be able to citizen interest in and awareness of political issues, practice and defend their democratic rights, and so government conduct, and electoral campaigns; and that no ethnic or status group is systematically there are high rates of membership in a wide range marginalized from the political process. Equality is of non-governmental organizations and activities that also higher when there is real social inclusion, i.e. concern political issues and the public good. This when women and ethnic minorities enjoy substantial latter point underscores that the democratic representation in parliament and executive office in dimension of popular sovereignty is not only degrees that are not grossly disproportional to their electoral. Vertical accountability also includes a shares of the population. Finally, the liberal element non-electoral dimension, in which citizens can includes a liberal or civic culture of tolerance and express their interests and concerns and hold their respect for opposition, willingness to compromise, government accountable through a wide variety of and commitment to peaceful and legal means of organizations, networks, and movements in civil competing for power (though a democratic culture society. Finally, if the democratic dimension is also includes a commitment to the rule of law and working well, there will be a high level of the constitutional system that supports the other two responsiveness of elected government to the policy dimensions). preferences and distributive aspirations of the The republican dimension of liberal citizens, as they have been expressed and democracy rests first and foremost on a democratic aggregated through the political process. rule of law, which limits the power of government, no The liberal dimension of liberal democracy matter how much support it may enjoy from the protects minority and individual rights. It requires majority. Under a rule of law, all citizens are equal strong guarantees for liberties and the political under the law, no one is above the law, and officials, equality of all citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, both elected and appointed, must adhere to both the gender, class, or other characteristics. For a law and the constitution. Undergirding this is an democracy to be liberal, its citizens must enjoy independent and capable judiciary, which, because it extensive freedoms of speech, press, and in the is politically independent, is willing to overrule current era digital expression (on the Internet and executive actions when they violate the laws or the social media). People must also be secure from constitution. This is crucially important at the peak of physical abuse by the state. They must enjoy ample the judicial system, with a constitutional court that free to think and worship as they wish; to associate, interprets and defends the constitution from all forms assemble, and protest; to obtain information; to of abuse. But independence and neutrality is not move about the country; and to use their native sufficient. In a liberal democracy, “the legal state is language and culture. Real freedom of association supreme throughout the county,” with no significant
...... 22 Beetham, 2005.
5 What is Democracy?
areas dominated by organized crime or abusive non- more likely to be responsive to the public will when state or sub-national actors.23 And citizens must participation is broad, competition is open, people have reasonably fair and expeditious access to the are free to express themselves and organize, and courts to defend their rights and pursue justice. This many people do so through a pluralistic and active is closely related to the broader concept of horizontal civil society. Competition will be more sustainable accountability. Whether vertical or horizontal, and the rule of law deeper when there is a civic accountability is the process by which government culture of respect for democratic norms and officials are made to answer for their decisions and willingness to tolerate and compromise with sharply their conduct in office. Horizontal accountability is different points of view. In the absence of mutual the broader system of checks and balances for toleration and restraint, or what Dahl called “mutual monitoring the functioning of government and security”,25 the electoral struggle is liable to descend preempting or controlling (in part by punishing and into a no-holds-barred, zero-sum game, in which any correcting) corruption and abuse of power. It law can be violated and any group victimized in the encompasses a network of multiple independent effort to win or retain power. The rule of law is branches and agencies of government, all capable fundamental to every other aspect of a liberal of monitoring the executive (and one another) and democracy. It protects or deepens freedom, ensuring fidelity to good governance norms. In competition, participation, equality, and the ability of addition to an independent judiciary and legislature, citizens to hold government accountable in between other key institutions of horizontal accountability elections and to make government responsive. It is include a counter-corruption commission, also a crucial companion to the broader concept of ombudsman, electoral commission, supreme audit horizontal accountability that monitors, restrains and agency, and a central bank. For these institutions to disciplines the exercise of government power. effectively monitor and constrain executive branch This, then, is the architecture of liberal actors, they must have autonomy in their democracy. No political system perfectly realizes all appointment and functioning and the financial and these dimensions. But it is possible to measure the human resources to do their job.24 extent to which countries satisfy these conditions. The countries (mostly in northern Europe, Canada, The General Architecture of New Zealand, and Australia) that do best on these Democracy annual measures, such as the Freedom House survey of “Freedom in the World” and the annual In summary, the different elements and dimensions Democracy Index of The Economist Intelligence of a high-quality or liberal democracy may be in Unit, are also the most stable democracies, with the tension, but they are also mutually complementary lowest levels of public disaffection with democracy. and reinforcing in many ways. Without independent This is to underscore that the effort to identify a more electoral administration (a dimension of horizontal comprehensive conceptual framework for liberal accountability) and a strong rule of law, it is difficult democracy has more than simply conceptual value. to get truly competitive, free and fair elections. It also enables us to predict which democracies will Vigorous and broad political participation requires a be the most secure by measuring the quality or high level of political equality, so that significant depth of democracy. The higher the quality of groups of the population do not encounter obstacles democracy, the more it is stable and likely to (legal or social) to participation. Government is much endure.26
...... 23 Diamond and Morlino, 2005: 14; O’Donnell, 2005. 24 Diamond and Morlino, 2005: xxi-xxv, Diamond, 2008: 303-310. 25 Dahl, 1971: 16. 26 Diamond, 1999: 74-75.
6 What is Democracy?
Annotated Bibliography
Collier, David and Steve Levitsky. 1997. “Democracy with Adjectives Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research,” World Politics 49 (3): 430-51. . The article explores the strengths and weaknesses of alternative strategies of conceptual innovation that have emerged. Using Sartori's ladder of generality, the article generates “diminished” subtypes of democracy, “precises” the definition of democracy by adding defining attributes, and shifts the overarching concept with which democracy is associated. . The analysis seeks to make more comprehensible the complex structure of these strategies, and examine trade- offs among strategies. Dahl, Robert A. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press. . Dahl is concerned with the two main variables of political orders: 'competition' (public contestation among various political actors) and 'participation' (defined with regards to the right to participate). Using these variables, these systems can graded based on whether they possess these qualities to a greater or lesser degree. . While most modern political systems fall in a 'gray area' (they are neither perfectly competitive nor inclusive), Dahl believes that all should strive towards the ideal type, or polyarchy. Diamond, Larry, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. 1995. “What Makes for Democracy?” in Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, eds., Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracies. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. . The authors present case studies of experiences with democracy in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, along with a synthesis of the factors that facilitate and obstruct the development of democracy around the world. The introduction, “What Makes for Democracy?” considers factors that contribute to democratic polities. Diamond, Larry. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. . Diamond proposes a distinctive theoretical perspective on democratic evolution and consolidation in the late 20th century. Rejecting theories that posit preconditions for democracy―and thus dismiss its prospects in poor countries―Diamond argues instead for a "developmental" theory of democracy. . This, he explains, is one which views democracy everywhere as a work in progress that emerges piecemeal, at different rates, in different ways and forms, in different countries. Diamond, Larry. 2002. “Elections without Democracy: Thinking About Hybrid Regimes,” Journal of Democracy 13 (April 2002): 21-35. . The article considers scholarly attention on the varieties of nondemocratic regimes and to the rather astonishing frequency with which contemporary authoritarian regimes manifest, at least superficially, a number of democratic features. . This new intellectual upsurge partly reflects the exhaustion of the “third wave” of democratic transitions, which essentially crested in the mid-1990s. Diamond, Larry, and Leonardo Morlino. 2004. “The Quality of Democracy: An Overview,” Journal of Democracy 15 (October 2004): 20-31. . The article argues that while there is no absolutely objective way of laying out a single framework for gauging democratic quality, there are eight dimensions on which democracies vary in quality: freedom, the rule of law, vertical accountability, responsiveness, equality, participation, competition, and horizontal accountability. . These dimensions are closely linked and tend to move together, either toward democratic improvement and deepening or toward decay. Diamond, Larry. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World. New York: Times Books. . The book asks whether democracy is something that can exist only in rich and educated countries, those with a strong middle class. Do all people actually want democracy, or do some believe that a form of authoritarianism is the best way to run a country? . To answer this question, Diamond, in a sweeping survey of countries around the world, examines the forces that contribute to democracy, from the internal influences that give rise to civil societies to the impact of peaceful outside pressures like diplomatic persuasion or, in some cases, economic sanctions. Elklit, Jorgen and Palle Svensson. 1997. “What Makes Elections Free and Fair?” Journal of Democracy 8 (3): 32-46. Freedom House, 2013. Freedom in the World, 2012. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. . The authors consider the factors that contribute to free and fair elections around the world. 7 What is Democracy?
Huntington, Samuel P. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. . This seminal work outlines the significance of a third wave of democratization to describe the global trend that has seen more than 60 countries throughout Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa undergo some form of democratic transitions since Portugal's Carnation Revolution of 1974. Karl, Terry Lynn. 1990. “Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 23 (1): 1-21. . This article addresses the question of what condition make democracy possible and what makes it thrive? The author argues that theorist should develop an approach that considered structural constraints that shape choices. . Looking to Latin America, research should also focus on different types of democracy that emerge from regime transitions, as well as the political, economic, and social consequences, rather than the simple and broad transition from authoritarian rule to democracy. Karl, Terry Lynn. 1995. “The Hybrid Regimes of Central America,” Journal of Democracy 6 (3): 72-86. . Karl poses several question related to the prospects for democracy in Central America and argues that optimism for a real democracy in countries like Honduras is low because military impunities linger, repression is pervasive and domestic actors are relatively weak. Levistky, Steven and Lucan Way. 2002. “Elections without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 13 (April 2002): 51-65. . In recent years, new types of nondemocratic government have come to the fore, notably competitive authoritarianism. Such regimes, though not democratic, feature arenas of contestation in which opposition forces can challenge, and even oust, authoritarian incumbents. Levitsky, Steven and Lucan Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Based on a study of 35 cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and post-communist Eurasia, this book explores competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2008. . It finds that where social, economic, and technocratic ties to the West were extensive, as in Eastern Europe and the Americas, the external cost of abuse led incumbents to cede power rather than crackdown, which led to democratization. . Where ties to the West were limited, external democratizing pressure was weaker and countries rarely democratized. Linz, Juan J. and Alfred Stepan, 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. . The authors argue that, although "nation-state" and "democracy" often have conflicting logics, multiple and complementary political identities are feasible under a common roof of state-guaranteed rights. . They also illustrate how, without an effective state, there can be neither effective citizenship nor successful privatization. . Further, the authors provide criteria and evidence for politicians and scholars alike to distinguish between democratic consolidation and pseudo-democratization, and they present conceptually driven survey data for the fourteen countries studied. Lipset, Seymour Martin, 1981. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. . A collection of essays that illustrate the contribution of sociologists to understanding democratic political systems. . The author present a series of key hypotheses, such as democracy requires institutions that can resolve conflict, and in modern democracies, political parties represent a democratic translation of the class struggle, among others. O’Donnell, Guillermo. 1999. “Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies,” pp. 29-51 in Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. (An earlier, condensed version of this appeared under the same title in Journal of Democracy 9 (July 1998): 112-126. . O’Donnell discusses the absence of horizontal accountability focusing on the polyarchies of Latin America, Asia and some post-communist countries.
8 What is Democracy?
Przeworski, Adam. 1991. Democracy and the Market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . The book outlines economic and political reforms witnessed in Latin America and Eastern Europe, and argues that the reforms raise questions about the nature of democracy and transitional challenges. Przeworski, Adam, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Anontio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Material Well-being in the World, 1950-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Is economic development conducive to political democracy? Does democracy foster or hinder material welfare? These two questions are examined by looking at the experiences of 135 countries between 1950 and 1990. . The book finds that economic development does not generate democracies, but democracies are much more likely to survive in wealthy societies. Scalapino, Robert, “The East Asian Prospect: A Tale of Three Systems,” Journal of Democracy 8, number 3 (July 1997): 150-55. The article assesses the prospects for democracy in three Asian countries. Schmitter, Philippe C. and Terry Lynn Karl, 1991. “What Democracy Is… and Is Not,” Journal of Democracy 2 (3): 75- 88. . The article assesses the definition of democracy, and assert that democracy does not consist of a single set of institutions. Rather there are many types with diverse practices that produce differing effects. Valenzuela, J. Samuel, 1992. “Democratic Consolidation in Post-Transitional Settings: Notion, Process, and Facilitating Conditions,” in Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O’Donnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press). . Building on a minimal formal definition of democracy, this chapter presents a conception of democratic consolidation and of the process for reaching it. It also discusses several key conditions that facilitate (or hinder) consolidation.
9 Why Prefer Democracy?
This primer summarizes the normative and empirical arguments for democracy. That is, why is democracy preferable to other forms of government?
Key Points . Democracy is a human right. Various . Corruption is higher in dictatorships than international and regional instruments democracies. recognize political self-determination as a . No modern democracy has ever suffered a fundamental right that all people have. famine, mass murder, or genocide, in . Full human dignity requires political contrast to many autocracies. equality and self-determination, the ability . No two democracies have ever gone to war of people to choose and replace their with one another. leaders as they wish. . As demonstrated in another primer, . Democracies tend to perform well at democracies are not intrinsically or protecting other basic freedoms beyond empirically inferior to autocracies in political rights, including freedoms of economic performance, so they are to be speech, press, organization, association, preferred on other grounds. and religion. Democracies appear to do a better job, on . The rule of law is stronger in democracies the whole, of protecting the environment, than dictatorships. though the evidence for this relationship is rather mixed.
Democracy, Human Rights, and Human ability of each individual to make choices for him or Dignity herself. Dahl saw democracy as promoting human development and empowerment, enabling people to As Robert Dahl observed, democracy promotes pursue their own interests and values.1 “freedom as no feasible alternative” form of govern- It is also the case that as economic development ment can. Dahl saw democracy as “instrumental to proceeds, people increasingly embrace what Inglehart freedom” in three ways. First, free and fair elections and Welzel term “self-expression values,”2 which inherently require certain political rights of expression, “emphasize human autonomy and choice.” organization and opposition, “and these fundamental Socioeconomic development, they argue “tends to political rights are unlikely to exist in isolation from make people materially, intellectually and socially broader civil liberties.” Second, democracy maximizes more independent,” and this in turn “leads people to opportunities for individual self-determination—for give … liberty priority over discipline, diversity over people “to live under laws of their own choosing.” conformity, and autonomy over authority.” From this Third, democracy facilitates moral autonomy, the perspective, development is about “human
...... 1 See Robert Dahl. 1989. Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 88-89. 2 Ronald Inglehart and Christian Wetzel. 2005. Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Why Prefer Democracy?
emancipation.”3 The growth of self-expression values requires public discussion and exchange of “motivate(s) people to seek the civil and political rights information, views, and analyses.”9 that define liberal democracy.” Liberal democracy There is no clear evidence that the poor do not thus becomes a moral imperative as people gain the care about freedom and democracy. In fact, when knowledge and resources to think for themselves and “there has been any testing of the proposition that to break free of traditional social dictates. poor people in general do not care about civil and However, the view of development as human political rights, the evidence is entirely against that emancipation is not just for the materially well off. claim.”10 Sen cites the recurrent struggles and Amartya Sen argues persuasively that poor people mobilizations for democracy in a wide range of Asian need democracy just as much as the well-off: “People countries, from the resistance to Indira Gandhi’s in economic need also need a political voice. emergency rule in India in the mid-1970s to Democracy is not a luxury than can await the arrival of movements for democracy in Korea, Thailand, general prosperity.4 Sen advances several arguments Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Burma. But the most for democracy. First, “political and social participation compelling evidence may come from the poorest has intrinsic value for human life and well-being. To region of the world, Africa. As the Afrobarometer be prevented from participation in the political life of survey data have regularly and consistently shown, the community is a major deprivation.”5 Second, he overwhelming majorities of the public in most African argues, democracy has an important instrumental countries surveyed believe “democracy is preferable value in “enhancing the hearing that people get” for to any other kind of government” and reject various the needs they express.6 This also plays a crucial specific authoritarian alternatives. Even more tellingly, protective role for the poor. For one thing, it gives where democracy is absent or glaringly deficient, it is them immunity against famine, since “no substantial generally not because the public doesn’t value it but famine has ever occurred in any independent country rather because ruling elites simply aren’t providing it, with a democratic form of government and a free as evidenced in the substantial gaps between the press.”7 This is because the free flows of information public’s demand for democratic institutions and their and mechanisms of political accountability compel the (largely accurate) perceptions of the supply of it.11 state to act before large numbers of people starve to death needlessly. By the same token, as noted in the Some Empirical Evidence primer on democracy and economic growth, all of the Empirically the link between freedom and democracy severe or protracted development disasters have is inescapable. Freedom House annually rates civil occurred in authoritarian regimes, not democracies. liberties and political rights on twin seven-point scales, For example, during the period 1990 to 2007, virtually with 1 being most free and 7 most repressive. Civil all of the countries with negative annual rates of liberties are heavily correlated with the presence of growth (such as Togo, North Korea, and Zimbabwe) democracy. All 80 countries that have a 1 or a 2 on 8 were authoritarian regimes. Finally, democracy has civil liberties are democracies (with the exception of for Sen constructive value in that it “helps society to Hungary). All but one of the 26 countries with a score form its values and priorities. Even the idea of of 3 are democracies (the lone exception is ‘needs,’ including the idea of ‘economic needs,’ Macedonia, which has only recently slid into autocracy). All 61 of the countries with scores of 5, 6,
...... 3 Inglehart and Wetzel, pg 151-152. 4 Amartya Sen. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Random House and Sen, “Democracy as a Universal Value,” Journal of Democracy 10 (July 1999) 3-17. 5 Amartya Sen, “Democracy as a Universal Freedom” 1999, pg. 10. 6 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom 1999, pg. 148. 7 Ibid, pg. 152. 8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_growth_1980%E2%80%932010, data culled from the UN Statistics Division. 9 Amartya Sen, “Democracy as a Universal Value,” pg. 10. 10 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, pg. 151. 11 Michael Bratton. “Formal Versus Informal Institutions in Africa,” Journal of Democracy 18 (July 2007):96-110.
2 Why Prefer Democracy?
and 7 are non-democracies. And the countries with a political and civil rights are really beneficial in score of 4 are split about half and half (54 percent are encouraging economic development.” And therefore: democracies).12 In short, there are essentially no “Since political liberty and freedom have importance of liberal autocracies, and no regime that severely their own, the case for them remains unaffected.”15 represses civil liberties can qualify as a democracy. Second, while the process of moving to Increasingly, “liberal autocracy” is a contradiction in democracy in deeply divided or conflict-ridden terms, because liberalism insists on the sovereignty of situations can open the door to increased violence or the people to decide their form of government, and instability, democracies are better at avoiding large- when people have true freedom to debate that, scale internal violence and particularly genocide. Like “popular sovereignty can hardly fail to lead to popular famine, genocide and mass murder are uniquely the government.”13 Democracy and basic freedoms of products of authoritarian rule. Rummel found every conscience, association, expression, organization, instance in the twentieth century of mass murder by a and assembly thus go hand in hand. state against its own people happened under authori- Democracies are certainly not free of corruption. tarian rule, and the more absolute the authoritarian Indeed, no factor more often undermines democracy regime the greater the tendency toward genocide and than widespread corruption and a weak rule of law. mass murder (together termed “democide”). He thus However, corruption remains a pervasive problem concluded, “Power kills, absolute power kills worldwide, and again, there is a striking correlation absolutely.”16 And the best way to eliminate mass between control of corruption, as measured by a murder is “through restricting and checking power,” in country’s rank on the Transparency International other words, “to foster democratic freedom.”17 Corruption Perceptions Index14, and democracy. If we With respect to interstate warfare, no two divide the 175 independent countries rated by democracies have ever fought one another. Thus, it is Transparency International into 7 groups of 25 states reasonable to argue that no development would be each, we observe the following pattern. Among the 25 more likely to end warfare between nations than the least corrupt states, 88 percent are democracies. achievement of universal democracy. As then UN Among the next most honest group, 84 percent are Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali observed, democracies. And the percentage of democracies “A culture of democracy is fundamentally a culture of keeps declining with each step down the latter of peace.” The secretiveness, repression, and dubious corruption: 74 percent, 60 percent, 50 percent, and legitimacy of authoritarian regimes make them “more 19 percent, until we arrive at the 25 most corrupt likely to incite hostilities against other States in order states, none of which are democracies. to justify their suppression of internal dissent or forge Two other points should be highlighted from other a basis for national unity.”18 primers. First, there is no consistent relationship There is also some statistical evidence to suggest (across time and space) between economic growth that democracies do a better job of protecting the and democracy, although the democracies of Africa environment, though it is not uniform. One study have generally done better than the authoritarian found “a significant and robust” negative relationship regimes. What remains true today—nearly two between the level of democracy and the urban air decades after Sen wrote his path breaking book—is concentrations of three major pollutants,19 although an that “there is rather little general evidence that earlier study found a more mixed and even negative authoritarian governance and the suppression of relationship between democracy and environmental
...... 12 Data as analyzed by Larry Diamond. 13 Marc F. Plattner. 1998. “Liberalism and Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 77, no. 2: 171-180. 14 https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016. 15 Amartya Sen, 1999. Development as Freedom, pg. 150. 16 Rudolph Rummel. 1994. “Power, Genocide and Mass Murder” in Journal of Peace Research 31, no. 1: 1-10 and Rummel, 1997. Power Kills: Democracy and the Method of Nonviolence. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. 17 Rummel. 1994, pg. 8. 18 Boutros Boutro-Ghali. 1996. An Agenda for Democratization. New York: United Nations. pg. 7-8. 19 Margrethe Winslow. 2005. “Is Democracy Good for the Environment?” in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 48, no. 5: 771-783.
3 Why Prefer Democracy?
protection.20 One of the most comprehensive identified with this perspective. Under Xi Jinping, quantitative studies found that the degree of China is increasingly trumpeting the superiority of its democracy had significant (though not equal) effects system of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” as in reducing each of the five forms of environmental offering (in Xi’s words at the October 2017 19th Party pollution it examined: carbon dioxide emission, Congress) “a new option for other countries and nitrogen dioxide emissions, deforestation, land nations who want to speed up their development while degradation, and organic pollution in water.21 Another preserving their independence.” And political theorist study found “strong evidence that long-term Daniel Bell, who teachers in China, touts the democracy stock helps lower sulfur and carbon traditional Confucian system of meritocracy as offering dioxide emissions.”22 Other studies have found a more a superior form of government in terms of effective- general relationship between democracy and ness, rationality, and stability (though he concedes environmental protection, for several fairly obvious China itself has yet to fully achieve this model itself). reasons. Democracies allow for freer flows of However, as Amartya Sen argues, when people information, enabling environmental activists to are given the choice, they generally opt for the goals discover and expose environmental damage and the of freedom and democracy, even if they become risks it poses to human health and even economic disillusioned with the way democracy is working in sustainability. Democracies enable environmental their country at a particular point in time. In fact, the activists to protest more freely and to lobby for striking thing about all forms of authoritarian rule so far environmental protections. They are more responsive attempted is that they never meaningfully and freely to popular pressures, including for environmental put to their people the choice of what kind of protection, and with their greater transparency in government they would like to live under. Although the policy making and government functioning and their public opinion survey evidence is not uniform or generally greater respect for law, democracies are consistent over time, people in societies that have more likely to uphold international conventions with freedom of information and of intellectual argument regard to the environment.23 express a strong overall preference for democracy.24 And cultural traditions, like those in South and East Is Democracy A Universal Value? Asia, that are often depicted as favoring authoritar- Defenders of autocracy (and even some scholars ianism in fact have more complex traditions with many 25 sympathetic to democracy) have long insisted that democratic elements. different cultural traditions place priority on different Sen argues that the mark of a universal value is types of values, and that “Asian values” (for example) not that it has the consent of everyone everywhere, prioritize hierarchy, order, and harmony over political but rather that “people anywhere may have reason to 26 equality, freedom, and competition. Singapore’s see it as valuable.” There are in fact multiple founding leader, and author of one of the greatest compelling reasons why people anywhere have success stories of rapid economic development in the reason to see democracy as preferable—the best post-colonial world, Lew Kuan Yew, was particularly form of government.
...... 20 Minus Midlarsky. 1998. “Democracy and the Environment: An Empirical Assessment,” Journal of Peace Research 35 (May): 341- 361. 21 Quan Li and Rafael Reuveny, “Democracy and Environmental Degradation,” International Studies Quarterly 50: 935-956. 22 Kevin P. Gallagher and Strom Thacker, “Democracy, Income and Environmental Quality,” March 2008, http://www.bu.edu/sthacker/files/2012/01/Democracy-Income-and-Environmental-Quality.pdf 23 See Rodger Payne 1995. “Freedom and the Environment,” in Journal of Democracy 6 (July): 41-55 and Thomas Drosdowski. 2006. “On the link between Democracy and the Environment,” Discussion Paper 355, University of Hanover. http://diskussionspapiere.wiwi.uni-hannover.de/pdf_bib/dp-355.pdf 24 See Larry Diamond and March Plattner, eds., 2008. How People View Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press and Larry Diamond. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World. New York: New York Times Books, pp 31-38. 25 See Armarty Sen. 1999. Development as a Freedom, Amartya Sen. 1999. Democracy as a Universal Freedom, and Larry Diamond. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy, pg. 28-31. 26 Amartya Sen. 1999. Democracy as a Universal Freedom, pg. 12.
4 Why Prefer Democracy?
Annotated Bibliography
Bell, Daniel A. 2015. The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. . The author argues that Chinese-style political meritocracy can help to remedy the key flaws of electoral democracy. . He discusses the advantages and pitfalls of political meritocracy, distinguishes between different ways of combining meritocracy and democracy, and argues that China has evolved a model of democratic meritocracy that is morally desirable and politically stable. . Bell summarizes and evaluates the “China model”—meritocracy at the top, experimentation in the middle, and democracy at the bottom—and its implications for the rest of the world. Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. 1996. An Agenda for Democratization. New York: United Nations. . The paper seeks to deepen understanding of United Nations efforts to promote democratization and aims to intensify debate on future international action. Bratton, Michael, 2007. “Formal versus Informal Institutions in Africa, Journal of Democracy 18 (July 2007): 96-110. . A decade and a half after the first African regime transitions and despite growing popular disillusionment with democracy in practice, the general idea of "rule by the people" remains an attractive prospect for solid majorities of citizens. . However, popular attachment to the specific institutions of a democratic regime—and how willing citizens feel to apply formal criteria of institutional development to the evaluation of regime performance—is a much more varied and tentative matter. Dahl, Robert A. 1989. Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press. . The author examines the most basic assumptions of democratic theory, tests them against the questions raised by its critics, and reinterprets the theory of democracy. . He concludes by discussing the directions in which democracy must move if advanced democratic states are to exist in the future. Diamond, Larry. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World New York: Times Books. . The book asks whether democracy is something that can exist only in rich and educated countries, those with a strong middle class. Do all people actually want democracy, or do some believe that a form of authoritarianism is the best way to run a country? . To answer this question, Diamond, in a sweeping survey of countries around the world, examines the forces that contribute to democracy, from the internal influences that give rise to civil societies to the impact of peaceful outside pressures like diplomatic persuasion or, in some cases, economic sanctions. Diamond, Larry and Marc F. Plattner, eds. 2008. How People View Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. . This volume gathers essays by leading scholars and principals of regional public-opinion surveys, known as "barometers," which are making possible the first systematic, worldwide study of how citizens think about democracy and weigh it against other forms of government. Drosdowski, Thomas. 2006. “On the Link between Democracy and the Environment,” Discussion Paper 355, University of Hanover. http://diskussionspapiere.wiwi.uni-hannover.de/pdf_bib/dp-355.pdf. . The author examines the relationship between democracy and environment, but first comparing democracies and non-democracies. They next address environmental distribution conflicts and the role of economic growth. . Also, concentrating on the role of economic inequality, the author illuminates how democratization influences environmental policies and discuss the impact of elections, electoral systems and polluting lobbies.
5 Why Prefer Democracy?
Gallager, Kevin P., and Strom Thacker, “Democracy, Income, and Environmental Quality,” March 2008, http://www.bu.edu/sthacker/files/2012/01/Democracy-Income-and-Environmental-Quality.pdf. . This working paper considers the role of democracy in environmental quality and the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). . The paper examines panel data from 1960 to 2001 to analyze the extent to which both the current level and the stock of a country’s democracy have significant and independent effects on a nation’s sulfur and carbon dioxide emissions. . While there is no evidence for the short-run effect of the current level of democracy, the authors find strong evidence that long-term democracy stock helps lower sulfur and carbon dioxide emissions. Inglehart, Ronald and Christian Welzel. 2005. Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . The authors demonstrate that modernization is a process of human development, in which economic development triggers cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely. Li, Quan and Rafael Reuveny, “Democracy and Environmental Degradation,” International Studies Quarterly 50: 935- 956. . Addressing the democracy–environment debate, the article the effect of democracy on five aspects of human- induced environmental degradation—carbon dioxide emissions, nitrogen dioxide emissions, deforestation, land degradation, and organic pollution in water. . They find that democracy reduces all five types of environmental degradation. . While the substantive effect of democracy is considerable, it varies in size across different types of environmental degradation. Midlarsky, Minus. 1998. “Democracy and the Environment: An Empirical Assessment,” Journal of Peace Research 35 (May): 341-361. . This article examines the relationship between democracy and the environment. In a regression analysis of three environmental indicators, deforestation, carbon dioxide emission, and soil erosion by water, the statically significant effect of democracy on the environment was negative, contrary to assumptions. In another case (protected land area), the impact of democracy was positive, while in two other instances (freshwater availability and soil erosion by chemical), there was no effect of democracy on the environment. . The findings suggest that democracy cannot be viewed uni-dimensionally in its relationship to the environment, and warrant reconsideration of the assumptions by theorists and policy makers regarding the positive effects of democracy on the environment. Payne, Rodger. 1995. “Freedom and the Environment,” Journal of Democracy 6 (July): 41-55. . Since Kant, liberals have argued that a world filled with democracies would suffer fewer wars. Remarkably, a growing body of historical scholarship confirms that democratic states have not fought one another. . Though a burgeoning literature during the 1990s sought to explain why this peace results. The present essay explores a different, though related, theme by asking whether democratization produces other consequences for the community of nations. Specifically, do democratic states take better care of the environment? Plattner, Marc F. 1998. “Liberalism and Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 77, no. 2: 171-180. . In a rejoinder to Fareed Zakaria, Plattner argues that while liberalism and democracy are not inseparably linked, it is a disjunction that must not be overstated, as it is difficult to have one without the other. Rummel, Rudolph J. 1994. “Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder.” Journal of Peace Research 31, no. 1: 1-10. . Case studies and quantitative analysis show that ethnic, racial, and religious diversity, economic development, levels of education, and cultural differences do not account for mass killing. . Rather, it is explained by the degree to which a regime is empowered along a democratic to totalitarian dimension and, also the extent to which it is characteristically involved in war or rebellion. . The results show that democracies do not make war on each other, the more democratic two nations are the less foreign violence between them, and that the more democratic a regime the less internal violence strongly suggests that democracy is a general method of nonviolence.
6 Why Prefer Democracy?
Rummel, Rudolph J. 1997. Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. . Rummel, here, similarly observes that well-established democracies do not make war on and rarely commit lesser violence against each other. . The more democratic two nations are, the less likely is war or smaller-scale violence between them. . The more democratic a nation is, the less severe its overall foreign violence, the less likely it will have domestic collective violence, and the less its democide. Sen, Amartya. 1999a. Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. . Freedom, Sen argues in his book, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Sen, Amartya. 1999b. “Democracy as a Universal Value,” Journal of Democracy 10 (July 1999) 3-17. . Sen argues that democracy is a universal value and discusses the relationship between democracy and economic development. Winslow, Margrethe. 2005. “Is Democracy Good for the Environment?” Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 48, no. 5: 771-783. . This paper presents empirical evidence that supports the existence of a relationship between democracy and one aspect of environmental quality, urban air pollution. . The relationship between environmental quality and democracy is explored using a regression analysis of urban air concentrations of three pollutants, sulfur dioxide (SO2), suspended particulate matter (SPM) and smoke, and two measures of democracy, the Freedom House Index and Polity III. . The results suggest a significant and robust negative linear relationship between these pollutant concentrations and democracy level: the higher the level of democracy, the lower the ambient pollution level.
7 Political Culture and Democracy
Researchers and policy makers alike have long believed that successful democratic consolidation requires citizens to embody a suitable political culture. This primer addresses how political culture is defined and describes its features that relate to democracy. Are there cultural requisites for successful democratization and durable democracy, and what are the major global trends in mass political culture?
Key Points . Political culture refers to a people’s beliefs . Democratic culture tends to be more and values about a political system, and prevalent at higher levels of development, their personal role in that system in their but in the past two decades, poverty and own country. underdevelopment in regions like Africa and . Key attributes of a democratic culture are the Americas have not inhibited people from tolerance, civility, willingness to expressing a well-informed support for compromise, belief in the legitimacy of democracy. democracy, and a healthy skepticism . While citizens in the Americas support toward authority tempered with underlying democracy, they tend to distrust democratic trust toward institutions and other citizens. institutions, in favor of traditional power . Regime performance, both politically and holders like the church and military. economically, as well as education, income, . Despite general cultural differences and and people’s firsthand experience with many caveats, citizens of Asia and the democracy can all shape political culture, Middle East tend to favor democracy. but the impact of economic performance appears to be more cumulative over time.
Defining Political Culture data to examine people’s attitudes, values or understanding of the political system. The Political culture refers to “a people’s predominant proliferation of numerous regional datasets as well beliefs, attitudes, values, ideals, sentiments, and as global surveys have fostered interest in empirical evaluations about the political system of their studies of culture, and enabled social scientists to country and the role of the self in that system.”1 The identify important regional variations. But as a study of democratization in this field of research is product of shared behaviors and orientations, culture therefore often premised on the idea that there are is more than the sum of individual attitudes. For this certain cultural requisites of democracy, or that a reason, defining the boundaries of a culture is change in values precedes a successful transition to challenging, and since some studies have attempt to democracy. Much of this research utilizes survey claim that some cultures are less compatible with
...... 1 See Diamond 1999, 161-65 a fuller discussion.
Political Culture and Democracy
democracy,2 advancing such claims can be sensitive programs to cooperate and compromise. too. Democracy is a system of institutionalized conflict, National societies may manifest dominant but if conflict becomes too intense it risks patterns of political beliefs and values, but different descending into violence and repression. Thus a groups within the same society may hold contrasting democratic culture must embody some degree of cultures. For example, Japanese hold more pragmatism, civility, trust, and tolerance—both of optimistic beliefs about the ability of democracy to political opposition and of social difference. These, in bring economic development than Chinese, but turn, enable bargaining and compromise.4 By the within Japanese society, youths are pessimistic same token, healthy democracy requires an attitude relative than older adults. Age, ethnicity, religion, toward authority that is neither blindly allegiant nor region, class, and elite vs. mass all constitute reflexively cynical.5 . cleavages that can generate distinct sub-cultures Crucially, stable democracy entails a belief in within a nation. the legitimacy of democracy, probably the most indispensable element of democratic culture. In its The Cultural Correlates of Democracy most robust form, citizens believe that democracy is the best form of government both for their own A healthy democratic political culture encompasses country and as a political system more broadly. several attributes, and a common theme in the People are morally committed to democracy, not literature is that any attribute taken to its extreme only for what it produces economically and socially, can also threaten democracy. To begin, a culture of but for its intrinsic political features, such as choice, democracy embraces an active and informed accountability, freedom and rule of law. citizenship that believes in the power of individual
and group action. Citizens must be willing to seek information, participate in politics and the public Factors Enabling Democratic Political sphere, and believe their actions can lead to change, Culture as opposed to feeling powerless (or what is called The initial process of democratization may only “low efficacy”). Yet Almond and Verba’s classic early require a relatively narrow segment of elite actors to study, The Civic Culture, warned that too much pursue regime change, but in the long-run, mass participation can overload the system with excessive political culture becomes increasingly important for demand and partisanship. 3 They therefore argued the viability of democracy.6 As the previous section that democracy needs a mixed or “civic” culture that discussed, democratic political culture includes tempers participation with the subject role (which tolerance, trust, individual empowerment, balanced accepts and is loyal to political authority) and the skepticism toward authority, and most of all, a robust parochial role (which binds the individual to commitment to the legitimacy of democracy and traditional, non-political groups). Such a balanced democratic procedures. Research points to several culture tempers the intensity of politics with social factors that engender such a mass culture. and political trust and cooperation. In general, modernization promotes the growth Balance, flexibility and moderation encompass of democratic values and beliefs. As countries other core features of democratic culture, such as become richer and income levels rise, people willingness among those with contending beliefs and become more tolerant, more inclusive, more flexible,
...... 2 Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster. 3 Almond and Verba 1963. 4 Dahl 1970, Putnam 1993. See also Diamond, 1999, 165-167. 5 For example, Hook 1950; Inkeles 1997, 195-8. 6 Diamond 1999, 172.
2 Political Culture and Democracy
more participatory, more questioning of authority, democracy, a more informed conclusion would be to and more valuing of freedom and democracy.7 encourage citizens to engage in the public life, which In particular, education tends to usher in a may include smaller-scale, more local democratic commitment to democracy.8 Analysts of post- activities. Communist countries have found that education is System performance may also contribute to one of the most important predictors of pro- mass confidence in democratic legitimacy. Research democracy and anti-authoritarian attitudes.9 This link finds that that political—rather than economic— between education and democratic government performance better explains people’s belief in often includes a deeper commitment to liberal democracy. People who believe that democracy is democratic values as well.10 African democracies at solving problems and responsive to citizens are the turn of the century exhibit a similar pattern: more likely to subscribe to democracy as the best educated citizens are more supportive of form of government.14 In contrast, scholars mostly democracy.11 find that short-run economic performance does not Thus, promoting broader access to education affect perceptions of democratic legitimacy, though will likely have the effect of promoting such key prolonged economic deprivation might deteriorate elements of democratic culture as autonomous democratic culture.15 Studies from different regions participation, skepticism toward authority, and belief at different time periods show that once public in democracy. support for democracy becomes entrenched, The next set of factors that foster key elements democratic legitimacy becomes resilient to of democratic culture are civic and political fluctuations in economic performance.16 One engagement. In a classic study of Italian democracy, potential exception, however, are citizens of Asia. A Robert Putnam finds that public participation in civic study of public opinion data from 54 countries associations—Rotary Clubs, sports and hobby covering Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and organizations, and the like—fosters a political culture Asia shows that Asian citizens are most likely to link of cooperation, trust, and tolerance, which are their personal and national economic circumstances necessary ingredients for democracy.12 The findings with their attitudes toward democracy.17 Lastly, in on civic engagement extend to democratic some cases of deep democratic experience such as engagement. Specifically, an important predictors of Spain in the 1970s through 1990s, citizens might people’s belief in democratic legitimacy is whether even come to value democracy more intrinsically, they have direct experience participating in and decouple their commitment to democracy from democracy.13 Thus, rather than conclude a country shorter-run changes in economic and political lacking democratic culture is wholly unsuitable for performance.18
...... 7 See example, Lipset, 1959 (Some Social Requisites of Democracy), Inkeles 1969, Inkeles and Smith, 1974; and Inglehart and Welzel, 2005, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. For more on this literature, see the Primer on Economic and Social Requisites. 8 This is a key pillar of “modernization theory.” See Almond and Verba 1963; Inkles and Smith 1974. 9 Rose, Mishler, and Haerpfer 1998. 10 Reisinger et al. 1994. 11 Bratton and Mattes 2001. 12 Dahl, 1970, Putnam 1993. 13 Almond and Verba 1963, 19; Inkeles 1969; Diamond 1999, 171. 14 Diamond 1999, 200. 15 Diamond 1999, 205. 16 E.g. Evans and Whitefield 1995 on post-Communist countries in the 1990s; Rose, Mishler, and Haerpfer 1998 on former East Bloc countries; Bratton and Mattes 2001 on Africa; Lagos 2003 on Latin America. 17 Chu et al. 2008, 81. 18 Bunther, Montero, and Botella 2004.
3 Political Culture and Democracy
Identifying Geographic Patterns in the court being able to constrain executive action. Political Culture These trends speak to the sophistication and depth with which African citizens desire democracy.22 The 1999-2001 World Values Survey reveals that Despite this thirst for democracy, citizens’ citizens across all geographical regions tend to expressed less stellar beliefs about whether the express a great deal of support for democracy, with specific democracy they live under is performing up over 80 percent agreeing to the statement that to par. About 50 percent of those surveyed believed “Democracy may have its problems, but it’s better that democracy was working well in their country and 19 than any other form of government." Surveys since expressed satisfaction with the way democracy was then have generally reinforced democracy as a working. If we call this the “supply” of democracy, broad aspiration, linking it to “emancipative” attitudes then there is a 25 percentage point gap between the as people embrace “civic” attitudes over demand and supply of democracy among the public individualism, and worry less about material in Africa (roughly 75 minus 50, on average). Thus, concerns after reaching a certain level of the challenges of democracy in Africa are not 20 development. But within this global context there primarily due to mass ignorance and lack of are several distinct regional patterns. Responses demand, but instead due to poor institutional also differ depending on how questions are worded. performance at the elite and government levels. Beginning with Africa, public opinion data from Turning to the Americas, a USAID report on the the Afrobarometer reveals widespread enthusiasm Americas Barometer shows that citizens in the for democracy. In the four waves of surveys Americans also exhibit strong demand for conducted between 2005 and 2015, the average democracy, though slightly lower than in Africa.23 “demand” for democracy among eighteen African From 2004 to 2014, consistently about 70 percent of 21 countries remained between 70 and 80 percent. respondents believed that democracy is better than Demand for democracy is measured by averaging any other form of government. Troubling, however, people’s response to whether they believe are the low levels of trust in democratic institutions democracy is always the preferable form of that prevail in most Latin American countries. Trust government and whether they reject authoritarian in the three branches of government and in elections alternatives such as single party, personalist, and is generally under 50 percent, while trust in the army military rule. More promising, the data show that and church is above 60 percent.24 The persistently African citizens also support key components of higher levels of trust in the military are especially democratic governance, even when the word troubling given many of these countries’ significant “democracy” is not mentioned. Consistently between history of military rule. Continued economic strife 2005 and 2015, over 75 percent of respondents and criminal violence that plague many citizens supported choosing leaders through elections. might explain these trends in institutional trust.25 Levels of support for these other key democratic These data from Africa and the Americas speak principles averaged over 60 percent of the public: to an age-old question about whether there are having multiple political parties, having the socioeconomic perquisites for democracy, as argued parliament make laws rather than the president, and by “modernization” theorists. Looking within African
...... 19 Diamond 2008, 33. 20 Welzel, Christian. 2013. Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation. New York: Cambridge University Press. 21 Countries include Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nambia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. 22 These trends come from independent analysis of the most recent Afrobarometer data. While covering a shorter period of time, Bratton (2012) draws a similar conclusion regarding African demand for democracy from 2000 to 2012. 23 USAID 2014, 198. 24 Ibid, 200. 25 https://www.economist.com/news/americas/21706344-latin-america-has-different-worries-united-states-and-europe-neither- trumpian-nor.
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countries, one analyst finds that poorer citizens living democratic culture is simply not robust. In Burma, in rural areas do indeed demand democracy less opinion polls find that general support for democracy ardently than their wealthy urban counterparts.26 But does not translate to holding liberal value about the aggregated data from the Afrobarometer and authority and accountability.30 This reflects a broader AmericasBarometer are more optimistic. Given the trend in developing Asia and especially South East high support for democracy even among poor Asia, where deference to power and “authoritarian countries, economic underdevelopment does not nostalgia” for strong rulers remains.31 And where necessarily inhibit citizens from adopting a robust competitive authoritarian regimes have delivered a democratic political culture. sustained strong record of economic performance Data from Asia and the Middle East provide while claiming that they are actually democratic—in other insights into the political culture of democracy. Malaysia and particularly Singapore—they have To begin, some argue that Islamic and Asian values garnered higher levels of “democratic” support and are incompatible with democracy, and thus satisfaction even than many actual democracies in perpetuate authoritarianism. Much evidence, Asia. However, the implication of this finding cuts however, shows otherwise: majorities of citizens both ways. The experience of countries like Taiwan from many Muslim-majority and Asian countries tend and South Korea, and before them Spain, shows to express support for democracy—and in some that when democratization follows modernization, it cases for specific democratic values—even at levels is likely to be quite stable and liberal, precisely comparable to people from western countries.27 The because rising levels of education and income have mass protests and calls for democracy in the Arab produced a much more democratic culture. Spring (and before that, the Green Movement in Iran) and in Myanmar, Taiwan, and Hong Kong also Conclusion show that Middle Eastern and Asian citizens do not Support for democracy is widespread around the intrinsically prefer authoritarian rule. Even after the world, and there is evidence that certain political Arab Spring, data show that “people still want values are conducive to the development of democracy.” In nine Middle Eastern countries, democracy. But this is not to say that global values beliefs that democracy is the best system of are converging on any particular model of western 28 government did not fall between 2010 and 2014. liberalism; regional variation in attitudes show how Yet views of democracy in the region do reflect particular undemocratic values and may sometimes complicated views about any political costs of coexist with genuine democratic aspirations. Nor regime change. Even where Arab citizens strongly should the evidence linking modernization and support democracy (60%), they are concerned about democratic values imply that democracy is not its consequences. This is particularly true in feasible in poor countries because economic countries have experienced upheaval or instability development has not generated the “right” values. after holding elections (e.g. Algeria 1991, Palestine Political culture remains an evolving field of study. It 2006, Egypt 2011). For example, 27% of provides a useful way for thinking about paths to ArabBarometer respondent overall see democracy democratic development apart from factors such as 29 as generally good, but not right for their country. institutions or economic structures by exploring There are also clearly some areas where social norms and citizens’ beliefs.
...... 26 Bratton 2006. 27 Reviewing the evidence, see Diamond 2008, 34-38. 28 Robbins 2015. The countries are Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, Jordan, Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria. See also Jamal and Tessler 2008. 29 Benstead, Lindsay J. 2015. "Why do some Arab citizens see democracy as unsuitable for their country?" Democratization no. 22 (7): 1183-1208. 30 Welsh, Huang, and Chu 2016. 31 Chang, Chu, and Park 2008.
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Annotated Bibliography
Almond, Gabriel A., and Sidney Verba. 1963. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. . Confidence in the Enlightenment in the inevitable triumph of human reason and liberty has been twice shaken in recent decades. The development of Fascism and Communism after World War I raised serious doubts about the inevitability of democracy in the West; and there is still uncertainty that Europe will discover a stable form of democratic process suitable to their particular cultures and social institutions. This is a study of the political culture of democracy and of the social structures and processes that sustain it. Almond, Gabriel A. 1980. “The Intellectual History of the Civic Culture Concept,” in The Civic Culture Revisited, edited by Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. . Almond updates the five-nation study and reviews developments since the 25-year inception of the civic culture. The authors address many of the questions raised by scholars of the field, such as the validity of the concepts and the soundness of their study. Bratton, Michael. 2006. “Poor People and Democratic Citizenship in Africa.” Working Paper No. 56, Afrobarometer Working Papers. . This paper explores the relationship of poor people to democratic citizenship in sub-Saharan Africa. It is prompted in part by intriguing research results emerging from South Asia that suggest that poor people are equally or more likely to hold democratic values, support democratic regimes, and vote in democratic elections. Bratton, Michael. 2012. “Trends in Popular Attitudes to Multiparty Democracy in Africa 2000-2012. Available at: http://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Briefing%20paper/afrobriefno105a.pdf. . To determine whether Africans want democracy, this Afrobarometer paper asks four related survey questions. The first item measures popular expressions of support for democracy; the remainder measure mass rejection of one-party, military and one-man rule. . Taken together, these items form a scale of demand for democracy. The logic of the scale is that effective demand requires more than lip service to democracy; it also implies that people abandon attachments to old autocratic regimes. Bratton, Michael, and Robert B. Mattes. 2001. “Africans’ Surprising Universalism.” Journal of Democracy 12 (1): 107- 21. . The article finds that although Africa is a late-comer to democratization, Africans overwhelmingly support democracy and the conception of democracy is surprisingly liberal. Chang, Yu-tzung, Yun-han, and Chong-Min Park. 2008. “Authoritarian Nostalgia in Asia.” How People View Democracy, edited by Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. . Compared to levels of popular support for democracy, strength of authoritarian de-attachment, and satisfaction of performance of democracy observed in six East Asian democracies appear on a par with similarly situation societies elsewhere. . The lesson is that this form of government must win citizen support through performance. Chu, Yun-han, Michael Bratton, Marta Lagos, Sandeep Shastri, and Mark Tessler. 2008. “Public Opinion and Democratic Legitimacy.” Journal of Democracy 19 (2): 74-87. . This paper examines on a global scale how important it is for young democracies to deliver economic welfare to win the hearts of their citizens. . A decoupling of popular support for democratic form of government from economic performance is believed to be conducive to the consolidation of young democracies. . Evaluations of economic condition are relatively unimportant in explaining level of popular support for democracy. . However, high-income East Asian countries register a glaring exception to this global generalization, suggesting that their distinctive trajectory of regime transition has imposed on democratic regimes an additional burden of sustaining a record of miraculous economic growth of the past.
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Diamond, Larry. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. . Diamond proposes a distinctive theoretical perspective on democratic evolution and consolidation in the late 20th century. . Rejecting theories that posit preconditions for democracy―and thus dismiss its prospects in poor countries―Diamond argues instead for a "developmental" theory of democracy. . This, he explains, is one which views democracy everywhere as a work in progress that emerges piecemeal, at different rates, in different ways and forms, in different countries. Diamond, Larry. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World. New York, NY: Holt. . The book asks whether democracy is something that can exist only in rich and educated countries, those with a strong middle class. Do all people actually want democracy, or do some believe that a form of authoritarianism is the best way to run a country? . To answer this question, Diamond, in a sweeping survey of countries around the world, examines the forces that contribute to democracy, from the internal influences that give rise to civil societies to the impact of peaceful outside pressures like diplomatic persuasion or, in some cases, economic sanctions. Diamond, Larry and Marc F. Plattner, eds. 2008. How People View Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. . This volume gathers essays by leading scholars and principals of regional public-opinion surveys, known as "barometers," which are making possible the first systematic, worldwide study of how citizens think about democracy and weigh it against other forms of government. Evans, Geoffrey, and Stephen Whitefield. 1995. “The Politics and Economics of Democratic Commitment: Support for Democracy in Transition Societies.” British Journal of Political science 25: 485-514. . This article uses national probability samples from Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine to examine potential influences on support for democratic processes in post-communist Europe. . Although both political and economic factors are found to be significant, multivariate analysis indicates that political experience is of greater weight than is economic. Moreover, when support for marketization is controlled for, there is very little link from economic experience to support for democracy. Gunther, Richard, Jose R Montero, Juan Botella. 2004. Democracy in Modern Spain. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. . The authors survey those aspects of Spanish society and politics that had contributed to the country’s inability to sustain a stable and democratic regime prior to the 1970s. . They argue that the successful transition to and consolidation of democracy was made possible by socioeconomic modernization, cultural change, and by decisions made by political elites in the establishment of core democratic institutions and the conduct of electoral competition. Hook, Sidney. 1950. Reason, Social Myth, and Democracy. New York, NY: Humanities. Inglehart, Ronald and Christian Welzel. 2005. Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. . This work calls readers to embrace reason and rationality as the only way to solve social problems. Hook discusses: democracy and scientific method, the mythology of class science and other topics. Inkeles, Alex. 1969. “Participant Citizenship in Six Developing Countries.” American Political Science Review 63 (4): 1120-41. . This paper tests how far certain concepts dealing with individual orientations to politics, previously used in studies of relatively advanced European societies, are appropriate to populations in developing countries; considers how far these separate dimensions of individual political orientation cohere as a syndrome, indicating the existence of a general underlying dimension of “participant citizenship;” and assess the importance of certain social experiences or forces in inculcating the qualities of participant citizenship in individuals exposed to these influences. Inkeles, Alex. 1997. National Character: A Psycho-Social Perspective. New York, NY: Routledge. . Drawing on earlier works on character development in the Soviet Union and other countries, this book seeks to restore national character to respectability by placing it on a firm methodological footing. It uses psychological
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and survey data to define German, Soviet, and American national character and relates national character to the development of political institutions like democratic government. . Inkeles concludes that there is in fact an empirical basis for saying Germans respect authority and Americans trust one another readily. Inkeles, Alex, and David H. Smith. 1974. Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. . The study explores modernization processes in six developing nations (Argentina, Chile, India, Israel, Nigeria, and Bangladesh), by surveying about a thousand men, aged 20-30, in each of these countries. . The goal is to demonstrate that a “modern man,” identifiable by his attitudes toward different aspects of life, exists, and seeks to discover the factors that encourage the transformation from traditional to modern. Jamal, Amaney and Mark Tessler. 2008. “The Arab Inspiration for Democracy.” How People View Democracy, eds. Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. . This article explores existing conceptualizations of democracy in Arab countries through survey research.
Lagos, Marta. 2003. “Latin America’s Lost Illusions: A Road with No Return?” Journal of Democracy 14: 163-73. . Since 1995, the Latinobarometer has asked voters and citizens in 17 countries of Latin America about their support for and opinions of electoral democracy. . While democracy often attracts more "default support" than it does positive loyalty, it is nonetheless true that authoritarian alternatives command little or no favor. This is the case even when democracy performs rather poorly in economic and institutional terms. . Still, Latin American democracies must redouble their efforts to meet the challenges of building strong and democracy-friendly civic cultures and bringing marginalized groups and classes within their societies into the realm of full citizenship, equal rights, and political participation. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. “Some Social Requisites of Democracy.” American Political Science Review… Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. . This paper posits the social requisites for democracy, such as values, social institutions, and historic experience. Reisinger, William M., Arthur H. Miller, Vicki L. Hesli, and Kristen Hill Maher. 1994. “Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania: Sources and Implications for Democracy.” British Journal of Political Science 24: 183-223. . Employing data from three surveys of mass opinion conducted in Lithuania, Ukraine and European Russia during 1990, 1991 and 1992, the authors examine three prominent but competing hypotheses about the source of political values in the post-Soviet societies: historically derived political culture, regime indoctrination and the effects of societal modernization. Robbins, Michael. 2015. “People Still Want Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 26 (4): 80-89. . The article finds that democracy remains the most preferred political system in the region, but few citizens say they live under a democracy. . Yet, what changes the Arab uprisings did bring about in public opinion are not uniform, especially in the countries most affected by these events. . Tunisians have become much more concerned about negative effects of democracy while Egyptians attribute poor political outcomes to the Muslim Brotherhood instead of democracy. Rose, Richard, William Mishler, and Christian Haerpler. 1998. Democracy and Its Alternatives: Understanding Post- Communist Societies. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. . Drawing on data from public opinion and exit polls, election results, and interviews, the authors present testable hypotheses regarding regime change, consolidation, and prospects for stabilization in Eastern Europe. The authors point out that the abrupt transition to democracy in post-Communist countries is normal; gradual evolution in the Anglo-American way is the exception to the rule. USAID. 2014. The Political Culture of Democracy in the Americas, 2014. Available at: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/ab2014/AB2014_Comparative_Report_English_V3_Updated_040517_W.pdf . The report address a key theme present in AmericasBarometer surveys since 2004: democratic governance. Using project data from 2004-2017, the authors present a series of assessments of the extent to which citizens across the Americas support core democratic values, perceive a sufficient supply of basic liberties, experience the rule of law, engage in political life, and support their system of government.
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Welsh, Bridget, Kai-Ping Huang, and Yun-han Chu. 2016. “Clashing Attitudes toward Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 27 (2): 132-40. . Using the 2015 Myanmar Asian Barometer Survey, this essay highlights the challenges ahead for Burma’s democratization. Despite the decisive victory of pro-democratic forces, Myanmar’s political culture and, in particular, its illiberal values, gaps in democratic citizenship, and demands for economic development pose daunting challenges for the new government and will place strain on the ongoing democratization process. . The findings point to the need for civic education to deepen support for democracy.
9 Democratic Transitions
There is more than one model or pathway to democratic transition. Elites and civil society may each have a role to play. This primer examines the various types of transitions that may population the landscape, and the conditions under which they occur. Also of interest is how are oppositionists able to achieve democratization without resorting to violence? How effective has the international community been?
Key Points . Historically, there are three pathways to . Oppositions are much more likely to democratization: public contestation achieve substantial and durable gains for precedes participation; participation freedom if they avoid the use of violence— precedes public contestation; participation even if the state uses violence against them. and public contestation at the same time. . International influences—including diffusion . In the contemporary world, elite-led effects, peaceful pressure, and democracy transformation, authoritarian breakdown, assistance—have played an important role in and negotiated (“pacted”) transition are the the “third wave” of democratic transitions three primary models of democratic (since 1974). transition. . Transitions are much more likely to produce successful democracy if they have a strong component of bottom-up pressure from civil society, using tactics of non-violent civic resistance.
Historical Pathways to Democracy In the third path, mass political participation and competition emerge suddenly or rapidly in According to Robert Dahl, democratization consists simultaneous fashion.2 Historically, England and of two dimensions: liberalization (contestation for Sweden embarked on the first path, Germany took power) and inclusiveness (political participation).1 the second, and France (1789-1792) followed the Historically, Dahl identifies three pathways to third. democratization. In one scenario, liberalization The first path of democratic transition is comes first; political competition develops among an relatively stable. When electoral competition elite, then participation gradually expands to precedes expansion in participation, the rules, incorporate the entire adult citizenry (universal practices and culture of competitive politics develop suffrage). In the second path, citizenship rights are first among elites, who share a common culture and extended to the mass public before political have broader common interests; then later, when liberalization, then competition gradually emerges. additional strata are included, they are easily
...... 1 Robert A. Dahl. (1971). Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2 Ibid, p.34
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socialized into these norms.3 Thus, the first path model requires the government to be stronger than allows more time for the emergence of mutual trust, the opposition but also the reformers within the confidence, and tolerance among competitors. This regime (who O’Donnell and Schmitter call “soft- produces what Dahl calls a “system of mutual liners”7) to be stronger than conservative “hard- security,” in which the government and its opponents liners”.8 The typical cases of this transition include, come to recognize that the costs of repressing among others, Spain (mid-1970s), Brazil (1973- opposition are greater than the costs of toleration.4 1985), Taiwan (1987-1996), Hungary (1988-1989) Not surprisingly, the second and third paths are less and Mexico (1990s). Although civil society is stable because they offer less time for contending presumed weak in these cases, in fact, civil society political forces to understand and share the cultural mobilization usually plays (and did in the above norms of peaceful contestation and to work out a cases) an important role in inducing ruling elites to system of mutual security.5 Nonetheless, in an age develop and implement a transition plan, both by of political equality and mass mobilization, the first undermining their legitimacy and by raising the costs path is no longer viable, as legitimate require of repression.9 universal franchise, and once that is granted it A more recent study of transitions found a frequent cannot be taken away.6 major role for mass mobilization, whereas “failed transitions were generally elite led.”10 Some of the Contemporary Models of Democratic latter (such as in Azerbaijan in 2005) were probably Transition never serious, but the ongoing transition in Burma, dominated (and constitutionally constrained) by the Huntington identifies three models of democratic military is a textbook example of how an elite-led transition in recent decades: transformation, transformation can get stuck in a hybrid state.11 replacement, and transplacement. Transformation Successful democratic transitions seem invariably to entails “the elites in power” taking the lead in feature strong and resourceful civil society bringing about democracy.” In Replacement, the organizations, at least some independent media, opposition leads the transition process and the and an important role for mass mobilization.12 It is authoritarian regime collapses or is overthrown. thus useful to distinguish transitions that are Transplacement involves negotiation by government thoroughly elite-dominated from those which have at and opposition groups to bring about democracy least some role for grassroots actors (see also the through strategic interaction. concluding section). A Freedom House study found Elite-Led Transformation statistical evidence for the value of bottom-up Transformation is initiated and managed by transitions (with strong movements of civic authoritarian elites who impose the timing and pace resistance) as opposed to top-down, elite-led of democratic change, as well as the new (or transformations. The former produced on average existing) constitutional framework. This transition
...... 3 Ibid, p.36 4 Ibid, pp15-16 and pp.36-37 5 Ibid, pp.36-37 6 Ibid, p.39 7 O’Donnell, Guillermo and Philippe C. Schmitter. (1986). Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 8 Huntington, 1991 9 Ruth Berins Collier and James Mahoney, “Adding Collective Actors to Collective Outcomes: Labor and Recent Democratization in South America and Southern Europe,” Comparative Politics 29, no. 3 (1997): 285-303; and Larry Diamond, (1999). Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 233-239; O”Donnell and Schmitter, 1986, p. 27. 10 Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul, eds. Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, p. 15. 11 Larry Diamond, “The Opening in Burma: The Need for a Political Pact,” Journal of Democracy 23 (October 2012): 138-149; Min Zin, “Burma Votes for Change: The New Configuration of Power,” Journal of Democracy 27 (April 2016): 116-131. 12 Stoner and McFaul, 2015, pp. 13-16.
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much more dramatic improvements in political and in eventually ousting the incumbent leaders.17 civil freedom.13 Brownlee, et al, however, reminds in an analysis of Authoritarian Breakdown (Replacement) Arab Spring dynamics that the success of attempts to oust an autocratic leader depends on one, oil Authoritarian breakdown is marked by the rapid wealth – which endows leaders with sufficient overthrow of the authoritarian regime due to regime resources to counter challenges to the regime – the collapse and/or popular mobilization. In this model, regime’s reliance on hereditary succession, which is reformers within the regime are weak or nonexistent. an indicator of the strength and existence of coercive Thus, the success of transition depends on the actors supportive of incumbent rulers, or both growing strength of the opposition vis-a-vis the factors. Bahrain, Syria, and Libya, respectively, are diminishing or suddenly imploding strength of the examples.18 government.14 This transition process usually involves the security forces dividing, turning against Negotiated (Pacted) Transition the regime, or refusing to intervene to save the (Transplacement) regime. This type of transition typically is precipitated A negotiated transition begins with or is accelerated by crisis, such as defeat in war, military coup, or a by splits within the authoritarian regime. While a stolen election. The most notable cases of this “consensually unified” elite (which agrees on the transition model were Argentina (1983), Portugal rules of the game) is necessary for stable (mid-1970s), Greece (mid-1970s), Philippines democratic politics,19 divisions between “hard-liners” (1986), East Germany (1989), Romania (1989) and and “soft-liners” within the ruling elite constitute a the color revolutions of the early 2000s. common and crucial condition for igniting a transition These color revolutions—including the Federal from authoritarian rule.20 In general, the more that Republic of Yugoslavia’s Bulldozer Revolution democratic opposition forces can unify their own (2000), Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003) and ranks and widen the divisions among ruling elites, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (2004) — overthrew the greater their chances of success in bringing incumbent leaders in semi-autocratic regimes, about a democratic transition. This requires that culminating in democratic breakthroughs in these leaders of competing political parties and of class, countries. In each case, a national electoral fraud, ethnic, and other conflict groups agree to narrow exposed by independent electoral monitoring their differences and even to share power after the organizations and reported by relatively independent transition. But it also usually requires some kind of media, trigged massive street protests.15 Crucially, pact between regime and opposition forces, in which the opposition was united; hence, it was able to the two sides agree to “forgo or underutilize their mobilize large numbers of protestors and to present capacity to harm each other” by guaranteeing the a viable alternative to the unpopular incumbent other’s vital interests.21 Negotiating power-sharing leader.16 In addition, a split among the “guys with arrangements is an interactive process, combining guns”—the state’s military, police and security societal pressure from below and liberalization and forces—played an indispensable role in preventing constraint from above. the regime from effectively deploying force and thus
...... 13 Adrian Karatnycky and Peter Ackerman, 2005. How Freedom Is Won: From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy. New York, Freedom House, pp. 7. 14 Huntington, 1991 15 Michael McFaul, (2005). “Transitions from Postcommunism,” Journal of Democracy 16(3): 5-19 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Jason Brownlee Tarek Masoud and Andrew Reynolds (2013). “Tracking the Arab Spring: Why the Modes Harvest?” Journal of Democracy 24 (4): 29-44. 19 Michael G. Burton and John Higley, (1987). “Elite Settlements,” American Sociological Review 52(3): 295-307 20 O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986, p. 19. 21 O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986, p. 38.
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During the negotiation process, a small circle of in South Africa, the process was lengthy and leaders from regime and opposition plays a frequently threatened by violence and resistance disproportionate role. Whatever agreement they from hard-liners among both regime elites and the reach must be transmitted to the citizens at large.22 opposition. Power-sharing arrangements have their A genuine compromise is the second-best solution limits, however. Philip Roeder and Donald Rothchild, for all major actors.23 Politically, a pact involves a for example, find that power-sharing’s long-term package deal that gives conservative groups certain solutions come with costs. The same institutions that concessions, which may include continued economic provide a basis to end a conflict, may well hinder the control, immunity from prosecution for corruption and consolidation of peace and democracy. Fraught human rights abuses, and even (as in Chile for a forms of power-sharing in Nigeria, Lebanon, time) some guaranteed political role. At the Ethiopia, Pakistan and India suggest that power- extreme, these concessions can give rise to dividing, rather than power-sharing is more likely to authoritarian enclaves or “birth defects” in the new result in lasting peace. Power-dividing, often constitutional arrangement, which may diminish the overlooked, requires that state powers be allocated quality of democracy or leave behind a hybrid between the government and civil society. regime that fails to roll back military prerogatives or Responsibilities of enforcing civil liberties is taken secure citizen rights and a rule of law.24 out of the hands of government. Instead they are Substantively, pacts frequently also restrict (at distributed among independent organs with cross- least implicitly) the policy agenda to guarantee the cutting majorities. Because there are checks and “vital interests” of key elites while limiting the balances, power-dividing strategies are more likely participation of outsiders in decision-making.25 to be successful.29 Economically, a compromise is necessary to “reassure the bourgeoisie that its property rights will International Influences not be jeopardized for the foreseeable future,” and to International dimensions of democratization have make concessions to the mass that “their demands gained increasing attention in recent scholarship. for compensation and social justice will eventually be First, democratization has diffusion and 26 met.” But the concessions to those with wealth demonstration effects: Successful democratization in (and power) are typically greater than to those one country is likely to encourage people in other without, and this can hamper the ability of new countries to demand democratic institutions. democracies to deal with entrenched problems of Demonstration effects occur because countries face 27 poverty and inequality. Pacts may also provide for similar problems and democratization could be a some proportional sharing of power and state solution for their problems, or because democratized benefits among different parties and interest groups. countries are powerful and are viewed as political or Spain was one of the early and paradigmatic cultural models.30 During the third wave of instances of this transition model (though it later democratization, diffusion or snowballing effects 28 experienced a regime rupture as well), followed have been evident in many instances: “people later by Brazil, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Uruguay, power” in the Philippines in 1986 spurred the mass South Korea, and South Africa. In some instances, protests in South Korea in 1987; the Solidarity agreement was forged quickly, but in other cases, as
...... 22 Dankwart A. Rustow, (1970). “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics 2(3) : 337-363 23 Ibid. 24 Terry Lynn Karl, “Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 23, no. 1 (October 1990): 1-21. 25 O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986, p.41 26 O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986, pp. 46-47 27 Terry Lynn Karl, “Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 23, no. 1 (October 1990): 1-21. 28 Linz and Stepan, 1996, chapter 6. 29 Philip G. Roeder and Rothchild, eds. (2005). Power Sharing and Peace: Democracy and Power after Civil Wars. Ithaca, New York: Cornell UP. 30 Huntington, 1991, p.100
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movement in Poland inspired Eastern European allow for democratic transitions.37 These diplomatic countries to struggle for democratic change in the interventions helped tip the balance toward late 1980s; and the democratic transitions in South democracy in the Philippines in 1986, South Korea Africa and Eastern Europe had a large resonance in in 1987, and Chile in 1988-89. However military democratic movements in Sub-Saharan African assistance to hybrid regimes in Central America in countries.31 the 1980s “did much to undermine the ability of Peaceful pressure constitutes another source of embattled democratic forces to wrench control from international influence during democratic transitions. abusive militaries.”38 It generally takes three major forms: diplomacy, the Various forms of democracy assistance have conditioning of aid and sanctions.32According to played an increasingly important role in third-wave Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, linkage and transitions. Economic assistance from Western leverage are two key dimensions for understanding governments provided crucial support to democratic international pressure for democratic change.33 forces in non-democratic countries to promote civic Linkage refers to “the density of ties (economic, education, stimulate political participation, foster civil political, diplomatic, social, and organizational) and society organizations, and facilitate independent cross-border flows (of capital, goods and services, media. For instance, democracy assistance to the people, and information) between particular Solidarity trade union in Poland facilitated its countries and the United States and the EU,” education, publishing and human rights projects.39 rendering authoritarian regimes vulnerable to Aid to Chile assisted its democratic organizations Western pressure.34 Geographic proximity is the such as democratic parties, trade unions, and think most important source of linkage. While countries in tanks to educate voters and encourage political Eastern Europe and the Americas had extensive ties participation, catalyzing democratic transition in late to the West and were more likely to transition to 1980s.40 Across many cases, international support democracy, the former Soviet states and many for independent media was crucial in opening up African states were weakly linked to the West and critical information and reporting to the public. For more likely to sustain authoritarian rule. Leverage is example, radio Free Europe and Radio liberty to the government’s vulnerability to external some extent destabilized the Soviet Union and democratization pressures.35 The effect of leverage mobilized citizens against the coup attempt against is also mediated by “countries’ strategic or economic Gorbachev in 1991.41 In addition, technical support, importance” or “assistance from counter-hegemonic particularly for domestic election monitoring and powers.”36 Both the Carter and Reagan international electoral observation, can disseminate administrations employed diplomatic measures or basic standards of election administration, increase economic sanctions to pressure some Latin voter confidence, detect electoral fraud, and American countries to limit human rights abuses and enhance the legitimacy of election results.42 In
...... 31 Larry Diamond. (2008). The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World. New York: Henry Holt and Company. pp. 108-110. 32 Diamond, 2008, p.114. 33 Levitsky, Steven and Lucan A. Way. (2010). Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 34 Ibid, p.23. 35 Ibid, p.23. 36 Ibid, p.24. 37 Diamond, 2008, pp.114-115. 38 Diamond, 2008, p. 114. 39 Diamond, 2008, p.121. 40 Diamond, 2008, p.121. 41 Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul, (2013). “The Soviet Union and Russia: the collapse of 1991 and the initial transition to democracy in 1993,” In Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul, eds. Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective. 42 Thomas Carothers, (1997). “The Observers Observed,” Journal of Democracy 8 (3):1731
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recent decades, most successful transitions have significantly less likely to become democracies than benefited from training and technical assistance to countries where the anti-authoritarian opposition democratic forces in civil society, the media, and the avoided the use of violence.46 The benefit of (re)emerging sphere of electoral politics.43 opposition non-violence is extremely robust and In the contemporary era of social media, holds (rather dramatically) even when the state uses international influences flow more quickly and violence against the opposition.47 powerfully. The growing influence of social media in This makes sense for a number of reasons. A politics, even in a poor country like Gambia, can give key condition for successful transitions is to divide the opposition new tools with which to mobilize the authoritarian regime and pull the security popular support while also enabling more effective establishment away from defending it. But participation by a pro-democratic diaspora opposition violence tends to unite the regime and to community.44 Social media played a major role in harden support for it among the security forces. stimulating and facilitating the popular uprisings Moreover, violent tactics may divide opposition against authoritarian rule in Iran in 2009, during the forces, driving away more moderate and Green Movement, and during the Arab Spring of establishment elements of it, while polarizing 2011. Social media platforms like Twitter and societal divisions and making compromise more Facebook raised political consciousness, focused difficult. Violence also carries other risks. It is likely popular anger, drew people into the streets, and to generate a trail of human rights abuses for which lowered the risks of political dissent. However, opposition forces will have to answer after the surveillance of the Internet enabled the Iranian transition, and it may elevate radical and anti- authorities to preempt and contain popular democratic elements of the opposition, while demonstrations before they threatened the regime’s entrenching norms of intolerance and inflexibility that survival. And the more general lesson from these bode ill for future democracy. Finally, large-scale mainly failed Middle Eastern uprisings is that social violence may shatter the state altogether, making media are no substitute for opposition leadership, democracy impossible. coordination, organization, and effective strategy.45 But the absence of violence does not mean the These remain indispensable to the success of absence of grassroots action. Rather, a Freedom movements for democratic change. House study of 67 transitions from authoritarianism identified in 50 of them a prominent role played by Violence, Non-Violence, and nonviolent civic resistance—“which employs tactics Transitions such as boycotts, mass protests, blockades, strikes, and civil disobedience to de-legitimate authoritarian One of the strongest generalizations that can be rulers and erode their sources of support” (including offered about democratic transitions is that they are from the armed forces).48 Transitions were more likely to be successful to the extent that the particularly likely to produce large, sustained gains democratic opposition eschews or minimizes for freedom when they were driven by a cohesive, violence. Countries where the opposition employed “strong, broad-based nonviolent popular fronts or significant violence during the transition achieved civic coalitions.”49 much weaker gains in freedom and were
...... 43 Stoner and McFaul, 2013. 44 Sheriff Kora and Momodou Darboe, “The Gambia’s Electoral Earthquake,” Journal of Democracy 28 (April 2017): 147-156. 45 Mehdi Yahyanejad, 2015. “The Role of Social Media: Myth and Reality,” in Abbas Milani and Larry Diamond, eds., Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran: Challenging the Status Quo. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 165-178; Marc Lynch, 2015. “After the Arab Spring: How the Media Trashed the Transitions,” Journal of Democracy 26 (4): 90-99. 46 Adrian Karatnycky and Peter Ackerman, 2005. How Freedom Is Won: From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy. New York, Freedom House, p. 8. 47 Ibid, p. 9. 48 Adrian Karatnycky and Peter Ackerman, 2005. How Freedom Is Won: From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy. New York, Freedom House, pp. 4, 6. 49 Ibid, p. 7.
6 Democratic Transitions
Annotated Bibliography
Dahl, Robert A. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press. . Contestation and participation are two major characteristics of polyarchies. A regime that has neither is a closed hegemony; a liberalized but non-inclusive regime is a competitive oligarchy; and an inclusive but non-liberalized regime is an inclusive hegemony. . There are three paths to democratization: (I) liberalize, then expand inclusiveness, (II) expand inclusiveness, then liberalize, and (III) liberalize and expand inclusiveness at the same time. Diamond, Larry. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Chapter 5. . International forces affect democratic transitions through several mechanisms including demonstration effects, peaceful pressure, democracy assistance and the use of force. . Peaceful pressure generally takes three major forms: diplomacy, the conditioning of aid and sanctions. Huntington, Samuel P. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. . There are three different types of transition: (1) transformation: “the elites in power took the lead in bringing about democracy”; (2) replacement: “opposition took the lead in bringing about democracy, and the authoritarian regime collapsed or was overthrown.” (3) transplacement: “democratization resulted largely from joint action by government and opposition group.” . International factors played an especially important role during the recent third wave of global democratization. Karl, Terry Lynn. 1990. “Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 23 (1): 1-21. . Different types of democracy emerge from different modes of regime transition. . Negotiated or imposed transitions may leave behind diminished democracies, as concessions to authoritarian actors that were presumed to be temporary become permanent “birth defects.” Levitsky, Steven and Lucan A. Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Linkage and leverage are two key dimensions for understanding international pressure for democratic change. . Linkage refers to “the density of ties (economic, political, diplomatic, social, and organizational) and cross-border flows (of capital, goods and services, people, and information) between particular countries and the United States and the EU.” Linkage makes authoritarian regimes vulnerable to Western pressure. . Leverage is the government’s vulnerability to external democratization pressures.50 The effect of leverage is also mediated by “countries’ strategic or economic importance” or “assistance from counter-hegemonic powers.” Lynch, Marc. 2015. “After the Arab Spring: How the Media Trashed the Transitions,” Journal of Democracy 26 (4): 90-99. . Old and new media played a crucial role in mobilizing protests against authoritarian regimes during the Arab Spring. However, social media and transnational broadcasting mainly contributed to “self-segregation into ideological or sectarian clusters,” hence political polarization, and greater popular fear, anxiety, and discontent with the transitional order. McFaul, Michael. 2005. “Transitions from Postcommunism,” Journal of Democracy 16 (3): 5-19 . The author identifies several necessary conditions for three successful cases during the color revolution: (1) A semi-autocratic regime; (2) An unpopular incumbent; (3) A united opposition; (4) Independent electoral- monitoring capabilities; (5) A modicum of independent media; (6) Mobilizing the masses; (7) Splits among the “guys with guns.” O’Donnell, Guillermo and Philippe C. Schmitter. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. . “There is no transition whose beginning is not the consequence – direct or indirect – of important divisions within the authoritarian regime itself” typically “between hard-liners and softliners.” . An opening occurs when soft-liners within the government see advantage to allow some limited form of expression by the populace. . Economic agreements must be made to protect property while giving compensation to mass groups.
...... 50 Ibid, p.23. 7 Democratic Transitions
Rustow, Dankwart A. 1970. “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics 2 (3): 337- 363 . The single background condition is national unity. . The democratic bargain is a second-best solution accepted by groups that would rather dominate one another but are unable to do so. It is an agreement usually worked out by elites, and must be transmitted to the citizens at large.
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