Title: IR5001 Theories and Concepts in International Relations PI5013 Contemporary Research Issues Week 11: DEMOCRATIZATION
1IR5001 Theories and Concepts in International
RelationsPI5013 Contemporary Research
IssuesWeek 11DEMOCRATIZATION
- Patrick Bernhagen
- Room F69, Edward Wright Building
- e-mail P.Bernhagen_at_abdn.ac.uk
- tel 27-2720
2Source Polity IV Country Reports 2003
3- Source Ronald Inglehart, Mansoor Moaddel and
Mark Tessler (2006) 'Xenophobia and In-Group
Solidarity in Iraq A Natural Experiment on the
Impact of Insecurity', Perspectives on Politics,
Vol. 4, Issue 03, pp. 495-505 - Note 14 countries with predominantly Islamic
societies highlighted in bold.
4How to study democratization?
- Democracy
- What is it?
- Why want it?
- Democratization in historical perspective
- Are there waves?
- If so, how many?
- Driving forces and obstacles to democratic
transition - Statehood
- Economy
- Culture
- International context
5I. Democracy1. What is it?
- A democratic country is one in which the
Sovereign and the people are one and the same
person (J.-J. Rousseau, 1754). - versus
- The democratic method is that institutional
arrangement for arriving at political decisions
in which individuals acquire the power to decide
by means of a competitive struggle for the
peoples vote (J.A. Schumpeter, 1943). - Different things to different people (W.B.
Gallie, 1964)?
6What is democracy?
- Dahls (1971) two dimensions of polyarchy
- Participation
- Competition
- Dahls (1989) five criteria
- Effective participation
- Equality in voting
- Enlightened understanding
- Exercising final control over the agenda
- Inclusion of adults
- Further reading Hyland 1995, ch. 3
- http//www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/notes07/Level3/PI3049/Hy
land_ch3.pdf
72. Why not something else (e.g., dictatorship,
monarchy, theocracy, technocracy, anarchy, ...)?
- Democracys instrumental value, promoting
- Human rights
- Personal freedoms
- Aggregate social happiness
- Self-determination and moral autonomy
- Human development
- Prosperity
- Peace
- Further reading Dahl 1998, ch. 5, Dahl 1989,
ch. 6
8Democracys intrinsic value?
- Kants conception of the person as a morally
autonomous agent - Being a good person means being a morally
autonomous person (MAP) - Being a MAP consists in ordering ones life in
accordance with ones conception of the good. - Unproblematic in 1-person society, but ...
- Find a form of association ... in which each,
while uniting himself with all, may still obey
himself alone, and remain as free as before
(Rousseau, 1754). - Further reading Dahl 1989, chs. 3, 4, 5, 7
Hyland 1995, ch. 7 - http//www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/notes07/Level3/PI3049/Hy
land_ch7.pdf
93. Can democracy be measured?
- Dichotomous regime classification (Przeworski et
al. 1996) - Freedom House political rights score (7 to 1)
- Polity IV measure of institutionalized Democracy
(0 to 10) - World Banks Political Institutions Database
(-2.5 to 2.5) - Vanhanens (2000) Polyarchy Index (1 to 100)
- LIT Berg-Schlosser, D. (2004d), 'The quality of
democracies in Europe as measured by current
indicators of democratization and good
governance', Journal of Communist Studies and
Transition Politics 20(1) 28-55 - Munck, G. L. Verkuilen, J. (2002),
'Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy -
Evaluating Alternative Indices', Comparative
Political Studies 35(1) 5-34.
10II. Democratization in historical perspective
- Three major waves (e.g. Huntington)
- Early 1800s end of WWI
- 1945 to early 1960s
- 1974 to 1991
- Two long waves and three major positive
conjunctures (Berg-Schlosser) - First long wave Early 1800s WWI
- First conjuncture 1918/19
- Second conjuncture 1945/52
- Second long wave 1945 1990 (or ongoing?)
- Third conjuncture 1989-91
11Emergence of Democracies since 1800Based on
Jaggers and Gurr (1996), countries with 8 and
more points on the Polity III democracy scale
12(No Transcript)
13III. Driving forces and obstacles1) Statehood
- No state, no democracy (Linz 2007)
- Identity
- Nationhood
142) Economy
- Modernization and economic development (Lipset
1960, Vanhanen 1997) - Growth of bourgeoisie
- rising social mobilization (literacy,
urbanization, non-agricultural employment) - Non-linear relationship (Kuznets curve of
inequality) - What about India?
- Or the Middle East?
- Investors prefer democracies (Boix 2003)
- Business actors contingent democrats (Bellin)
153) Culture
- cultural homogeneity?
- if segmented, some consociational arrangements
(Lijphart 1977) - democratic political culture (Almond and Verba
1963)
164) International environment
- neighbourhood effects, diffusion and contagion
(e.g. Daniel Brinks and Michael Coppedge (2006)
Diffusion is No Illusion Neighbor Emulation in
the Third Wave of Democracy Comparative
Political Studies (May). - The post-1975 international conjuncture
(Przeworski et al., Sustainable Democracy, 1995) - decline of the Bretton Woods gold/dollar peg
- oil price shocks, mounting foreign debt
- turn toward fiscal austerity in/by developed
countries - Globalization (Fukuyama)
- Democracy promotion
- US
- EU