POLS 373 Foundations of Comparative Politics

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POLS 373 Foundations of Comparative Politics

• What Makes a Democracy?
• November 21, 2006

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What Makes a Democracy?

• What is democracy?

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What Makes a Democracy?

• In the academic literature, democracy is
  generally defined either formally (i.e.,
  narrowly) or substantively (i.e., broadly), or
  sometimes as a combination of the two

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What Makes a Democracy?

• The formal definition of democracy is
  straightforward. Here is one definition
• I would say democracy exists where you have a
  multiparty system with political parties
  competing with one another, free and non-corrupt
  voting procedures to elect political leaders, and
  an effective legal framework of civil liberties
  or human rights that underlie the mechanisms of
  voting processes.

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What Makes a Democracy?

• If the foregoing definition down, we have three
  readily discernable components of democracy
• A competitive multiparty system
• Free and non-corrupt elections
• An effective legal framework of civil liberties
  or human rights
• To this list, we might add a fourth component
• Universal and equal suffrage (suffrage is simply
  the right or privilege of voting)

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Many scholars, though, argue that the formal
  requirements of democracy arent enough

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Is an imperfect democracy still a democracy or is
  it something else?
• To properly answer this question, it is critical
  to contrast democracy with potential
  alternatives authoritarianism, totalitarianism,
  monarchy, and so on
• You must be able to say that an imperfect
  democracy is not meaningfully different from any
  alternatives--consider the issue in more concrete
  terms

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Is it legitimate to say that there is no
  meaningful difference between an imperfect
  democracy, such as exists in the United States
  and many other countries, and, say, Nazi Germany
  or Cambodia under Pol Pot or Uganda under Idi
  Amin?

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What Makes a Democracy?

• With the foregoing discussion in mind, we can now
  focus on the next big set of questions, which
  are
• How and why do democracies emerge?
• Why do some survive while others do not?
• Why do some thrive and become stronger over time,
  while others just sort of limp along?

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Structural Approaches to the Study of Democracy

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Lets begin with a simple, but telling
  observation the people (or the social class)
  that have predominant control over economic
  resources in society are generally not friends of
  democracy
• Why?

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What Makes a Democracy?

• For the dominant groups in society, genuine
  democracy represents a concrete threat to their
  own interests, since, by its very nature,
  democracy gives power to the oppressed
  subordinate classes who constitute the large
  majority of any societys population

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Think of it this way If the majority of people
  in a society are poor and exploited would they
  not be immediately tempted, in a democratic
  system, to use their new-found and overwhelming
  voting power to redistribute economic resources
  and, ultimately, to undermine permanentlyif not
  destroythe position and privileges of the
  wealthy (or political and economic elite)?
• More to the point, would not the elite be well
  aware of this potential threat and, therefore, do
  whatever they could to prevent democracy from
  taking hold?

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Given the almost undeniable tension between
  democracy and social inequality, Ruschemeyer et
  al. make a basic assertion, one which undergirds
  their entire argument Democracy is above all a
  matter of power

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What Makes a Democracy?

• As a struggle for power, democracy is highly
  conditioned
• This means that transitions to democracy are
  constrained and enabled by broad structural
  changes that reorder the balance of power among
  different classes and class coalitions in society

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Central Contention Capitalist development is
  related to democracy because it shifts the
  balance of class power, because it weakens the
  power of the landlord class and strengthens
  subordinate classes

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Key Point For democracy to emerge, subordinate
  classes must have sufficient power to challenge
  the dominant classes.

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What Makes a Democracy?

• How is this a structural argument?
• Because capitalist development inexorably creates
  the foundation for subordinate classes to
  exercise power

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What Makes a Democracy?

• How and why does capitalist development shift
  power to subordinate classes?
• Short Answer Capitalist development generally
  entails the an increasing concentration of
  workers, all of whom toil under the same general
  (and generally exploitative and powerless)
  conditions

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Consider a typical urban factory and the
  emergence of factory towns

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Class organization is key, for the power of
  workers is maximized only when they can act in
  united manner
• As long as they are divided, they are weak and
  will remain weak. But a united working class is
  a powerful working class.

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What Makes a Democracy?

• While the role of the working class and the
  internal dynamics of capitalism occupy center
  stage in the authors argument, they also
  acknowledged a couple of other important factors
• The first is the structure of state and
  state-society relations, and the relative power
  balance between the state and social actors
• The second factor, or power cluster, involves
  international power relations

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What Makes a Democracy?

• The structure of state and state-society
  relations, and the relative power balance between
  the state and social actors

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What Makes a Democracy?

• International power relations
• During the cold war, international power
  relations were a key force in blocking
  democratization, since dominant states like the
  United States often directly supported and helped
  strengthen dictatorships, as long as they were
  anti-Communist (while the Soviet Union supported
  anti-American regimes)

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What Makes a Democracy?

• International power relations
• Indeed, in a few cases, the United States
  directly intervened to help bring down
  democratically elected governments in the
  developing world for fear that those governments
  would not support US interests
• Chile is a good example of this

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Important Point
• Power clusters are inter-related they act
  together to produce or undermine democracy

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What Makes a Democracy?

• RATIONAL CHOICE APPROACES

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Democracy Rational Choice

• A key difference between structural and rational
  choice approaches might be encapsulated in the
  following statement
• Waiting for democracy versus making democracy

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Democracy Rational Choice

• Two basic approaches in rational choice
• Elite-centered (top-down)
• Cooperative approaches
• Bottom-up (or mass-based movements)
• Non-cooperative approaches

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Democracy Rational Choice

• Elite-centered Approaches
• Based on the premise that political/economic
  power in non-democratic societies resides
  primarily in the hands of the elite
• In this view, democracy is always a product of
  essentially voluntary and (of course)
  self-interested decisions made by elite actors

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Democracy Rational Choice

• Elite-centered Approaches
• Elite-based rational choice explanations posit
  that any changes must be a product of disputes
  among the elite themselves
• Usually result of a cleavage or split between
  hard-liners and soft-liners

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Democracy Rational Choice

• Elite-centered Approaches
• Important QuestionWhere do demands for change
  arise?
• Usually exogenous source, such as economic or
  political crisis that threatens the legitimacy of
  the ruling elite
• Outsiders in political system may also play a
  role (putting pressure on elite for political
  change)

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Democracy Rational Choice

• Elite-centered Approaches
• A democratic transition is most likely when
  soft-liners in the regime have relatively equal
  power to hard-liners and
• Exogenous shock cannot be easily overcome,
  and/or
• When opposition is moderate, as opposed to radical

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Democracy Rational Choice

• Elite-centered Approaches
• Nature of top-down democratization means that
• Transitions to democracy are generally the
  product of negotiated pacts or agreements among
  the elite
• Transitions represent a second best outcome
• Transitions do not require a commitment to
  democracy on the part of any elite group
• Democracy without democrats

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Democracy Rational Choice

• Bottom-up explanations
• Based on the premise that democracy is not a
  product of elite negotiations, but of strong
  pressure from the masses or from outsiders
• Democracy therefore reflects a relative (and
  significant) loss of power among the elite in
  general, rather than just a split between elites

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Democracy Rational Choice

• Authoritarian Regime Types and Democratic
  Transition

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Democracy Rational Choice

• Authoritarian Regime Types and Democratic
  Transition