Democracy and Democratisation: G. Philip

Democracy and democratisation
G. Philip
PS3086, 2790086
2011
Undergraduate study in
Economics, Management,
Finance and the Social Sciences
This subject guide is for a 300 course offered as part of the University of London
International Programmes in Economics, Management, Finance and the Social Sciences.
This is equivalent to Level 6 within the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications in
England, Wales and Northern Ireland (FHEQ).
For more information about the University of London International Programmes
undergraduate study in Economics, Management, Finance and the Social Sciences, see:
www.londoninternational.ac.uk
This guide was prepared for the University of London International Programmes by:
G. Philip, Professor of Comparative and Latin American Politics, London School of Economics
and Political Science.
This is one of a series of subject guides published by the University. We regret that due to
pressure of work the author is unable to enter into any correspondence relating to, or arising
from, the guide. If you have any comments on this subject guide, favourable or unfavourable,
please use the form at the back of this guide.
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Reprinted with minor revisions 2011
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Contents
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1
Aims ............................................................................................................................. 1
Learning outcomes ........................................................................................................ 1
Syllabus......................................................................................................................... 1
Reading and preparation ............................................................................................... 2
Online study resources ................................................................................................... 5
Structure of the subject guide ........................................................................................ 6
Reading time ................................................................................................................. 7
The examination ............................................................................................................ 7
Chapter 1: Defining and conceptualising democracy ............................................. 9
Aims of the chapter ....................................................................................................... 9
Learning outcomes ........................................................................................................ 9
Essential reading ........................................................................................................... 9
Further reading ........................................................................................................... 10
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 10
Democracy as participation .......................................................................................... 11
Democracy as competition ........................................................................................... 16
Democracy as balance ................................................................................................. 19
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 24
A reminder of your learning outcomes.......................................................................... 24
Sample examination questions ..................................................................................... 24
Chapter 2: Democracy and the state ................................................................... 25
Aims of the chapter ..................................................................................................... 25
Learning outcomes ...................................................................................................... 25
Essential reading ........................................................................................................ 25
Further reading............................................................................................................ 25
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 26
Limited and façade democracy ..................................................................................... 27
Democracy in biased states .......................................................................................... 29
Illiberal democracy ....................................................................................................... 30
Delegative democracy .................................................................................................. 31
The notion of democratic consolidation ........................................................................ 32
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 34
Chapter 3: Non-democratic systems and the transition to democracy ................ 35
Essential reading ........................................................................................................ 35
Further reading............................................................................................................ 35
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 36
Colonial rule and the collapse of empires ..................................................................... 37
Political consequences of imperial control and decolonisation prior to 1990 .................. 38
Negative legacies of colonialism .................................................................................. 39
Other forms of non-democratic organisation ................................................................ 41
i
86 Democracy and democratisation
Transitions to democracy.............................................................................................. 45
Chapter 4: General theories of democratisation .................................................. 47
Essential reading ......................................................................................................... 47
Further reading............................................................................................................ 48
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 48
Modernisation theory and its critics .............................................................................. 49
Managing social and political change .......................................................................... 55
Social class and comparative historical sociology .......................................................... 55
Democracy as ideas and culture: Fukuyama and Huntington ......................................... 63
Chapter 5: Threats to democracy, democratic breakdown and the prevention
of democratic breakdown .................................................................................... 67
Essential reading ......................................................................................................... 67
Further reading............................................................................................................ 67
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 68
Democratic breakdown: cases and near misses............................................................. 69
General explanations .................................................................................................. 72
Developmental dictatorship? ....................................................................................... 74
Economic progress in wealthy countries ....................................................................... 75
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 77
Appendix: Sample examination paper ................................................................. 79
ii
Introduction
Introduction
Aims
In our study of democracy and democratisation we have three main aims.
These are to consider:
• how democracy is defined and understood, and how far actual systems
conform to democratic principles
• the main explanations of why political systems have moved from non-
democracy to democracy
• whether or not democracy is a stable political system, and whether
democratic systems run any serious risk of breakdown.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this course, you should be able to discuss critically a range of
issues relating to democratisation. You should be able to:
• explain how democracy actually works in real world conditions
• explain how democracy relates to the non-elective institutions of the
state
• discuss different ways in which democracy can work badly
• outline the essential arguments of comparative historical sociologists of
democratisation, such as Moore and Rueschemeyer
• explain how some forms of non-democracy can make the transition to
democracy
• assess theories of democratic breakdown in relatively poor countries
and arguments for developmental dictatorship
• discuss why democracy has survived in wealthy countries.
Syllabus
If taken as part of a BSc degree, 114 Democratic politics and the
State or 130 Introduction to modern political thought must be
passed before this course may be attempted.
In this course we will consider various aspects of the conditions of
democracy, the processes of democratisation, and the breakdown of
democratic regimes.
Conceptualising democracy. General criteria for democracy and particular
forms of semi-democracy. Delegative democracy, illiberal democracy and
biased states. Democratic consolidation.
Process of democratisation. Paths to democracy. Comparative historical
studies.
Conditions of democracy and its maintenance. The concept of democratic
legitimacy and the functioning of liberal democracy in advanced capitalist
societies.
Transitions to democracy. Forms of non-democracy and transitional paths
towards democratisation.
1
Democratic breakdown and reconstruction. Mass society theories and

theories of class conflict. Modernisation theory and later criticisms.
Democracy and war. Democratic reconstruction and its problems.
A range of countries will be examined in relation to these themes from
Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Reading and preparation

The reading required for this course is quite wide and extensive. It goes
well beyond this subject guide. The history of democratisation, democratic
breakdown and democratic reconstruction extends across virtually the
whole world and backwards through centuries. It may be better for you to
take a limited part of the syllabus, and study that very thoroughly, than to
range widely but superficially across a very broad area. The fact that you
have an hour in which to answer each examination question indicates that
the Examiners will be looking for a certain amount of depth from each
candidate rather than a wide range of knowledge.
In your examination, you will have to answer three questions from a
choice of 12. You will need to prepare more than three topics, but if
you are careful to cover Chapter 1 of this subject guide – which really is
essential – together with its associated reading, along with the material
covered in one other chapter, that should be enough.
You also will want to consider the Sample examination paper, which is
given in the Appendix to this subject guide, in order to get a sense of
what is likely to come up. It may be a good idea to test yourself before the
examination by writing a one-hour answer to one or more of the sample
questions. It should be reasonably clear to you whether you have written a
good answer or not.
Reading advice
A very large number of works cover different aspects of democracy and
democratisation, and you cannot hope to read them all. Moreover, some
of the works that you do need to read are long and complex. The main
thing is to get a sense of the arguments presented rather than trying to
follow every detail. Remind yourself when reading complex works that this
subject is mainly designed to explain concepts. The amount of potentially
relevant factual material is virtually infinite, but you do not need to master
it all – you only need to know enough facts to be able to illustrate and
understand general ideas.
Listed below are works described as Essential reading. These relate mainly
to authors whose arguments are specifically discussed in the text. Other
works are listed as Further reading. These should supplement the essential
texts and give a fuller basis for those topics that you choose to concentrate
on in detail. If you are keen to read more on your selected topics than
the works listed here, use the bibliographies of the listed works to find
additional material.
Essential reading
Books
Dahl, R.A. Democracy and its Critics. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991;
re-issue edition) [ISBN 9780300049381].
Fukuyama, F. The End of History and the Last Man. (London: Penguin, 2006;
reprint edition) [ISBN 9780743284554].
2
Introduction
Galbraith, J.K. The Culture of Contentment. (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992)

[ISBN 9781856191470].
Linz, J. and A. Stepan Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation:
Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) [ISBN 9780801851582].
Lipset, S.M. Political Man: the Social Bases of politics. (London: Heinemann,
1983) [ISBN 9780801825224].
Moore, B. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the
Making of the Modern World. (London: Penguin, 1967; reprint edition 1993)
[ISBN 9780807050736].
Przeworski, A. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in
Eastern Europe and Latin America. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003) [ISBN 9780521423359] Chapters 1 and 2.
Rueschemeyer, D., E. Stephens and J. Stephens Capitalist Development
and Democracy. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) [ISBN
9780226731445].
Schumpeter, J. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. (London: Allen and Unwin,
1978) fifth edition [ISBN 9780043350324] Chapters 21 and 22.
Whitehead, L. Democratization: Theory and Experience. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002) [ISBN 9780199253289].
Journals
Carsten, Q. and Philippe C. Schmitter ‘Liberalization, transition and
consolidation: measuring the components of democratization’,
Democratization, 11(5) 2004, pp.5990.
Huntington, S.P. ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, S93, 72(3) 1993,
pp.2249.
O’Donnell, G. ‘Delegative Democracy’, Journal of Democracy, 5(1) 1994, pp.55
69. Available online at www.nd.edu/~kellogg/publications/workingpapers/
WPS/172.pdf
Zakaria, F. ‘The Rise of Illiberal Democracy’, Foreign Affairs, 76(6) 1997,
pp.22–43.
Detailed reading references in this subject guide refer to the editions of the
set textbooks listed above. New editions of one or more of these textbooks
may have been published by the time you study this course. You can use
a more recent edition of any of the books; use the detailed chapter and
section headings and the index to identify relevant readings. Also check
the virtual learning environment (VLE) regularly for updated guidance on
readings.
Further reading
Please note that as long as you read the Essential reading you are then free
to read around the subject area in any text, paper or online resource. You
will need to support your learning by reading as widely as possible and by
thinking about how these principles apply in the real world. To help you
read extensively, you have free access to the VLE and University of London
Online Library (see below).
Other useful texts for this course include:
Books
Anderson, J. (ed.) Religion, Democracy and Democratisation. (London:
Routledge, 2006) [ISBN 0415355370].
Beetham, D. (ed.) Defining and Measuring Democracy. (London: Sage, 1994)
[ISBN 0803977891]. This is available via the publisher’s website.
Brooker, P. Non-Democratic Regimes: Theory, Government and Politics. (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2000) [ISBN 0312227558].
3
Bull, M. and P. Newell (eds) Corruption in Contemporary Politics. (Basingstoke:

Buxton, J. The Failure of Political Reform in Venezuela. (Aldershot: Ashgate
Publishing Group, 2000) [ISBN 0754613461].
Crystal, J. Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; updated edition)
[ISBN 0521466350].
Diamond, L. et al. (eds) Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies. (Baltimore:
Diamond, D. and M. Plattner The Global Resurgence of Democracy. (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) second edition [ISBN 0801853052].
Diamond, D. and M. Plattner (eds) The Global Divergence of Democracies.
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) [ISBN 0801868424].
Di Palma, G. To Craft Democracies: an Essay in Democratic Transition. (Berkeley:
University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton, 1990; reprint
edition) [ISBN 0520072146].
Gill, G. The Dynamics of Democratisation. (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 2000)
Hagopian, F. Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil. (Cambridge; New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) [ISBN 0521032881].
Handelman, H. and M. Tessler (eds) Democracy and its Limits: Lessons from
Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1999) [ISBN 0268008914].
Haynes, J. (ed.) Towards Sustainable Democracy in the Third World. (London/
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001) [ISBN 0333802500].
Held, D. Models of Democracy. (Cambridge: Polity, 2006) third edition
[ISBN 9780804754729].
Huntington, S.P. The Clash of Civilizations. (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1996) [ISBN 0684811642].
Huntington, S.P. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century.
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993) [ISBN 0806125160].
Leftwich, A. States of Development. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999)
[ISBN 0745608426].
Lieven, D. Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals. (London: John Murray,
2000) [ISBN 0719552435].
Mann, M. Sources of Social Power: Volume 2, The Rise of Classes and Nation
States 1760–1914. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
[ISBN 052144585X].
Marx, K. and F. Engels The Communist Manifesto: a Modern Edition. (London:
Verso, 1998) [ISBN 1859848982].
North, D. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) [ISBN 0521394163].
O’Donnell, G., P. Schmitter and L. Whitehead (eds) Transitions from
Authoritarian Rule and Prospects for Democracy: Latin America. (Baltimore:
O’Neill, M. and D. Austin (eds) Democracy and Cultural Diversity. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press with the Hansard Society, 2000) [ISBN 0199290008].
Parry, G. and M. Moran (eds) Democracy and Democratization. (London; New
York: Routledge, 1993) [ISBN 0415090504].
Philip, G. Democracy in Latin America: Surviving Conflict and Crisis?
(Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity, 2003) [ISBN 0745627601].
Rousseau, J.J. The Social Contract. (London: Penguin, 2006) [ISBN 0143037498].
Skocpol, T. (ed.) Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984) [ISBN 0521229286].
Vanhanen, T. Prospects for Democracy: a Study of 172 Countries. (London:
Routledge, 1997) [ISBN 041514406X or 0521297249].
Whitehead, L. (ed.) The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe
and the Americas. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; revised 2005)
[ISBN 0199243751].
4
Introduction
Journals
Philip, G. ‘The Venezuelan Coup Attempt of February 1992’, Government &
Opposition, 27(4) 1992, pp.454–69.
Philip, G. ‘Democracy and State Bias in Latin America: Lessons from Mexico,
Venezuela and Peru’, Democratization, 6(4) 1999, pp.74–92.
Plattner, M. ‘Liberalism and Democracy’, Foreign Affairs, 77(2) 1998, pp.171–80.
Online study resources

In addition to the subject guide and the Essential reading, it is crucial that
you take advantage of the study resources that are available online for this
course, including the VLE and the Online Library.
You can access the VLE, the Online Library and your University of London
email account via the Student Portal at:
http://my.londoninternational.ac.uk
You should have received your login details for the Student Portal with
your official offer, which was emailed to the address that you gave
on your application form. You have probably already logged in to the
Student Portal in order to register! As soon as you registered, you will
automatically have been granted access to the VLE, Online Library and
your fully functional University of London email account.
If you forget your login details at any point, please email uolia.support@
london.ac.uk quoting your student number.
The VLE
The VLE, which complements this subject guide, has been designed to
enhance your learning experience, providing additional support and a
sense of community. It forms an important part of your study experience
with the University of London and you should access it regularly.
The VLE provides a range of resources for EMFSS courses:
• Self-testing activities: Doing these allows you to test your own
understanding of subject material.
• Electronic study materials: The printed materials that you receive from
the University of London are available to download, including updated
reading lists and references.
• Past examination papers and Examiners’ commentaries: These provide
advice on how each examination question might best be answered.
• A student discussion forum: This is an open space for you to discuss
interests and experiences, seek support from your peers, work
collaboratively to solve problems and discuss subject material.
• Videos: There are recorded academic introductions to the subject,
interviews and debates and, for some courses, audio-visual tutorials
and conclusions.
• Recorded lectures: For some courses, where appropriate, the sessions
from previous years’ Study Weekends have been recorded and made
available.
• Study skills: Expert advice on preparing for examinations and
developing your digital literacy skills.
• Feedback forms.
Some of these resources are available for certain courses only, but we
are expanding our provision all the time and you should check the VLE
regularly for updates.
5
Making use of the Online Library

The Online Library contains a huge array of journal articles and other
resources to help you read widely and extensively.
To access the majority of resources via the Online Library you will either
need to use your University of London Student Portal login details, or you
will be required to register and use an Athens login:
http://tinyurl.com/ollathens
The easiest way to locate relevant content and journal articles in the
Online Library is to use the Summon search engine.
If you are having trouble finding an article listed in a reading list, try
removing any punctuation from the title, such as single quotation marks,
question marks and colons.
For further advice, please see the online help pages:
www.external.shl.lon.ac.uk/summon/about.php
Structure of the subject guide

The first chapter in this subject guide seeks to explain how democracy can
be defined and understood. It takes three different approaches to defining,
understanding and theorising democracy and considers each in turn.
Chapter 2 looks at systems that have some of the characteristics of a
democracy but which contain significant shortcomings from the viewpoint
of democratic purists. These include systems defined by O’Donnell (1994)
as ‘delegative democracies’ and Philip’s work on biased states (1999).
It also includes systems defined by Zakaria’s (1997) work as ‘illiberal
democracies’, which is mostly considered to relate to some Asian countries.
Finally, the work of Linz and Stepan (1996) is discussed and, in particular,
their study of democratic consolidation. The notion of consolidation allows
us to evaluate the working of democracy according to different criteria.
Chapter 3 deals with non-democratic systems and transitions to
democracy. It does not deal in very great detail with the internal
characteristics of non-democratic systems. However, it does discuss
how far the different internal characteristics of different kinds of non-
democracies either facilitate or impede democratic transition.
Chapter 4 looks at general attempts to theorise the development of
democracy. In doing so, it discusses the works of six major authors. The
first part deals with Lipset (1983), who is a classic modernisation theorist,
and Vanhanen (1997), who has written about democratisation from a
similar standpoint. The second part deals with historical sociologists who
look at class-based theories of political change, particularly Moore (1967)
and Rueschemeyer (1992). The third part deals with a clash between
Fukuyama (1992), who believes that democracy reflects a universal
human aspiration, and Huntington (1996), who is much more of a
cultural relativist.
Chapter 5 has to do with threats and alternatives to democracy. It
considers one case of democratic breakdown (Chile in 1973) and one
case in which democracy might have broken down but did not (Venezuela
in the 1990s) and tries to relate these outcomes to theories. It also
considers economic theories that appear to argue in favour of the greater
developmental efficiency of authoritarian government. Finally, it discusses
the possibility that democracy in wealthy countries may face different
prospects and problems than democracy in poor countries.
6
Introduction
At the end of each chapter, you will find a list of Learning outcomes and
some Sample examination questions to help you with your revision. In the
Appendix, you will find a Sample examination paper for further practice.
The subject guide offers a summary of quite a lot of reading matter, and deals
with quite a number of different topics. It is an introduction to the literature
and not a substitute for it. It is intended to raise questions rather than close
off discussion by offering answers too readily. It also deals largely with
comparative and theoretical issues, even though there are some case studies
mentioned in particular chapters. If you are familiar with your own political
system, or have read about the political systems and recent history of other
countries, then you should consider this familiarity with particular cases to be
an advantage. However, no matter how much you may know about detailed
political arrangements, there is no substitute for engaging with concepts.
Reading time
If you can find the readings without too many problems, and have no
difficulty reading English, then in roughly 25 full days, you should be able to
cover enough of the subject to be able to answer three examination questions.
Another way of expressing this is that we normally recommend that if you
study one course over an academic year, you need to do a minimum of
seven hours of study per week. It will take longer if you read more slowly
or with difficulty. Please note that this is the absolute minimum and we
would never recommend that you only prepare for the minimum number of
questions required on the examination paper! If you have already taken 82
Comparative politics (although this is not a prerequisite), then you may
need to do a little less reading.
The examination
Important: the information and advice given here are based on the
examination structure used at the time this guide was written. Please
note that subject guides may be used for several years. Because of this we
strongly advise you to always check both the current Regulations for relevant
information about the examination, and the VLE where you should be
advised of any forthcoming changes. You should also carefully check the
rubric/instructions on the paper you actually sit and follow those instructions.
There will be a three-hour examination. You will be expected to answer
three questions out of 12, allowing one hour per question, which should
enable you to explore a selected set of topics with some degree of depth.
It is a good idea, when the examination actually begins, to spend a reasonable
period of time making absolutely sure that you understand the questions and
preparing your answers in outline. You can probably afford to spend at least
one quarter of the examination period preparing. It is important not to
embark on an answer until you are sure that you know what you are going
to say. Since all answers are all given equal marks, it is important to spend
virtually equal amounts of time on each question. You should therefore not
begin an answer until you know how you intend to conclude it.
Remember, it is important to check the VLE for:
• up-to-date information on examination and assessment arrangements
for this course
• where available, past examination papers and Examiners’ commentaries
for the course which give advice on how each question might best be
answered.
7
Notes
8
Chapter 1: Defining and conceptualising democracy
Chapter 1: Defining and conceptualising

democracy
Aims of the chapter

This chapter considers three different ways of explaining how democracy
works and how it differs from other forms of government:
• the first of these is that democracy has to do with voting and popular
participation
• the second is that democracy has to do with free, fair and competitive
elections
• the third is that democracy is essentially a system of checks and
balances.
Each of these approaches is set out and then criticised. At the end of the
chapter you should be able to explain, at least in outline, the advantages
and disadvantages of all three approaches to democracy.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and
activities, you should be able to:
• list, describe and compare the main theoretical approaches to
understanding democracy
• describe the main criticisms of each of these approaches
• outline and discuss the main ethical principles that lie behind
democracy as a system of government
• outline the ways in which the relationship between majoritarian
government and individual rights has been understood
• analyse the role of activists in democratic politics
• explain why the notion of contestation is crucial to our understanding
of how democracy works
• explain why liberal democracy is inherently a rather complex system of
government.
Essential reading
Dahl, R.A. Democracy and its Critics. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991;
re-issue edition) [ISBN 9780300049381].
Schumpeter, J. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. (London: Allen and
Unwin, 1978) fifth edition [ISBN 9780043350324] Chapters 21 and 22.
9
Further reading
Beetham, D. (ed.) Defining and Measuring Democracy. (London: Sage, 1994)
[ISBN 0803977891].
Handelman, H. and M. Tessler (eds) Democracy and its limits: Lessons from Asia,
Latin America, and the Middle East. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, c1999) [ISBN 0268008914].
Held, D. Models of Democracy. (Cambridge: Polity, 2006) third edition
[ISBN 9780804754729].
2003) [ISBN 052142335X] Chapters 1 and 2.
Rousseau, J.J. The Social Contract. (London: Penguin, 2006)
[ISBN 0143037498].
Introduction
The post-1945 period has seen a very great extension of democratic
government. Virtually every wealthy, industrialised country is now a
democracy. A high proportion of poorer countries in Asia, Eastern Europe,
Africa and Latin America are also democracies, although some clearly
are not. While the downfall of Soviet Communism has not democratised
the entire world, it has led to a significant increase in the number of
democratic systems. By the same token, cases of democratic breakdown,
though certainly not unknown, have been proportionately fewer since
1945 than they were during the 1920s and 1930s. No First World
country has suffered from democratic breakdown since 1945, although
democracies have been overthrown in quite sophisticated political
societies, such as Greece in 1967, Chile in 1973 and Pakistan in 1999.
In the first two cases, however, the military governments that replaced
democracy did not prove infinitely durable, lasting for seven and 16 years,
respectively. Both of these countries are now democracies once again.
This transformation has given some encouragement to those who believe
that democracy is the best form of government and would like to see it
extended further. It does, however, raise a number of questions. Many of
these questions are discussed in subsequent chapters of this subject guide.
In this chapter, we consider in general terms some of the questions that
we need to ask about particular situations. These are essentially questions
about democracy itself:
• On the basis of ideas about individual freedom and human rights –
does democracy have to be liberal?
• How can we understand and theorise liberal democracy?
• How democratic is liberal democracy?
• How liberal is it?
• How stable is it?
How far political systems can usefully be compared just because they are
democracies is also a valid question. For example:
• Do the political systems of Bolivia, the United Kingdom and Bulgaria
really have much in common just because they are democracies?
• Or are they still divided by more than unites them?
10
There are many approaches to and theories of democracy, but the ruling
ideas that lie behind them can be summarised under three headings:
1. democracy as participation
2. democracy as competition
3. democracy as balance.
Democracy as participation
The first major theorist of democracy in the modern world was the
eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau
is still a controversial figure in the history of political thought. How far
his views were understood and how far they were misrepresented by later
authors presents a complex question. However, even if his views were
actually rather complex and somewhat misrepresented on some occasions,
Rousseau is forever associated with the idea that a good political system
allows its citizens the freedom to participate in political life. We need to
consider such a viewpoint because the notion of participation must be
central to our understanding of what democracy is, can be and should be.
The most influential present-day exponent of the ‘participationist’ view of
democracy is Robert Dahl. In his work, Dahl (1989) specifically outlines and
defends participatory democracy against a number of competing arguments.
Participationists seek to replicate in the modern world the virtues of the
political system invented in Athens in classical times. It may be difficult to
describe as a democracy a system in which slavery existed and in which
women did not vote, as was the case in Athens. What many people saw
as valuable about the Athenian system, however, was the assembly where
all full citizens were encouraged to attend, participate and vote. Rousseau
believed that people were free only when they were actually voting to
choose their leaders or actively discussing proposed legislative changes.
Central to this approach is the argument in favour of participatory
democracy. The essential argument is psychological. Political participation
is good for us, both as individuals and as a society. It is an important
dimension of human experience that we should seek to participate in
choosing the rules and the people that govern us. It is also important for
our society that we should exert some important influence on the decision-
making process in our capacity as independent-minded individuals
with personal viewpoints. Ultimately, from this standpoint, political
participation is a good thing, because it is an expression of human desire
and social need for civic equality.
The notion of democracy as being about participation plus equality reached
its clearest and most extreme expression during the French Revolution.
Fukuyama (1992), following the German philosopher Hegel, recently put
forward the view that the radical democratic ideas of the French Revolution
moved the argument for political equality from the religious to the secular
dimension. Secular democratic ideas are more universal in their appeal than
ideas about human equality in the sight of God, and their relationship to
politics is direct and explicit. Although the French Revolution did not put
an end to despotism, even in France it helped to create modern democratic
ideology – along with the War of American Independence (the principles
of which are discussed later in this chapter). Since the French Revolution,
the idea of civic equality has lain at the heart of all significant demands for
political change – even if some movements, like Communism, have been
mistaken and subject to perversion when in power.
11
Civic equality means the notion that we are all capable of understanding
and debating issues that concern the general good. We are not all equal
at our place of work, or in what we have in the bank. However, so the
argument goes, what unites us is (or should be) a common concern for
the general good. This common concern needs to be given institutional
expression if it is to remain vibrant. Voting and (in some countries) jury
service are very important here. Unless we keep activating some formal
concept of equality, society is in danger of dividing more and more into the
rich and powerful on one side and everybody else on the other.
Legitimacy and governability

A related and more recently elaborated argument in favour of the
view that the key to democratic politics is participation has to do with
legitimacy and governability (Beetham, 1991). People will accept authority
more easily if they see it as rightful, and this is more likely if they have an
opportunity to make the rules themselves. This is necessary because, in
any successful society, people have to do things that they do not much like
doing, such as paying taxes, obeying the speed limit for driving cars, and
so on. The state is obviously able to use force to make people comply with
the law, but it is much better for all concerned if there is a general culture
of agreement. This is much more likely when people are able to challenge
and possibly change the law through appropriate participatory channels.
It is important to distinguish here between the conservative argument that
democracy is mainly about legitimation – in other words, about giving
the appearance of self-government to people so that they obey authority
more willingly – and the radical argument that democracy allows popular
notions of morality to discipline the rulers. Both viewpoints conclude that
participation is a kind of public good.
Critics of the participationist theory of democracy

Participationist arguments for democracy have been criticised on three
main grounds:
• apathy
• intolerance
• logistics.
Apathy
This reason for criticising participationist theories relates to differential
knowledge. We live in a complex and sophisticated world. Decision-makers
need to have a reasonable amount of knowledge so they can make good
decisions. We might ask ourselves whether we want to live in a world in
which a porter or a gardener has as much influence on political outcomes
as a diplomat or a scientist. We would not go to a gardener to be operated
on if a doctor of medicine was available instead. The objection is not really
about narrowly defined expertise – because all political systems need to
rely on experts to some extent – it is rather that the democratic need to
express political arguments in ways that will influence ordinary people
lowers the level of public debate. The current phrase used in the UK to
express this is ‘dumbing down’.
It could be argued that the effect of too much popular participation is
that democratic political systems pay too much attention to presidential
adultery and not enough to foreign policy. This is mainly because most
people can understand adultery, but only a few understand foreign policy.
12
If the world is indeed a dangerous place, then misplaced emphasis of this

kind can make it very dangerous. In Europe in the 1930s, for example, the
democracies made a very poor job of standing up to Hitler, largely because
they were not sufficiently focused on the main threat.
A supporter of participation could try to counter this argument by
saying that a lot of general knowledge – albeit not the most detailed and
specialist knowledge – could be acquired by interested voters. This is not
true of very specialised knowledge, but monarchies and aristocracies do
not have this either. All kinds of government have to rely on specialist
advisers, and there need be no problem with democratic states having
professional bodies of experts to give detailed expression to the democratic
will. General legislative bodies do not need to set interest rates or
draft precise legislation. All that might be needed for effective popular
participation is a willingness to understand the main issues and relate
them to general principles, just as members of legislative assemblies are
expected to.
However, this observation does not get rid of the problem. In order to
acquire knowledge, people need to have not only the ability but also
the inclination to learn. Some may find it interesting and enjoyable to
do this, but ordinary people may not want to learn the details of every
public policy. The only realistic incentive that a democracy can give to
people to learn about policy is a chance to change it. The problem here,
though, is that the nature of the democratic process ensures that non-
expert individuals can have only the most minimal impact on the choice
of government. If 20 million people vote at the next election, then it is
statistically inconceivable that the way in which you or I might vote will
make any difference to the outcome. So why bother to vote at all?
In many present-day democracies, most people do vote at major national
elections when given the chance; although turnout in local elections is at
very low levels and non-voting has increased alarmingly in the USA and
the UK. Voting in general elections, and perhaps even at local elections,
however, can be seen as a kind of civic ritual. Most people vote because
they want to make some kind of statement of principle or to participate in
what is seen as a social process of some significance. Media coverage of
election campaigns is very high and also helps to bring out the vote. Party
machines sometimes play an active part in persuading people to go to
polling stations. None of this, however, explains why people should learn
about policy issues in detail.
In fact the ‘why bother?’ argument becomes much stronger in the context
of active or informed participation on policy issues. A voter may be a
family man with a job or a working mother with a young family who does
not want to spend time mastering the complex details of, for example,
economic policy in order to decide how to cast a vote. A voter’s time is not
free. The theoretical idea that voters may not want to involve themselves
in mastering the details of complex issues is reinforced by empirical
findings. Majority participation in most democracies is limited to voting
in national elections; just about every other form of active participation is
limited to minorities.
Critics, such as Schumpeter, say that, overall, most people either do not
participate much in politics and do not know much about policy issues
(by the standards of a professional politician at least) or else they do
participate in politics, but still do not know much about policy issues
(Schumpeter, 1978). Neither is necessarily a good idea.
13
Intolerance
A second argument against democracy as participation is that it gives too
much attention to what majorities think and not enough to individual
or minority rights. Majority opinion does not necessarily reflect respect
for personal freedom or a respect for individual rights, and critics do
not necessarily accept that one will lead to the other. Most of us accept
that people have individual rights that should not be violated by pure
majoritarianism. Minority rights can be violated by an excessive emphasis
on majority rights. Majorities have discriminated against minorities on the
grounds of religion or ethnic background. The rights of neighbours and
foreigners should be considered – most of us understand why it would be
undesirable for the popular majority of a large and powerful country to
vote to go out and conquer a smaller and less powerful neighbour.
Popular participation is not the same as mob rule, but some authors have
expressed the fear that one might lead to the other. There is a memorable
scene in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar when the mob kills a poet called
Cinna because he has the same name as a conspirator, even though he is
a completely different person. In historical fact, there has been less mob
rule in reality than may have appeared in theory. Usually, when crowds or
popular masses have put on a show of intolerance, they were encouraged
by antidemocratic or politically manipulative elites. As Rousseau would
have put it, they have been misled rather than corrupted. Even so, an
alliance of irresponsible or antidemocratic elites and manipulable masses
can be very damaging. For this reason, most democratic systems in the
First World try to protect minority and individual rights through some kind
of constitutional provision. Such provisions are generally accepted to be,
on the whole, beneficial for democracy. They do not prevent or limit the
amount of popular participation, but they do put limits on what can be
expressed or decided democratically.
Logistics
A third problem with participation, often argued reluctantly by people who
generally sympathise with the idea of greater participation, is practicality.
The problem here is that participation involves more than deciding and
voting. It should also involve listening, deliberating and debating. It is
impossibly difficult in a large community, however, for people to be able to
present arguments to other people in the hope of making them listen. The
media – even the correspondence columns of newspapers – have space for
only a tiny amount of possible communications.
Dahl (1989) makes the point very clearly. Suppose that every adult
citizen had the right to address his or her fellow citizens for two minutes
only, once a year, on any subject. All citizens would have to have the
corresponding duty to listen to all others: if this were too drastic a rule,
then there could be at least one television channel given over purely to
individual speech-making. At that rate, 30 citizens could speak every
hour and 720 every day, allowing no breaks for eating, sleeping or
anything else. If this went on for an entire year, then 262,800 citizens
would get to speak. However, most people in the democratic world live
in countries whose electorates are well over 20 million. So even if this
drastic experiment in participation were possible, then only around one
per cent of the population would be able to enjoy their two-minute speech,
and it is reasonable to suppose that this one per cent would soon cease to
command the full attention of the other 99 per cent.
14
Referendums as expression of the need to participate

Realistically, the existence of societies with very large numbers of people
makes full-scale participatory democracy impossible, although universal
suffrage is, of course, feasible. In fact, computer technology means that
popular voting has never been easier to organise from a purely technical
point of view and there have been arguments that referendums should be
used more often to take advantage of this fact. Participatory democracy,
however, was originally intended to mean more than voting. Participants –
like jurors in a courtroom – should listen and perhaps ask questions: they
should inform themselves of the main issues and then make a decision. To
vote in semi-ignorance, with one’s mind made up by a slogan or a reflex, is
a much poorer form of participation.
A genuine difference in emphasis as to how much weight to give to
referendums as instruments of policy exists between different democratic
political systems. Switzerland uses them frequently, some states of the
USA occasionally and the UK hardly at all. Since different countries
have adopted different attitudes to referendums, it is evident that strong
arguments are in favour of (and against) each type of system. It has been
widely observed that public opinion tends to be rather conservative (in
the sense of disliking change) and systems for referendums have been
more effective in blocking change than promoting it. For example, the
Irish people once voted by referendum to prevent any change in their
divorce laws and only narrowly reversed this decision in 1995. The
Swiss have remained outside the European Union and have played little
part in foreign affairs: they also gave women the vote much later than
most other countries. In the USA, the California electorate has at times
voted to restrict public spending according to a formula (proposition 13)
and to make life far tougher for undocumented migrants from abroad
(proposition 187). Broadly speaking, these are ‘right-wing’ decisions.
Supporters of referendums see them as an important antidote to the
inevitable elitism of professional politicians and organised interests.
Opponents see them as giving too much power to possibly ignorant
people. Opponents of referendums also fear that too much direct voting
can make it easy for opponents of change to block desirable innovations.
There have often been cases where legislative majorities have introduced
change, even when this has been unpopular; later on, public opinion has
accepted such changes. For example, when abortion was legalised in the
UK in the 1960s, it was clear that Parliament was voting for a change
that was not supported by most people. Today, however, only a minority
want the state to prevent abortion by law. Much the same was true in
the USA, although the actual decision was made by the Supreme Court
rather than the legislature. In the late 1960s, conservative Americans (who
opposed abortion) hoped that the issue would prove seriously damaging
to liberal Americans (who supported the legalisation allowing abortion). A
generation later, the opposite had become true. The abortion issue is very
delicate for conservative Americans, because many women will refuse to
vote for a candidate who openly opposes abortion.
Overall, although the historical importance of participationist ideas
and arguments should not be ignored, there are many reasons why an
uninhibited form of direct democracy would not be feasible and might
not be desirable. In practice, the direct effect of democratic participation
is mediated by the fact that there are legal and representative aspects to
democracy as well.
15
Activity
List the different ways in which Robert Dahl (1989) defends his theory of democracy
against its critics.
Democracy as competition
Another important theoretical approach to democracy defines it by the
existence of free and fair elections and electoral competition. The most
famous exponent of this argument was the Austrian political philosopher
and economist Joseph Schumpeter (1978).
Schumpeter believed that it was wrong to idealise either democracy or
the folk wisdom of the people. His view of the characteristics of ordinary
people is much more pessimistic than that of Rousseau or Dahl. Schumpeter
was writing a few years after the German electorate had voted in sufficient
numbers to allow Adolf Hitler to take power. Schumpeter also argued
that, although democracy was important, it was not the only public good.
Under extreme political circumstances, people would be more likely to be
guided by an innate sense of right and wrong than by any doctrine of the
democratic mandate. For example, people either supported or opposed
Hitler on moral grounds: a few people who opposed him nevertheless
believed that he should be supported because he was democratically
elected. However, many people during the past century – including
intellectuals – have at times supported antidemocratic parties or movements
such as fascism and communism. At the opposite extreme, many people
who today prefer democracy do so because of a belief in freedom and the
rights of the individual. They are pro-democracy, because they believe that
democracy is the best means of securing freedom and rights. If they were
persuaded otherwise, they might change their minds about democracy itself.
Schumpeter believed, therefore, that democracy should not be theorised in
too idealistic a way. Whether a political system is democratic is not at all
the same question of whether we like it. Nor, argued Schumpeter, should
democracy be based on an overly optimistic view of people’s wisdom.
People devote their main care, attention and skill to areas of their life
where it would make a real difference, such as their livelihoods and their
families. Because few people believe that their vote does make a real
difference, they mainly participate in politics by expressing attitudes rather
than reflecting quietly on issues. Even quite intelligent people are capable
of casting their votes without much thought to the consequences.
Such arguments are pessimistic, of course. What is interesting, though, is that
Schumpeter could find a strong defence of democracy even though he started
from so negative a position. His main argument is that elections discipline
elites. Anybody who wants to be head of government must first win an election.
For many ambitious elite figures, argued Schumpeter, the pursuit of power
is actually a bit of a game. In order to win the game, however, a democratic
leader must appeal to ordinary people. Furthermore, a party leader cannot
afford to be too arrogant because he or she might well lose the next election.
Power is less likely to corrupt people who have only a limited tenure on it.
Criticisms of Schumpeter
Schumpeter’s arguments have been criticised as being too negative and
restrictive on a number of grounds:
• the role of activists
• democracy and law
• democracy and collective interest.
16
The role of activists

It may be true that not everybody who participates in politics does so
intelligently, but intelligent participation is the hallmark of a democracy.
If we only have elites competing for the vote and voters acting in semi-
ignorance, we lose an important aspect of democracy – the ability of
people who do not want to be professional politicians to take some active
interest in how they are governed and to bring issues to the attention of
the public as a whole.
Furthermore, democratic politics is much more than party politics.
Pluralism was an important strand in post-1945 US political science, to
some extent reacting against the view that democracy is essentially an
auction for votes. Pluralists such as Dahl (1989) have generally been less
interested in political parties than in organised groups, including voluntary
organisations that people join in order to express a view (e.g. Amnesty
International) and those that represent them at their place of work (e.g.
trade unions). Early pluralist scholars argued that anybody could be an
activist and that organised group politics were a way of extending the
effectiveness of democracy. It was not the case that citizen participation
was restricted to one vote every four or five years. The politics of
organised groups, it was argued, could bring ordinary people into contact
with governmental decision-making on a day-to-day basis.
Activists are people – not generally personally ambitious – who wish to
use democratic action to bring about (or sometimes prevent) change. In
today’s wealthy democracies, they are often supporters of environmental
causes and sometimes of the rights of minorities, children or even animals.
There can be no doubt that such people have succeeded in changing the
political agenda in a variety of ways. Conservative critics see activists as
misguided and, not infrequently, as a nuisance. At times, that is true – they
are motivated by impractical ideas and support experimental changes
that do not work well. Activism, however, often initiates the slow process
of changing the way in which non-activists think about particular issues.
In general, plural groups create an additional dimension to political life
that is valuable and positive. One only has to compare the state of the
physical environments in the former Soviet Union – where this kind of
activism was ruthlessly suppressed – with that of Western Europe – where
environmentalist groups have been very active for years – for the point to
be very clear.
Unfortunately, though, subsequent scholarship has shown some of these
pluralist arguments to be somewhat optimistic. Activists involved in
interest group activity are not usually the very poor. They tend to be
from a relatively well-educated minority of the population and are often
quite unrepresentative of the population as a whole. Furthermore, some
interest group activity has more to do with helping a selected group
make extra money than with seeking a better world. Business and labour
interest groups are entirely legitimate, but one cannot really see them as
deepening democracy. In fact, business interests often operate even under
authoritarian governments.
An additional problem is the way in which activist politics tends to turn
itself into just another form of political organisation. Interest groups, like
parties, may quickly acquire a salaried bureaucracy, which may come to
see itself as simply doing an ordinary job. For some (though by no means
all) salaried officials, interest group politics are just another means of
earning a living.
17
Some scholars, identified more with a conservative than pluralist

viewpoint, tend to see activists as forming a counter-elite rather than a
representative body of the citizenry. It is their activism itself that makes
them atypical. Nevertheless, the number of genuine activists – although
relatively small in terms of society as a whole – is much greater than the
number of professional politicians or people in public office. The existence
of intermediate groups prevents society from polarising between the
leaders and the led.
Democracy and law

Liberals would be critical of Schumpeter on another point – that it may
be possible to restrict the effect of any excesses and injustices caused by
mistaken popular decisions by putting some constitutional and judicial
restrictions on democratic politics. It is surprising that Schumpeter, who
was a very strong supporter of capitalism and the US way of life, did not
give this point more attention. Of course, no legal system is necessarily
proof against a really determined despot, because such a despot can
simply refuse to enforce the law; however, in political cultures in which
the legal process is generally respected, the rule of law can discipline some
of the excesses of political competition.
Democracy and collective interest

Like many free-market economists, Schumpeter starts from the notion
that people participate in the political process as individuals. Yet in the
real world, many people define their participation in public life in terms
of a collectively formed identity – such as social class, religious belief or
regional origin. Some people do change their preferences between parties
on the basis of promises made to themselves as individuals or as a result
of dissatisfaction with the performance of incumbents. However, there
are ‘loyalist’ voters who have always voted Labour, Christian Democrat,
Republican, or Ulster Unionist, for example.
Of course, it may be objected that loyalist votes do not determine electoral
outcomes, but swing votes do, because they are determined by the political
alternation necessary for democracy to work. Nevertheless, democratic
leaders have to appeal to people who think of themselves as members of
collectives. For example, in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionist Party
has, for many years, been mainly Protestant, and the Social Democratic
and Labour Party (SDLP) and Sinn Fein have been mainly Catholic. Little
competition for votes exists across religious boundaries, although there
is some. Democratic systems somehow still have to be made to work
in societies where competition is blocked by strongly held collective
identities.
Overall, Schumpeter is right to point to electoral competition as an
essential and valuable part of the democratic process. Some of his
scepticism about the intelligence commonly shown by the general public
is, at least, valuable as a corrective. However, his theory of democracy as
competition oversimplifies and limits too much.
Activity
List the criticisms that Schumpeter makes of what he calls the classical theory of
democracy.
18
Democracy as balance
I would hazard the view that most political scientists today would define
democracy mainly as a system of balances. They would give some weight
to participation, some to competition, and some to the expression of
collective aspirations within an overall context where individual rights
are protected via the legal process. The task of a successful democracy is
to make these coherent or, if this is not possible, to manage difficulties
effectively as may arise.
Theories of constitutional balance were developed, in different ways, in
eighteenth-century France, Britain and the USA. Two particular ideas are
of interest here:
• The first is the notion of the English eighteenth-century philosopher
Edmund Burke that a system of government based on elections should
be representative.
• The other is the US notion, normally ascribed to James Madison,
that different aspects of a democratic political system should provide
checks and balances. Madison is regarded as the key intellectual force
behind the doctrines expressed in the US Constitution, whereas Burke,
originally a supporter of the American Revolution, eventually emerged
as the foremost English critic of the French Revolution.
Burke’s argument attempts to reconcile representative government with
the autonomy of the political class. His point is that elected representatives
do not exist to do exactly what the voters want them to do. They exist
to provide knowledge and good judgment as well as to reflect any
popular preference. It is not the job of a representative political system
to give people what they want, but to make decisions based on striking
a reasonable balance between what is popular, what is morally desirable
and what works in practice. Although Burke was by no means a democrat,
his thinking has influenced the way in which one school of thought looks
at democracy. The essential point is that democracy is generally a rather
complex system that seeks to strike a set of balances between different sets
of principles.
The US Constitution was based on a rather similar idea. However, the
important difference between British and US thinking at that time is
that, in the case of the USA, much more emphasis was put on limiting
the power of the state. Government was seen as a necessary evil. Popular
participation was desirable in so far as it made it harder for the state
to exercise despotic power, although popular dictatorship was itself a
threatening but possible form of government. Political institutions should
therefore be devised both to express and to limit the popular will. To avoid
any overpowering effect, voting should be channelled through a complex
set of institutions:
• strong local government
• separate legislative assemblies
• separate elections for a president
• a written constitution
• powerful courts.
19
For a system of checks and balances to work, it is necessary for the

institutional system to be popularly supported – in other words, legitimate.
As part of the normal political process, those who control one branch of
government (or one part of the state) may be tempted to exceed their
authority. Although those in control of other parts of the state may be
capable of preventing this, the task of maintaining the system becomes
much easier if public opinion remains steadfastly in favour of the
constitutional process. Where this does not reliably happen, we may find
ourselves dealing with imperfect forms of democracy, which are discussed
in the next chapter.
Prerequisites for balance: the defeat of absolutism

It is important to note that much eighteenth-century thinking in the
English-speaking world (following the example of John Locke a century
earlier) was based on the notion that government needed to be limited
and, where necessary, opposed. This view can be seen as expressing an
antithesis between economic and political power. It was almost universally
accepted in the eighteenth century that property conferred rights.
Moreover, property owners – whether merchants or nobility – wanted to
protect what they had from the Crown. The monarchs themselves tended
to engage in wars and inevitably found this to be an expensive pursuit.
Finding themselves short of money, they sought to impose taxation. This
desire met resistance in a number of ways. In England in medieval times,
these conflicts led to deliberate efforts to contain royal power through the
signing of Magna Carta in 1215 and the effort of Simon de Montfort, an
English politician and military leader, to organise a parliament in the later
thirteenth century.
It is not easy to trace a clear line from medieval institutions such as
Magna Carta in England and the early development of Parliament to the
dramatic constitutional changes that took place in England, the USA and
France between 1642 and 1815. However, the sources of tension between
property and political power were rather similar:
• The crown asserted its right to power, but it needed money.
• Civil society was unwilling to pay taxes.
• Parliament offered some scope for bargaining between civil society and
the crown.
• Eventually bargaining broke down and armed conflict resulted.
The monarchical state was defeated in England in the 1640s, in the USA
in the 1780s and in France at the beginning of the 1790s. In England and
France, the monarchy was eventually restored (although in France it was
subsequently re-abolished), but the absolutist state was not. The USA
went further in the direction of democracy by abolishing the monarchy
altogether and replacing it with a presidency.
This subject guide does not have the space to give a detailed discussion
of constitutional change in these countries since then. However, it is clear
that the defeat of the principle of absolutism in the most economically
advanced and most powerful countries of the world represented a victory
for propertied interests. This is not to say that the propertied interests that
played a vital part in this transformation were wholly and unambiguously
in favour of democracy (they were not), but rather that independently
held property provided a base of social power. This could, on rare but
decisive occasions, challenge the authority of the state and initiate
20
far-reaching political change. The point still relevant today is that the
issue of property versus taxation led to some very sophisticated thinking
about political organisation and to the development of what are still some
dominant intellectual ideas about how a political system should work.
Checks and balances versus the doctrine of the democratic mandate

Fashions change in political science, as they do everywhere else, and
the idea of democracy as a system of checks and balances was rather
superseded in the mid-twentieth century, in Europe if not elsewhere, by
the doctrine of the democratic mandate. According to this, democracy
was essentially a means of empowering government to change society in
accordance with the wishes of the majority. This majority, so the argument
went, would use their vote to support the political party (or parties) of
their choice. These would represent their supporters in parliament and
would legislate according to the desires of their supporters. Class interests
or political ideas would establish a natural affinity between certain kinds
of voter, certain kinds of political ideology and one or more political
parties. Political parties would play the role of encouraging activists and
attracting ordinary people into politics. (There is a significant overlap
between this idea and the pluralist idea of activist participation.)
The doctrine of the democratic mandate never came close to describing
the conduct of politics in the USA, but it did come closer to describing
how democracy worked in the mid-twentieth century in some European
countries. Labour or Social Democratic parties tended to compete with
Conservative or religious parties. If the left-wing parties won, they would
increase taxes on high incomes and property; if the right-wing parties
won, income and property taxes would be reduced. A range of other issues
always complicated the actual process, but the essential model, according to
which parties reflected defined social interests, largely seemed to operate.
The absence of a role for checks and balances in this kind of political
game, however, left collectivist doctrines of democracy vulnerable to the
accusation that they had no good way of limiting the possible abuse of
power by elected governments. Surveys show that voters in industrialised
countries have become more suspicious of government in the past 50
years and that people are less collectively minded and more interested in
personal freedom. The end of the Cold War and the damage done to the
credibility of socialist doctrines by the collapse of the of Soviet Union also
led people to doubt that the best form of politics involved a clash between
the advocates of rival ‘big ideas’ about politics. Furthermore, the past 50
years has seen a decline in religious observance in most industrialised
countries and also a significant class dealignment. There are therefore, for
example, fewer politically motivated Catholics, irrespective of what they
do, who are likely to vote for religious parties, and fewer manual labourers
with an obvious affinity for working-class politics.
For these reasons, theories that premise democratic politics on the role of
the individual rather than the collective, and on problem-solving rather
than general political doctrines, have come back into fashion. From this
viewpoint, the point of democracy is as much to limit state power and
protect citizens against the abuse of government as it is to express the view
of majorities or transform society. What makes a political society healthy
or otherwise is whether individual citizens are content with the working of
their public institutions. The influence of this kind of thinking can be seen in
major recent works by political scientists, such as Przeworski (1991, 26).
21
Przeworski argues that democracy is in equilibrium when ‘all the relevant

political forces find it best to continue to submit their interests and values’ to
the uncertainties inherent in the democratic system. The people are subject
to both law and the ultimate authors of the law-making power. Because of
popular attachment to the system, participants in politics face lower costs or
greater benefits by complying with the procedures of democratic process than
by breaking them. For this to be possible, democratic institutions need real
popular backing, otherwise those in charge of such institutions may gain from
behaving undemocratically and may be tempted to do so.
Some of the ideas of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment have been
abandoned. People today do not generally believe (as the authors of
the US Constitution did) that we have inalienable ‘natural rights’ given
to us by God. We believe instead that we have to work at creating and
protecting our rights and that if this is not done then our political system
will fail. The protection of rights, however, is still considered to be
essential for a good political system.
One reason for the current ascendancy of ideas about democracy as
balance has to do with the longevity of the US system and the considerable
contemporary prestige of the USA. The US political system is still
recognisably the same that existed in 1800. This is not really true in the UK,
where parliamentarianism did not severely limit the role of the monarchy
until after the 1832 Great Reform Act. It is not at all true of most other
countries that are now democracies. A good question is how far the US
model can usefully be adapted to other democratic systems. Although many
political scientists are wary of the US idea that the executive and legislative
bodies should be elected separately, however, there is now almost universal
agreement that democracy needs a strong constitutional system with
powerful courts. In many wealthy countries today, an aggrieved individual
is at least as likely to visit a lawyer as a parliamentary representative.
The complexity of democracy

In the mid-1980s, when democratic transition was more or less complete
in southern Europe, just underway in Latin America and possibly just
beginning in eastern Europe, more emphasis was put on holding free and
fair elections. For many observers, the important thing was to get elections
held and then a country could be considered a democracy. Now there is a
general view that free-and-fair elections are not enough. Democratically
elected leaders are capable of acting very undemocratically at times.
Democracy is now seen as the embodiment of a set of principles including:
• individual freedom
• human rights
• non-discrimination on the ground of religion, ethnicity or gender
• opportunities for participation
• an element of electoral competition.
We need all of these things, because the absence of any one of them makes
us vulnerable to some form of bad government.
Although the theory of democracy as involving a complex balance of
different aspects is probably accepted by the majority of political scientists,
it also has weaknesses. These include, for example:
• The fact that democracy is unavoidably complex. This may not matter
to a well-educated and sophisticated elector. Many people, however,
will not see much relationship between how they vote and what they
get. There is, inevitably, too much else going on. Less sophisticated
22
people may be ‘turned off’ politics altogether by the complex nature of

the democratic process. Electoral turnout has tended to fall in recent
years in both the USA and the UK. The result may be to create a more
apathetic, or fatalistic, culture among the population at large. This, in
turn, might create opportunities for populist politicians. It is too early
to be sure that this is happening, but concerns have been expressed. As
a result, some politicians have tried to find ways of reinvigorating the
political process, possibly by strengthening local government.
• Multiple criteria can make definitions of democracy very demanding.
This may not be a bad thing in wealthy, First World countries, where
constant thought needs to be given to how to upgrade the quality of
the political process. It may not be so helpful, however, in evaluating
emerging democracies, where the holding of free-and-fair elections on
a consistent basis may seem to be an achievement in itself. The best
may become an enemy to the good.
• The US version of democracy tends to be biased against strong
government and (at least by implication) sympathetic to the role of
markets. This certainly fits the spirit of the times. We live in an age
that is rather sceptical about the role of government. In most First
World countries the press is constantly full of details about government
policy failures in transport, agriculture, education and so on. The
idea – very widespread in the 1940s – that government could be used
as an active instrument to achieve valuable social purposes has lost
a lot of credibility. Certainly the idea of democracy as balance is very
congruent with the idea of limited government, and with the notion
that state power is generally part of the problem rather than part of the
solution. It is understood that people will seek their main satisfactions
in private life and that the economy works best if it is run essentially
privately. This approach is not problematic, as long as its underlying
bias is recognised and the assumptions on which it is based continue to
be accepted.
Democracy and capitalism

It may be, however, that the relationship between capitalism and
democracy will turn out to be more problematic than eighteenth-century
Enlightenment thinkers originally supposed. As we saw earlier, democracy
was originally intended to give expression to notions of civic equality.
What happens, however, if private ownership of property and capitalist
relations of production have the effect of maintaining and even increasing
inequality? Most eighteenth-century thinkers did not care very much about
the genuine poor, but today’s democrats do. It follows that the relationship
between democracy and equality – like that between democracy and
property – has become complex and problematic.
It is widely accepted (perhaps more in Europe than in the USA) that very
great disparities of wealth are potentially threatening to democracy as
well as being socially undesirable and perhaps morally wrong. For these
reasons, generations of socialist or social democratic politicians have
sought to use democracy to turn the state into a materially equalising
institution. In other words, the idea was that the less-privileged majority
in any society would use the powers of universal suffrage to elect
redistributionist parties. For much of the twentieth century, left-wingers
hoped, and conservatives feared, that democracy would foment equality
and reduce differentials based upon unequal incomes and ownership of
property.
23
It did not turn out like this. This is at least partly because a very balanced and
sophisticated democratic system, although good at preventing undesirable
things from happening, is nothing like as good at getting anything done.
This is not a problem for people who believe that they can mostly organise
their lives satisfactorily with only minimal help from the state. However,
the abandonment of the idea that a strong, central government can resolve
pressing social problems ensures that democracy offers at best only limited
opportunities for redressing the inequalities of the marketplace. Moreover, if
genuine economic or political crises developed, we would have to think again
about what we wanted from our democratic system.
Overall, the definition of democracy as embodying a balance of principles
reflects the way in which most of us think of democracy. Whether this will
be the case in the future remains to be seen.
Conclusion
Democracy is a complex system that is understood in ways that are
increasingly demanding. Democracy is a word that has to be understood
by ordinary people and also by practising politicians, so that political
scientists are not able to define it purely as they please. What they
can do is to try to make our understanding coherent, or at least to
point out inconsistencies when they occur. The general international
trend in the past generation has been to emphasise individual rights in
our understanding of democracy and de-emphasise (to some extent)
participation. Countries, however, have to satisfy a whole series of
conditions before they can truly be regarded as democracies.
A reminder of your learning outcomes

By the end of this chapter and the relevant reading, you should be able to:
• list, describe and compare the main theoretical approaches to
understanding democracy
• describe the main criticisms of each of these approaches
• outline and discuss the main ethical principles that lie behind
democracy as a system of government
• outline the ways in which the relationship between majoritarian
government and individual rights has been understood
• analyse the role of activists in democratic politics
• explain why the notion of contestation is crucial to our understanding
of how democracy works
• explain why liberal democracy is inherently a rather complex system of
government.
Sample examination questions

1. ‘A system is more democratic if people can vote more often on issues
which concern them. That is why democracy should make frequent use
of referendums.’ Discuss.
2. ‘A democracy is a country that chooses its leaders through election.’
Discuss.
3. ‘The notion of liberal democracy is inherently contradictory.’ Discuss.
4. To what extent, if any, does contemporary, First World democracy allow
ordinary voters to exert control over what their government does?
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Chapter 2: Democracy and the state
Aims of the chapter

This chapter looks at systems that are democratic in some ways and not
democratic in others. It considers several variants of systems that do not
fit easily into either category. These include façade democracy, state bias,
illiberal democracy and delegative democracy. It then discusses the notion
of democratic consolidation as a way of distinguishing semi-democracies
from countries that are fully democratic.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the chapter and the associated reading, you should have a
good understanding of how political scientists have tried to conceptualise
these different forms of semi-democracy and what their main
characteristics are. You should be able to:
• identify and discuss when it is most difficult for elected political leaders
to control the military
• explain when democracy is most at risk from within the state itself
• outline what illiberal democracy is
• outline what delegative democracy is
• explain what happens when a democratic state is biased in favour of
incumbents
• analyse the advantages and disadvantages of using a demanding
standard of democratic consolidation.
Essential reading
Books
Journals
O’Donnell, G. ‘Delegative Democracy’, Journal of Democracy 5(1) 1994, pp.55
69. Available online at www.nd.edu/~kellogg/publications/workingpapers/
WPS/172.pdf
Zakaria, F. ‘The Rise of Illiberal Democracy’, Foreign Affairs 76(6) 1997,
pp.22–43.
Further reading
Books
North, D. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) [ISBN 0521394163].
Philip, G. Democracy in Latin America: Surviving Conflict and Crisis?
(Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity, 2003) [ISBN 0745627601].
2003) [ISBN 052142335X] Chapters 1 and 2.
25
Journals
Philip, G. ‘Democracy and State Bias in Latin America: lessons from Mexico,
Venezuela and Peru’, Democratization 6(4) 1999, pp.74–92.
Plattner, M. ‘Liberalism and Democracy’, Foreign Affairs 77(2) 1998, pp.171–80.
Introduction
The previous chapter established that democracy, as we understand it, is
a fairly complex form of government. Some early political philosophers
would not have recognised it as democracy at all. This chapter looks at
some cases in which the minimum conditions of democracy have probably
been met, but in which there are still serious problems in achieving all
of the things we generally want from democracy. This issue is especially
relevant when we look at new democracies, or democracies that are
imperfect in some ways but effective in others. Is there a dividing line that
enables us to say that ‘A’ is a democracy but ‘B’ is not? More importantly
still, is there a good way to understand and conceptualise a system that
has some of the characteristics of democracy but not others?
These are open-ended questions to which no definitive answer can be
given. They are, however, questions that can usefully be explored further.
Linz and Stepan (1996) and other authors such as Przeworski (1991) have
introduced into the literature a broad notion of ‘democratic consolidation’.
This can be used to separate systems in which elections are held but in
which the democratic process is flawed from those that are democratic in
the fullest sense. We will look at the issue of democratic consolidation later
in the chapter. Non-consolidated democracy can refer to a wide range of
situations, which need to be narrowed down somewhat. In this chapter, we
look at four specific but different kinds of situation.
1. Limited democracies, in which elections are held freely but the
government does not fully control the state. The state – by which is
meant principally the army, the police and the judiciary – does fairly
much as it sees fit. This is normally known as limited democracy, but at
the extreme its critics could regard it as ‘façade democracy.’
2. Biased states, in which votes are honestly counted and individual
freedoms mainly respected, but where the elected government tends to
use the state for partisan advantage (Philip, 1999). The courts, police,
etc. are subject to the will of powerful politicians. These, in turn, act
as though they are above the law and may resort to illegal methods of
media manipulation or campaign financing at election time.
3. Illiberal democracies, in which the government and state control
each other and where effective government is possible, but where
there is little respect for individual rights (Zakaria, 1997). We have
already noted that the notion of human rights seems essential to our
understanding of democracy today. In addition to this, a problem exists
with the internal logic of illiberal democracy, in that illiberal systems
can deny essential rights to opposition politicians and thereby limit
democratic participation and competition.
4. Delegative democracies, in which the government responds
only to public opinion and neglects pluralist arrangements and
institutions (O’Donnell, 1994). Some overlap exists between illiberal
and delegative democracy, in that both are likely to involve the abuse
of rights by the forces of the state. There is a difference of degree,
however: delegative democracy is more likely to be a response to
crisis and something that is inherently transitional. Moreover, the
26
abuse of rights under delegative systems is more likely to be the result

of personalist arbitrariness than systematic state policy. One might
consider the outcome as being the ‘personalisation’ of the state.
The distinctions drawn in the literature between different forms of semi-
democracy are possibly a little bit neater than real-life situations, and the
literature sometimes overlaps categories. It is, however, a good idea to
keep them apart for the purposes of clear discussion.
We will now look at each of category in turn.
Limited and façade democracy

Some political systems may appear superficially to be democratic without
being democratic at all. In such cases, democracy is no more than a façade,
and the real power is in the hands of a dominant party or the military or
an individual dictator. It may be better to regard such systems as non-
democracies and to analyse them as authoritarian systems.
We do, however, need to be concerned with systems in which there is a
genuine democratic element, but in which this is not strong enough for a
country to be considered fully democratic.
Example: South America

Between 1945 and 1976 (or thereabouts), South America had many elected civilian
governments. Could South America be regarded as fully democratic? The answer is ‘not
exactly’, because most countries had military interventions and long periods of military
dictatorship as well.
For example, the Ecuadorian politician, Velasco Ibarra, was famous as an orator. His
personal motto was ‘give me a balcony and I will govern’. He found, to his cost,
however, that winning elections was one thing and governing quite another. He won
five presidential elections and was unable to complete a single term: the military always
stepped in and overthrew him before the end.
Could we say that these countries were democratic at some points and
authoritarian at others? This may be true as far as it goes, but it does
not go very far. It is quite reasonable to treat authoritarian rule as non-
democratic, but it is not clear that we can regard a country as democratic
merely because it is not currently run in an authoritarian way. There are
several reasons why this is so:
1. A democratically elected government will not do certain things,
because it cannot expect to survive the consequences of opposition
from non-democrats. We call this an ‘anticipated reactions’ problem.
2. So-called democracies with powerless democratic leaders will have a
problem of legitimation. Democracy can only take hold in a society if
it is taken seriously as a means of deciding who governs. If anybody
dissatisfied with an election result or government can just call in the
military, people will be likely to see democracy as a meaningless game.
3. Non-democratic forces, possibly including the military and the police,
will control ‘enclaves’ of society and will not be accountable for their
actions via democratic means.
4. In policy terms, this creates a situation in which measures that might
help with long-term democratic stabilisation are inhibited by the
short-term needs of political survival. For example, it was sometimes
politically impossible for elected governments to use the legal process
against their authoritarian predecessors for corruption or the abuse
27
of power. The realisation that senior ranks of the military were often
above the law made it even harder for civilians to govern in the
long run.
Democracy and the state

Moving from specific examples to consideration of more general points,
we can see that limited democracy exists when the elected government
does not control the state. It is of course true that the word ‘control’ is
problematic. There are ways in which the elected government should not
control the state (for example, it should not be able to win exemption
from prosecution for corruption). Democratic systems require a balanced
relation between the democratic and non-democratic parts of the state.
(We saw in Chapter 1 that democracy involved a complex set of balances.)
Democratic systems vary according to which positions are subject to
election and which are not, but there is always a non-elected aspect
to the state. Some democracies elect their judges. Very few elect their
generals. The relation between the elected and non-elected part of the
state needs to be constructive if democracy is to be successful. It is evident
that the elected government must be able to govern; however, elected
government still needs to be subject to the constraints of the law. The
elected government must not have absolute power over the state, or else it
may be able to place itself above the law. The problem of securing a good
relationship between the government and the state cannot just be a matter
of command and control. It needs to involve elements of command, but
also agreement and cooperation.
Situations do sometimes arise in which what we might call the permanent
state – officials, judges and security forces – is out of favour with the
elected government. Such a situation will always generate a certain
amount of tension, but normally this is likely to be manageable. The
problems that arise can also be more serious, however. One of the reasons
why the parliamentary republic in Weimar Germany failed to prevent the
rise of Hitler in 1933 had to do with the lack of sympathy with democratic
values on the part of the German state elite – judges, the police, the
military and so on. Nazi street fighters enjoyed over-tolerant policing and
leniency from the courts, and Hitler served only a few months in prison
in 1923, despite having been involved in an attempt to overthrow the
democratic state by force. Obviously, this enormously strengthened the
Nazi party.
Similar problems occurred in the case of Allende’s Socialist government
in Chile (1970–73). It is quite possible that this government would have
encountered severe problems whatever the circumstances, but it did not
help that the courts, police and military were completely out of sympathy
with the elected government. A lack of trust in the existing state induced
some militant supporters of the government to bypass the constitution
and to engage directly in property seizures and harassment of opponents.
This, in turn, led conservatives to claim that the government was failing to
uphold the law and to invite the military to step in. In the end, the military
accepted this invitation.
Tensions within the state are especially likely to arise under conditions of
war, serious insurgency or terrorism, because such conditions are likely
to create a security dilemma. Either the state fights its enemies in an
indiscriminate way, or else it accepts certain restraints on its conduct of
conflict. Restrained warfare can be a tenable option if the aim is to bring
the adversary into a negotiating situation. It is often the case, however,
28
that military officers, senior policemen and others will resent the restraints
that democracy puts on what they are allowed to do, and they may
be tempted to break the rules. The liberal democratic solution to such
occurrences is for those responsible for lawlessness to be arrested and
brought to justice. When even genuine liberal democracies are involved
in some kind of armed conflict, though, such an outcome does not occur
as often as it possibly should. When the security forces are in a position to
make a credible threat to overthrow the state, it may in fact be impossible
for an elected government to intervene too much in what the forces of the
state do. It may have to ignore past or present-day abuses. In the worst
case, the military becomes the effective arbiter of power.
Democracy in biased states

Moving further along the democratic spectrum, in some political systems,
elections are routinely held and contested, but the state is biased toward
incumbents. This situation is not uncommon and requires some further
discussion.
Most social scientists accept Douglass North’s way of defining institutions
and organisations (1992). Institutions are enforced rules – some people
would say valued and enforced rules. Organisations are collectives that
seek to gain some advantage by playing according to the rules. There is
a clear analogy here with sporting occasions – for example, a football
match. The referee and ultimately the governing council of football
(the institution) interpret and enforce the rules. The team players (the
organisation) seek to win the game. In football, as in life, rules are
occasionally broken and enforcement is occasionally mistaken. The key
point, however, is that different people have different roles.
In liberal democratic systems, the state is the rule-enforcing body. Those
who run the state may have interests of their own, but they still have to
operate through laws and formal procedures. State bodies operate the
political process by enforcing the rules rather than by trying to determine
the outcome. They intervene only when the rules are in dispute or
where they have been broken. Political parties and interest groups are
organisations. Organisations may not want to observe the rules, but they
have to do so or else they will fail to achieve their objectives. As a result
of winning power (when they do so), organisations can change the rules
in ways that are of benefit to their members and supporters; however,
they still have to operate through the formal rules of impartial institutions
rather than directly as they please.
In biased states, the state behaves ‘organisationally’ as well as
institutionally. The people who run the top echelons of the state – elected
politicians, the military, the police, sometimes the economic technocracy
and sometimes the judiciary – do not necessarily have to respect formal
procedures operated by impartial officials. They can act more or less as
they wish. They may prefer one political party or one political outcome
above others.
Example: Mexico
By way of example, Mexico was governed in the 1980s and 1990s by an economic
technocracy. The technocracy was introduced into the political system by the power of
the presidency, and it was kept there by a system that allowed the outgoing president to
select his successor. For most of this period, there were contested elections.
If one takes competitive elections with the vote honestly counted as the minimum
definition of democracy, then Mexico was a democracy during the 1990s at any rate.
29
However, the ruling party that contested the elections – the Institutional Revolutionary
Party (the PRI) – was very much dominated by the state itself. It would be impossible to
argue seriously that the state was indifferent as to whether the PRI was elected or not,
or that the state simply enforced impersonal rules within which different organisations
competed. Instead, the situation was that the referee was also a player. The state and the
PRI were so closely connected that it was hard to say where the PRI ended and the state
began.
Example: Peru
A further example can be taken from Peru under Fujimori in the 1990s. Fujimori was
elected to the presidency as an independent candidate. He faced serious problems on a
number of fronts:
• Peru was suffering from economic decline and hyperinflation.
• Peru had a problem with terrorism.
• Fujimori did not enjoy a congressional majority.
It seems that some Peruvian military officers who wanted to fight against terrorism
without constitutional restraint approached Fujimori and suggested that they get together
and overthrow the congress and existing judiciary. Fujimori agreed to this and, in April
1992, closed congress by force. Public opinion generally approved of this – Fujimori’s
popularity actually rose following the closure.
In policy terms, the closure of congress was quite successful:
• inflation fell
• economic growth resumed
• the main terrorist organisation – Sendero Luminoso – was largely defeated.
Fujimori took advantage of the resulting increase in presidential popularity in order to
run for re-election. He was able to do this in 1995, but things become more complicated
afterwards. Fujimori wanted to run again in 2000, despite the fact that the constitution
approved by plebiscite in 1993 forbade him to do so. However, Fujimori’s supporters in
congress voted in a law that would allow him to run again. The Peruvian Supreme Court
declared this unconstitutional. Fujimori’s supporters in congress counteracted by voting
to impeach Supreme Court judges opposed to Fujimori’s re-election. These were replaced
with tame judges, who ruled that Fujimori’s candidacy for re-election did not break
the constitution. In the end, Fujimori appeared to win the 2000 elections, but further
allegations of bribery led the Peruvian Congress – which was also elected in 2000 – to
vote Fujimori from office at the end of that year.
Activity
Using the relevant reading, present some explanations as to why democracy in biased
states does not break down altogether.
Illiberal democracy
The term ‘illiberal democracy’ was developed in an article by Zakaria
(1997), in which he made the point that democracy, as we generally
know it, involves a mixture of majoritarianism and respect for individual
rights. He argued also that many independently established consolidated
democracies enforced systems of individual rights before they introduced
universal suffrage. Britain, for example, was a liberal state (according to
some definitions of the term) after 1689, but only became fully democratic
after 1918. Zakaria questioned whether the introduction of universal
suffrage before systems of individual rights were firmly established would
lead to liberal democracy or whether majoritarian systems would actually
stand in the way of the development of rights.
30
Zakaria’s argument has led to a considerable debate in academic literature,

and Plattner’s critique is directly relevant (1998). Plattner argues that
liberal values can be institutionalised via the democratic process in
cases where liberalism did not precede democracy. It is, though, not
entirely clear that this is the case. In Latin America, most countries are
democracies, but it is not at all clear that they have institutionalised
systems of state impartiality. Nor are countries that have been democratic
for longer – such as Colombia and Venezuela – more successful at building
liberal institutions than others.
Zakaria can be criticised for using the concept of liberalism (or ‘illiberalism’)
too widely. Some people think of liberalism as having to do with
impartiality, others think of it as having to do with freedom. Some political
systems can be broadly fair and impartial but quite intolerant as well. It
might be best to call such systems illiberal, while using a concept such as
bias to describe state partiality (as seen in the previous sub-section).
Although Zakaria’s concept of illiberal democracy may need some
reformulation, it does work reasonably well in at least one important
real-world context. This context is the system in which cultural values are
rather authoritarian and not particularly responsive to the individualistic
principles of equality before the law and competition for the popular vote.
Many such systems are to be found in Southeast Asia.
It is certainly the case that a country can be governed according to a set
of political values that are not individualist or liberal but indeed formally
democratic. Whether such systems are democratic in a deeper sense is
disputable.
Activity
Consider illiberal democracy alongside Schumpeter’s definition of democracy,
which was described in the last chapter. Would illiberal democracy fit Schumpeter’s
definition?
Delegative democracy
The term ‘delegative democracy’ was developed by Guillermo O’Donnell
to cover some countries in Latin America (1994). Although O’Donnell
principally had in mind the presidencies of Collor in Brazil and Menem in
Argentina, some people would say that other examples in the region could
also be found, notably those of Fujimori in Peru and Chavez in Venezuela.
The basic idea is that the system is run on the basis of extreme
personalism. People vote for the president – delegative democracy is
far more likely in presidential than in parliamentary systems – on the
basis that they are voting for a pure leader figure who will solve all of
the country’s pressing problems. A relation exists between this idea and
the Weberian notion of charismatic authority. Weber’s notion is based on
earlier religious leaders who successfully appealed to large numbers of
people. A relation also exists between this idea and ‘cults of personality’,
which are common enough in non-democracies. O’Donnell’s notion,
however, refers to countries that are indeed democratic and to elections
that have been freely held and actively contested.
Empirically, personalist politicians do not usually win presidential elections
in Latin America, and where they have done so, they have often faced
overthrow by congress. However, the phenomenon of extreme personalist
rule, although not common even in Latin America, is not unknown and
is worth discussing further. Certainly, one important reason why extreme
31
personalists sometimes do win elections is the fact that democratic systems

can fail in policy terms and this failure can produce political crisis. In Latin
America at the beginning of the 1990s, for example, there was a clear
relationship between hyperinflation and extreme personalism.
Delegative democracy may well prove to have been an inherently transitional
form of government. An individual cannot solve all of a society’s problems
and will soon lose his (or her) authority if he (or she) tries to do so. Very
personalistically minded presidents in the region have often been removed
from power by congress. An individual leader, however, can sometimes
reorganise the state so that, although the moment of extreme personalism is
transitory, its political significance may be long-term. The significance may
be that a personalist leader will make use of the military to help him govern,
which is what happened in Peru under Fujimori and, to some extent, in
Venezuela under Chavez, or else he can make common cause with business
leaders, as happened in Argentina under Menem. The end result may be that
the system changes into some other form of semi-democracy.
Activity
List O’Donnell’s main criteria for characterising delegative democracy.
The notion of democratic consolidation

We saw in the introductory chapter that liberal democracy is a complex form of
government. It is entirely likely that we will find systems that are democratic
in some aspects and not in others. We have already discussed some of these
situations in this chapter. We should also ask whether there is a dynamic of
democracy. In other words, does the experience and practice of democracy
make it more likely that democracy will be strengthened? If it does, then
limited, biased, illiberal and delegative democracies are likely to be transitional
phenomena pending the deepening of democratic institutionalisation.
Although some countries have indeed seen a strengthening of their democratic
institutions after they democratised, this has not been so in all cases. There
does not seem to be much evidence of a general trend according to which non-
consolidated democracies are likely to become consolidated according to a set
pattern.
Linz and Stepan discussed this point in their work on democratic consolidation
(1996). Their work is rich and complex, and the methodology is reasonably
clear. They start by defining democracy in a very demanding way. Essentially
they define five arenas of democratic consolidation.
1. In civil society, there has to be freedom of association and communication.
2. In political society, there has to be free and inclusive electoral contestation.
3. There must be a rule of law and a spirit of constitutionalism.
4. The state apparatus has to be fun, according to legal–rational (Weberian)
bureaucratic principles.
5. Economic society has to be organised around respect for property rights,
and conditions must be in place to permit economic growth.
These conditions are rather demanding, and contrast with a simpler definition
proposed by Prezworski, which is that:
‘democracy is consolidated when under given political and economic
conditions a particular set of institutions becomes the only game in
town’ (1991, 26).
32
The problem with any very demanding definition is that only a few
political systems can meet it. For example, most people would regard the
UK and Spain as democracies, but armed groups wanting some form of
secession have attacked each country from within:
• the Irish Republican Army (IRA) wants Northern Ireland to become
part of a united Ireland
• the Basque Separatist Movement (ETA) wants an independent Basque
country.
For years, the southern states of the USA were racially segregated and
black Americans did not enjoy the full protection of the law. It would be an
extreme view, however, to say that the USA was not a democracy during
this period, although it is a view that has been advanced. Some European
democracies have also been run in very corrupt ways. Can we seriously
say, however, that the rule of law did not operate in these cases?
There are some advantages in having a demanding definition of democracy:
• We saw in the last chapter that democracy is inherently a complex form
of government.
• We do need to break down the concept into some of its component
parts in order to see how they fit together in different ways and at
different times.
• We need to be able to analyse systems in which there are elections but
where there also exists a threat to democracy from armed minorities.
• We also need to be able to analyse systems in which elections are
routinely held and contested but in which there is not much confidence
in the judicial system and in which it would be optimistic to speak of a
rule of law.
In practice, Linz and Stepan give considerable weight to voter attitudes
towards democracy. Their work uses extensive survey data and seeks to
evaluate answers to questions such as:
• Are people convinced that democracy is the best form of government?
• Do they have confidence in their own democratic institutions?
Other authors, such as Diamond (1999) also believe that we have a lot to
learn about democracy by asking questions of ordinary people, particularly
in places where democracy is a relatively new form of government.
In principle, this does seem to be a useful way of proceeding. We can learn
more about how democracy works in practice, by learning about people’s
attitudes towards it. It is likely that these attitudes will be rationally explicable
in terms of the objective conditions facing the country. For example, if voters
perceive their government as being economically unsuccessful, then it is
entirely likely that the economic indicators will show this to be so. If that is the
case, then we can specify what objective conditions are likely to orient public
opinion in a given way. There is, however, always some irrationality in politics,
and it may well be that there is some lack of fit between what people believe
to be the case and that is actually the case. If such a lack of fit exists, then we
will not be able to explain democratic legitimation purely in terms of objective
conditions. We may need to look for more complex kinds of explanation.
It is also important that the notion of non-consolidated democracy does
not become a theory of stages. We really cannot know whether democratic
systems that today seem non-consolidated will in the future:
• become consolidated
• break down altogether
33
• remain non-consolidated
• consolidate in some ways and de-consolidate in others.
Not only is democracy a complex category in itself, but the dynamics of
democratisation or non-democratisation in some respects remain obscure.
There are limits to our possible knowledge of these things.
Activity
Explain how each of the Linz and Stepan arenas of democratic consolidation interconnect
to form an overall picture of a consolidated democracy.
Conclusion
This chapter has considered some of the ways in which scholars have
tried to conceptualise and categorise political systems that were at least
minimally democratic (having free and contested elections) but not
completely so, according to the rather demanding criteria set out at the
end of Chapter 1. The authors considered here do not have a monopoly
on these characterisations. There are other possible ways of discussing
imperfectly democratic systems – an enormous amount of literature exists
on the subject, and fresh ideas will no doubt be put forward in the future.
Those authors considered here do, however, have the merit of putting
forward characterisations that work both at a conceptual level and as
descriptions of one or more real-world political systems.

By the end of the chapter and the associated reading, you should have a
good understanding of how political scientists have tried to conceptualise
these different forms of semi-democracy and what their main
characteristics are. You should be able to:
• identify and discuss when it is most difficult for elected political leaders
to control the military
• explain when democracy is most at risk from within the state itself
• outline what illiberal democracy is
• outline what delegative democracy is
• explain what happens when a democratic state is biased in favour of
incumbents
• analyse the advantages and disadvantages of using a demanding
standard of democratic consolidation.

1. What is ‘illiberal democracy’? What are the reasons for supposing it to
be a potentially durable form of government?
2. ‘“Delegative democracy” is just a sophisticated name for presidentialist
personalism.’ Discuss.
3. What good reasons, if any, are there for supposing that non-
consolidated democracies are likely to become more consolidated over
time?
4. What is state bias? What impact does it have on democracy?
34
Chapter 3: Non-democratic systems and the transition to democracy
Chapter 3: Non-democratic systems and

the transition to democracy
Aims of the chapter

This chapter looks at the relation between different kinds of non-democracy
and different kinds of transition to democracy. The types of non-democracy
discussed in the chapter are:
• imperial and colonial rule
• monarchy
• military government
• dominant party government.
We will give an account of some of the ways in which each of these
systems has been transformed into democracy.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and
activities, you should be able to:
• explain the main problems and difficulties that are likely to be associated
with democratising each system of government discussed in this chapter
(empire, monarchy, military government and dominant party rule)
• explain how transition could happen in different kinds of non-democratic
political system.
Essential reading
2003) [ISBN 9780521423359] Chapters 1 and 2.
Further reading
Brooker, P. Non-Democratic Regimes: Theory, Government and Politics. (London:
Crystal, J. Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) updated edition
[ISBN 0521466350].
Di Palma, G. To Craft Democracies: an Essay in Democratic Transition. (Berkeley:
University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton, 1990; reprint
edition) [ISBN 0520072146].
Gill, G. The Dynamics of Democratisation. (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 2000)
Hagopian, F. Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil. (Cambridge; New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) [ISBN 0521032881].
Lieven, D. Empire: the Russian Empire and its Rivals. (London: John Murray,
2000) [ISBN 0719552435].
35
O’Donnell, G., P. Schmitter and L. Whitehead (eds) Transitions from

Authoritarian Rule and Prospects for Democracy: Latin America. (Baltimore:
Introduction
During the past 20 years, many countries that were formally non-
democracies have become democracies. Essentially this chapter is an
empirical discussion of how democratisation took place in the recent and
more distant past. It suggests that the way in which societies became
democratic (or not) depended significantly on the way in which they
were organised prior to democratisation. This chapter should be read in
conjunction with the next chapter, which examines some theories of why
democratisation occurred.
Huntington’s (1991) notion that there have been three waves of
democratisation has generally been accepted as empirically useful. The
first wave of countries essentially adopted democratic principles in the
nineteenth century. They included:
• the USA
• Switzerland
• France
• Britain.
The second wave consisted of countries that democratised after the defeat
of fascism in 1945. The list includes:
• (the then) West Germany
• Italy
• Japan
• Austria.
The third wave began in 1974 with the overthrow of the authoritarian
government of Portugal. The military government in Greece also fell
in 1974, and the following year the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco
died. By 1980, these three southern European countries had all become
democracies. During the next decade, the majority of Latin American
countries changed from non-democracies to democracies. Many African
countries also adopted democracy in the 1980s or early 1990s. From the
late 1980s, the countries of eastern Europe also rejected communism and
adopted democracy. The process culminated in mid-1991, when a failed
coup attempt brought about the destruction of the Soviet Union as a unit.
Many, though not all, of its component parts became democracies.
It is, however, important to qualify the notion of ‘waves’ in one respect. In
the past, in some regions of the world there were almost as many cases
of democratic breakdown as of democratisation. To adapt Huntington’s
phraseology, waves sometimes pulled away from the shore as well as
moving towards it. Latin America has suffered several waves of democratic
breakdown, the most important of which took place in the 1930s, 1960s and
early 1970s. In continental Europe, many parliamentary systems were set up
at the end of the First World War and the majority of these broke down in the
1920s or early 1930s. In the 1930s, many observers believed that fascism or
communism, and not democracy, would be the wave of the future.
What is significant for this discussion is that there has been much less
democratic breakdown since 1980 than there was following earlier ‘waves’
of democratisation. By the middle of the 1990s, well over 50 countries that
36
were not democracies at the beginning of 1974 had become democracies.

Most of these were in the Third World, and so far the vast majority of these
democratic transitions have not been reversed. Some countries nevertheless
did suffer from democratic breakdown. A military coup took place in
Pakistan in 1999, and serious problems were seen with the electoral process
in Zimbabwe in 2002. It is also clear that some important parts of the
world – China and much of the Middle East – did not participate in the most
recent democratising wave. Nonetheless, we cannot really speak of any
major reversal of the most recent wave of democratisation.
However, progress towards democracy has slowed down since the mid-
1990s. Even so, the extent of democratisation has surprised scholars.
As we shall see in more detail in the next chapter, some modernisation
theories did not expect the spread of democracy across Africa and Latin
America to be sustained. It is true that some new democracies do not seem
to be particularly secure and that only some of the countries that have
democratised since 1974 can be regarded as democratically consolidated.
Nevertheless, as we saw in the last chapter, the criterion of democratic
consolidation is demanding. The mere fact that democracy has proved as
durable as it has over quite long periods of time is significant.
One way of trying to understand the magnitude of this transformation
is to consider how different forms of non-democracies have evolved into
democracies or, on occasion, have failed to do so. This approach will be
considered in the rest of this chapter.
Colonial rule and the collapse of empires

An important force behind political change has been the decline, or in
some cases, collapse of empires. This process has sometimes created
entirely new countries – new countries that need new political systems.
Ex-colonial countries have not invariably adopted democratic systems
of government. Former British colonies have often done so – the USA,
India and Ireland are positive examples – but there are negative examples
as well, such as Pakistan. Former Spanish colonies did not immediately
develop democratic institutions, even in countries, such as Argentina,
that were settled principally from Europe. Nevertheless, the history of
decolonisation has seen major changes in the way in which very large
numbers of people have been governed.
The defeat of the British Empire in the War of American Independence
had particularly important consequences for the history of democracy
worldwide. The USA pioneered the presidential system of government,
which today is the main alternative to parliamentarianism. A generation
later, the success of many former Latin American colonies of Spain and
Portugal in securing independence also brought into existence new states
and new constitutional systems – although constitutional development
was much less successful in Latin America than in the USA. Most Latin
American countries adopted hybrid systems that include:
• presidentialism
• continental European systems of administrative law
• a tradition of rule by decree.
Unfortunately, very few systems of this kind have truly consolidated
institutionally in the long run.
In 1918, the collapse of the Austro–Hungarian Empire also brought
a number of new states into existence. Attempts were made to set up
democratic parliamentary systems in most of these new states, but virtually
37
all of them failed, falling victim to authoritarian forms of politics by the

1930s. Many were then occupied or controlled by the Nazis during 1941–
45. In some cases re-democratisation followed the defeat of Nazi Germany
in 1945 and in others it followed the collapse of Communism in the 1980s.
After the Second World War, the European empires pursued a consistent,
if not always voluntary, policy of decolonisation. The political results
of independence were mixed, but at least some countries adopted and
retained democratic systems. India famously adopted a democratic
parliamentary system in the late 1940s, while some other countries,
notably in Africa, only became democracies in the 1980s ‘wave’, and
sometimes not even then.
Political consequences of imperial control and

decolonisation prior to 1990
The effect of imperial collapse upon democratisation was therefore
rather mixed. In some very important cases, the end of empire led to
democratisation, but this was by no means the only outcome. It is clear
that democratisation did spread after the collapse of the former Soviet
Union, but much less clear that the collapse of previous empires had so
general an effect. The consequences of earlier forms of imperial control
and decolonisation in various parts of the world depended upon (among
other things):
• the character of the imperial society
• the extent to which there was settlement from the metropolitan country
• the historical epoch in which the colonising and decolonising took
place.
In some cases, the impact of colonial rule was utterly destructive.
Indigenous populations in much of the Americas were either totally wiped
out or greatly reduced in number.
In other cases, the colonial power sought to reduce the cost of direct
administration, either by allowing some precolonial patterns of authority
to survive or by developing and transmitting new institutions. This was
done with varying degrees of success in different parts of the world. In
some cases, European colonial powers were able to legitimate their rule,
in the sense that subjects of the empire wished to remain so, at times on
the basis of full-scale integration into the imperial country, but such cases
are extremely few. Sometimes, willing ex-colonies have proved to be more
a source of embarrassment than satisfaction to the colonial power, which
wanted to find an acceptable means of getting rid of a colony eager to
stay in the empire – the Falkland Islands are one example and Gibraltar
another. Of course, the Falklands are populated by British settlers rather
than indigenous people. On the other hand, though, indigenous peoples in
Martinique and French Guyana are content to remain part of France. This
kind of government is not inevitably non-democratic, in the sense that the
French Guyanese vote in French elections and the Falkland Islanders elect
a council of their own.
Far more often, however, the imperial power was unable to persuade
former colonies to remain as colonies. When the opportunity for
independence presented itself, it was generally accepted and sometimes
seized. We can identify four possible ways in which decolonisation
interacted with democratisation:
• continuity and democratisation
38
• continuity and non-democratisation

• discontinuity and democratisation
• discontinuity and non-democratisation.
Continuity and democratisation

In some cases, independent countries adopted democratic institutions
from their former colonial powers (which were themselves democracies).
It sometimes mattered that independence was granted and accepted on
relatively good terms, though this was not necessarily decisive. Britain
retained good relations with India after independence in 1947, and India
adopted and maintained a parliamentary system based on the British
model. The same was also true of British Honduras, which became
known as Belize upon independence in 1981. Nevertheless, the bitterly
fought independence movement in Ireland did not preclude Ireland from
adopting parliamentary institutions after 1922.
Continuity and non-democratisation

In some cases, the independent country threw off the control of a non-
democracy, but did not democratise when it did so. A form of colonial rule
that was doubly non-democratic (both because colonialism is not inherently
democratic and because the colonial power was not a democracy) then gave
way to a non-democratic but local form of post-colonial rule. When Brazil
became independent from Portugal in the 1820s, it retained a monarchical
system of government. The monarchy was not overthrown until 1889, and
Brazil did not really establish a democratic form of government until the 1980s.
Discontinuity and democratisation

The category most relevant to the issue of democratic transition occurred
where the collapse of a non-democratic empire led to the adoption
of democracy in the newly independent countries. When Soviet rule
collapsed in Eastern Europe after 1989, most of the countries of eastern
Europe adopted democratic systems of government. They did so partly in
reaction to the unpopular Communist system imposed upon them earlier,
partly out of a genuine preference for democracy and partly because the
new states enjoyed the support of the USA and the European Union. Such
cases are illustrations of transition to democracy via imperial collapse.
Discontinuity and non-democratisation

In some cases, newly independent countries seemed likely to adopt
democratic parliamentary systems similar to those existing in their former
colonial powers, but in the end did not do so. This pattern of abortive
democracy is common in Africa, although the past decade has seen
significant amounts of re-democratisation in the region. Vietnam and
Algeria became independent from France when France was a democracy,
but they did not democratise themselves.
Negative legacies of colonialism

Sometimes the impact of colonialism created problems that made it hard for
post-colonial countries to become stable democracies. One of the legacies of
colonialism was that centralised states and national borders were organised
over territories that had not previously known them or that had experienced
quite different boundaries at earlier times. Borders that once seemed
artificial often remained intact after the ending of colonial rule and tensions
often resulted from a poor ‘fit’ between the externally imposed national
39
borders and the original allegiances of indigenous peoples. Because empires

were coercive, they sometimes imposed a single form of rule on ethnically
or religiously divided territories. The downfall of such empires has led, at
times, to an upsurge in conflict between different ethnic or religious groups
as each tried to consolidate its own territorial claims.
Sometimes a clear-cut secession is possible and may appear to resolve the
issue (for example, the Czech Republic and Slovakia agreed to separate in
1991). At other times, clear-cut solutions are less easy to find and serious
armed conflict may develop. These conflicts did not absolutely prevent
subsequent democratisation but they did make it more difficult. Examples
include:
• the former republics of Yugoslavia in the 1990s
• Ireland after 1922
• India/Pakistan after 1947.
One might conclude this discussion, therefore, by saying that empires,
although they do not often make any successful claim to legitimacy in
their own terms, do at times develop institutions that can be transmitted
successfully to colonies and kept on after independence. It is often a
matter of contingency whether or not this happens, however, and there
have been many failures as well as successes. For this reason, the decline
of empires – although an opportunity for democratic transition – can also
be a time of very great disorder and conflict.
Whether the influence exerted today by the USA over Latin America and by
some European countries over parts of Africa can be considered imperial
is controversial. What is clear, though, is that attempts by the USA and
to some extent Europe to export democracy to various parts of the world
have been influential. In southern and eastern Europe, countries that could
sustain democratic institutions over the long term could enjoy the prospect
of membership of the European Union. Such membership is advantageous
on many grounds. In the African case, quite significant amounts of aid
have been made conditional on democratisation. The relative importance
of this linkage for democracy has varied from case to case and is never
preponderant. International bodies do have to work through local agents
if they are to succeed and most Africans do prefer democracy. At the very
least, however, the international community is much less supportive of non-
democracy in the Third World than was once the case. In Latin America,
too, international influence has played a part in discouraging dictatorship,
although abundant survey evidence shows that most people within the
region prefer democracy, and this fact needs to be taken into account as well.
Consequences of the breaking-up of the former Soviet Union

in 1991
The central event in the third wave of democratisation was the fall of the
former Soviet Union. Although Soviet rule over eastern Europe loosened
considerably after 1986, the seminal event here was the breaking up of the
former Soviet Union after a failed military coup attempt in 1991. This had
three important consequences.
1. Several countries in eastern Europe that would probably have adopted
democracy if left to themselves could then do so. The Soviet Union had
supported communist rule in eastern Europe and invaded Hungary in
1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 in order to preserve communism in
the region, but from the late 1980s, the former Soviet Union no longer
tried to do so.
40
2. The decline and eventual disintegration of the former Soviet Union

changed the nature of politics in other parts of the world. Communist
parties in non-communist countries needed to rethink their ideologies
and strategies. This was also true of anti-communists. Some of those
who had supported military rule in Latin America because they
believed that this was the only way of suppressing communism had
to re-evaluate their positions. Similarly, the USA and some European
governments, which had previously backed non-democratic rulers
in parts of the Third World because they were anti-communist and
likely to suppress communism, no longer needed to do so. The USA, in
particular, became a global advocate of democratisation and this is also
true of the European Union.
3. A number of newly independent republics that had formerly been part
of the Soviet Union (though not all of them) subsequently adopted
democratic systems of government.
Activity
List the most important European Empires, including the former Soviet Union. Trace
out which of their ex-colonies became democracies immediately after independence
and which did not.
Other forms of non-democratic organisation

We now turn to countries that have made the transition to democracy
without major changes in their basic identity or international relations.
There are three fairly common forms of non-democratic rule in the world
today:
• monarchy
• military government
• rule via a dominant party system.
We might want to make a further distinction between totalitarian and
authoritarian rule, but this will not be discussed in great detail here,
because it is not directly relevant to democratisation.
Monarchy
A number of countries are monarchies today, but for many it is in name
only, in the sense that the monarch is a figurehead for what is, in practice,
parliamentary government. Nepal, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates of
the Persian Gulf are still run on monarchical principles, and the King of
Thailand exerts real, though not absolute, power in his country.
At first sight, the concept of monarchy might fit perfectly into Weber’s
belief that some political systems can be run on the basis of ‘traditional’
legitimation. There can be little doubt that the maintenance of a
figurehead monarchy in parliamentary democracies relates to the aim of
legitimating political authority among certain sections of the population.
Soldiers in the UK are asked to risk their lives for ‘Queen and country’. The
appeal of ‘Prime Minister and country’ may be somewhat less. Monarchists
in the UK would almost certainly win a referendum on the question of
whether the UK should become a republic. It would be far too much to
claim that the monarchy in the UK legitimates the political system as
a whole, but it probably plays a modest part in the overall process of
legitimating state power.
41
In countries where the monarch actually does rule, it would, by the same
token, be too simple to adopt an uncritical definition of traditionalism.
Traditionalism usually is, to some degree, contrived and deliberately designed
to maintain stability. Another Middle Eastern monarchy – that of Reza
Shah II in Iran – could scarcely be seen as traditional at all, although this
partially explains its undoing. In 1979, the Shah was overthrown by religious
fundamentalists, who did not believe that he was traditional enough.
Most observers have attributed the survival of the Saudi and Gulf
monarchies less to the legitimation produced by traditional values than
to the neo-patrimonial allocation of resources in oil-rich countries (see
Crystal, 1990). In other words, oil money is recycled through these
societies as a result of essentially personalist decisions made by the ruling
families. The money clearly alleviates social discontent. The deliberate
arbitrariness and unpredictability of a system that depends upon
individual decision-making creates some degree of insecurity within civil
society. As a result, people who need access to public money are less likely
to try to organise themselves in order to demand their rights or oppose the
government. The objective of all of this from the viewpoint of the rulers is
not so much to build political institutions as to avoid the need for them,
although family networks remain.
Monarchical systems can, however, undertake the transition to democracy.
Sometimes this may occur because of the will of the monarch. A notable
example of this occurred in Spain after 1975 when King Juan Carlos made
a determined attempt to ensure that his country adopted democratic
principles. Although there were some anxious moments, in the end the
transition to democracy was a clear success. When this happens, it is likely
that the country will retain a constitutional monarchy. Such a system can
remain a surprisingly popular form of government as long as the monarch
does not seek to undermine the principles of the constitution. At other
times, though, monarchs have been opposed to democratisation and have
either prevented it from happening or else have fallen from power under
pressure from forces demanding change. The most spectacular recent case
was the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979. Since it is hard to think of a smooth
and sustained transition to democracy that has also involved the overthrow
of a monarchy, it is likely that democratic prospects are enhanced when the
monarch supports democratic transition rather than opposes it.
Military government
Military rule, like monarchy, is a more complex form of government than it
may at first seem. It may indeed appear coercive and repressive. After all it
might be said that the whole point of military rule is to introduce policies
and forms of governance different from those the people would choose
if they could. Often, it is true that the whole purpose of military rule is
to block democratic government. Some significant exceptions to this rule
do exist, however, and the question of how military rule can give way to
democratic government is complex.
Sometimes the military itself initiates democratisation. This may happen
because military rulers have got into difficulties and seek some form of
extrication. Commonly, a military withdrawal from power occurs on the
implicit basis that it could be cancelled or reversed later on. Military
officers may be more willing to hand over power to civilians if they think
that the new arrangement may only be temporary. Of course, if democracy
is to survive, any expectation that the military is handing back power
temporarily will have to be changed at a later date. This is, to a degree,
what happened in Latin America in the early 1980s. Many officers who
42
were involved in handing back power to elected civilians did so in the

belief that this was just another phase in a cycle of military and civilian
rule. Only in retrospect did the transfer appear definite. What needs to be
explained, therefore, is less the original decision to hand power back than
the inability or unwillingness of the military to organise fresh intervention.
The changed international environment may be an important part of the
explanation for this.
Another possible pattern of transition occurs when the military seeks
to move from a position of outright dictatorship to a position in which
they still rule, but in which they do so in a more indirect and therefore
theoretically more constitutional way. Sometimes, a move from open
dictatorship to semi-dictatorship has appeared to work. General Pinochet
in Chile twice won plebiscites – in 1978 and 1980. In the longer run,
however, semi-dictatorship is an unstable form of government. By
attempting to sustain it, military rulers have often put themselves in
positions where they had to give up power altogether. When General
Pinochet lost the 1988 plebiscite (his third), he was forced to give up
power altogether. By the same token, military officers sometimes prefer
one civilian political party to another and they may try to organise
democratic transition in such a way as to help their friends. If the military
government is unpopular, however, people may vote for a candidate who is
seen as the most anti-military of all of those available.
Another reason for the military allowing a transition to democracy is
that it sometimes sees no further point in continuing to govern. Military
officers are not necessarily anti-democrats in principle – they may have
genuine institutional concerns. One reason the military sometimes distrusts
democracy has to do with the concept of hierarchy, which is central to the
military itself. The military organisation is based on hierarchy, discipline
and obedience, not on participation or activism. To that extent, it can be
threatened by civil commotion and political militancy. After a period of time,
however, it may come to feel that society has changed and the danger has
passed. After 1975 the Spanish military was mostly prepared to believe that
the circumstances prevailing at the time of the 1936–39 Civil War no longer
existed. The decline of communism in the 1980s also persuaded some
military officers in South America that they had less to fear from democracy.
A less stable way by which military governments have sometimes tried to
adapt to democracy was for officers to make the transition into civilian
politics. It is not impossible for officers who have already taken power
to organise some kind of political party, provided that they are willing
to accept a transition from military to civilian life. Colonel Peron played
an important part in the Argentine military coup of 1943, but thereafter
behaved much as any civilian politician. Although Peron himself was
eventually overthrown by the military in 1955, Peronism was (and is) a
successful political movement. Similarly, the Mexican Revolutionary Party
was created by successful revolutionary generals willing to operate through a
party organisation. Today, the party is wholly civilian. In ex-military or semi-
military governments in the Middle East, the instrument of government is a
ruling party rather than the military. However, these transitions, real though
they were, did not for the most part lead quickly to stable democracy.
Finally, the military may simply be defeated and become unable to
maintain itself in power. In this situation, however, political change will
not necessarily lead to democracy. In Cuba, the military dictator Batista
was overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959, and in Nicaragua, the military
dictator Somoza was overthrown by the Sandinistas in 1979. Neither
of these dictatorships was typical of the region – they were much more
43
personalistic than the majority. However, this does not alter the fact
that they were overthrown by force. Nicaragua, after a flirtation with
communism, eventually evolved in the direction of democracy; Cuba
remains authoritarian. In other cases, political change has been precipitated
by defeat by an external force. The Argentine military government fell in
1982–83 following a military defeat by the UK, and democracy returned to
Panama after the USA invaded and deposed General Noriega in 1989.
Activity
List the main real-world cases that involved democratisation of monarchical systems and
the democratisation of military governments.
Dominant party government

The idea of government by an all-controlling party largely stems
from Lenin’s organisation of the Russian Bolsheviks. Lenin set up a
Revolutionary party, not in order to compete for power in a democratic
system, but rather to seize power from an autocracy. His idea was to create
a strongly disciplined elite party composed of professional revolutionaries
– a so-called vanguard party. This would, in turn, control a range of other
organisations either openly or through clandestinity.
Lenin did not bring about the overthrow of the Tsarist monarchy. He did
not expect this to happen, and played little part in it. What he did do was
take advantage of the power vacuum that followed the defeat of the Tsar
in order to organise the seizure of power. The Bolsheviks were then able to
take control of the whole of the Soviet Union and govern until the entire
system collapsed at the end of the 1980s.
The idea of a vanguard party was hugely influential in other parts of the
world. However, the communist parties in China, Cuba and Yugoslavia
differed from the Bolsheviks in that they were originally, in large part,
military organisations as well as political ones. Mao, Tito and Castro
actually took power by force from pre-existing dictatorships. The military
aspect of government in these countries was correspondingly greater than
that in the former Soviet Union.
We have already noted that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991. Essentially, it was torn apart by internal conflicts
between would-be modernisers and traditionalists who wanted to retain
the Soviet Empire at all costs. Meanwhile, some of the modernisers had
become alienated from the Communist Party and wanted a new kind of
political system altogether. Most dominant party systems, however, are run
in a very disciplined way by people who understand that internal disunity
is likely to have very serious consequences, which is what happened in the
former Soviet Union. Of the world’s remaining non-democracies, the most
important are based on dominant party systems run by autocratic leaders.
Can Leninist vanguard systems adapt to democratic circumstances?
Evidence shows that they can, even though they may not particularly
want democracy. The Mexican PRI had many of the characteristics of a
dominant party system, although it was able to adapt to democratisation.
The same was also true for the former ruling party in Taiwan. Both of
these parties were able to retain an essential degree of unity, while moving
from being authoritarian parties to parties willing to engage in democratic
contestation. Both eventually lost power via the popular vote, but neither
disintegrated completely. Both parties continue to play an active part in
democratic politics.
44
Transitions to democracy
It is difficult to theorise about democratic transition on the basis of logical
deduction about the strengths and weaknesses of non-democratic forms
of rule – so many different possibilities exist. Moreover, subjective factors
– such as whether particular individuals prefer democracy or distrust it –
may matter as much as objective conditions.
Attempts have been made to discuss democratic transition in more general
terms, however.
• A first influential approach is based on ideas about class power and
state power.
• A second approach is based on ideas of economic change and assumes
that democratisation is associated with economic progress. This kind
of approach – known as modernisation theory – is also discussed in the
next chapter. It is important to note, however, that a number of quite
poor countries have democratised since 1985, and that this is something
that modernisation theory on its own would have failed to predict.
• A third approach refuses to consider general ideas and puts a lot of
emphasis on the detail of individual cases (see di Palma, 1990). If 50
countries have democratised in the past 15 years, there are likely to
be 50 different combinations of factors responsible. This approach
is valuable as a corrective, and it reminds us that democratisation is
something that has to be brought about by political practitioners: it does
not just happen by itself. Yet, if there were no general influences, one
would expect democratisation to be something of a random process.
In point of fact, democratisation has generally occurred in waves rather
than as a set of random events. We do need, therefore, to consider changes
in international politics. These are not the only relevant factors, but
they clearly matter and they are capable of being analysed in reasonably
general terms.

Having completed this chapter, and the Essential reading and activities,
you should be able to:
• explain the main problems and difficulties that are likely to be associated
with democratising each system of government discussed in this chapter
(empire, monarchy, military government and dominant party rule)
• explain how transition could happen in different kinds of non-democratic
political system.

1. Under what circumstances are empires most likely to be able to
transmit effective political institutions?
2. ‘Whether or not monarchies can democratise rather depends on the
monarch.’ Discuss.
3. What are the main problems that arise when military regimes try
to control the handing over of power to their preferred democratic
candidates?
4. ‘Dominant party systems are authentic political institutions, but they do
not always survive democratisation.’ Discuss.
45
Notes
46
Chapter 4: General theories of democratisation
Chapter 4: General theories of

democratisation
Aims of the chapter

The main purpose of this chapter is to discuss the works of six different
authors, all of whom are associated with different theories relating to
democratic transition. The six are grouped into pairs to look at three
different approaches to democratisation:
• modernisation theory
• comparative historical sociology based mainly on class factors
• theories based on culture and ideology.
Learning outcomes
This chapter should give you a broad understanding of the way in which
the works discussed provide theories for democratisation. By the end of
this chapter and the relevant reading, you should be able to:
• explain what the central logic of each of the main arguments is
• list the main principles of classic modernisation theory
• outline the main points made by critics of classic modernisation theory
• explain why some authors have believed that there is an affinity
between modernisation and democratic government
• describe and explain the main weaknesses of approaches that seek to
explain political change primarily in social or economic terms
• list and explain the main principles of Moore’s argument in respect of
the social origins of democracy
• discuss the key variables identified by Rueschemeyer et al. as being
helpful to and negative for democratic transition
• explain the main criticisms of both Moore’s and Rueschemeyer’s work
• explain what Fukuyama intends us to understand as ‘the end of history’
• explain why Huntington is sceptical about the spread of democracy to
the Middle East.
Essential reading
Huntington, S.P. ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, S93, 72(3) 1993,
pp.22–49.
Lipset, S.M. Political Man: the Social Bases of Politics. (London: Heinemann,
1983) [ISBN 9780801825224].
Moore, B. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in
the Making of the Modern World. (London: Penguin, 1967; reprint edition
1993) [ISBN 9780807050736].
and Democracy. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) [ISBN
9780226731445].
47
Further reading
Diamond, D. and M. Plattner The Global Resurgence of Democracy. (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) second edition [ISBN 0801853052].
Gill, G. The Dynamics of Democratisation. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000)
[ISBN 0333801970].
Mann, M. Sources of Social Power: Volume 2, The Rise of Classes and Nation
States 1760–1914. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
[ISBN 052144585X].
Skocpol, T. (ed.) Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984) [ISBN 0521229286].
Vanhanen, T. Prospects for Democracy: a Study of 172 countries. (London:
Whitehead, L. (ed.) The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe
and the Americas. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; revised 2005)
[ISBN 0199243751].
Introduction
So far, we have discussed how we define and understand democracy and
how we understand cases of semi-democracy and democratic transition.
This chapter looks at some rather ambitious theories that seek to explain
why some countries are democracies and others are not. It is not at all
clear that such theories can ever be completely successful. A good place
to start, therefore, is by asking what the purpose of such theorising is and
what we can hope to learn from it.
Historical approaches
One approach is historical. We look at the course of history to try to
find key junctures in the evolution of democracy. We try to explain
why democratisation occurred in particular cases. If there are enough
similarities, we try to generalise. Historical approaches (usually) look at
a few cases in detail, seeking to establish findings from carefully focused
comparisons. They are more powerful than statistical approaches in
gaining insights into particular cases, and they may produce ideas that
can subsequently be tested statistically. They are also better at explaining
anomalous or different outcomes, and they might also be better at asking
nuanced questions. As we saw in Chapter 2, not every country in the world
is either wholly democratic or wholly undemocratic.
However, we still come up against the limits of inductive reasoning. In other
words, even if we suppose that the initial theory met all of the historical
facts, it might not necessarily continue to do so in the future. The relevant
conditions may have changed. The act of theorising about politics may
possibly change the way in which we think about and act in politics – and this
may itself change our behaviour and its consequences. The Greek philosopher
Heraclitus pointed out that ‘no man jumps into the same river twice’.
Statistical approaches
Another approach is statistical. We look at countries that are democracies
and those that are not. We try to find correlations that indicate what the
countries in each of the different categories have in common. Statistical
truth is a matter of probabilities. A statistical approach can indicate
the strength of relations between certain selected variables and others.
There may well be exceptional cases, but these need not be a problem. A
statistical relation has to be significant, but not perfect. It is not intended
to replace the detailed study of particular cases, but to supplement it.
48
Here, too, we have the same problem of inductive reasoning. For example,
in 1985, very few African democracies existed, and since Africa is on the
whole a poor part of the world, it was reasonable to suppose that poverty and
non-democracy went together. In 1998, however, 22 African countries were
authoritatively counted as new democracies. Much less of a statistical relation
between affluence and democracy now exists. It may be, of course, that some
of these African democracies will eventually break down, but we have no real
means of knowing whether or not this will happen. All we can say is that a
statistical relation that seemed robust enough as recently as the mid-1980s
may no longer work. The world is in a constant process of change.
What do we hope to learn from general theories?

Whether we find general theories of democracy useful or not depends on
what we hope to learn from them. We will not get very much purchase on
individual events. None of the authors whose work is considered below will
help us to assess the likelihood of a military coup in Pakistan or Venezuela
within the next six or 12 months. They might tell us that these countries are
likely to be democratically ruled in 50 years’ time if they achieve reasonable
economic progress in the interim and if the world does not change radically
during this period. This is not, however, very illuminating, and there is no
guarantee that even these conditions will be met. They might tell us that
democratic breakdown in First World countries is unlikely; however, we
are likely to have a good idea that this is so by looking at opinion poll data
telling us that most people in Europe, the USA, Canada and Oceania are
reasonably satisfied with the way their systems operate.
Occasionally, a theorist may produce a finding that surprises us and
turns out to be true. It was prescient of Lipset in the first edition of his
work, which was published in 1959 (second edition 1983), to claim that
democratic breakdown in Europe was unlikely – some people had expressed
fears over the political evolution of 1950s Europe. Vanhanen (1987) helps
explain the failure of Weimar democracy in Germany, by pointing out that
power relationships were rather heavily concentrated within the country at
that time. Although Germany in the aggregate was an advanced industrial
country at that time, there was not the greater diffusion of power resources
within Germany that tends to be found in more materially advanced
countries. Where insights of this kind can be found, they give us an
additional dimension to understand the history of particular cases. Attempts
to find a single big explanation that can cope in its entirety with so large a
topic as democratisation are likely to fail, however.
Theories of this kind provide good mental exercise as well. They establish
intellectual connections – through statistical or historical means – that give
us an extra dimension of understanding when considering particular cases.
They do not provide us with answers. They do help, however, to make our
understanding of particular cases more sophisticated than it otherwise
might be. In general, moreover, a good knowledge of history is helpful to
students of political science.
Modernisation theory and its critics

If we look around, we see that most wealthy countries in the world are
liberal democracies. We also see a historical trend according to which
countries that are now democracies tended to democratise as they became
richer, although this does not at all suggest that they became democratic
at the same pace or without struggle and conflict. Nor, as just noted,
does it imply that poor countries cannot be democracies; in fact, many
49
poor countries are democracies. Nor can we be certain that democracy

is necessarily the wave of the future. The future is, by definition,
unpredictable. There is little doubt, however, that, for most of the past
hundred years, a definite relation could be established between affluence
and democracy. The question is not so much whether but why this is true.
Economic development and democracy

The question of whether economic development leads to democracy was
first raised in the USA. At the end of the Second World War, the European
empires were in decline and Soviet communism was seen by many as
an alternative to European colonialism. The US government, in contrast,
became identified with a different position. It believed that independent
countries would gradually increase their national wealth. This, in turn,
would lead to social change, which in turn would ultimately bring about
both democracy and development.
This line of analysis has frequently been criticised as too optimistic and
evolutionary. It does rather de-emphasise the importance of political
culture and the historical specificity of each country. If we allow for the
fact that we are dealing with a relatively simple explanation that does not
seek to cover everything, modernisation theory does have advantages.
What helps it is a further phenomenon that has proved broadly true
up until now – that the world’s most affluent societies typically suffer
from less internal inequality and a greater diffusion of economic
power than poorer societies. This enables a happy coincidence of view
between authors who put most emphasis on limited internal inequality
as a key condition of democracy – the case with Vanhanen (1997) and
Rueschemeyer (1992) – and those who regard affluence itself as the most
important factor. It also helps that First World countries have, for the
most part, experienced fairly constant improvements in living standards
since around 1950. The ability of societies to enjoy the benefit of steady
increases in real income may also be a factor making for democratic
stability. People become relatively contented with their life chances and
are less likely to resort to anti-democratic means in order to change them.
Finally, the years since 1945 have seen an absence of major war, although
there have, of course, been conflicts in various parts of the world. We
cannot know for certain what effect nuclear warfare would have upon
democratic stability, but it is likely that it would be powerfully negative.
Literacy
Sometimes, as in the case of Lipset’s work (1959; 1983), various kinds of
argument are run together. One of these has to do with the role of literacy
in democracy. The key point is that, once societies reach a certain size and
sophistication, the written word becomes crucial in the communication of
information. The outdoor assembly may have been feasible in a small city-
state, but could not serve much of a purpose once a country’s population
reached tens of millions. Much political argument takes place through
the written word – in pre-televisual days, almost all of it did. How could
a voter be expected to assess a complex economic argument if he or she
could not read?
This theory is appealing, but the relation between literacy and
development is not perfect. India is a good example of a country that
has remained democratic since independence despite the existence of
significant illiteracy. Better evidence shows that the relation works in the
opposite direction. High levels of literacy and a good educational system
50
are regarded as crucial if countries are able to move from poverty to

relative affluence. At the same time, wealthier societies can more easily
spare the resources necessary to operate ambitious public education
systems. Even today, evidence from some poor countries shows that very
poor people are not much interested in education because they need their
children to bring in an income – however small – from a very early age.
Urbanisation
Another factor that has been regarded as important for the development of
democratic systems is urbanisation. From the beginning of time until the
nineteenth century, most of the world’s population was rural. Britain was
the first country to urbanise extensively. Although the British Industrial
Revolution dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the rate
of social change increased radically from the development of the railways
in the 1830s and 1840s. It was only in the later part of the nineteenth
century that the majority of the British population was urban based. By
the same token, urbanisation took place even later in the main countries
of Europe and in the USA. Most present-day first world societies only
acquired urban majorities in the early part of the twentieth century.
Since around 1800, an increasing proportion of the world’s population
is to be found in urban areas. The pattern of urbanisation has spread
from First World countries to parts of the world that are still considered
relatively less developed. Latin America had a rural majority in the 1950s
and reached the 50 per cent urbanisation rate some time during the 1960s.
It is now heavily urbanised. Urbanisation is now taking place across Africa
and Asia, including – at a very fast rate – China.
Why should cities be associated with democracy? Modernisation theorists
have argued that the urban voter is less deferential than the rural one. It
is certainly true that established churches, where they are strong, tend to
find greater followings in rural than in urban areas. By the same token,
socialist and communist parties have almost always performed better in
urban than in rural areas.
It has been argued that urban voters communicate more with people like
each other and less with people in different class situations. It is possible
that the anonymity of urban life can allow somewhat greater personal
independence, which might in turn encourage greater political activism.
Moreover, the greater possibilities for socialisation in urban areas might
allow the urban poor to appreciate the distinctiveness of their situation
rather than defining their interests in terms of a dominant value system.
Urban mobs are less likely to be deferential and more likely to be radical.
Well-attested historical examples certainly point to cases in which
established power was challenged in the cities, but found support in the
countryside.
It would be a mistake, however, to regard country dwellers everywhere as
naturally conservative. Moore (1967), discussed later in this chapter, calls
some of these assumptions into question. Where there have been major
social upheavals – for example, the French and Russian revolutions – rural
rebellion was an important part of the process. It might be more accurate
to say that country dwellers are not natural social democrats in the way
that the urban working class was once reputed to be. Country dwellers
might organise their political lives around particular collective demands
– for example, for the redistribution of land or for a particular form of
national self-determination – that simply do not easily fit into the world’s
views of urban social democrats.
51
Diffusion of power
A broader version of modernisation theory – one that features in the work
of Vanhanen – suggests that democracy is associated with the diffusion
of power. Modernisation theorists generally believe that the process of
economic development would itself tend to diffuse power within a society
and therefore undermine the position of ‘traditional’ elites. As society
became more sophisticated, the distribution of power would become
broader, even without political change. Under these circumstances, a
traditional elite would find that it no longer held all the levers of power
within its own society. Control over resources, particularly financial
resources, would be extended to a wider section of the population, with
the result being that the middle classes and others would be better able to
assert their right to political representation through democratic means.
It is certainly true that there are European cases in which the power of
money was used to ensure that monarchical or aristocratic rulers became
more accountable to the people. When the Duke of Wellington tried to
maintain the old semi-monarchical political system in the early 1830s
against demands for reform, some of his opponents tried to organise a
run on the banks. ‘To stop the Duke, go for gold’ was the slogan. This
version of modernisation theory is rather bland, however. Political power
is generally transferred significantly, when it is so transferred, through
active contestation rather than through the slow diffusion of power via the
increased complexity of society – although diffusion may change the odds
attached to the outcome of particular conflicts.
Criticisms of modernisation theory
Economic criticisms
Left-wing and right-wing critics challenged some of the main premises of
modernisation theory during the 1960s and 1970s. On the Left, doubts
were expressed as to whether modernisation was actually occurring in
many parts of the world. In Latin America, where these doubts were
elaborated in their most sophisticated form, so-called dependency theory
suggested that the developing countries would be unable to catch up with
First World countries, because they lacked sufficient economic power.
Ironically, these doubts were being expressed at a time when many parts
of the developing world – Latin America and East Asia in particular – were
doing fairly well. By the early 1980s, it appeared as though dependency
theory could be dismissed as empirically false. Yet the data, which had
seemed at one stage to refute dependency theory, has more recently shown
how difficult it is for poor countries to catch up economically with rich
countries. Although a number of Asian economies have enjoyed a positive
economic performance during the 1980s and 1990s, this was not generally
true of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, eastern Europe or the
former Soviet Union. With only a small number of exceptions, the world is
now very clearly divided into a number of quite rich countries and a larger
number of quite poor countries.
It is likely that many people in poor countries find the slowness of any
improvement in their material conditions frustrating. Between 1995 and
2001, survey evidence from Latin America showed a considerable increase
in disenchantment with democracy. This correlates with - and may well
be explained by - the experience of significant economic setbacks. While
traditional dependency theory was too pessimistic about the economic
prospects of poor countries, modernisation theory may well have been too
optimistic.
52
Social criticisms
Critics of modernisation theory are also sceptical as to whether the
‘modernisation’ experience of First World countries could be replicated in
socio-economic terms in a different world order. A hundred years ago, the
mark of a country experiencing successful socio-economic development
was the existence of a large working class made up of manual labourers.
This was a powerful social force that acted mainly in favour of social
democracy. Today, First World countries no longer have a large traditional
working class – poor people certainly are present, but the link established
by early twentieth-century sociology between mass production,
proletarianisation, poverty and potential economic power can no longer be
made (Rueschemeyer, 1992). In most advanced economies, only around
one-quarter of the workforce is engaged in manufacturing, and some of
this is actually quite well paid. Similarly, in developing countries, typically
only a minority of the workforce is engaged in manufacturing production,
although there are exceptions.
International criticisms
Democratisation also clearly relates to international factors. It is clearly
the case that some countries, by virtue of their geographical position, are
heavily dependent upon more powerful neighbours. This may make it
difficult for them to adopt autonomous political strategies unwelcome to
them. For example, the countries of eastern Europe between 1945 and
the late 1980s had little choice but to adopt some form of communism
because of the will of the then Soviet Union. Hungary in 1956 and
Czechoslovakia in 1968 were actually invaded because the then Soviet
Union feared that they were about to abandon communism. The USA,
which prior to around 1977 often supported non-democratic regimes,
subsequently changed its foreign policy to support democracy. This
certainly had a major impact on the subsequent democratisation of most
of Central and South America.
Demographic criticisms
Historically speaking, it can be observed that a number of countries
underwent unsuccessful experiments in democracy before democratic
government was finally installed. In many cases, democratic breakdown
occurred well after the serious beginnings of economic development.
Democracy failed (temporarily) in Germany, Spain and Argentina in the
1930s and in Portugal and Italy during the 1920s. Of all the developed
democracies, only a very few (the USA, Britain and some British
Commonwealth countries, and Switzerland) have a record unbroken by
some form of crisis or democratic breakdown, and the USA had its own
civil war between 1861 and 1865.
It is almost a truism within conservative social thought that social
transformation can be stressful. It has been suggested that these stresses
were themselves likely to make it very difficult to establish democratic
institutions. It is also true that a tradition in European sociological
thought, associated particularly with Emile Durkheim, related rapid social
change to social breakdown (although Durkheim was not primarily a
political theorist as such).
The role of population growth plays an important part in the argument.
A quick look at the demographics of development might help here. Poor
and traditional societies have high birth rates and high death rates.
53
Because infant and child mortality is very high, parents tend to have many
children, in the hope that some will survive to support them in their old
age. There is little education, so the cost of raising children is relatively
low: they are expected to start some form of work at the age of six or
seven. When serious development begins, however, the level of infant and
child mortality is likely to fall sharply. These factors are very responsive to
changes in the level of income.
The parental generation will not immediately change its reproductive
behaviour, even though the rate of child mortality is falling. Thus, the birth
rate remains high, even though the death rate may be decreasing and life
expectancy rising. As a result, a predominantly young population comes
into being. It will not be long before the younger generation itself reaches
the age of parenthood, and a disproportionately high young population
then reinforces itself by producing further children.
A rapidly growing population is socially disruptive, increasing the pressure
on relatively fixed amounts of land. Population growth, therefore,
adds to conflict over land tenure, and a disaffected peasantry can be a
powerful catalyst to radical social change. Another consequence of a rising
population is likely to be an accelerated drift to the cities. Conservative
social theorists have sometimes seen the city as a source of political
alienation and disaffection. What they see as the ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ ties
of rural life are replaced by a kind of rootlessness, which may lead lonely
or socially dissatisfied people to drift into politically extremist movements
out of a desire to find solidarity and comradeship. The existence of
extremist movements with popular appeal has been seen as one of the
factors behind the breakdown of political institutions.
A further consequence of a growing population, and rising living
standards, occurs higher up the social scale. As development occurs and
the size of the middle classes increases, so competition for university
places becomes more intense. Sometimes, universities respond by adopting
a conservative policy on admissions; at other times, under political
pressure, they expand in order to take in more students. This expansion
is not necessarily accompanied by better teaching or more money for
facilities. The result is that students often fail to graduate or find that
they have little to offer a potential employer upon graduation. This leads
to discontent, and radical political forces have often been able to recruit
extensively from the student/bohemian sub-culture of young people who
may be unable to break into the fully middle-class world. A very good
recent example of such a political force is Peru’s communist Sendero
Luminoso, which was very active in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The arguments evaluated

The non-economic critics of modernisation theory do identify some
potential opponents of democracy (such as Rueschemeyer, 1992).
Studies of anti-democratic political movements often find that they are
disproportionately supported by people drawn from three different groups:
1. Some traditional families who find it difficult to accept the demand for
greater social and civic equality coming from democracy.
2. Potentially ambitious people who find that they do not fit easily into
any particular social role. Rapid change may be a factor here.
3. Aggrieved peasants threatened by conflicts over land tenure. The
Zapatista rising in Mexico in 1994 would be a good example of this
kind of problem.
54
Managing social and political change

The challenge of social change could be regarded, to some extent, as
a problem of political management. Consensual styles of politics and a
reliance on pacts and alliances that cross narrow sectional lines are feasible
ways of defusing the tensions inherent in certain kinds of social conflict.
Political institutions do not just occur – they have to be built and maintained
– and the subjective role of individual political leaders is likely, therefore, to
be as important as the outcome of social and economic processes.
Modernisation theorists still need to ask themselves why democracy
sometimes survives in poor countries and has extended recently into much
of Africa and Latin America. India has a largely uninterrupted history of
democracy since independence in 1947. In most cases, the former British
colonies in the West Indies have made a successful transition from colonial
rule to democratic government. Ireland, after it became independent
in 1922, was a poor country, in which conservative modernisation
theorists would surely have expected democracy to break down; however,
democracy has survived uninterrupted to the present day.
Institutional factors may be responsible for this. It is true that many cases
of democratic stability in poor countries have occurred in former British
colonies. We considered the role of empires in transmitting institutions
in Chapter 3. The record of former Spanish colonies is much less good,
although Costa Rica has a long history of democracy. Even though many
former British colonies did not, in fact, maintain stable democracies, it is
possible that parliamentary systems are more robust against stress and
pressure than presidential systems.
The transfer of ideas may be important as well. For example, in India,
Ghandi and Nehru were clearly committed to the principle of democracy,
as was de Valera in Ireland. Yet if one accepts that ideas are influential in
this way, the explanatory power of structural factors such as urbanisation,
the birth rate, etc. is limited. Nevertheless, one might wish to argue
that structural change brings about changes in values that themselves
ultimately change the nature of politics.
The question of how far political outcomes can be understood by observing
general social processes (structural explanations), and how far subjective
human consciousness matters ‘autonomously’, is very important. We will
consider it again in the next section. Meanwhile, a reasonable conclusion
might be that modernisation theorists have raised interesting ideas, but
that they leave a great deal unexplained.
Activity
In conjunction with the reading in this chapter and Chapter 5, consider three cases of
democratic breakdown or near breakdown. Ask how far modernisation theory arguments
would have predicted them. Use the arguments of both Lipset and Vanhanen.
Social class and comparative historical sociology

As an alternative to rather broad analyses of socio-economic factors
in making democracy possible, some writers have attempted far more
detailed historical analyses of particular transitions to see what can be
learned from them. However, these authors share with those we have
already considered the belief that democratisation can be understood in
essentially structural terms. The most influential practitioners of what we
might call comparative historical sociology are Barrington Moore (1967)
and Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens (1992).
55
Barrington Moore’s approach

An important work of historical sociology – and a point of departure for
many other works – was produced by Barrington Moore. In Moore’s own
words, his book:
‘endeavors to explain the varied political roles played by the
landed upper classes and the peasantry in the transformation
from agrarian societies…to modern industrial ones…it is an
attempt to discover the range of historical conditions under
which either or both of these rural groups have become
important forces behind the emergence of Western parliamentary
versions of democracy, and dictatorships of the right and left’
(1967, p.viii).
Immediately, we come across one important feature of Moore’s approach.
Traditional nineteenth-century sociologists – whether radicals, such
as Marx, or conservatives, such as Durkheim – put the notion of
industrialisation or urbanisation at the centre of their work. For many
years thereafter, the dominant scholarly trends were taken up with
attempts to explore the role of the emergent working class or industrial
bourgeoisie as key catalysts for political change. Moore, however, takes the
argument much further back in time. He argues, famously, that the success
or otherwise of transitions to democracy depends upon the character of
agrarian capitalism.
This is an interesting and fruitful observation. There can be no doubt that
some of the seminal events in the history of at least some European and
American countries came at a time when most of the population lived off
the land:
• The English Civil War and the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ of
1688 occurred when England was mainly a rural country. After
1688, England was certainly not a democracy, but it had a liberal,
parliamentary system with an independent judiciary.
• By the same token, the French Revolution occurred at a time when
France was predominantly a rural country. Although it is not possible
to trace an unbroken constitutional line from the revolution to the
present day, it is nevertheless clear that it created intellectual traditions
of democratic republicanism that are alive today. Moreover, even if
we consider that the democratic history of France started with the
beginning of the Third Republic in 1871, this was still a time when
most French people lived in rural areas.
• The USA provides another example of the same point. When the USA
became independent from Britain, it was predominantly a rural society.
The US Constitution, with its famous first amendment – the Bill of
Rights – was designed largely by Virginian landowners. If one takes
the story into the more recent past (as does Moore) and considers that
democracy in the USA was only assured after the defeat of the South in
the 1861–65 war and the abolition of slavery, then the conclusion still
holds. When these events took place, most Americans still lived in the
countryside.
Problems do arise, however, when we consider the last two cases that
Moore discusses:
• Russia
• Germany.
56
When Moore wrote his book in the mid-1960s, the former Soviet Union
was still a socialist empire. Today, Russia is a (somewhat precarious)
democracy. By the same token, Germany was, in 1966, divided between
a communist East and a capitalist West. Its Nazi years were barely 20
years in the past. Under these circumstances, it might have been quite
reasonable for Moore to categorise the history of both of these countries as
non-democratic – but can the same observation still hold good today?
It is certainly an important question to ask why Russia underwent a
non-democratic revolution in 1917 and why democracy did not take
hold in Germany before 1945. There were no doubt historical roots to
non-democracy in both countries, although shorter-term factors such as
the disastrous experience of both during the First World War also need
to be considered. History does not stand still, however, and from today’s
perspective the most important features of Russia and Germany may be
seen to be the fall of communism and Nazism, respectively. Germany’s
Nazi experience, although it certainly affected millions of lives, is not a
guide to German politics today.
Returning to Moore’s argument, the main hypothesis to explain the
different political evolution of these various countries has to do with
the role of the bourgeoisie during the period when agriculture becomes
commercialised. When the bourgeoisie defines its interests in opposition
to the land-owning class, the result is likely to be democracy. When it
forms an alliance with them, the result is non-democracy, because of the
emergence of labour-repressive forms of agriculture that prevent the
opening up of politics.
A critique of Moore’s approach

Even Moore’s critics accept that he has produced an interesting and
original piece of work. Flaws are present in Moore’s historical analysis,
however, and questions about his methods have not been fully resolved.
Moore entitled his work The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.
An origin is not a cause, although the two words mean something rather
similar. If one is to establish a cause–effect relation, then this should be
something that can be specified independently and applied comparatively.
The causal relationship need only be probabilistic – in other words, it
need not apply on absolutely every occasion, but merely with sufficient
frequency to establish that a definite tendency exists. An author seeking
to establish a causal relationship, however, needs theory, hypothesis and
statistics.
The idea of an ‘origin’ is less demanding – although it is also less
enlightening. It is true but trivial that because event A occurred before
event B, it necessarily had some impact upon event B. There is no
historical event, however trivial, that cannot be said to have had an impact
upon another historical event. The notorious and not very impressive
‘Cleopatra’s nose’ theory of history asserts that, had Cleopatra’s nose been
longer, Mark Antony would not have fallen in love with her. Without
this distraction, he would not have lost the war with Octavian and Rome
would have remained a republic. As a republic, Rome would not have
undergone the process of imperial expansion and decline that occurred
after it became an empire. Christianity could never have been adopted by
the empire. And the whole history of the world would be unimaginably
different.
57
The point of the Cleopatra’s nose theory is that history can give rise,
in principle, to almost any number of arbitrary ideas about causation.
Historical sociologists may choose to interpret the course of events in
terms of:
• economic factors
• demographic factors
• the role of nations and nationalism
• the character of class conflict
• the rise and decline of organised religion
• the role of the state
• the progress of medical science
• or virtually anything else.
How is one to choose between conflicting interpretations?
One possible solution is to try to deal, in principle, with virtually
everything. Professional historians try to take a very wide range of factors
into account when attempting to explain events – sometimes they avoid
explanation altogether. Moore, however, mostly ignores factors that he
does not wish to emphasise. Little in his analysis considers the role of
the state, the rise of empire and the effect of war. Yet, these are crucial
elements in the evolution of early modern and, indeed, twentieth-century
Europe. It must also be admitted that Moore’s history, as such, is flawed
in places. Flawed history, like arbitrary explanations of causality, is an
occupational hazard for historical sociologists. The problem is that any
scholar starting with a framework will be tempted to make the available
facts fit that framework – whether or not they easily do so. Many
historians would dispute, for example, that there were neat class factors
behind the English Civil War, or that the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688
represented any kind of defeat for the traditional landowner classes.
More complex structural theories: Rueschemeyer and others

One of the key differences between the comparative historical sociology of
the late 1980s and early 1990s and the earlier work of Barrington Moore
is the greater statistical sophistication of the former. Many attempts have
been made to find correlations between democracy or democratisation and
other variables. The work of Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens seeks
to combine some statistical analysis with historical sociology (1992). The
fact that both approaches are combined surely strengthens the work.
Rueschemeyer and others also move away from single-factor explanations
of complex historical change in favour of a more nuanced set of
explanations. Rueschemeyer et al. seek to explain democratisation in terms
of three sets of variables:
• class formation and alliances
• international factors
• the role of the domestic state.
They also look at a different and wider range of cases, including most of
South and Central America as well as North America and Europe. This
protects them from the criticism levelled at Moore and, to some extent,
Lipset – namely, that they are only really interested in the history of
countries that today are rich.
58
The authors conclude that the main agent of democratic change in

Europe was the organised working class. This was less of a factor in South
and Central America, where the middle class – whose role in European
democratisation was more ambiguous – played a more important role.
In general terms, the landed upper class was the enemy of democracy,
while the bourgeoisie was not especially friendly to it either, although it
was often in favour of forms of political liberalisation. As for the role of
the state, this needed to be strong enough to maintain domestic order
and to act with a degree of internal autonomy, but not so strong that it
overpowered civil society as a whole. International factors were sometimes
negative for democracy, especially if the country was excessively
dependent upon others, but overall they had varying consequences.
As this very brief synopsis of the authors’ conclusions might suggest, the
work itself is complex and its methods are sophisticated. Many comments
might be made about it, but this discussion will focus particularly on the
authors’ treatment of the working class. This is because the main respect in
which their treatment differs from that of Moore (and the modernisation
writers discussed in the last chapter) is the importance that they give to
this particular class. First though, the general role of class analysis is worth
a brief discussion at this point.
Marx’s theory of class

Let us start with the question of how one defines what a class is, what
it does and what its interests may be. The first, and one of the most
influential, discussions of working-class politics came from Karl Marx, who
believed that the working class was a revolutionary class whose historical
role was to overthrow capitalism. His argument can be divided into three
stages (Marx, 1998; Mann, 1993):
1. He characterised the working class by its relationship to the means of
production. In other words, in principle one could find out, by looking
at the right kind of statistics, the size of the working class, its location
and its potential strength compared with other classes. Marx argued
that industrialisation would, in time, spread across much of the world
and that this would bring about a very large increase in the absolute
numbers and weight of the working class.
2. The working class was organised in such a way that it was inherently
likely that it would acquire a class consciousness. Marx explicitly
characterised some other classes, such as the small peasantry in France,
as unlikely to acquire consciousness because a peasant’s experience of
work did not bring him (or her) much into contact with other peasants
but rather into a world of superiors and (occasionally) subordinates. As
we have seen, Marx compared the peasant class to ‘potatoes in a sack’,
which rubbed up against each other but did not acquire a collective
awareness of each other. Marx believed that working-class consciousness
would develop because the factory employers did not socialise with the
workers (in the way that agrarian employers often did) but rather built
separate workers’ housing, segregated workers within factories and took
few measures to organise the workers either industrially or politically.
3. Marx believed that capitalism was incapable of significantly increasing
the living standards of the working class. Although there would be
economic growth, there would also be increased inequality of income
and wealth, and the trade cycle would become increasingly virulent.
The working class would try to improve its position within capitalism
by reformist means but would fail. Increasingly frustrated, it would
then turn its attention to overthrowing the capitalist system itself.
59
Criticisms of class-based interpretations
The variability of capitalism

Much has been said about all three of Marx’s assertions, and it might be
best to take them in reverse order. Marx did not actually claim (as his
critics have asserted) that the working class would undergo continuous
drops in real living standards. He certainly underestimated, however,
the likelihood that – where successful – capitalism might deliver quite
significant improvements in real wages.
Even by 1900, it was becoming clear that the living standards of the
working classes in industrial countries were showing a slow but definite
trend towards improvement. It was also the case that under some
circumstances, trade unions were able to increase the living standards of
those working-class members who were able to join them. The number
of middle-class occupations was also slowly increasing. Although it
was true that social inequality remained great, the ability of workers to
enjoy limited increases in income introduced an element of choice into
revolutionary working-class politics. Should workers seek to improve their
position within the system or should they seek to overthrow the system
altogether? Some political revolutionaries sought to bring about the
overthrow of capitalism by seeking positions of influence within working-
class movements.
Since 1900, democratisation has enabled workers and their families to
vote for political parties that were able to achieve power and use the tax
system and public spending to bring about at least a limited redistribution
of income in the direction of poorer people.
Even if one were to accept some of the premises of Marx’s original
argument (and he was a perceptive critic of capitalism), it is clear that
the urban working class might adopt any of a variety of possible political
positions. They might want the overthrow of capitalism, but they might
just as easily want to reform the existing system. This brings us to the
question of class-consciousness.
What creates class-consciousness?

Why should workers identify themselves politically as members of the
working class? There are many other ways in which they might define
themselves:
• They could be nationalists or members of a religious party.
• They might have ambitions to upward mobility within the existing
system.
• They might decide not to take an active interest in politics and live for
their families or their sporting activities instead.
There is not necessarily a connection between membership of a sector of
society and social activism of any particular kind.
It might be countered that the working-class experience – which is one of
social as well as occupational difference – was inherently socialising under
conditions of industrial capitalism. Moreover, political organisations, such
as parties and trade unions, tended to offer a social as well as a purely
political aspect. Although it might be claimed that there will always be
a tendency for organisations to represent their own interests rather than
the interests of their members, there are influences in both directions. A
working-class party or a trade-union bureaucracy will not succeed for long
without responding in some serious way to what the membership wants.
60
Nevertheless, working-class interests are not always easy to define. It is

reasonable to suppose that the business class is primarily interested in
making money – this is not necessarily an interest that will lead to class
solidarity, but it is reasonable to suppose that it is an objective that accurately
reflects the aspirations of most individual businesspeople. But what is the
corresponding working-class interest? Is it to achieve some financial success
and so emerge from the working class, to use working-class organisation
to improve the position of the working class within the system, to show
solidarity and advance collective class interests (assuming that these can be
satisfactorily defined), or to overthrow the existing system altogether?
A critic of Marxist kinds of theory might reasonably express scepticism about
whether working-class politics really exist. They do not deny that members
of the working class have engaged in politics or that some organisations,
such as trade unions or parties, identify themselves as working class. They do
doubt, however, whether any claim to ‘represent’ a class can be substantiated,
and they point out that working-class people have voted for and otherwise
supported a range of parties with a wide variety of policies and aspirations.
What matters, according to critics, is the nature of the political leadership that
successfully attracts working-class support on a sustained basis. That is quite a
different matter from the inherent outlook of the support itself.
The limited spread of industrialisation

Marx was more perceptive than many other writers of his generation about
the spread and significance of industrialisation; however, this was still a
process with limits. During the course of the twentieth century, the relative
share of the population involved in manual labour has consistently declined
in Europe – at first gradually and then quite quickly. Many former workers,
or at least their children, were able to move into the middle class. The USA
never had as high a proportion of its population engaged in manufacturing
as was the case in Europe, and here too there has been a sustained decline
since the early part of the twentieth century. In many Third World countries,
only a very few people are engaged in the blue-collar manufacturing jobs
regarded as typical working-class work. The political weight of such people
has diminished largely in proportion to their diminished numbers.
Rueschemeyer’s treatment of class

Rueschemeyer et al. (1992) are fully aware of these difficulties. They seek
to overcome them by defining working-class politics in ‘social’ terms. In
other words, they implicitly accept that there is no such thing as a clear-
cut definition of working-class interests. One can observe, however, forms
of working-class politics that are conducive to democracy; these forms are
– according to Rueschemeyer et al. – of key significance in the emergence
of democracy.
This argument is defensible, but how illuminating is it? The problem is that
working-class politics, as defined by Rueschemeyer et al., may have little to
do with any objective definition of the working class. A trade-union official
who lives in an expensive house and sends his children to a fee-paying
school may be ‘socially’ working class, but is hardly economically so. There
is, moreover, a danger of circularity in the explanation. For example, when
considering why Mexico and Argentina have experienced difficult transitions
to democracy, Rueschemeyer et al. explain that working-class movements in
these countries have been co-opted by leaderships whose own commitment
to democratic principles is ambiguous at best. At an empirical level, this is
indeed true, but it also constitutes an admission that the working class can,
under certain circumstances, be co-opted by authoritarian leaders.
61
Nor was this just a matter of authoritarian control. Juan Peron won
contested and fair presidential elections in Argentina in 1946 with the
willing support of the leaders of organised labour. Rueschemeyer et al.
are left with the observation that the working class is democratic when it
is democratically led and that it can, under these circumstances, make a
contribution to the establishment of democracy. This argument is probably
true, but it is very modest. It becomes even more modest when set beside
these authors’ admission that working-class politics mattered far more to
democratisation in Europe than it did in South or Central America.
A further question needs to be asked about the argument that
Rueschemeyer et al. develop. This has to do with historical specificity or, to
put the matter differently, whether there can be (or is) any general pattern
to which most cases of democratisation can be expected to correspond.
Even if it were true that the working class played a major role in the
transition to democracy in (say) nineteenth-century Britain, then why
should this also be true of the transition to democracy in Peru or Chile?
Moore admits that his own argument does not translate very easily, if at
all, to the history of the countries that he does not specifically analyse.
Rueschemeyer et al. do attempt to go beyond Europe, and a significant
part of their work is taken up with a discussion of Latin America. As
noted above, these authors conclude in any case that the role of the
working class in democratic transitions was much less in Latin America
than in Europe. They tend to conclude, therefore, that the democracies
in these countries are less firmly established. It is not clear, however, that
the conclusion follows from the argument. It is logically possible that
the different combination of forces that lay behind the stabilisation of
democracy in South America (with a far stronger middle-class role) could
turn out to be as effective in its own historical context as the very different
combination in Europe.
The role of the state

The role of the state in democratisation is more complex. Moore hardly
discusses the issue at all. Rueschemeyer et al. suggest that there are
two opposite extremes in state–society relations that are detrimental to
democratic development.
1. At one extreme, the state can sometimes play an overpowering role
and inhibit the development of plural groups within civil society that
might, if allowed to do so, press for democratisation. Something of
this kind seems to have happened in Mexico, where the co-optation of
civil society by a post-revolutionary state has allowed the maintenance
of one-party rule until quite recently. Turkey is another country that is
sometimes seen as having an overpowering state with regard to civil
society, although Turkey (like Mexico) is now a democracy.
2. At the other extreme, it is damaging to have a weak state completely
penetrated by powerful social groups or business enterprises. This is
because some degree of autonomous law enforcement is necessary to
persuade social forces to operate through institutions. Some Central
American countries are seen as cases in which an insufficiently
autonomous state is an impediment to democratisation.
It would seem clear that, if the state is seen as the private property of an
individual ruler or elite group, then the state–government distinction, which
is necessary for peaceful political contestation to develop, will be hard to
find. On the other hand, effective and tightly run states are not necessarily
the enemies of democracy if the state elite itself is clearly pro-democratic.
62
Activity
Read Rueschemeyer et al. (1992) carefully and list all of the countries in which the working
class was regarded as the most important force making for democratisation. Make another
list of countries in which other factors were regarded as being more important.
Democracy as ideas and culture: Fukuyama and

Huntington
The first part of this chapter was taken up with theories of economic
progress and democracy, and the second part with theories of social
class and democracy. In this final part we look at theories of ideas and
democracy. Ideas can be rooted in a political culture (a viewpoint that is
clearly formulated by Huntington), but they can also be posited as reflecting
universal aspirations. This is an ambitious approach, but it has its adherents
– Fukuyama is one of them, and we will consider his work first.
Fukuyama and the end of history

Some authors have indeed argued that the idea of democracy does have
universal appeal. One of the best-known writings of this kind is that of
Fukuyama. His argument, essentially, is that democracy appeals to core
human values of which the most important are human equality and the
right of self-expression. These were once expressed in religious belief, but
they became secularised in the aftermath of the French Revolution. The
nineteenth century saw the gradual sweeping away in Europe and the USA
of systems of governance based on traditional forms of belief. The most
progressive ideas in the nineteenth century were democracy and socialism
– both depended on notions of human equality, albeit incompatible ones.
The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the twentieth century saw
the discrediting of socialism, leaving democracy as the only major belief
system that both emphasised equality and proved compatible with the
efficient running of a modern state.
Although ‘the end of history’ is an ambitious theme, Fukuyama’s actual
argument is somewhat more limited than this suggests. He does not mean
that nothing more will happen to human political life. He only means that
the dominating ideological struggles that have given a kind of meaning
to political conflict since the days of the French Revolution are largely
over. Democracy has won the day, because it is the form of government
best suited to the aspirations of ordinary human beings. Given the choice,
people would rather live in a mediocre society with nobody clearly better
than they are, rather than aspire to collective achievement at the price of
authoritarianism and hierarchy.
Critics of Fukuyama
Fukuyama’s argument has proved controversial. Critics have pointed out that
non-enlightenment philosophies, such as fascism and forms of politics based
on religious belief, were by no means absent in the twentieth century. This
criticism calls into question the idea that human history is governed by some
ideational notion of rationality or abstract human preferences for one system
of government over another. One cannot deny altogether that politics in the
past century has involved a conflict of ideas, but it has involved a battle for
power as well. Fukuyama’s critics have also pointed out that liberal capitalism
may not necessarily be as successful an economic strategy in poorer countries
as it has been in the USA. Some countries might have adopted democracy
out of an over-optimistic view of its economic benefits, and they may turn to
alternatives if it becomes clear that these benefits are not forthcoming.
63
In defence of Fukuyama
Nevertheless, Fukuyama’s approach does have some advantages. It is clear
that democratic values do have a genuine appeal to people. This does not
mean that democracy can easily be introduced against the wishes of powerful
non-democrats or anti-democrats; however, the observation that democracy
requires committed democrats is true, and it shows that such people do exist
in the real world. Beyond doubt, many people genuinely see democracy
as a desirable form of government, because they see its characteristics as
inherently attractive. For this reason, democratic breakdown in established
democracies has been rare. Democratic breakdowns in countries that have
become democratic since around 1975 have been comparatively few. We
might regard these systems as new democracies, and only a handful of
them have given way to overt systems of authoritarianism. It is also clear
that public opinion surveys do show a high, or at least a reasonably high,
commitment to democracy on the part of electorates in new democracies.
Fukuyama is surely right to state that democracy is both an intellectually
appealing and a popular form of government.
Democracy, civilisation and culture: the work of Huntington

Huntington’s discussion of democracy is far more sceptical. He departs
from a far more culturally specific viewpoint. In fact, he does not explicitly
present a theory of democracy in his work, but he does see it as relating
to a particular kind of political culture, which he defines as a civilisation.
He argues that the spread of democracy during the 1980s and 1990s to
parts of the world that had not been democracies in the past relates more
to perceptions that democracy had made the USA successful than to any
intellectual conversion to the desirability of democracy as such. Ultimately,
according to Huntington, some kinds of political culture are conducive to
democracy, while others are not – among the less suitable cultures, the
most important is Islam.
In some ways Huntington is rather cavalier in his treatment of what he calls
civilisations. For example, he does not use recent survey evidence to try to
substantiate his arguments about civilisations, although in principle this does
exist. It is true that the use of surveys to try to capture political culture in
different countries has advanced considerably since Huntington’s own work
was published. The data about public opinion that is now available, however,
does not bear out all of Huntington’s judgments. For example, most Muslims
do not want conflict with liberal democracies. The preferences of public
opinion are not necessarily conclusive evidence of how a country’s political
system will develop. Public opinion can change over time or be manipulated
by powerful elites. For example, relatively few Germans in the 1930s were
genuinely committed Nazis, but they still ultimately went to war under a Nazi
regime. Yet if public opinion is not regarded as key evidence for the future
orientations of political systems, then how useful is it to group these systems
together into so-called civilisations?
Huntington’s work is most valuable as a corrective to what may be seen as
Fukuyama’s over-optimism. Huntington may well be right to suppose that
some systems of government that did not democratise during the 1980s or
early 1990s are not necessarily going to become democratic soon. Despite
the considerable spread of democracy since 1985, some countries have not
adopted democracy and seem unlikely to do so in the near future. We may
have to get used to the fact that the world still contains some influential
non-democracies. It is also the case that cultural differences may lead
to forms of political conflict that make a consensus on the desirability
of spreading democracy across the globe more difficult to achieve. The
64
more difficult international security situation following the events of 11

September 2001 may work against further democratisation. To the extent
that the interests of the Great Powers lie in pursuing short-term security
imperatives, they cannot easily take on long-term institution shaping
interests as well. For example, the US government strongly opposed
the military coup in Pakistan in 1999, but when anti-Taliban military
operations began in October 2001, the US government found it necessary
to drop its objection to military rule in Pakistan.
Huntington may, however, be rather too pessimistic about the prospects
for new democracies. Less reversal of democracy in Latin America and
eastern Europe has occurred than pessimists expected, even though
economic progress in democratic Third World countries has not been
especially impressive. Furthermore, it is not at all clear that democracy
is only feasible in Western or Christian societies. India, Japan and now
perhaps Taiwan are obvious counter-examples. Indeed, Germany did not
become securely democratic until the defeat of Nazism, nor Russia until
the downfall of communism.
Both Fukuyama and Huntington raise very big issues. Their purpose
is mainly to raise awareness and encourage discussion rather than to
present hard-and-fast rules about democracy. Fukuyama seeks to draw
general lessons from the ending of the Cold War, while Huntington is more
concerned with the failure of the liberal democracies to transform the
countries of the Middle East in the direction of greater democratisation or
greater sympathy for the USA. In the end, all generalisations of this rather
ambitious kind break down against the obstinacy of specific facts, but works
of this kind do raise serious issues and it is well worth them being written.
Activity
List the most important countries within each of Huntington’s civilisations. Cross-reference
them to Vanhanen’s indicators of power resources. Consider which of the two notions – power
resources or civilisations – best explains whether these countries are democracies or not.

This chapter should give you a broad understanding of the way in which
the works discussed provide theories for democratisation. By the end of
this chapter and the relevant reading, you should be able to:
• explain what the central logic of each of the main arguments is
• list the main principles of classic modernisation theory
• outline the main points made by critics of classic modernisation theory
• explain why some authors have believed that there is an affinity
between modernisation and democratic government
• describe and explain the main weaknesses of approaches that seek to
explain political change primarily in social or economic terms
• list and explain the main principles of Moore’s argument in respect of
the social origins of democracy
• discuss the key variables identified by Rueschemeyer et al. as being
helpful to and negative for democratic transition
• explain the main criticisms of both Moore’s and Rueschemeyer’s work
• explain what Fukuyama intends us to understand as ‘the end of history’
• explain why Huntington is sceptical about the spread of democracy to
the Middle East.
65

1. What happens to societies when they modernise? What are the political
consequences likely to be?
2. What are the strengths and weaknesses of economic explanations for
democratisation?
3. Does underdevelopment make it more difficult to sustain a democracy?
If so, why has democracy sometimes survived in poor countries?
4. ‘The principal weakness of Moore’s analysis is his class reductionism.’
Discuss.
5. What general lessons, if any, have we to learn from the Rueschemeyer
study of democratisation?
6. ‘The spread of democracy to over 50 countries since the mid-1970s
proves that Fukuyama is likely to be right about “the end of history”.’
Discuss.
7. What implications does Huntington’s theory of clashing civilisations
have for the spread of democracy?
66
Chapter 5: Threats to democracy, democratic breakdown and the prevention of democratic breakdown
Chapter 5: Threats to democracy,

democratic breakdown and the
prevention of democratic breakdown
Aims of the chapter

This chapter tries to explain why democratic breakdown is relatively rare
today, although it was not so rare in the comparatively recent past. It
considers some empirical cases first and then looks at explanations to
do with:
• class conflict
• international opposition to democracy
• the argument that dictatorships can be more efficient than
democracies, especially in poor countries.
The chapter then looks at the main reasons for the stability of democracy
in wealthy countries.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the chapter and the associated reading, you should be able to:
• discuss the main explanations given by scholars for democratic
breakdowns – when these have in fact occurred – and for the non-
occurrence of democratic breakdown in wealthy democracies
• explain what the main theories of democratic breakdown are, and how
they relate to one or more specific examples
• examine how far class factors can be said to have influenced anti-
democratic right-wing interventions in countries such as Spain and Chile
• explain why some people think that authoritarianism is more
economically efficient than democracy
• outline why democratic stability has so far remained the normal case in
First World democracies.
Essential reading
Galbraith, J.K. The Culture of Contentment. (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992)
[ISBN 9781856191470].
and Democracy. (Chicago: University of Chicogo Press, 1992) [ISBN
9780226731445].
Further reading
Bull, M. and P. Newell (eds) Corruption in Contemporary Politics. (Basingstoke:
Buxton, J. The Failure of Political Reform in Venezuela. (Aldershot: Ashgate
Publishing Group, 2000) [ISBN 0754613461].
Diamond, L. et al. (eds) Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies. (Baltimore:
67

Leftwich, A. States of Development. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999)
[ISBN 0745608426].
O’Neill, M. and D. Austin (eds) Democracy and Cultural Diversity (Oxford: Oxford
University Press with the Hansard Society, 2000) [ISBN 0199290008].
Philip, G. ‘The Venezuelan Coup Attempt of February 1992’, Government &
Opposition, 27(4) 1992, pp.454–69.
Vanhanen, T. Prospects for Democracy: a Study of 172 countries. (London:
Introduction
We are no doubt fortunate that there has been no case of democratic
breakdown in any First World democracy since 1945, although France
came close in and just after 1958, and there was a failed coup attempt
in Spain as recently as 1981. In order to study democratic breakdown,
therefore, we have to look further afield. There were many examples
of democratic breakdown in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, when
a considerable number of weak democracies were replaced with
authoritarian or outright fascist systems. Democracy also broke down in
Greece in 1967, and several incidences of military involvement in Turkish
politics have occurred since 1945. A number of military coups took
place in South America, even in the most politically sophisticated and
economically developed countries of the region, such as Argentina and
Chile. Democracy has also broken down more often, though not invariably,
in poorer Third World countries, such as Pakistan and Zimbabwe.
As with the readings discussed in the last chapter, scholars have
approached the question of democratic breakdown in two different ways.
1. The first approach has to do with general theories. An evident premise
behind Fukuyama (1992) is that democracy should not break down
once it has been properly established. Vanhanen (1997) also claims that
democracy is here to stay in countries whose index of power resources
has passed a certain threshold. These theories seem fairly optimistic,
but it has to be said that they have not yet been falsified. Relatively
wealthy countries can face democratic crises, but this need not lead
to democratic breakdown. This kind of theorising, of course, does not
help much when considering the possible futures of poor countries
that have democratised since the 1970s. It does explain, though, why
scholars have on the whole paid less attention to discussing democratic
breakdown than they did a generation ago.
2. The second approach is to look at the actual or possible appeal of
non-democratic forms of government. We should not look only at the
defeat of democrats without considering the victory of non-democrats.
At various times in the past, fascism and communism appeared to
many people – including some intellectuals in wealthy countries – to
be attractive models. This is no longer the case. Today, the appeal
of potential alternatives to democracy – fundamentalist Islam and
developmental dictatorship – is more limited. In places where
democracy performs really badly, however, people might reject it on
pragmatic grounds, without necessarily accepting any authoritarian
ideology. It could possibly be argued that the most dangerous figures
68
for democracy are semi-democrats, who may appear to be liberal

democrats but are not. They have the power to deceive people who
might otherwise reject an openly anti-democratic politician.
It may be that the relative importance of these two aspects – democratic
weakness and anti-democratic strength – varies between cases. At one end
of the scale, there are few democrats and many authoritarians. Democracy
has not so much failed as been insufficiently tried. This may be because
elites prefer non-democracy due to their interest in pursuing goals that they
might consider incompatible with democracy – such as rapid economic
development. Vanhanen may be right to suppose that an unequal distribution
of factors of power within a society may be negative for democracy when
such cases arise. An unfavourable international climate might also be an
influence. The overthrow of the Weimar Republic in Germany in 1933
principally had to do with a general lack of support for democracy. It was not
so much that democracy failed, but that it had not really been tried.
At the other end of the scale, it may be that democracy might be preferred
in principle, but found lacking in practice because of its inability to resolve
pressing problems. For example, the Chilean coup of 1973 reflected a
widespread (though by no means universally held) idea that democracy
had failed in that country, rather than any idea that it had not been
sufficiently tried. Much the same could be said about the various populist
experiments tried in Latin America in the 1990s, although these did not
quite amount to democratic breakdown. The discussion below looks at one
of the 1990s cases – namely Venezuela – in some detail.
Are there good arguments to the effect that democracy is not necessarily
the most appropriate form of government under all circumstances? It
is certainly true that from the viewpoint of economic growth some of
the most successful governments of the twentieth century have been
authoritarian. Franco’s Spain developed from effectively being a Third
World country to being a society that, by the mid-1970s, was ready for
full membership of the European Community. Countries such as South
Korea, China and Taiwan made considerable material progress under
authoritarian rule. Pinochet took power in Chile when that country was in
severe economic crisis, and when he left power 16 years later, the Chilean
economy was by far the most successful in Latin America. The social costs
of these achievements, in terms of repression and inequality, however,
have often been high. Many people would prefer to live in a country whose
economic performance was no better than average, but where they could
feel safe and at peace. The argument that authoritarianism is somehow
best for economic efficiency will be discussed in a later part of this chapter.
Democratic breakdown: cases and near misses

Although, today, democracy appears to be in the ascendancy and non-
democracy in retreat, there have been historical periods in which it was
democracy that appeared to be in retreat. The 1920s and 1930s were the
most evident period in respect of Europe, and the 1960s and early 1970s
in respect of Latin America. During these periods, democracy proved
vulnerable to replacement by authoritarian rule at two opposite extreme
situations. At the one extreme, elites felt threatened and frightened
by democracy and wanted to put a stop to it. At the other, democracy
seemed so unsuccessful and corrupt that it failed to generate any popular
enthusiasm. Its opponents could then attack democracy for being not so
much threatening as pointless.
69
Good examples of each of these two extremes come from Latin America.
The overthrow of President Allende in Chile in 1973 was the result
of social polarisation following on from excessive social conflict. The
coup attempts in Venezuela in 1992 (which failed narrowly) show that
democracy can also be vulnerable to atrophy, policy failure and a general
sense of futility. The Venezuelan case also provides an example of a
country in which democracy might have broken down but has so far
narrowly survived. This is an obvious point of contrast.
Chile in 1973
The Chilean case is fairly well known. Of all the countries in Latin America, Chile had,
in 1970, one of the most overtly institutionalised democracies (Rueschemeyer, 1992).
There had been a brief experiment with military rule in the late 1920s, but the Great
Depression set in motion a series of developments that forced the military from power.
From the early 1930s onwards, there were regular elections and alternations in power –
there were socialists in the Chilean government as early as 1939. Despite the banning
of the Communist Party for a decade at the height of the Cold War, there was enough
consistency in the electoral process to convince some observers that democracy in Chile
was fully established.
Two more ominous trends lay below the surface, however.
1. One trend was the expansion of political participation. The alternations in power of
the 1930s and 1940s took place in a country with relatively few electors. Women
were not given the right to vote, and there was an illiteracy disqualification as well.
This meant that only a minority – though a substantial one – could vote. During the
1950s and 1960s, the suffrage was extended to cover virtually everybody. Six times as
many Chileans voted in 1970 as in 1952.
Although it is not necessarily ominous for the electorate to expand in an existing
democratic context, the process clearly introduces some dangers. It might be that
the demands of new electors, or organisations that compete with each other for
the popular vote, could damage existing institutional arrangements. In retrospect,
observers of Chile in the 1950s were too complacent about what might happen as
the franchise became less and less restricted.
2. The other key trend was the relative decline in the Chilean economy. During this
period, Chile was heavily dependent on copper exports and suffered for this
dependency. Copper was losing ground to aluminium in the world economy, and
countries other than Chile were rapidly increasing their output of copper. Meanwhile,
the international price of copper fluctuated greatly (as it still does today). All of this
engendered a politics of frustration, as the high expectations of Chileans in the post-
war years were not met. This encouraged many Chileans, and their leaders, to look for
ever more radical solutions to their country’s problems.
Under these circumstances, Salvador Allende won the Chilean presidential elections in
1970 as the Socialist candidate. He was the head of a four-party coalition within which
there was considerable tension between the reformist and the revolutionary wings.
Allende himself never seems to have made up his mind between the two, thus enabling
his political enemies to portray him as a revolutionary. Allende inherited a weak economy
and mismanagement made it much worse. Economic decline and political tension
then reinforced each other and set off a spiral of events that led to the intervention
of the military in September 1973. The military dictatorship that replaced the Allende
government was particularly brutal, and many thousands of Chileans lost their lives in the
resulting repression.
70
The near-miss in Venezuela

The Venezuelan case was more ambiguous in the sense that there were two military
coup attempts in 1992 which did not succeed. However, the man who led the first coup
attempt – Lt Col. Hugo Chavez – was elected to the presidency with 56 per cent of the
vote in December 1998. His victory, while certainly achieved by fully democratic means,
did not fully stabilise the situation in the military. This has remained difficult since 1992
and still does so today.
The Venezuelan case is important because many observers saw the country in the 1970s
– like Chile a generation earlier – as a stable South American democracy. Elections had
been held consistently since 1958. There was contestation and alternation in power, and
Venezuela avoided the extension of military rule that happened across so much of the
rest of the region in the 1960s and 1970s. The political parties that ran the country were
politically moderate and ready to negotiate with each other.
Despite these advantages, democracy in Venezuela was also seriously flawed in two ways:
1. One of these flaws was economic. Venezuela was dependent on oil revenues in
precisely the same way that Chile was dependent on copper. However, whereas
copper prices have always fluctuated, the price of oil held steady during the 1950s
and 1960s. It then increased sharply during the 1970s before falling back with equal
sharpness in the mid-1980s.
The result of this was to create a classic, but very large, boom and slump effect
in Venezuela. The boom led to mismanagement and corruption; the slump to
capital flight and misery. By the end of the decade, the Venezuelan people had lost
confidence in their politicians’ ability to manage the country’s affairs either honestly
or competently.
2. Additional problems had to do with the rather hierarchical, non-receptive and
generally closed nature of the main democratic institutions themselves and with
the rigid and ineffective nature of the public bureaucracy. The difficulty with the
democratic institutions had partly to do with the electoral system. Elections were
held every five years. President and congress were elected together and there were
no mid-term elections. One of the parties occasionally experimented with a primary
system, but most presidential candidates were simply nominated through internal
party processes. Until 1989, local governors were appointed from the centre rather
than being elected directly – this was also true of municipal authorities until 1969.
Whereas the process of selecting candidates was rather centralised, thereby reinforcing
the role of party machinery, the party elites developed close relationships with business
interests. Election campaigns were extremely expensive, even by US standards, and
needed to be financed. Business interests were also heavily involved in policy-making.
This led, in some cases, to suspicions of corruption and also to a distancing between
ordinary people and their political representatives. Judicial power was also weak and
often corrupt.
The combination of an aloof political system and economic decline led to a very severe
popular disillusionment with politics. As a result, an opportunistic coup by a small group
of relatively junior officers came close to success and was widely applauded. Moreover,
although the coup failed, the coup leader – Hugo Chavez – was later granted amnesty by
the government. He stood for president in 1998 and won. He subsequently changed the
entire national constitution in ways that were certainly popular, but that paid little respect
to due process. The new constitution was not generally accepted by Chavez’ opponents.
We now need to move away from discussion of particular situations to

see what general factors can be taken into account when discussing the
breakdown of democracy.
71
General explanations
Class conflict
For a number of scholars – many, though not all, of them writing within
the Marxist tradition – class conflict provides an important explanation for
democratic breakdown (see Rueschemeyer, 1992). It is certainly true that
some of the most notorious destroyers of democracy – Franco in Spain,
Pinochet in Chile and Papadopoulos in Greece – were concerned above
all with destroying challenges to the existing order from the left of the
political spectrum. Class conflict was certainly an important explanation
of the coup in Chile. It played no significant part in events in Venezuela,
however, and is evidently not an essential ingredient in any threat to
democracy.
Those who argue that class conflict is a primary factor in explaining
democratic breakdown in general need also to explain why it has not
had this effect in other parts of the world, such as the UK, France
or Scandinavia. In the last chapter, we considered the arguments of
Rueschemeyer et al. to the effect that the working class tends to be pro-
democratic in its orientation. If this is broadly true, then why should class
conflict lead to the overthrow of democracy?
There are two compelling reasons why we would not expect working class
assertiveness to lead to the collapse of democracy.
1. The first reason is economic. We have already seen that capitalism does
have the capacity to raise the living standards of ordinary people via
the normal process of economic growth. Why should an employing
class, faced with potentially militant workers, not simply buy them off
by offering pay increases or selective opportunities for promotion, and
why should a working class not accept such inducements?
2. The second reason is political. When class polarisation has occurred,
the workers have almost invariably lost. The number of Marxian
working class-led revolutions currently stands at zero, and no new
revolutions (of this kind) in industrial countries are expected soon.
Every successful revolution in history has involved a significant degree
of involvement from rural forces and at least some from the urban
middle class. Twentieth-century revolutions also involved some kind of
‘vanguard’ political leadership, which exploited rather than represented
its social supporters. So why should the working class precipitate class
confrontation when it has little prospect of victory and every likelihood
of defeat?
One possible answer is that what matters is the political leadership of
the working class rather than its structural political characteristics as a
class, always assuming that this is something that can actually be said to
exist. When labour movements were in the hands of moderate politicians,
democracy was not in danger. When there was a significant communist
or ‘ultra’ leadership, however, this might have been a different matter.
Communist or other revolutionary forms of politics were influential in
the political composition of the Weimar Republic in Germany, the Popular
Front in Spain and Popular Unity in Chile. All of these were overthrown
by right-wingers. By the same token, the Bolshevik vanguard in the former
Soviet Union did successfully make a revolution, but this resulted in a
Stalinist dictatorship.
72
In other words, the key issue may be conflict rather than class. We cannot
safely deduce whether social differences in any particular society will lead
to conflict. This depends upon how these differences are interpreted, how
society is organised and how the most important social organisations are
led. These factors can be observed, but they cannot be deduced from a
country’s socio-economic characteristics. Ideas about politics, international
developments and pure contingencies matter as well.
It may also be that class conflict, while important, was by no means the only
factor in democratic breakdown in countries where this has taken place.
Additional reasons seem to have contributed to democratic breakdown in
both Spain and Chile. The religious issue should not be ignored – Marxism,
as a political movement, was not just about equality, but was about atheism
as well. The Marxism prevalent in Spain in the 1930s and in Chile in the
1960s was aggressively anti-clerical. This led to hostile reactions from
people who might not have been so threatened by the purely economic
aspect of what the left-wing governments were proposing. In point of fact,
the campaign on which Allende fought the 1970 elections in Chile was not
significantly different from the campaign of Rodmiro Tomic, the leader of
the left wing of the Christian Democratic Party. Tomic’s radical Catholicism
might, however, have been more acceptable to moderate Chilean
conservatives than Allende’s Marxist atheism.
International influences
International issues were also important in the cases of Chile and Venezuela.
The Cold War was clearly an important influence in the Chilean case. The
US government actively sought to encourage opposition to Allende, and it
played a significant – though probably secondary – part in his overthrow. In
Venezuela, the USA was opposed to a coup and made its opposition clear.
Comparative politics tends to operate on the assumption that most people
live in a world of effectively independent countries. In practice, however, a
significant proportion of the world’s population (though a much diminished
one by comparison with a century ago) cannot choose its government
without some reference to the wishes of one or more powerful neighbour.
In the past, heavy international involvement was mostly negative from
the point of view of democratic stability. This might sometimes have been
because a powerful neighbour was simply opposed to democracy in a
satellite country. This was largely the case in eastern Europe until 1986.
It might also have been that hostility to a powerful neighbour built up to
a point where a domestic dictator could achieve power and popularity by
asserting the national identity of his country. This was very much the case
in Cuba with Castro, whose successful defiance of the USA played a key
part in his consolidation of power.
International pressures in recent years, however, have been self-
consciously supportive of democracy. One important reason for the
stabilisation of democracy in Spain after the death of Franco in 1975 was
the desire of much of the Spanish elite to enter the European Community.
This factor may also have played a part in the stabilisation of democracy
after the fall of the Colonels’ regime in Greece in 1974. Since the mid-
1980s the US preference for democratic governments within Latin
America may well have warned off potential military coup leaders in
particular countries. It is entirely possible that this was the case in respect
of Venezuela during the 1990s, when on three separate occasions the US
government publicly declared its opposition to a coup.
73
Efforts by the international community to press for democratisation are

sometimes ambiguous in their effects. With respect to the majority of
countries that democratised after 1980, it would appear that the initial
pressures for democratisation came from within, and received international
support only after it had already become effective to some extent in domestic
terms. It is true that the big powers today are less likely to try to undermine
democracy in Third World countries than they were during the days of the
Cold War and are more likely, in consequence, to offer limited encouragement
to democratising movements. Democracy cannot survive, however, without
local democrats, and international pressures are generally likely to be, at best,
of secondary importance, even when they are favourable.
Policy failure
Many theorists of democracy have tended to take it for granted that a
country is likely to achieve material progress if it:
• adopts liberal capitalism as an economic system
• adopts democracy as a form of government
• gives due weight to technocratic expertise in policy-making.
From the economic viewpoint, however, the performance of newly
installed democratic governments in many regions of the world – in
Africa, the former Soviet Union and Latin America – turned out to
be disappointing (during the 1990s, at least). Will people become
disillusioned with democracy if democratic governments perform poorly
in policy terms? Disillusionment with democracy as a result of severe
corruption and policy mismanagement did play a significant part in the
near-breakdown of democracy in Venezuela during the 1990s.
In Latin America more generally, there does seem to be survey evidence that
a failure to progress economically has led to growing distrust of democracy
since the late 1990s. According to a poll reported in the Economist (26
July 2001), the percentage of Argentinians agreeing that ‘democracy is
preferable to any other kind of government’ fell from 77 per cent in 1995
to 58 per cent in 2001. Meanwhile, those who agreed with the statement
that ‘in certain circumstances an authoritarian government can be better
than a democratic one’ rose from 11 per cent to 21 per cent. In Brazil, 41
per cent of respondents clearly preferred democracy in 1995 – this had
fallen to 30 per cent by 2001. Those who preferred authoritarianism under
certain circumstances also declined – but from 21 per cent to 18 per cent.
In Paraguay in 2001, more people preferred dictatorship under certain
circumstances to democracy under all circumstances. This response also
indicated a swing of opinion against democracy.
Activity
When you have specifically read about Chile and Venezuela, look again at the work of
Linz and Stepan on democratic consolidation (1996). How consolidated would you say
that Venezuela was in 1992 and Chile in 1973? What have we to learn from the two
experiences about democratic consolidation as a concept?
Developmental dictatorship?
Mussolini famously claimed that Italian Fascism would make the trains
run on time. History does not really record whether he succeeded, though
his government was clearly a failure on far more important criteria.
Authoritarians do argue, however, that they are more likely to be able
to achieve national progress and prosperity than democrats. How well
founded are these claims?
74
In order to achieve any economic growth, all societies need to be able to

achieve a certain level of savings and investment. If one assumes (and
this is a questionable but not absurd assumption) that the amount of
investment determines growth most of all – rather than the quality or
allocation of the investment – then countries that wish to grow rapidly
need to find a lot of investment capital. Some of this may be funded from
abroad, but the most important source of domestic investment is domestic
saving. This can either be voluntary or involuntary (in the sense that the
saving is achieved through tax revenue, inflation, the appropriation of
social security funds or other forms of fiscal coercion). Money that is saved
by whatever means, though, cannot at the same time be consumed.
Democratic systems depend, however, upon competition for the popular
vote. Politicians can hope to win elections by promising tax reductions,
spending increases and general prosperity. They are unlikely to do so
by raising taxes, cutting spending or reducing consumption. Essentially,
democracy may be associated with an excessive demand to consume,
both privately or publicly. This can lead to financial instability and high
real interest rates, or it can lead to a squeezing out of investment. It is
noteworthy that the amount of income saved by Latin Americans actually
fell when the region democratised during the 1980s, but rose in Chile,
which remained dictatorial until the end of that decade.
This argument is plausible, but it also contains a number of weaknesses.
One key point is that savings ratios in democracies are generally high
enough to finance growth. If democracy is bad for economic performance,
how can the general economic success of wealthy democracies since 1950
be explained? It seems to make more sense to explain problems in new
democracies, where these exist, in terms of institutional shortcomings.
What is needed is the right kind of public policy and the right kind of
economic technocracy. A democratic state can have effective institutions
of economic policy-making that are autonomous of the political process
– which is, after all, the situation with the European Central Bank and
the Federal Reserve Bank in the USA. In order to ‘de-politicise’ economic
decision-making, it is not necessary to have a dictatorship. Moreover,
some authoritarian governments have been as much driven by short-term
considerations of political expediency as some democracies.
In fact, no clear relation between democracy and economic performance
exists. Some democracies have performed well in economic terms,
others badly. The same is true of authoritarian systems. As Leftwich
(1999) pointed out, the most successful economic performers in the past
generation have been a diverse set of countries that do not have very
much in common. In other words, democracy has an economic aspect, but
it should not be seen too much in economic terms.
Economic progress in wealthy countries

Finally, if we turn our attention to the notion of why democracy has not
broken down in First World countries that have adopted it, we again come
across a range of explanations emphasising somewhat different factors.
It is reasonable to start with the idea that capitalist liberal democracy
has, for the most part, been a reasonably successful form of government
in terms of international conflict. The First and Second World Wars –
and also the Cold War – were won by the most powerful of the world’s
democracies (which is not to deny that the former Soviet Union played a
major part in the outcome of the Second World War).
75
When we move from considering primarily military to primarily economic

issues, there are other reasons to understand why liberal democracy has
remained stable. Economic growth in First World countries is entrenched
in the sense that progress is expected virtually every year. In the UK, which
has not by any means been the most successful First World country from
an economic viewpoint, there have only been three years since 1945 in
which economic growth has been negative. The average rate of growth
over the past 40 years has been in the order of 2.5 per cent per annum.
This is not especially fast, but it still allowed national income to double in
less than 30 years. First World countries tend to have stable, or in some
cases slightly declining, populations, so that per capita income grows as
rapidly as national income. Most people are gradually becoming better off
materially, and the improvement can be very noticeable over a generation.
There is, therefore, reason for contentment with the status quo.
The economic performance of First World liberal democracies (a category
which now includes some Asian countries) was markedly superior to that
of communist systems. Although some capitalist authoritarian systems
have proved economically successful, it remains true that the world’s
richest countries are almost all democracies. It is certainly true that
some countries have adopted democratic forms of government only after
achieving significant levels of economic growth, but it is still the case that
the economic record of the wealthy democracies is reasonably good. The
democracies are under no pressure to change their systems of government
in order to achieve superior economic performance.
Political stability in wealthy countries

Threats to First World liberal democracy seem to consist mainly of events
that might hypothetically take place, but that so far have not. It is not clear
that liberal democracy (or any form of government) could survive a full-
scale nuclear conflict. Nor is it clear that liberal democracy could survive
if advanced capitalism went into severe and prolonged economic crisis. No
capitalist system (or any other kind of economy) operates without some
difficulties, but prophets of the ‘coming crisis of capitalism’ have been
proved wrong so often that they are now largely discredited. Sometimes,
economic slowdowns and recessions occur, but these are not usually so
long-lasting that resentment against the system as a whole has time to
accumulate. Bad economic results may often lead to a vote against the
government of the day, but not generally to a reaction against democracy
as a concept.
Finally, it seems implausible that democracy could be the loser in any
coming battle of ideas. In this sense, Fukuyama’s thesis may be valid.
Doctrines based on human inequality evidently lack appeal within
established democratic systems. Of all the major doctrines that are based
on the notion of equality, liberal democracy has been the least unsuccessful
in practice. This need not mean that every society in the world will
eventually adopt democracy – there may always be limited, provisional
justifications for particular authoritarianisms. Furthermore, illegitimate
government is indeed possible under certain circumstances. There are,
however, no longer intellectual rivals to democracy with sufficient appeal
to encourage significant numbers of people within stable democracies to
seek to replace their system with a different one.
76
Conclusion
Democratic breakdown has been unknown in First World democracies
since 1945 (unless we count Greece in 1967 as First World), though it
was relatively common in the 1920s and 1930s. It was relatively common
in semi-industrialised countries, such as Chile, between 1945 and 1980
but has since become much rarer. It is still common, though less so than
it was, in genuinely poor countries such as Zimbabwe and Pakistan. In
some poor countries political elites still believe, with mixed evidence, that
authoritarianism is good for economic progress.
It cannot be taken for granted that this situation will remain unchanged,
especially in respect of semi-industrialised countries. Venezuela has come
close to full-scale democratic breakdown at several points since 1992.
However, the likelihood of democratic breakdown in genuinely First
World democracies seems remote except in consequence of a genuinely
catastrophic event such as nuclear war.
On the whole, positive economic change seems to have reinforced
democracy where this has occurred. Where it has not occurred (and is
not occurring), then democratic breakdown remains a possibility. It could
be triggered by popular rejection of democracy due to policy failure, by
changes in international conditions that might reward non-democratic
leaders, or by class conflict due to frustration at the failure to achieve
economic progress. However, democracy does seem to have won the battle
of ideas, at least for the present, and can be expected to survive in the
majority of the world’s democracies in the absence of severe crisis.

By the end of the chapter and the associated reading, you should be able to:
• discuss the main explanations given by scholars for democratic
breakdowns – when these have in fact occurred – and for the non-
occurrence of democratic breakdown in wealthy democracies
• explain what the main theories of democratic breakdown are, and how
they relate to one or more specific examples
• examine how far class factors can be said to have influenced anti-
democratic right-wing interventions in countries such as Spain and Chile
• explain why some people think that authoritarianism is more
economically efficient than democracy
• outline why democratic stability has so far remained the normal case in
First World democracies.

1. What are the main problems facing newly created democracies?
Discuss with respect to any one country of your choice.
2. What can the case of either Chile or Venezuela tell us about conditions
under which democracy can break down?
3. ‘Class factors, on their own, do not cause the breakdown of democracy.
Other issues are usually more important.’ Discuss.
4. ‘Democracy is likely to be the normal form of government in the
future.’ Discuss.
77
Notes
78
Appendix: Sample examination paper
Appendix: Sample examination paper
Important note: This Sample examination paper reflects the

examination and assessment arrangements for this course in the academic
year 2010−2011. The format and structure of the examination may have
changed since the publication of this subject guide. You can find the most
recent examinations papers on the VLE where all changes to the format of
the examination are posted.
Time allowed: three hours.
Candidates should answer THREE of the following TWELVE questions.

All questions carry equal marks.
1. ‘Democracy is a set of electoral practices.’ ‘Democracy is a set of

values.’ Which of these statements do you prefer, and why?
2. ‘Pluralist theory suffers from unrealistic ideas about participation.’
Discuss.
3. ‘Political competition is an essential but only a limited part of liberal
democracy.’ Discuss.
4. Discuss some of the complexities in the relation between capitalism
and democracy.
5. ‘Referendums are inimical to representative democracy.’ Discuss.
6. What are the main reasons for believing that democracy is unlikely to
be sustainable in poor countries? Are these good reasons?
7. Discuss, with reference to any one historical sociologist, the role of
class analysis in our understanding of the process of democratisation.
8. What, if any, reasons are there for believing that we are at ‘the end of
history’?
9. What is democratic consolidation? How can we tell whether a
democracy is consolidated or not?
10. Why has democratic breakdown been so rare in developed countries
since 1945?
11. ‘Right-wing reaction against democracy has more to do with
nationalist or religious extremism than with class politics.’ Discuss
with examples.
12. Has the spread of democracy to many Third World countries since
1985 decisively undermined modernisation theory?
END OF PAPER
79
Notes
80

Democracy and Democratisation: G. Philip

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Democracy and democratisation

University of London International Programmes

Published by: University of London

Democratic breakdown and reconstruction. Mass society theories and

Reading and preparation

Galbraith, J.K. The Culture of Contentment. (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992)

Bull, M. and P. Newell (eds) Corruption in Contemporary Politics. (Basingstoke:

Online study resources

Making use of the Online Library

Structure of the subject guide

Chapter 1: Defining and conceptualising

Aims of the chapter

Legitimacy and governability

Critics of the participationist theory of democracy

If the world is indeed a dangerous place, then misplaced emphasis of this

Referendums as expression of the need to participate

The role of activists

Some scholars, identified more with a conservative than pluralist

Democracy and law

Democracy and collective interest

For a system of checks and balances to work, it is necessary for the

Prerequisites for balance: the defeat of absolutism

Checks and balances versus the doctrine of the democratic mandate

Przeworski argues that democracy is in equilibrium when ‘all the relevant

The complexity of democracy

people may be ‘turned off’ politics altogether by the complex nature of

Democracy and capitalism

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Sample examination questions

Chapter 2: Democracy and the state

Aims of the chapter

abuse of rights under delegative systems is more likely to be the result

Limited and façade democracy

Example: South America

Democracy and the state

Democracy in biased states

Zakaria’s argument has led to a considerable debate in academic literature,

personalists sometimes do win elections is the fact that democratic systems

The notion of democratic consolidation

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Sample examination questions

Chapter 3: Non-democratic systems and

Aims of the chapter

O’Donnell, G., P. Schmitter and L. Whitehead (eds) Transitions from

were not democracies at the beginning of 1974 had become democracies.

Colonial rule and the collapse of empires

all of them failed, falling victim to authoritarian forms of politics by the

Political consequences of imperial control and

• continuity and non-democratisation

Continuity and democratisation

Continuity and non-democratisation

Discontinuity and democratisation

Discontinuity and non-democratisation

Negative legacies of colonialism

borders and the original allegiances of indigenous peoples. Because empires

Consequences of the breaking-up of the former Soviet Union

2. The decline and eventual disintegration of the former Soviet Union

Other forms of non-democratic organisation

were involved in handing back power to elected civilians did so in the