pols 374 foundations of comparative politics what makes a democracy? introductory lecture

POLS 374 Foundations of Comparative Politics

What Makes a Democracy?Introductory Lecture

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What Makes a Democracy?

• Democracy is an exceedingly important topic in the world today. Any student of political science should be concerned with questions concerning how democracies emerge, how the are maintained, why they sometimes fail.

• We should also be concerned about the quality of democracy, even or especially in places—like the United States—where democracy seems to be firmly embedded.

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• Before we can begin a discussion of “what makes a democracy,” however, we must define the term.

• So, what is democracy? (Discuss)

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

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• The formal definition of democracy is straightforward. Here is one definition offered by Anthony Giddens (2000), an eminent sociologist:

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

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• If we break Giddens’ definition down, we have three readily discernable components of democracy:

A competitive multiparty system. Free and non-corrupt elections. An effective legal framework of civil liberties or human

rights. To this list, we might add a fourth component: Universal

and equal suffrage (suffrage is simply the right or privilege of voting).

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• These four components constitute what many, but not all, people would consider the minimum requirements for democracy. But this raises an obvious question: Are the “minimum requirements” enough?

• That is, is a country that has a competitive multiparty system, free and non-corrupt elections, an effective legal framework of civil liberties or human rights, and universal suffrage a “real” democracy? Or is something else required?

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• There is no easy answer.

• Many scholars, though, argue that the formal requirements (i.e., those we just discussed) of democracy aren’t enough, because the formal requirements of democracy don’t guarantee the existence of genuine democracy.

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• This is the point in some of the cartoons shown earlier …

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• David Held, to cite just one example, argues that a justifiable account of democracy must be premised on the principle of autonomy. As he explains it, autonomy means:

Individuals should be free and equal in the determination of the conditions of their own lives; that is, they should enjoy equal rights [and, accordingly, equal obligations] in the specification of the framework which generates and limits the opportunities available to them, so long as they do not deploy this framework to negate the rights of others.

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• To this, another scholar adds that democracy should include “a bill of rights that goes beyond the right to cast a vote to include equal opportunity for participation and for discovering individual preferences as well as citizens’ final control of the political agenda.”

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• Based on these views, we might even argue that “real” democracy doesn’t exists even in the United States.

• After all, with the influence of money and power in American politics, it is sometimes difficult to assert that citizens ultimately control the political agenda or that they are “free and equal in the determination of the conditions of their own lives.”

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• But this raises another key point: Is an imperfect democracy still a democracy or is it something else?

• There’s really no definitive answer to this question. In this regard, we might say that there is an unavoidably subjective element to defining democracy.

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• The debate about how to define democracy is important and should not be glossed over; however, for our purposes, a formal definition of democracy may not only be justifiable, but also necessary.

• Why?

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• If we fail provide a reasonably narrow definition of democracy, comparativists and other researchers will face serious analytical difficulties, not the least of which is that the dependent variable—the outcome we are most interested in understanding—ends up being anything we want it to be, or nothing at all.

• The upshot is that our analysis becomes meaningless, for how can we say that certain independent variables lead to democracy if we can’t say what democracy is?

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• One last point: Some scholars argue that, even though a formal definition of democracy may be limited, it is still substantively meaningful.

• It is meaningful because, once the most basic institutions, practices, and/or components of democracy are established in a society, they almost invariably create a “promising basis for further progress in the distribution of power and other forms of substantive equality.”

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• With the foregoing discussion in mind, we can now focus on the next big set of questions, which are:

• How and why do democracies emerge?

• Why do some survive while others do not?

• Why do some thrive and become stronger over time, while others just sort of limp along?

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• There are, of course, many explanations put forward about democratization. Equally unsurprising, these explanations run the theoretical gamut. Many are based on rational choice, some on structural interpretations, and some on culture. In addition, there are mixtures of two or all three theoretical types.

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Structural Approaches to the Study of Democracy

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• Let’s begin with a simple, but telling observation (an observation, by the way, that researchers in the rational choice school also generally accept): The people (or the social class) that have predominant control over economic resources in society are generally not friends of democracy.

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

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• Think of it this way: If the majority of people in a society are poor and exploited (which is often the case), would they not be immediately tempted, in a democratic system, to use their new-found and overwhelming voting power to redistribute economic resources and, ultimately, to undermine permanently—if not destroy—the position and privileges of the wealthy (or political and economic elite)?

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• More to the point, would not the elite be well aware of this potential threat and, therefore, do whatever they could to prevent democracy from taking hold?

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• The answer to both questions is clear: Of course they would.

• It is largely for this reason that the authors argue that political democracy inevitably stands in tension with the system of social inequality.

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

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• By this they mean that democracy is not the product of altruism or of morality. It is not a “gift” given to the masses. Neither does democracy emerge merely because society has become “too complex” or modernized.

• Instead, it is almost always a product of political struggle—a result of one or (more likely) several hitherto excluded groups assiduously fighting to breakdown barriers to their more complete participation in the political process.

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• The struggle for democracy, however, is also highly conditioned. Specifically, transitions to (and consolidations of) democracy are conditioned—i.e., constrained and enabled—by broad structural changes that reorder the balance of power among different classes and class coalitions in society. These structural changes, in turn, are primarily, although not exclusively, a product of capitalist development.

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• This leads to the authors’ central contention or thesis: Capitalist development is related to democracy because it shifts the balance of class power, because it weakens the power of the landlord class and strengthens subordinate classes.

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

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• How is this a structural argument?

• Because capitalist development inexorably creates the foundation for subordinate classes to exercise power.

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• The important theoretical question is how and why this happens. Any guesses?

• The answer is actually pretty simple. According to the authors, capitalist development generally entails the an increasing concentration of workers, all of whom toil under the same general (and generally exploitative and powerless) conditions.

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• As the authors explain it: “Capitalism brings the subordinate class or classes together in factories and cities where members of those classes can associate and organize more easily; it improves the means of communication and transportation facilitating worldwide organization; in these and other ways it strengthens civil society and facilitates subordinate class organization.”

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

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• Importantly, though, even a well-organized working class is not always strong enough to bring about change on its own. More often than not, the working class requires class allies: sometimes it’s the middle class, as in Latin America, sometimes it’s small independent farmers, as in Scandinavia, sometimes it’s the bourgeoisie, as in France and Britain.

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• In almost all cases, according to the authors, the working class remains the primary agent of change because it is the working class that is most consistently pro-democratic, while the interests of other classes may vary considerably (but even the working class may not always be pro-democratic, as was the case in Peron’s Argentina, 1946-55).

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• While the role of the working class and the internal dynamics of capitalism occupy center stage in the authors’ argument, they also acknowledged a couple of other important factors:

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

• The second factor, or power cluster, involves international power relations.

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

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• International power relations• During the cold war, especially, international

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

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International power relations• Indeed, in a few cases, the

United States even directly intervened to help bring down democratically elected governments in the developing world for fear that those governments would not support US interests.

• Chile is a good example of this. In this case, the United States helped to overthrow Salvador Allende, a democratically-elected, but “Marxist,” political leader.

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• Important to understand, too, that these power clusters are inter-related, as might already be apparent.

• In the example of Chile, it should be clear that US support of geopolitically important states affected the structure of state-society relations, often in a negative manner with regard to democratization. US support also had a direct impact on class relations within Chile--strengthening the capitalist class, while weakening the working class.

pols 374 foundations of comparative politics what makes a democracy? introductory lecture

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