Democracy & Democratisation

• Political regime


  The system of relations between society and the state, including formal and informal norms that determine the origin of state sovereignty, and the principles that justify the exercise of legitimate political power
• Democracy


  A form of regime associated with "rule by the people", and therefore with rights and liberties for citizens
• Democracy (etymology)


  From the Ancient Greek demokratía, dêmos (« people »), kratos (« power »)
• Aristotle, Politics III: Democracy is the rule of the many, and oligarchy the rule of the few
• Representative democracy


  The people are sovereign but do not rule themselves - instead, they periodically delegate their decision-making power to elected officials who represent them
• Representative democracy


  • Political and civil rights of citizens
  • Limited constitutional government and the rule of law
• Voting in representative democracy

  1. Delegation

  2. Accountability

  3. Responsible government (rule for the people)

  4. Representative government (rule by the people)
• Representative democracy is more efficient today given the scale of contemporary nation states, the centrality of work in contemporary economies, and the growing need for political expertise
• Direct democracy works in small-scale polities, under restricted conditions, and collapsed after 100 years in Ancient Athens due to lack of participation, high costs, issue of professionalization and state continuity
• Procedural definitions of democracy

  Focus on the procedures and institutions of democracy, such as guaranteed civil and political rights, free and fair elections, competition between political parties, and rule of law
• Joseph Schumpeter: '"(The) democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote."'
• Substantive definitions of democracy

  Focus not only on formal procedures but also on the outcome of procedures and the "end goals" of democracy, such as inclusiveness, participation, accountability, and equality
• Participatory democracy


  Minimum procedures + democratic decisions should involve citizen participation (through voting, referenda, membership of associations, etc)
• Deliberative democracy


  Minimum procedures + democratic decisions should result from a process by which citizens exchange reasons for their diverging views in respectful ways
• The V-Dem dataset covers 202 polities from 1789–2019 and includes five different indexes: two procedural (Electoral Democracy and Liberal Democracy) and three substantive (Participatory Democracy, Deliberative Democracy and Egalitarian Democracy)
• Procedural approaches are more amenable to measurement and quantification, and more adequate for studying causal relations, while substantive approaches account for what makes democracy a regime and an ideal
• Dichotomous measure of democracy

  Two discrete categories: "democracy" and "authoritarianism"
• Continuous measure of democracy

  A "democracy" scale of 0 to 10, allowing for a more nuanced approach with a greater number of criteria
• The Democracy-Dictatorship (DD) measure classifies a regime as democratic if all four criteria are satisfied: the legislature is elected with universal suffrage and the chief executive is otherwise elected, the outcome of the election is unknown before it happens, the winner of the election takes office, and elections that meet this criteria must occur at regular and known intervals
• Continuous measures often consider a broader range of criteria, including the right to vote, the right to be elected, the right of political leaders to compete for support and votes, free and fair elections, freedom of association, freedom of expression, and alternative sources of information
• Democratization


  The process by which regimes become (more) democratic, generally in two main phases: transition (adoption of democratic procedures and first free and fair elections) and consolidation (procedures become entrenched and legitimized over time)
• Waves of democratization


  Three main waves: the first wave in Western Europe and the Americas from the early 19th to the early 1920s, the second wave post-WWII, and the third wave from the 1970s onwards
• Democratization is not a one-way process - "consolidated democracies" can be affected by "deconsolidation" (democratic backsliding)
• Factors discussed in theories of democratization

  • Socio-economic ("structural") factors
  • Culture and cultural change
  • Domestic Institutions
  • Agents and Actors
  • The International system
• Socio-economic ("structural") factors and "modernization" theories

  Economic growth triggers deep, social changes that are fertile ground for the emergence and consolidation of democracy, such as better living standards, greater urbanization, higher levels of literacy and technical education, the emergence of a middle class, and a greater role of industrial activities vis-à-vis traditional agriculture
• There is a strong correlation between wealth and democracy, supporting the "modernization" thesis
• Four main factors discussed in the literature on what makes democracy endure

  • Socio-economic ("structural") factors
  • Culture and cultural change
  • Domestic Institutions
  • Agents and Actors
  • The International system
• Socio-economic ("structural") factors


  Also associated with "modernization" theories. The key idea is that economic growth triggers deep, social changes that are fertile ground for the emergence and consolidation of democracy.
• Socio-economic changes that favour democratization

  • Better living standards, greater urbanization, higher levels of literacy and technical education, the emergence of a middle class, a greater role of industrial activities vis-à-vis traditional agriculture
• Emergence of a middle class

  Favors democratization by reducing fear of "mob rule" from the elite and creating a demand for political and civil rights
• Lipset (1959) offered one of the first iterations of the "modernization" thesis in comparative politics
• "Lipset" hypothesis


  Linking democratization to socio-economic change
• There is a strong correlation between wealth and democracy
• The modernization thesis provides a relevant blue-print for understanding first wave democratization (in the West) as well as some other examples (South Korea, Malaysia)
• Limits of the modernization thesis

  • Exceptions: Some authoritarian regimes are very wealthy (Golf countries, Singapore) while some major democracies have consolidated with limited economic development
  • Unclear mechanisms: Given the complex chain of causality involved, the mechanisms at play are hard to ascertain
  • Western-centrism: The theory can problematically imply that all countries will (should?) evolve similarly to the West
• Modernization enables consolidation


  Democracies may emerge for a range of reasons. Once transition has occurred, democratic consolidation (the absence of breakdown) is more likely in wealthy democracies.
• No democracy has ever been subverted in a country with a per capita income higher than that of Argentina in 1975: $6,055.
• Economic development can support democracy even if it may not cause democratization.
• Culture and cultural change

  There are cultural determinants to democratic transitions and consolidation—norms, values, attitudes towards power, authority or rights within certain societies may be more conducive to democratic development
• Democratization as a process that requires and implies cultural change