Literature Comparative Politics: Democratization (MAN-BCU2011EN)
Inhoud
Lecture 1: What is democracy?........................................................................................................................................2
What is democracy... and is not (Schmitter, P.C. & Karl T.)........................................................................................2
Breaking out of the Democratic Slump (Diamond, L.)................................................................................................4
Lecture 2: Measuring democracy & patterns of regime change.......................................................................................5
Chapter 4 - Measuring democracy and democratization (Bernhagen, P.) book............................................................5
Chapter 5 - Long waves and conjunctures of democratization (Berg-Schlosser, D.) book...........................................8
Conceptualizing and measuring democracy: A new approach (Coppedge, M.).........................................................10
Lecture 3 – Colonial, authoritarian and democratic legacies.........................................................................................12
How democracies emerge: Lessons from Europe (Berman, S.).................................................................................12
Authoritarian vestiges in democracies (Loxton, J,)...................................................................................................14
Lecture 4: Economic development................................................................................................................................15
Some social requisites of Democracy: Economic development and political legitimacy (Lipset, S.)........................15
What makes democracies endure? (Przeworksi, A., Alvarez, M., Cheibub, J.A. & Limongi, F.)..............................19
Authoritarian reversals and democratic consolidation (Svoik, M.)............................................................................21
Modernization and Authoritarianism (Foa, R.S.).......................................................................................................22
Lecture 5: Political culture.............................................................................................................................................23
Chapter 9: Political culture, Mass beliefs & Value change (Welzel & Inglehart) book..............................................23
Why the future cannot be predicted (Foa, Mound & Klassen)...................................................................................28
Why the future is (still) democratic (Welzel, Kruse & Brunkert)..............................................................................29
Lecture 6: State-building and social structure................................................................................................................30
Stateness First (Fukuyama).......................................................................................................................................30
The sequencing fallacy (Carothers, T).......................................................................................................................31
Does heterogeneity hinder democracy? (Merkel, W. & Weiffen, B.).........................................................................34
Lecture 7: Political institutions – Constitutional power-sharing vs power-concentrating..............................................35
Constitutional design for dividend societies (Lijphart, A.)........................................................................................35
Chapter 1: Introduction to Electoral System (Gallagher, M. & Mitchell, P.).............................................................37
Lecture 8: Political institutions – Presidentialism..........................................................................................................37
The perils of Presidentialism (Linz, J.)......................................................................................................................37
Comparing democratic systems (Horowitz, D.).........................................................................................................40
The virtues of parliamentarism (Linz, J.)...................................................................................................................41
Presidents vs Parliaments: The centrality of political culture (Lipset, S.M.).............................................................41
Lecture 9: Political Parties and Media...........................................................................................................................41
Political parties (Morlino, L.) book...........................................................................................................................41
The media (Voltmer, K.) book...................................................................................................................................45
From liberation to turmoil: Social media and democracy (Tucker et al)....................................................................47
Lecture 10: Political actors – Citizens & Civil society..................................................................................................48
Social movements and contention in democratization processes (Rossi, F. & Della Porta, D.) book........................48
1
, Rethinking civil society (Kopechký, P. & Mudde, C.)...............................................................................................50
What do we know about civil society and regime change thirty years after 1989? (Bernhard, M.)...........................50
Lecture 11: International actors.....................................................................................................................................51
International linkage and democratization (Way, L.A. & Levitsky, S.)......................................................................51
Time to Choose (Carothers, T.)..................................................................................................................................52
Exporting digital authoritarianism: The Russian and Chinese models (Polyakova, A. & Meresole, C.)....................53
Lecture 12: Authoritarian regimes.................................................................................................................................54
The rise of competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky, S. & Way, L.)............................................................................54
Pathways from authoritarianism (Hadenius, A. & Teorell, J.)...................................................................................55
Autocratic breakdown and regime transitions: A new dataset (Geddes et al.)............................................................56
Lecture 13: Democratic erosion & Democratic defence................................................................................................57
A third wave of autocratization is here: what is new about it? (Luhrmann, A. & Lindberg, S)..................................57
On democratic backsliding (Bermeo, N.)..................................................................................................................58
Standing up against autocratization across political regimes (Tomini et al)..............................................................58
Lecture 1: What is democracy?
What is democracy... and is not (Schmitter, P.C. & Karl T.)
Wave of transitions away from autocracy rule began with the Portugal’s Revolution of the Carnations (1974) until the
collapse of the communist regimes across Eastern Europe (1989).
- Consensus emerged concerning the minimal conditions that polities must meet in order to merit the prestigious
appellation of democratic
What democracy is
Modern political democracy= A system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actionin the
public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives.
- Regime or system of governance ensemble of patterns that determines the methods of access to the principal public
offices, the characteristics of the actors admitted to or excluded from such access, the strategies that actors may use
to gain access & the rules that are followed in the making of publicly binding decisions.
- In order to work properly, the ensemble needs to be institutionalized
- Institutionalized= the various patterns must be known, practised and generally accepted. (can be formal and informal)
- Ruler= persons who occupy specialized authority roles and can give legitimate commands to others
- Public realm= encompasses the making of collective norms and choices that are binding for the society and backed
by state coercion.
- Liberal narrow public realm
- Socialist extend realm through regulation, subsidization & collective ownership
- Citizens= distinctive element in democracies (makes a regime a democracy or not)
- Competition= necessary evil widely accepted among factions
- Fairly conducted, honestly counted and regular elections (electorialism)
Modern democracy= offers a variety of competitive processes and channels for the expression of interests and values,
associational as well as partisan, functional as well as territorial, collective as well as individual. All are integral to
its practise.
- Majority rule governing body makes decisions by combining the votes of more than half of those eligible and
present is said to be democratic.
- Cooperation= actors must voluntarily make collective decisions binding on the polity as a whole.
- Interest associations primary expression of civil society in most stable democracies, supplemented by the more
sporadic interventions of social movements (thus not political parties)
2
, Procedures that make democracy possible
Roberth Dahl offers a generally accepted listing of what he sees as the procedural minimal conditions that must be
present for modern political democracy (polyarchy):
1. Control over government decisions about policy is constitutionally vested in elected officials
2. Elected officials are chosen in frequent and fairly conducted elections in which coercion is comparatively
uncommon
3. Practically all adults have the right to vote in the election of officials
4. Practically all adults have the right to run for elective offices in the government
5. Citizens have a right to express themselves without the danger of severe punishment on political matters broadly
defined
6. Citizens have a right to seek out alternative sources of information (these are protected)
7. Citizens also have the right to form relatively independent associations or organizations, including independent
political parties and interest groups
8. Popularly elected officials must be able to exercise their constitutional powers without being subjected to
overriding opposition from unelected officials.
9. Polity must be self-governing be able to act independently of constraints imposed by some other overarching
political system
Principles that make democracy feasible
Functions by the consent of the people or by the contingent consent of politicians acting under conditions of bounded
uncertainty
In a democracy representatives must (informally) agree that those who win greater electoral support or influence over
policy will not use their temporary superiority to bar the losers from taking office or exerting influence in the future,
and that in exchange for this opportunity to keep competing for power and place, momentary losers will respect the
winners’ right to make binding decisions.
- Citizens are expected to obey the decisions ensuing from such a process of competition.
How democracies differ
1. Consensus All citizens may not agree on the substantive goals of political action or on the role of the state
2. Participation All citizens may not take an active and equal part in political, although it must be legally possible
for them to do so
3. Access Rulers may not weigh equally the preferences of all who com before them, although citizenship implies
that individuals and groups should have an equal opportunity to express their preferences if they choose to do so
4. Responsiveness Rulers may not always follow the course of action preferred by the citizenry
5. Majority rule Positions may not be allocated or rules may not be decided solely on the basis of assembling to
most votes
6. Parliamentary sovereignty The legislature may not be the only body that can make rules or even the one with
final authority in deciding which laws are binding, but the are accountable for their actions
7. Party government Rulers may not be nominated, promoted and disciplined in their activities by well-organized
and programmatically coherent political parties, although where they are not, it may prove more difficult to form
an effective government
8. Pluralism Interests involved will be more closely linked to the estate and the separation between the public and
private spheres of action will be much less distinct
9. Federalism The territorial division authority may not involve multiple levels and local autonomies.
10. Presidentialism Chief executive officer may not be a single person and he/she may not be directly elected by
the citizenry as a whole.
11. Checks & Balances
What democracy is not
They are not necessarily more efficient economically than other forms of government
They are not necessarily more efficient administratively than other forms of government
- They are probably even more slower
They are not likely to appear more orderly, consensual, stable, or governable than the autocracies they replace
3
, They are not necessarily more open economies.
Breaking out of the Democratic Slump (Diamond, L.)
Third wave Global democratization (began in the 1970s)
Long democracy slump has seen a surge in democratic failures
o Liberal democracies become less liberal
Despite the pattern of democratic decline, there have been
recent encouraging signs of pushback against a principal agent
of democracy decay in our time (illiberal populism)
Neutering democratic institutions
Elected presidents have managed to neuter or take over the
institutions meant to constrain them
- Once conquered these institutions are then deployed as weapons against the opponents
Once populists win power they are able to manipulate the symbols and grievances of identity politics and to stir
nationalist fears and ambitions
- Authoritarian populist national treasury used to dispense patronage
The illiberal populist wave
Predominant trend decidedly negative
- Generated by one force: populism
o Polarize the polity and marginalize their opponents (people vs elite)
- Illiberal (populism) demonization of minorities and critics as well as in its preference for plebiscitary
mechanisms over the filters and deliberation of representative democracy
o Antidemocracy hostility to political pluralism, its aspirations for the political hegemony and its
tendency to exalt the leader above all other democratic actors and institutions.
The incremental erosion of liberal norms and institutions does not cease of its own accord
- It must be met with countervailing pressure from political actors, civil society, and what remains of
independent institutions.
The Achilles heel of authoritarian populism
Contradiction tendency to exalt one leader and to eviscerate checks and balances, which inevitably opens the way
to widespread corruption and ever more extreme abuses of power.
- Begins as an electoral revolution in the name of the forgotten people, but becomes into the abusing of power
Causes
Democracy likely fails in poor countries
Democracy with weak constraints on power are dramatically more likely to break down.
International environment is also important
- Third wave globalization (determines strength and endurance)
- They can sanction/pressure authoritarian regimes
International environment has changed
- War on Terror hard security and economic interests
- Immigration issues
- Powerful competitors for international influence
- Increasing of inequality
- Social media instrument for fanning grievances and intensifying polarization
Long term trends were crystallizing even as democracies were reeling under the impact of the abovementioned short
term shocks
Remedies
Not a clear reverse wave if democratic breakdowns
4
Inhoud
Lecture 1: What is democracy?........................................................................................................................................2
What is democracy... and is not (Schmitter, P.C. & Karl T.)........................................................................................2
Breaking out of the Democratic Slump (Diamond, L.)................................................................................................4
Lecture 2: Measuring democracy & patterns of regime change.......................................................................................5
Chapter 4 - Measuring democracy and democratization (Bernhagen, P.) book............................................................5
Chapter 5 - Long waves and conjunctures of democratization (Berg-Schlosser, D.) book...........................................8
Conceptualizing and measuring democracy: A new approach (Coppedge, M.).........................................................10
Lecture 3 – Colonial, authoritarian and democratic legacies.........................................................................................12
How democracies emerge: Lessons from Europe (Berman, S.).................................................................................12
Authoritarian vestiges in democracies (Loxton, J,)...................................................................................................14
Lecture 4: Economic development................................................................................................................................15
Some social requisites of Democracy: Economic development and political legitimacy (Lipset, S.)........................15
What makes democracies endure? (Przeworksi, A., Alvarez, M., Cheibub, J.A. & Limongi, F.)..............................19
Authoritarian reversals and democratic consolidation (Svoik, M.)............................................................................21
Modernization and Authoritarianism (Foa, R.S.).......................................................................................................22
Lecture 5: Political culture.............................................................................................................................................23
Chapter 9: Political culture, Mass beliefs & Value change (Welzel & Inglehart) book..............................................23
Why the future cannot be predicted (Foa, Mound & Klassen)...................................................................................28
Why the future is (still) democratic (Welzel, Kruse & Brunkert)..............................................................................29
Lecture 6: State-building and social structure................................................................................................................30
Stateness First (Fukuyama).......................................................................................................................................30
The sequencing fallacy (Carothers, T).......................................................................................................................31
Does heterogeneity hinder democracy? (Merkel, W. & Weiffen, B.).........................................................................34
Lecture 7: Political institutions – Constitutional power-sharing vs power-concentrating..............................................35
Constitutional design for dividend societies (Lijphart, A.)........................................................................................35
Chapter 1: Introduction to Electoral System (Gallagher, M. & Mitchell, P.).............................................................37
Lecture 8: Political institutions – Presidentialism..........................................................................................................37
The perils of Presidentialism (Linz, J.)......................................................................................................................37
Comparing democratic systems (Horowitz, D.).........................................................................................................40
The virtues of parliamentarism (Linz, J.)...................................................................................................................41
Presidents vs Parliaments: The centrality of political culture (Lipset, S.M.).............................................................41
Lecture 9: Political Parties and Media...........................................................................................................................41
Political parties (Morlino, L.) book...........................................................................................................................41
The media (Voltmer, K.) book...................................................................................................................................45
From liberation to turmoil: Social media and democracy (Tucker et al)....................................................................47
Lecture 10: Political actors – Citizens & Civil society..................................................................................................48
Social movements and contention in democratization processes (Rossi, F. & Della Porta, D.) book........................48
1
, Rethinking civil society (Kopechký, P. & Mudde, C.)...............................................................................................50
What do we know about civil society and regime change thirty years after 1989? (Bernhard, M.)...........................50
Lecture 11: International actors.....................................................................................................................................51
International linkage and democratization (Way, L.A. & Levitsky, S.)......................................................................51
Time to Choose (Carothers, T.)..................................................................................................................................52
Exporting digital authoritarianism: The Russian and Chinese models (Polyakova, A. & Meresole, C.)....................53
Lecture 12: Authoritarian regimes.................................................................................................................................54
The rise of competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky, S. & Way, L.)............................................................................54
Pathways from authoritarianism (Hadenius, A. & Teorell, J.)...................................................................................55
Autocratic breakdown and regime transitions: A new dataset (Geddes et al.)............................................................56
Lecture 13: Democratic erosion & Democratic defence................................................................................................57
A third wave of autocratization is here: what is new about it? (Luhrmann, A. & Lindberg, S)..................................57
On democratic backsliding (Bermeo, N.)..................................................................................................................58
Standing up against autocratization across political regimes (Tomini et al)..............................................................58
Lecture 1: What is democracy?
What is democracy... and is not (Schmitter, P.C. & Karl T.)
Wave of transitions away from autocracy rule began with the Portugal’s Revolution of the Carnations (1974) until the
collapse of the communist regimes across Eastern Europe (1989).
- Consensus emerged concerning the minimal conditions that polities must meet in order to merit the prestigious
appellation of democratic
What democracy is
Modern political democracy= A system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actionin the
public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives.
- Regime or system of governance ensemble of patterns that determines the methods of access to the principal public
offices, the characteristics of the actors admitted to or excluded from such access, the strategies that actors may use
to gain access & the rules that are followed in the making of publicly binding decisions.
- In order to work properly, the ensemble needs to be institutionalized
- Institutionalized= the various patterns must be known, practised and generally accepted. (can be formal and informal)
- Ruler= persons who occupy specialized authority roles and can give legitimate commands to others
- Public realm= encompasses the making of collective norms and choices that are binding for the society and backed
by state coercion.
- Liberal narrow public realm
- Socialist extend realm through regulation, subsidization & collective ownership
- Citizens= distinctive element in democracies (makes a regime a democracy or not)
- Competition= necessary evil widely accepted among factions
- Fairly conducted, honestly counted and regular elections (electorialism)
Modern democracy= offers a variety of competitive processes and channels for the expression of interests and values,
associational as well as partisan, functional as well as territorial, collective as well as individual. All are integral to
its practise.
- Majority rule governing body makes decisions by combining the votes of more than half of those eligible and
present is said to be democratic.
- Cooperation= actors must voluntarily make collective decisions binding on the polity as a whole.
- Interest associations primary expression of civil society in most stable democracies, supplemented by the more
sporadic interventions of social movements (thus not political parties)
2
, Procedures that make democracy possible
Roberth Dahl offers a generally accepted listing of what he sees as the procedural minimal conditions that must be
present for modern political democracy (polyarchy):
1. Control over government decisions about policy is constitutionally vested in elected officials
2. Elected officials are chosen in frequent and fairly conducted elections in which coercion is comparatively
uncommon
3. Practically all adults have the right to vote in the election of officials
4. Practically all adults have the right to run for elective offices in the government
5. Citizens have a right to express themselves without the danger of severe punishment on political matters broadly
defined
6. Citizens have a right to seek out alternative sources of information (these are protected)
7. Citizens also have the right to form relatively independent associations or organizations, including independent
political parties and interest groups
8. Popularly elected officials must be able to exercise their constitutional powers without being subjected to
overriding opposition from unelected officials.
9. Polity must be self-governing be able to act independently of constraints imposed by some other overarching
political system
Principles that make democracy feasible
Functions by the consent of the people or by the contingent consent of politicians acting under conditions of bounded
uncertainty
In a democracy representatives must (informally) agree that those who win greater electoral support or influence over
policy will not use their temporary superiority to bar the losers from taking office or exerting influence in the future,
and that in exchange for this opportunity to keep competing for power and place, momentary losers will respect the
winners’ right to make binding decisions.
- Citizens are expected to obey the decisions ensuing from such a process of competition.
How democracies differ
1. Consensus All citizens may not agree on the substantive goals of political action or on the role of the state
2. Participation All citizens may not take an active and equal part in political, although it must be legally possible
for them to do so
3. Access Rulers may not weigh equally the preferences of all who com before them, although citizenship implies
that individuals and groups should have an equal opportunity to express their preferences if they choose to do so
4. Responsiveness Rulers may not always follow the course of action preferred by the citizenry
5. Majority rule Positions may not be allocated or rules may not be decided solely on the basis of assembling to
most votes
6. Parliamentary sovereignty The legislature may not be the only body that can make rules or even the one with
final authority in deciding which laws are binding, but the are accountable for their actions
7. Party government Rulers may not be nominated, promoted and disciplined in their activities by well-organized
and programmatically coherent political parties, although where they are not, it may prove more difficult to form
an effective government
8. Pluralism Interests involved will be more closely linked to the estate and the separation between the public and
private spheres of action will be much less distinct
9. Federalism The territorial division authority may not involve multiple levels and local autonomies.
10. Presidentialism Chief executive officer may not be a single person and he/she may not be directly elected by
the citizenry as a whole.
11. Checks & Balances
What democracy is not
They are not necessarily more efficient economically than other forms of government
They are not necessarily more efficient administratively than other forms of government
- They are probably even more slower
They are not likely to appear more orderly, consensual, stable, or governable than the autocracies they replace
3
, They are not necessarily more open economies.
Breaking out of the Democratic Slump (Diamond, L.)
Third wave Global democratization (began in the 1970s)
Long democracy slump has seen a surge in democratic failures
o Liberal democracies become less liberal
Despite the pattern of democratic decline, there have been
recent encouraging signs of pushback against a principal agent
of democracy decay in our time (illiberal populism)
Neutering democratic institutions
Elected presidents have managed to neuter or take over the
institutions meant to constrain them
- Once conquered these institutions are then deployed as weapons against the opponents
Once populists win power they are able to manipulate the symbols and grievances of identity politics and to stir
nationalist fears and ambitions
- Authoritarian populist national treasury used to dispense patronage
The illiberal populist wave
Predominant trend decidedly negative
- Generated by one force: populism
o Polarize the polity and marginalize their opponents (people vs elite)
- Illiberal (populism) demonization of minorities and critics as well as in its preference for plebiscitary
mechanisms over the filters and deliberation of representative democracy
o Antidemocracy hostility to political pluralism, its aspirations for the political hegemony and its
tendency to exalt the leader above all other democratic actors and institutions.
The incremental erosion of liberal norms and institutions does not cease of its own accord
- It must be met with countervailing pressure from political actors, civil society, and what remains of
independent institutions.
The Achilles heel of authoritarian populism
Contradiction tendency to exalt one leader and to eviscerate checks and balances, which inevitably opens the way
to widespread corruption and ever more extreme abuses of power.
- Begins as an electoral revolution in the name of the forgotten people, but becomes into the abusing of power
Causes
Democracy likely fails in poor countries
Democracy with weak constraints on power are dramatically more likely to break down.
International environment is also important
- Third wave globalization (determines strength and endurance)
- They can sanction/pressure authoritarian regimes
International environment has changed
- War on Terror hard security and economic interests
- Immigration issues
- Powerful competitors for international influence
- Increasing of inequality
- Social media instrument for fanning grievances and intensifying polarization
Long term trends were crystallizing even as democracies were reeling under the impact of the abovementioned short
term shocks
Remedies
Not a clear reverse wave if democratic breakdowns
4
