History Catching Up with the Present? State-Society Relations and the Argentine Crisis

This article complements the view that socio-political elements underpin the causes of the current crisis by focusing on the 'Latin Americanisation' of Argentina through the acuteness of social tensions. This is attributed to economic and political change since the 1930s, through an increasingly 'politicised state', captured by self-interested actors and alienated from civil society. Based on a brief theoretical overview of state-society relations in Latin America, the essay examines how Argentina's political economy set it apart from the rest of the region until only recently. The article argues that due to dramatic changes beginning with the last military regime (1976-83), Argentina is becoming more like the rest of Latin America in its pattern of state-society relations, and the current crisis is only the most dramatic reflection of this. It concludes that the challenge facing all Argentines is to take advantage of this 'good opportunity' to set the historical record straight, so to speak, and use the space these democratic institutions provide to resolve longstanding problems before the crisis turns into a tragedy.     

Argentina's Turmoil: The Politics of Informality and the Roots of Economic Meltdown

This article argues that Argentina's current economic crisis cannot be fully understood without an analysis of recent political processes. It defines the politics of informality that have characterised Argentina's democracy-building processes. This de-institutionalisation of politics was perceived as the facilitator of democratic consolidation, state reform and economic restructuring. In practice, the politics of informality contributed to the crisis of 2001. The article begins by analysing the scale of the political and economic crisis from 1999. It is followed by an analysis of the politics of informality implemented by the Raúl Alfonsín and Carlos Menem's governments and then goes on to explain the consequences of informal politics. Finally, it concludes by outlining the main factors that conspire against democracy and economic stability in Argentina.     

The social factory of democracy in underdeveloped Spain

This article aims to analyse the contribution made by Christian movements towards constructing a democratic citizenship in an authoritarian context in the backward province of Albacete. Our study attempts to analyse the efforts made by grassroots Catholic sectors to foster democratic enclaves free from the interference of the Francoist state in 1960s and 1970s Spain. These alternative social spaces enabled new habits of civil resistance that confronted the socio-cultural hegemony of authoritarian values. As a result, throughout these years, various social groups started to challenge the sense of the regime's impregnable unity. This grassroots experience with the “power of the powerless” laid the foundations for negotiations among the political elites during the transition to democracy in Spain.     

Exploring the link between patronage and party institutionalization: an historical-institutional analysis of the Italian transition

This article analyses party patronage transformations in Italy since the early 1990s, a time when political parties and the party system entered a phase of continuing change. It examines how the interaction between the temporality of party system restructuring and historical legacies rooted in the nature of public bureaucracies reproduced patronage practices aimed at capturing state resources. The article employs a historical institutionalist approach as a research framework and concludes that this provides a cogent explanatory argument for the development of state exploitation taken by Italian political parties since the crisis of the early 1990s.     

A Comparative Analysis of Political Parties in Kenya,Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo

This article compares the characteristics and development of the main political parties of Kenya, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, starting from their independence in the 1960s up to the late 1990s. It offers an exploratory analysis of the differences and similarities that might have led to the, more or less, successful establishment of political parties and democratic regimes in these countries. The parties are compared along four dimensions: colonial heritage, the saliency of ethnicity, political communication between the party elite and the periphery, and their link to civil society. The study shows that the development of national parties at the time of independence was severely hindered by the colonizers. The inherited political structures encouraged the exploitation of both ethnic and regional links and further strengthened patronage networks. But also in more recent years, political leaders have used ethnicity as a strategic tool to strengthen their position in power. The comparative analysis shows that in those countries in which ethnicity was most salient, political parties were less democratic and less favourable for democratization. The analysis also highlights that the country with the least active political communication had the most difficult path towards a multiparty system. Finally, the article suggests that a civil society that is truly independent from the government, and incorporates powerful players in urban areas, is most likely to contribute to the development of a competitive party system.     

Ethnic and Regional Politics after the Asian Economic Crisis: A Comparison of Malaysia and South Korea

This article explores the impact of the Asian economic crisis on the Malay-Chinese and Kyongsang-Cholla regional political cleavage structures in Malaysia and Korea respectively. The weakening of previously intractable cleavages and the rise of cross-cutting cleavages have the potential to contribute to democratic consolidation, by enhancing democratic uncertainty or 'organised uncertainty'. The analysis of post-crisis election results shows that Malaysia's traditional ethnic linkages between political elites and voters became more flexible after the crisis and created a strong cross-cutting dimension to the political cleavage structure. In contrast South Korea's regional cleavages remained fundamentally undisturbed and may even have been reinforced by the crisis, notwithstanding evidence of defections from regionally dominant parties.     

Civil society and substantive democracy: Governance and the state of law in Belgium

Since the late 1980s, democratic institutions and an active civil society are being prescribed as important ingredients and preconditions to reduce poverty, social exclusion, and violent civil strife. Multi-party systems and elections are seen as the most important expressions of formal democracy. This paper argues that more attention is needed to substantive democracy, which requires a greater understanding of the various legal-political variants within a democratic framework. The paper discusses in some depth the crisis of governance in Belgium. The analysis raises questions about the relationship between 'political' and 'civil society', and between social movements and political parties.     

De-idealizing the democratic civil peace: on the political economy of democratic stabilization and pacification in Argentina and Ecuador

In the liberal concept of a ‘democratic civil peace’, an idealistic understanding of democratic stabilization and pacification prevails: democracy is seen to guarantee political stability and social peace by offering comprehensive representation and participation in political decisions while producing outcomes broadly in accordance with the common interest of society. This contrasts with the procedural quality and the material achievements of most, if not all, really existing democracies. South America is paradigmatic. Here, the legitimation of liberal democracy through both procedure and performance is weak and yet ‘third wave democracies’ have managed to survive even harsh economic and political crises. The article presents a conceptual framework to analyse historically specific patterns of democratic stabilization and pacification. Analyses of the processes of socio-political destabilization and re-stabilization in Argentina and Ecuador since the late 1990s show how a ‘de-idealized’ perspective on the democratic civil peace helps explain the viability of democratic regimes that systematically deviate from the ideal-type conditions for democratic survival that have been proposed in the literature.     

Argentina,a 'Parasite State' on the Verge of Disintegration

Argentina has more than twice the total debt of India whilst the latter has 28 times more population in roughly equivalent territories. According to Poder Ciudadano, a local NGO, in 1999 Argentine political parties spent 440 times more than those of Chile. These gross asymmetries help to show that Argentina's financial troubles must be attributed to her own political practices rather than to adverse circumstances or foreign scapegoats. By December 2001, overspending had manifestly destroyed the Argentine financial system. Across-the-board violations of property rights followed, through bank withdrawal restrictions and a debt default that was the biggest in world economic history. This paper analyses the breakdown of federal institutions, the atomisation of power and the erosion of governability that ensued as a consequence of the financial crisis. Mafia-style political practices, an endemic evil in the background of Argentine politics, jumped to the forefront as a consequence of this institutional breakdown.     

Fighting for the rule of law: civil resistance and the lawyers' movement in Pakistan

Pakistan, sometimes referred to as ‘the most dangerous place on earth’, is not typically thought of as a place where popular nonviolent resistance could take root, much less succeed. Citizen apathy, poor governance, and fear of regime repression and terrorist violence are barriers to effective civic activism inside Pakistan. Yet, over the past two years, Pakistan's authoritarian ruler was ousted and its independent judiciary restored following a massive grassroots campaign led by lawyers. The ‘men in black’, whose insistence on the rule of law and embrace of nonviolent struggle captured the hearts and minds of millions of Pakistanis, helped transform the country's political landscape in unexpected ways. The successes tallied by this nonviolent movement, this article will argue, can be attributed to the large-scale non-cooperation and civil disobedience that pressured two successive Pakistani regimes – one authoritarian and one democratic – to yield to its demands. Unity and mass participation, nonviolent discipline, and the creative use of nonviolent tactics were three key ingredients of success. While instability and Islamist extremism continue to plague Pakistan, the lawyers' movement highlights the steadily growing strength of Pakistani civil society have a potential to influence democratic change in the country.     

What a Little Democracy Can Do: Comparing Trajectories of Reform in Malaysia and Indonesia

Economic crisis sparked political mobilization in both Malaysia and Indonesia in the late 1990s, but with very different results. Reformism in competitive electoral authoritarian Malaysia took a largely electoral route, yielding marginal, top-down institutional change and the enhancement of democratic norms. The hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime in neighbouring Indonesia, on the other hand, was toppled by a sudden upsurge of grass-roots protest, encouraged by elite factionalism. Changes to Indonesian political institutions and personnel since then have disappointed many reformers, and mounting cynicism endangers the entrenchment of democratic political culture. The article argues that a relatively more democratic system grants more space for autonomous challengers to organize and mobilize over the long term than a less open system does. Specifically, civil society agents in the former may accumulate both social capital and its organizational-level counterpart, coalitional capital, facilitating mobilization. Such a regime, though, is better able to contain or otherwise defuse protest than is a more autocratic variant. The latter is thus more vulnerable to dramatic collapse, despite its fragmented political opposition, and faces serious hurdles in subsequent democratic consolidation.     

The role and example of Chilean and Argentinian Mothers in democratisation

This paper explores the development issue of democratisation from a gendered perspective, emphasising the need to look for the building blocks of democracy within civil society sectors where women play a key role. Chilean and Argentinian women prove an important example for sustainable political development through their roles as Mothers, particularly in the 1980s in the movements to protest against political disappearances. The author seeks to demonstrate how these women's practical endeavours have made them an indispensable ingredient in the achievement of real democratic development at the grassroots level, and how they serve as a model for policymakers in developing countries elsewhere.     

Indonesia's ‘democratic transition’ revisited: a clientelist model of political transition

This article presents an alternative theoretical framework to account for the political transition in Indonesia in 1998. Challenging the mainstream literature, which focuses on the presumed significance of civil society, the article claims that so-called democratization in Indonesia offered a mechanism through which to reorganize the distribution of patronage within the state. The transition was caused not by assertive civil society but Suharto's excessive centralization of patronage networks, which had the effect of alienating a significant proportion of the regime elite. Against this backdrop, democratization facilitated a decentralization of previously centralized patronage networks and a redistribution of spoils within the state towards elites that had been excluded from Suharto's inner circle.     

Political party formation by former armed opposition groups after civil war

ABSTRACT

Under what conditions are rebel groups successfully incorporated into democratic politics when civil war ends? Using an original cross-national, longitudinal dataset, we examine political party formation by armed opposition groups over a 20-year period, from 1990 to 2009. We find that former armed opposition groups form parties in more than half of our observations. A rebel group’s pre-war political experience, characteristics of the war and how it ended outweigh factors such as the country’s political and economic traits and history. We advance a theoretical framework based on rebel leaders’ expectations of success in post-war politics, and we argue that high rates of party formation by former armed opposition groups are likely a reflection of democratic weakness rather than democratic robustness in countries emerging from conflict.     

The re‐equilibration of democracy in inter‐war Ireland

This article examines the process of democratic stabilization in inter‐war Ireland. The Irish case is a classic example of what Linz calls re‐equilibration. Re‐equilibration is a political process that, following a crisis which has seriously endangered democratic institutions, results in their continued existence at the same or higher levels of effectiveness and legitimacy. The contention of the article is that the Fianna Fáil party's transformation of the democratic institutions of the Irish Free State in the 1930s constituted a case of democratic re‐equilibration, whereby the institutions of independent Ireland were given a greater degree of effectiveness and legitimacy. Indeed, since the main Irish parties had only recently been involved in a civil war, the Irish example could well be the classic case of re‐equilibration this century. The analysis of democratic re‐equilibration between 1922 and 1937 focuses on the Fianna Fáil party's transformation from being a semi‐loyal opposition party to being a party of government, emphasizing the impact on those political actors who remained hostile to the existence of the Free State.     

Book reviews

This article addresses the concern that democratization may contribute to the reproduction of neo-patrimonialism, rather than to counteract it. The article reports the result of a survey among members of parliament in Ghana regarding their election campaigns. Total spending, sources of funds, and their usage are analysed in the context of the consolidation of liberal democracy. The survey results are supplemented with data collected in 34 interviews with MPs. The data show that MPs are involved in patron-client relationships to a significant degree to reproduce their political power. Furthermore, the prevalence of patronage politics among MPs in Ghana has increased throughout the period of democratic rule. This persistent pattern of patronage politics threatens the very heart of democratic consolidation. Vertical accountability and legitimacy is threatened by alternative pacts of loyalty, expectations of corruption, and tendencies to delegative mandates. Horizontal accountability risks pervasion by 'big man' interventions, and by insufficient allocation of time to monitoring the government and legislative activities.     

Elections and political change in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article examines attempts to use electoral politics to promote substantive political change in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 1990 elections have been a key part of virtually all negotiated agreements to end civil wars. The utility of democracy for building peace is often asserted but rarely backed with long-term commitment and resources on the ground. Bosnia since 1996 is a rare exception. There, international actors sought not only to establish a democratic political system but to use electoral democracy as a tool with which to transform the nature of politics in Bosnia in short order. This article focuses on efforts to shape the development of political parties and the party system, assesses the degree to which it has succeeded and examines the broader implications of Bosnia's experience for other state-building efforts of its kind.     

Guns,roses and democratization: Huntington's secret admirer in the Caucasus

Georgia is the most democratic country in the Caucasus, but arguably its democratization has also been riddled by Huntingtonian developmental crises, resulting in ethnic conflicts and civil wars. We argue that variation in the type of political instability is best understood by focusing on the interaction between nationalism and political institutionalization rather than on their independent effects. We show that Gamsakhurdia's “state-breaking nationalism”, coupled with political deinstitutionalization, produced separatist and centrist civil wars. When Saakashvili's “state-making nationalism” enhanced state capacity, it marginalized the opposition and rekindled frozen separatist conflicts, but stronger administrative institutions enabled the government to avert another revolutionary regime change.     

Civil society and democratization: a counter-case from India

This article assesses whether civil society promotes democratization, as has been argued implicitly or explicitly in the political discourse, following the publication of Putnam's Making Democracy Work. The theorists of “third-wave” transitology have advocated civil society as the indispensable instrument for the survival and sustenance of democracy. This article, however, argues that civil society is not necessarily a democratic force. It may or may not have positive implications in regard to democratization and the functioning of democracy. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the tribal-dominated south Rajasthan, this article analyses the case of Rajasthan Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (RVKP), a Hindu(tva)-oriented non-governmental organization (NGO), to demonstrate how civil society could also be anti-democratic. It shows that by utilizing development as a medium of entry, the RVKP has not only successfully presented itself as a counter-force against the “threatening others”, such as Muslims and Christians but also mobilized electoral support for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In return, the BJP-led state government has provided economic, political and legal support to the RVKP and facilitated the Hindutva politics at the grassroots level. The article concludes that in the context of Rajasthan, a conservative state has collaborated with an exclusivist civil society organization – the consequence of which has not just been the spread of violence and demonization of religious minorities but also a serious undermining of cultural pluralism and democratic values of Indian society.