Democratization in clan-based societies: explaining the Mongolian anomaly

Mongolia is a long-standing democratic anomaly – a democracy in a clan-based society – that is rarely discussed in research. This article addresses the question, why did Mongolia and the Central Asian countries embark upon markedly different regime trajectories following 70 years of Soviet rule? I argue that the prospects of democracy were shaped by a complex relationship between clan-based traditional authority structures, social relations based on nomadism and the style of Soviet rule. In Mongolia, Soviet authorities carefully enforced collectivization across kin groups and provided all necessary public goods to citizens, effectively dismantling clan-based authority structures. This process unintendedly fortified nomadic social relations that enabled re-emergent elements of opposition and forces in civil society to fill the void of authority generated by the Soviet collapse and to use this counterweight to state power to push for competitive politics. In contrast, the Soviet authorities’ “divide and rule” with clans in Kyrgyzstan reproduced clans that easily took on a dominant role on the eve of the Soviet breakdown and filled the void of authority by placing themselves at the apex of political power providing welfare services and political order. This placed Kyrgyzstan on the path to a post-communist non-democracy.     

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.     

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.     

论转型时期俄罗斯公民社会：兴起、现状与展望

苏联解体后俄罗斯进入转型时期。转型时期所有制结构的多元化、民主政治制度的发展、社会思潮的多元化,成为俄罗斯公民社会兴起的经济、政治和文化因素。其中存在的问题主要有：非政府组织作用有限、中产阶级不成熟、公民政治参与意识淡漠。推进俄罗斯公民社会的对策有：大力培育中产阶级、培育公民文化、发挥非政府组织的作用、积极转变政府职能、发展市场经济同时重视解决社会问题。俄罗斯公民社会仍处于发展的初级阶段,对其培育是一个长期的渐进过程。     

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.     

The Tasks of Democratic Transition and Transferability

There is no single road to democracy. However, there are some factors that seem to have consistently positive effects on democratic development. These include the existence of a large and diverse civil society; a sharp political break with the authoritarian past, followed by regular turnovers in political leadership and governing parties; stable state borders; and political institutions which empower parliaments and, in culturally diverse societies, give minorities political voice without locking them into permanent coalitions that block collaboration across group divides in pursuit of common goals. Less important are economic considerations—though economic reforms are far more likely in democratic settings than in authoritarian regimes and far more supportive over the medium- and long-term of robust economic performance.     

Weak states and uneven pluralism: lessons from Mali and Kyrgyzstan

We argue that certain important democratic practices and elements of pluralism are lasting features of political systems in many poor countries. Because of state weakness, such arrangements work to the benefit of both elites and citizens. The broader citizenry and civil society enjoy significant political freedoms and greater access to foreign aid. Elites tolerate these limited civil liberties and regular elections because they produce few costly consequences due to state incapacity. We evaluate this theory of ‘uneven pluralism’ in poor countries using evidence from a paired comparison of Mali and Kyrgyzstan. These two countries have experienced significant political turbulence, but on balance have shown a persistent and robust commitment to a free press, transparent elections, and respect for freedom of association. Our theory suggests that uneven pluralism is likely to continue in countries like Mali and Kyrgyzstan, even as significant limits on judicial independence, persistent corruption, and lack of government transparency make democratic consolidation unlikely.     

Coercive or Corrosive: The Negative Impact of Economic Sanctions on Democracy

This article seeks to analyze the impact that sanctions have on democracy. We argue that economic sanctions worsen the level of democracy because the economic hardship caused by sanctions can be used as a strategic tool by the targeted regime to consolidate authoritarian rule and weaken the opposition. Furthermore, we argue that economic sanctions create new incentives for the political leadership to restrict political liberties, to undermine the challenge of sanctions as an external threat to their authority. Using time-series cross-national data (1972–2000), the findings show that both the immediate and longer‐term effects of economic sanctions significantly reduce the level of democratic freedoms in the target. The findings also demonstrate that comprehensive economic sanctions have greater negative impact than limited sanctions. These findings suggest that sanctions can create negative externalities by reducing the political rights and civil liberties in the targeted state.     

Contradictions between economic liberalization and democratization: The case of South Korea

This article examines the relationships between economic liberalization and democratization in South Korea. The two processes are often correlated, but in Korea liberalization has been problematic for democratization. Domestic liberalization initially expanded space for labour organizations, but after they appeared to become too active, the process was so managed as to block political activity. This also resulted from pressures brought on by international liberalization, which made competitive wage costs increasingly important and raised the prospect of disinvestment by Korean and foreign firms. Liberalization has not reduced the power of business (the chaebol). Deregulation and privatization have encouraged a transfer of public economic power to the private sector. The increased political role of business is not necessarily beneficial, and the chaebol's economic power represents a threat to democratization in a variety of ways. In previous decades state power rested on economic controls; and the main impetus for democratization has come from the expansion of civil society through economic development, rather than from economic liberalization. State intervention in the economy may continue to be required to protect the position of certain civil society groups and to control business power, but domestic and international liberalization have challenged both of these functions and may increasingly curtail them in the future. Thus, close examination of the specifics of liberalization in South Korea show no automatic positive correlation can be made between economic and political reform without risking either reductionism or reification.     

Modelling Transitions To and From Democracy

This article describes the results of a broad reanalysis of factors shaping the prospects of countries making a transition to or from democracy using a new measure of regime type. While some of the results are consistent with prior quantitative and comparative research, others are not. For example, in line with other studies, the article finds that autocracies are more likely to make a transition to democracy when they offer broader protections for civil liberties, experience a change in political leadership, or suffer an economic downturn. At the same time, the analysis does not support the claim that transitions in neighbouring countries directly improve prospects for a transition to democracy, or that economic decline and presidential systems heighten the risk of democratic breakdown. Perhaps most intriguing, our model of transitions to democracy also identifies a new twist on old stories linking economic development to democratization. For countries under authoritarian rule that have attempted democracy before, the research here indicates that development does improve prospects for another attempt, as modernization theory suggests. For countries with no democratic experience, however, affluence conveys no direct democratizing benefit and appears, if anything, to help sustain authoritarian rule.     

Civil Society,Democratization, and Foreign Aid: Civic Engagement and Public Policy in South Africa and Uganda

Drawing on comparative research in South Africa and Uganda, this article examines how far civil society organizations influence government policy and legislation and extend citizen participation in public affairs. The article also considers how far external funding influences policy engagement and outcomes. The main finding is that few civil society organizations have either a consistent level of engagement in the policy process or make a significant difference to policy outcomes. The nature of internal governance practices in galvanizing citizens' voices and the relationship to the state and political parties are the most decisive factors in civil society organizations achieving policy influence. The article concludes that the capacity of civil society organizations to offer citizens a say in decisions and to enhance pluralism may be as important as their ability to influence policy and demand accountability from state actors.     

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.     

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.     

Gender and democratization: Or what does democracy mean for women in the Third World?

The article argues that the ongoing process of democratization in the Third World affects both men and women significantly, though differentially. It examines the two major strands of democratic theory, representative and participative, to emphasize that both of these take for granted the division between the public and the private spheres. This division inhibits the mass participation of women in politics and therefore in the democratic processes affecting them. It further analyses the arguments made in the name of cultural specificity of Third World societies and the dilemmas that these pose for women in their struggle for democracy. It draws upon various case studies to examine the contradictory and often painful options that women of the Third World are faced with in any process of political change, including that of democratization. Through the case studies the article underscores the complex relationship between the state and civil society in the Third World and how women negotiate the boundaries of both. It concludes that the process of political democratization, though not an unproblematic transition, creates new opportunities for women to mobilize in their own various interests.     

Frozen political liberalization in Jordan: The consequences for democracy

Prompted by serious economic difficulties, in 1989 the Jordanian government launched a series of political liberalization measures aimed at rejuvenating the country's parliament and party politics, and restoring freedom to the media. Despite much initial enthusiasm, the liberalization process has become frozen and there have been few substantive moves toward a meaningful transition to democracy. Two developments have combined to result in this democratization freeze. One is the reluctance of the state to give up many of its powers in relation to the forces of civil society. A second is the inability of professional associations and the emerging parliamentary opposition bloc to formulate and institute viable links within themselves and with other social actors in an attempt to pressure the monarchy for more political concessions. The hybrid, semi‐democratic, absolutist monarchy that has emerged in the process has enhanced its popular legitimacy by adopting certain democratic trappings, which, in the short run at least, appear detrimental to a more meaningful transition to democratic rule.     

Civil society and local activism in South Korea's local democratization

Recent studies on causes of intergovernmental transformation in old and new democracies have found that decentralization is often the outcome of negotiations between national and local political interests. South Korea is commonly believed to be an exception because local elections and institutions introduced in the early 1990s were, by and large, the product of negotiations among political elites at the centre, without significant inclusion of local actors. However, this article attempts to explicate a hitherto ignored aspect of decentralization reform in Korea: the role of civil society and local activism in the politics of decentralization. In the 2000s, several ‘triggering events’ such as economic instability, democratic consolidation, emergence of civilian leaders, and the growth of civil society provided a strong momentum for the decentralization movement. We demonstrate how civic organizations at both national and local levels have played significant roles in proposing and pushing for decentralization, and argue that the bottom-up movement for decentralization under the Roh Moo-hyun administration was surprisingly well mobilized and institutionalized, especially at the agenda-setting stage.     

发展型联盟与印度持续的经济改革

印度政府自20世纪80年代中后期到90年代初持续的经济改革,是由于支持改革的政治家、官僚机构与智囊团、商业集团之间形成了一种发展型联盟。这一联盟是在民主政治的竞争中形成并发挥作用。印度进行的经济改革经验在很大程度上证明了,民主国家可以在不改变其体制的情况下进行经济变革的可能性,并在一定程度上否定了经济自由化的改革必然需要一个强权政府的观念。     

Reassessing the Role of Civil Society Organizations in the Transition to Democracy in Spain

Spain's democratization process has mainly been described as a settlement between political elites in which civil society organizations played little part. Yet the literature on Eastern European democratization sets great store by the role of civil society, both for transition and consolidation. Does this different treatment reflect the approach adopted by analysts or the actual contrasting presence of civil society organizations in the relevant periods? The question prompts this re-examination of the role of civil society organizations in the Spanish transition. It finds that the answer depends in part on definitions of civil society, but mainly on the approach taken by authors in presenting their accounts. It finds that the elite settlement perspective silences or removes agency from the Spanish civil society organizations active in the transition.

An alternative view is developed through an in-depth review of the events following the death of the dictator General Franco in 1975 and a textual analysis of Spain's actual definitive settlement, the 1978 Constitution. The research demonstrates that civil society organizations were responsible for disrupting the dictatorship's intention to maintain an authoritarian regime, leaving it no option but to negotiate with civil society organizations such as political parties and trade unions, which were pursuing their own strategic goals towards co-construction of a socially advanced democracy. The article's approach bridges the gulf between top-down and bottom-up accounts of political change in Spain at the end of the Franco regime.     

Civil society,the state,and the limits to global civil society

Just as domestic civil society is widely regarded as serving the greater common good of a national democratic political community, global civil society is also promoted as a vehicle through which a host of humanity's ills may be remedied. This article argues that the pinning of such high hopes on global civil society is mistaken, for its proponents have failed to recognise that global civil society is insufficiently analogous to domestic civil society for it to be a similarly positive force. At the national level, civil society functions in a balanced interdependence with the state. At the global level there is no equivalent of the state to provide the necessary scrutiny and regulation that at the national level prevents constituents of domestic civil society from committing injustices.     

Grassroots Civil Groups: The Potential and Limits of Democratic Change in Argentina's Interior Provinces

While the current crisis in Argentina has many facets--economic, political and social--it originated and has been fuelled by the unfulfilled promise of a democracy in which political leaders are accountable to society. In the 1990s it was widely hoped that the growing number of grassroots civil groups would contribute to democratisation, particularly in the interior provinces where clientelism and patronage have long been thought to hamper local development and the country's progress as a whole. Those hopes faded as social unrest broke out in Argentina's interior provinces in the mid-1990s and the country began its slide towards collapse by the end of the decade. Yet the problem of political change in the interior provinces remains a central issue in Argentina's current crisis, and its future prospects. The ability of civil groups to contribute to democratic change in the interior provinces is constrained in different ways, depending on whether clientelism or patronage prevail in social relationships. Clientelistic and patronage-based societies differently condition the types of grassroots groups that arise, the scope of their activities and their potential for contributing to democratic change. Exploring these differences offers important insights into Argentina's current crisis and the potential and limitations of change in the interior.