Beyond the fallacy of coup-ism: conceptualizing civilian control of the military in emerging democracies

It is consensus in the democratization literature that civilian control of the military is a necessary ingredient for democracy and democratic consolidation. However, there is considerable disagreement on what civilian control of the military exactly entails and there is a lack of solid theoretical arguments for how weak or absent civilian control affects democratic governance. Furthermore, a considerable portion of the research literature is captured by the fallacy of coup-ism, ignoring the many other forms in which military officers can constrain the authority of democratically elected political leaders to make political decisions and get them implemented. This article addresses these lacunae by providing a new conceptual framework for the analysis of civil–military relations in emerging democracies. From democracy theory it derives a definition of civilian control as a certain distribution of decision-making power between civilian leaders and military officers. Based on this definition, the authors develop a five-dimensional concept of civilian control, discuss the effects of weakly institutionalized civilian control on the quality of democracy and address the chances for democratic consolidation.     

How well ordinary citizens understand democracy: the case of the South Korean electorate

How do mass citizens understand democracy? Are they capable of distinguishing it from its non-democratic alternatives? Does their understanding about democracy matter? To reveal the contours of cultural democratization in South Korea, this article addresses these questions largely overlooked in earlier survey-based studies. Analyses of the 2010 Korea Barometer survey indicate that all segments of the Korean electorate, including the young and the college-educated, are neither accurately nor fully informed about what distinguishes a democratic regime from its non-democratic alternatives. Moreover, the study provides strong evidence of democratic learning in that an increase in democratic knowledge leads to committed support for democracy. The findings together imply an urgent need to improve the quality of civic education for the development of democratic political culture in Korea and new democracies.     

The relation between cultural values and models of democracy: a cross-national study

The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in political science. In the contemporary approach to cultural analysis, value orientations are studied as fundamental manifestations of culture. The mainstream research has focused on finding a relation between the quality of a democratic system and the existence of essential values in a society. There is, however, an understudied question as to what the relation between cultural values and models of democracy in different countries exactly is. We know that there are different models or patterns of democracy (for example, majoritarian versus consensus and participatory versus spectator democracy) discernible in various countries. But what is the reason that a particular country, or set of countries, appreciates and accepts one type of democracy, while suspecting and discrediting other types? This article aims to find an answer to this question from the perspective of cultural differences. Using the empirical data derived from the operationalization of dimensions of democracy and dimensions of culture at the national level, we examine hypotheses regarding the relation between societal cultural values and the practice of different models of democracy in various countries.     

South African election posters: Reflecting the maturing of a democracy?

Abstract

The South African democracy has survived three national and provincial elections and three local elections, since 1994. In comparison to other young democracies in Africa, South Africa has experienced a relatively stable transition to democracy. However, the ruling ANC has not been under pressure from opposition parties. Although this has helped pave the way, a dominant governing party does not necessarily encourage the growth of a mature, democratic political culture. The assumption of this article is that political parties in developing societies have a normative obligation to do more than canvas votes during election campaigns. Political parties should also be instrumental in fostering a democratic political culture by communicating democratic values, encouraging participation in the democracy and enabling voters to make an informed electoral choice. Although political posters contribute mainly to image building, the reinforcement of party support, and the visibility of the party, posters are the agenda setters or headlines of a party's campaign – it is therefore argued that political parties in developing societies also need to design political posters responsively, in order to sustain the democracy. In general it seems that the poster campaigns of parties have matured since 1999, in the sense that there was less emphasis on democratisation issues in the past, and the campaigns conformed more to the norm of Western political campaigning.     

Ideological radicalism and democratic experience in new democracies

In comparing publics’ ideological self-placements between established and new democracies, it has been observed that there is a higher proportion of citizens who express radical views in the latter countries. This is likely due to sharp differences with regard to evaluations of past authoritarian rule, the legitimacy of the new regime, or new institutional arrangements governing the distribution of power when countries embark on democratic transition. Studies on the attitudinal aspect of democratic consolidation lead one to expect a decrease in extreme views in new democracies with the passage of time, as questions of regime principles and institutions are settled, and citizens come to accept democracy as the “only game in town”. The present article investigates whether this proposition is applicable to “Third Wave” new democracies in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and East Asia by examining longitudinal public opinion data from 23 countries. In addition to the length of democratic regimes, We also analyse the impact of economic performance, quality of governance, and electoral systems on the proportion of radical citizens. Results show that while longer democratic experience does contribute to reducing extremist leanings, factors such as the level of corruption, rule of law, and plurality electoral rules play a more substantive role.     

Horizontal accountability and the challenges for democratic consolidation in Africa: evidence from Liberia

Why are most African emerging democracies failing to consolidate and reach the two-turnover test? Most scholars attribute this to the poor quality of elections and limited institutionalization of vertical accountability, overlooking some important variables. This article challenges this conception both theoretically and empirically by focusing on the quality of horizontal accountability illustrated by observations of comparative interest in Liberia's emerging democracy. Since the end of Liberia's bloody civil war in 2003, two successive and successful democratic elections (2005 and 2011) have been organized, putting Liberia on the path towards democratic consolidation. When analysing the electoral mechanism of vertical2016 accountability, many scholars have been enthusiastic about the prospects of democratic consolidation in Liberia, most of them neglecting the horizontal accountability processes that are also crucial for the quality and durability of democracy. This article analyses the processes and challenges of democratic consolidation in Liberia by focusing on key institutions of horizontal accountability. It argues that although the country has made some progress towards democratization since 2005, the domination and centralization of executive power, weak and dependent institutions of horizontal accountability (legislature, judiciary, national elections commission, general auditing commission, and anti-corruption commission) are major challenges to the consolidation of democracy. These findings have important implications for our understanding of horizontal accountability and democratic consolidation in African emerging democracies.     

Coups and nascent democracies: the military and Egypt's failed consolidation

Why do coups happen in some nascent democracies but not in others? To answer this question, I probe four interconnected variables in democratizing regimes: the military's ethos; the military's corporate interests; the military's perception of the new civilian ruling elite; and the correlation of force between the military and the founding democratic government. My argument is twofold: first, I maintain that ideational variables are central to shaping the military's political behaviour; and second, I argue in favour of merging insights from cultural, corporate, and structural theories to understand the consolidation, or breakdown, of nascent democracies.     

Demography and democracy: the impact of youth cohort size on democratic stability in the world

The traditional explanations for the survival of democratic systems mostly include economic and cultural variables. Only rarely has attention been given to the age structure of a society. This article introduces a hypothesis involving the ‘youth bulge’ concept popular in conflict studies. It is hypothesized that democratic countries with proportionally large male youth cohorts are more likely to become dictatorships than societies with a smaller share of young men. A causal link between demography and democracy is assumed to exist because young men are the protagonists of virtually all violent political action as well as political extremism with a potential to threaten democracy. Strong evidence supporting the hypothesis is found using data for 110 countries in the period from 1972–2009.     

Perils of parliamentarism? Political systems and the stability of democracy revisited

Parliamentary systems are generally regarded as superior to presidential ones in democratic sustenance. This article contributes to the debate on the relationship between systems of government and the survival of democracy by bringing in a new perspective and analysing the experiences of 131 democracies during 1960–2006. We argue that systems of government do matter, but their effects are indirect; they exert their influence through societies' prior democratic records. Confirming the conventional argument, our data analysis shows that uninterrupted parliamentary democracies face significantly lower risks of a first breakdown than their presidential counterparts. Contrary to the common understanding, however, we find that the risk of a democratic breakdown can be higher for parliamentary regimes than for presidential regimes among the countries whose democracy has collapsed in the past. Furthermore, the risk of a previously failed democracy falling again grows as (the risk of) government crises increase(s). Hence our study questions the common belief that parliamentary systems are categorically more conducive to democratic stability than presidential ones.     

Mapping deviant democracy

A number of countries have emerged as stable, electoral democracies despite low levels of modernization, lack of democratic neighbouring countries and other factors consistently related to democratic stability in the literature. The study of these deviant democracies is a promising new research field but it is afflicted by the lack of a consensus as to which democracies are actually deviant. The present article attempts to solve this problem by carrying out a comprehensive mapping of deviant democracies. It reviews the literature to provide an overview of the cases most often identified as deviant democracies and uses a large-N analysis of 159 countries covering the time period 1993–2008 to systematically map deviant democracies. The analysis points to 12 cases that merit further attention. These are the Central African Republic, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mongolia, Niger, Senegal, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turkey.     

Intelligence reform in new democracies: factors supporting or arresting progress

This article examines an important (and most problematic) component of the democratic civil–military relations (CMR) concept (understood in terms of democratic control, effectiveness, and efficiency of the armed forces, police forces, and intelligence agencies). It focuses (1) on the democratization of intelligence, that is finding a proper balance between intelligence effectiveness and transparency, and (2) on what particular factors support or arrest progress in the democratization of intelligence. The article provides supporting examples from Brazil and Romania, two developing democracies that have been undergoing major reforms of their intelligence systems for almost 20 years, in terms of both transparency and effectiveness.     

Democratic reform between the extreme makeover and the reinvention of tradition: the case of the Netherlands

Democracy in the Netherlands, like in so many other Western countries, is under substantial reform pressure. The problem with the democratic system in the Netherlands, according to democratic reformers, is that it is out of step with the fast and major changes taking place in modern society. Champions of democratic reform in the Netherlands mostly look to sweeping, large-scale, and all-encompassing plans for democratic reform, achieving, however, little success. Major structural changes have been planned time and again, but eventually the institutional structure has remained largely the same. This article presents a critical analysis of the standard recipe that democratic reformers often prescribe – radical makeover – and outlines a viable alternative that can also be derived from the Dutch case – reinventing tradition. Reinventing tradition implies a mixture of change and preservation, of movement and counter-movement. It is, arguably, the only way for democratic reform to go, at least in a consensus democracy like the Netherlands. Dutch history demonstrates that large-scale blueprint reform runs a serious risk of non-implementation, and that small-scale adaptive tinkering, part of the incremental ‘reinvention of tradition’, can be significantly more successful as a reform strategy.     

Media Dependency: Mass Media as Sources of Information in the Democratizing Countries of Central and Eastern Europe

The theory of media dependency states that for societies in states of crisis or instability, citizens are more reliant on mass media for information and as such are more susceptible to their effects. As there is little empirical evidence of how citizens use mass media in democratizing countries, this article demonstrates that individuals' media use is not only heightened during democratic transition but is also a function of a deliberate information-seeking strategy. Using surveys from six Central and Eastern European countries in 1996–1997, the article presents empirical evidence that citizens of new democracies purposively use the media for obtaining political information. This pattern of media use is especially pronounced in new democracies that have not proceeded very far in the process of democratic consolidation. These findings begin to fill the gap in our knowledge about the role of mass media in democratizing countries and chart clear directions for broadening our understanding of the process of political socialization in such countries.     

Reforming governance under authoritarianism: motivations and pathways of local participatory reform in the People’s Republic of China

Many authoritarian regimes use participatory political reform to maintain control over the societies under their rule and survive global waves of democratization. Recent studies of transitional governance have underscored the importance and intricacy of institutional reform; however, no consensus has been reached on an explanation of the dynamism that shapes institutional reforms under non-democratic systems. Why do authoritarian apparatchiks reform their institutions of governance? How can the varied pathways of these reforms be explained? Post-Deng China provides an ideal laboratory in which to study these issues. Since the 1990s, growing tensions between the Leninist polity and a gradually opened society have compelled local governments in China to test a vast set of participatory reforms. In an examination of three major local participatory budgeting reforms in China, this article maps the main pathways – representation, consultation, and transparency – of these recent sub-national participatory reforms implemented by the incumbent regime, and explores the driving forces that sculpt a reformist model over the alternatives. By introducing an “incentive-contingent framework”, this article sketches out the “repertoire” of participatory reforms in the authoritarian governance of China and suggests an explanatory framework for the variation in the strategies and forms of such institutional innovations.     

Arab national security in the 1980's. Threats and strategies

Scholars increasingly are accepting the empirical generalization that democracies almost never go to war with each other, and infrequently even engage in militarized disputes with each other. It has not been clear, however, whether the rarity of conflict between democracies is caused by some aspect of being democratic, or whether it is caused by some other variable or variables that may be correlated with democracy. Using data on all independent states for the period 1946–1986, we examine the effects of political system type, distance, wealth, economic growth, alliances, and political stability. The results suggest that, although most of the other variables do have an effect, as hypothesized, there still seems to be an independent effect of political system type: democracies engage in militarized disputes with each other less than would be expected by chance. The effect may be enhanced by political stability; that is, states which can be perceived as stable democracies are less likely to be involved in disputes with other democracies.     

Institutions of Direct Democracy and Accountability in Latin America's Presidential Democracies

The crisis of representative democracy in Latin America became apparent in a wave of constitutional reforms during the 1990s. A striking feature of these reforms was the incorporation of institutions of direct democracy (IDD) into most post-transitional Latin American constitutions. Despite the shortage of efficient mechanisms of accountability and its concomitant weakening of democratic consolidation in the region, the potential of IDD to bolster accountability in the representative structures of presidential democracies has not yet received systematic scholarly attention. To fill this theoretical gap, the article presents a typology designed to assess the accountability potential of IDD, which is used to classify the constitutional provisions for direct democracy in Latin America's 18 presidential democracies. After juxtaposing the findings of constitutional analysis to the actual record of direct democracy in the region, the article concludes that there is a considerable discrepancy between constitutional accountability potential and the empirical evidence. Whereas the adoption of IDD has hardly affected the vertical dimension of accountability, the practice whereby presidents use referendums to bypass legislative opposition has worked to the detriment of the horizontal dimension of accountability.     

Is successful democracy promotion possible? The conceptual problem

There is a standard academic consensus that semi-presidentialism is perilous for new democracies. In particular, this is because semi-presidential countries run the risk of experiencing difficult periods of ‘cohabitation’ between a president and a prime minister who are opposed to each other, and because they may also experience periods of divided minority government that encourage the president to rule by decree and subvert the rule of law. This article examines the evidence to support these two arguments. It finds very few cases of cohabitation in young democracies and only one case where cohabitation has led directly to democratic collapse. By contrast, it finds more cases of divided minority government and more cases where divided minority government has been associated with democratic failure. However, the article also finds that young democracies have survived divided minority government. The conclusion is that, to date, there is insufficient evidence to support the long-standing and highly intuitive argument that cohabitation is dangerous for new democracies. There is more evidence to support the much newer argument about the dangers of divided minority government. Even so, more work is needed in this area before we can conclude that semi-presidentialism is inherently perilous.     

The role of nonformal education in promoting democratic attitudes: Findings from Senegal

Civic education has been considered a way in which the behaviours and attitudes associated with democratic citizenship can be fostered among the members of a society. Since the emerging democracies are hard-pressed to develop a political culture supportive of democratic rule, civic education has been identified as one way such a political culture can be constructed. Recent studies, however, point to the limited reach of such programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on survey data, others have failed to find even a relationship between formal education and democratic attitudes in parts of Africa. On the other hand, despite the prominence nonformal education has gained in many developing countries, such as those in Africa, the effect of nonformal education on political attitudes has not been subject to empirical testing. Using data from a survey involving a probability sample of 1,484 Senegalese citizens, this article examines the effects of education, both formal and nonformal, on political attitudes among rural Senegalese. Both nonformal and formal education are found to increase the likelihood that people will embrace democratic, tolerant attitudes in Senegal.     

A third wave of autocratization is here: what is new about it?

Less than 30 years after Fukuyama and others declared liberal democracy’s eternal dominance, a third wave of autocratization is manifest. Gradual declines of democratic regime attributes characterize contemporary autocratization. Yet, we lack the appropriate conceptual and empirical tools to diagnose and compare such elusive processes. Addressing that gap, this article provides the first comprehensive empirical overview of all autocratization episodes from 1900 to today based on data from the Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem). We demonstrate that a third wave of autocratization is indeed unfolding. It mainly affects democracies with gradual setbacks under a legal façade. While this is a cause for concern, the historical perspective presented in this article shows that panic is not warranted: the current declines are relatively mild and the global share of democratic countries remains close to its all-time high. As it was premature to announce the “end of history” in 1992, it is premature to proclaim the “end of democracy” now.     

Civil society,political stability,and state power in Central Asia: cooperation and contestation

This article develops a concept of civil society in Central Asia distinct from that which emerged from the East European communist societies of the late 1980s. Kazakhstan presents a case study of a civil society that conceptually can be located between the vibrant civil society of the Baltic democracies and the civil society of the strongly repressive environments of Belarus or Uzbekistan. Kazakhstan's authoritarian structures and cultural traditions make it difficult to develop strong independent civic organizations – cooperation tends to mark state-civil society relations more than contestation, which shaped much of Eastern Europe's experience. Even in a context of relative affluence where civil society organizations are allowed some space to engage in critical activities, contestation tends to be minimized. This is only partially related to state suppression and cooptation; a political culture that views democratic processes as potentially destabilizing is also a significant factor. Kazakhstan represents a distinct Central Asian model of civil society, comparable to Russia but qualitatively different from that found in either Eastern or Western Europe, where civil society is less willing to confront the state, more cooperative with the authoritarian system, and wary of the potential for civic activism to degenerate into instability. Differentiating types of civil society is important because a key component of Western democracy assistance programmes has been providing assistance to build and strengthen civil societies. By refining our understanding of distinct civil society patterns in Central Asia, we can enhance our knowledge of political processes in this critical region, and we may improve the effectiveness of democracy assistance programmes. The study is grounded in field research, interviews, civil society workshops, survey research, and government documents.