Back to the future: the Arab uprisings and state (re)formation in the Arab world

This article contributes to debates that aim to go beyond the “democratization” and “post-democratization” paradigms to understand change and continuity in Arab politics. In tune with calls to focus on the actualities of political dynamics, the article shows that the literatures on State Formation and Contentious Politics provide useful theoretical tools to understand change/continuity in Arab politics. It does so by examining the impact of the latest Arab uprisings on state formation trajectories in Iraq and Syria. The uprisings have aggravated a process of regime erosion – which originated in post-colonial state-building attempts – by mobilizing sectarian and ethnic identities and exposing the counties to geo-political rivalries and intervention, giving rise to trans-border movements, such as ISIS. The resulting state fragmentation has obstructed democratic transition in Syria and constrained its consolidation in Iraq.     

Democratizing a Dependent State: The Case of Afghanistan

The post-Taliban democratic reforms in Afghanistan were in part a recreation of the past. Afghanistan has had six constitutions between 1923 and 1990, and most have provided for national assemblies and elections in one form or other. Yet the degree of foreign involvement in the most recent reform process was unprecedented. The heavy foreign hand contradicted the promise of national autonomy, representation, and fair process held out by the democratization agenda. By implicitly devaluing the institutions it sought to promote, the democratization process has also had potentially counterproductive effects. Moreover, while promoting democratization, Western governments simultaneously created a state so dependent on external support that it deprived the critical institution of liberal democracy – the legislature – of its meaning. The logical response of the national assembly has been to engage mostly in politics with symbolic or nuisance value. This study focuses on three areas of political reform: the structuring of the interim administration, the promulgation of a new constitution, and the establishment of the legislature.     

Adapting violence for state survival and legitimacy: the resilience and dynamism of political repression in a democratizing South Korea*

Capacity in violence and its utilization is generally understood to be a first-order condition of the state-building process. As capacity increases and a state gains supremacy over would-be competitors, the use of violence by the state is hypothesized to decline, especially in polities that have made the democratic transition. However, we here demonstrate theoretically and empirically that the conventional wisdom is inadequate. We argue that political violence ubiquitously evolves according to the changing socio-political environment and varying tasks of the state.

Using the case of South Korea, a high-capacity, consolidated democracy, as a prism for theory building and corroboration, this study chronicles the evolution of political violence from the state’s explicit mobilization of thugs to suppress opposition at the early stage of state building through its collaboration with criminal organizations for developmental projects to the manipulation of quasi-governmental organizations after democratization in the late 1980s, coeval with the traditional use of public sources of force. We specifically look at how political development, that is, democratization, has produced new demands for – and constraints on – political violence and how post-authoritarian governments have responded.     

The state-in-society approach to the study of democratization with examples from Japan

How does an undemocratic country create democratic institutions and transform its polity in such a way that democratic values and practices become integral parts of its political culture? This article uses the case of Japan to advocate for a new theoretical approach to the study of democratization. In particular, it examines how theoretical models based on the European and North American experiences have difficulty explaining the process of democratization in Japan, and argues that a state-in-society approach is better suited to explaining the democratization process' diverse cultural contexts. Taking a bottom-up view of recent developments in Japanese civil society through the close examination of two cases – one traditional organization dating from the pre-war era (neighbourhood associations) and one new-style group formed in 2000 (Association of New Elder Citizens) – this article illustrates how Japanese citizens have democratized their political culture at the grassroots. The state-in-society approach to democratization is particularly useful for the study of democratization processes in non-Western countries where the development of democracy requires not only the modification of a traditional political culture but also the development of new, indigenous, democratic ideas and practices.     

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.     

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.     

Democratization and communal politics

Understanding the complex interplay between democratization and communal politics is a crucial issue for students of democracy and political practitioners. Political liberalization can exacerbate communal politics, which can then bring setbacks to democratization, even violent conflict. As prospects of political liberalization grow in a society marked by a lack of agreement on the form of the state, communal politics will shape inter‐group relations. There is an in‐group‐out‐group dilemma. The dilemma is rooted in two, potentially mutually conflicting imperatives. Democratization requires group leaders to engage in compromise and negotiation. But they may also face an imperative to promote self‐styled conceptions of the state‐idea to suit the needs of group cohesion, especially where relations between groups become highly politicised. Two factors condition whether or not the dilemma can be resolved: the strategies of the legitimate leadership of the groups, and the ‘ideological’ landscape within the groups. The argument is applied to case studies that compare Algeria and South Africa.     

Pathways to democratization in personalist dictatorships

Personalist dictatorships make up an increasingly large proportion of the world's dictatorships. Moreover, they tend to be particularly resistant to democratization. Understanding the conditions that increase the likelihood of democratic transitions in personalist contexts, therefore, is critical for the study and practice of democratization in the contemporary era. This study argues that political party creation is a key factor. Though personalist dictators typically create parties to offset immediate threats to their power posed by the elite – and particularly the military – doing so encourages peaceful mass mobilization and a realignment of elite networks. These dynamics, in turn, enhance prospects of democratization. Using cross-national empirical tests that address the potential endogeneity of this relationship, we find support for the argument that personalist dictators who create their own political party are more likely to democratize than those who ally with a pre-existing party or rule without one.     

Democratization and War in Political Science

This article explores what political science literature has to say about the promises and perils of expanding democratic governance. International relations literature and comparative politics literature both deal with the claim that stable democracies do not fight each other. However, these two strands of literature only to a minor extent exchange research findings on the causes of war. International relations scholars are well aware of the fact that the early stages of democratization in particular may trigger conflict, and they explain that they are referring to the size of a country's power and the distribution of capabilities among the major powers, among other factors. In contrast, comparativists focus on the opening of domestic political space. In a transitional state, open political space fosters elite competition, which cannot be regulated by weak political institutions and therefore may cause civil war. They are less aware of the fact that these internal dynamics may even enhance the risk of political violence beyond territorial borders. Both of these approaches must be used to focus on the consequences of democratization on a regional scale. In ‘bad neighbourhoods’, including the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East and the Great Lakes in Africa, democratization can trigger conflict beyond state frontiers by altering the incentives and opportunities of political actors.     

Stateness problems or regime unification? Explaining obstacles to democratization in Burma/Myanmar

The fact that Myanmar is not democratic is too often taken as a given in international policy discourse without analysis as to why it has not democratized or what conditions might allow for democratization. Plausible theories to explain Burma's authoritarian politics include poor levels of economic development, colonial history, regional geopolitical factors, problems of state formation and the unification of the military. Determining which theories have the most explanatory power is important because different understandings of Burma's authoritarianism steer one toward some remedies and away from others. In this paper, I argue that problems of state formation – ‘stateness’ in one strand of the democratization literature – and ‘regime unification’ theories stand the best chance of explaining the lack of democracy in Myanmar. I examine the logic and evidence for each theory and conclude that while both explain some of the status quo, ‘stateness’ had more explanatory power before 1988 but in post-1988 Myanmar, ‘regime unification’ explains more.     

Conquering versus democratizing the state: political Islamists and fourth wave democratization in Turkey and Tunisia

What do we learn from Turkey and Tunisia regarding the relationship between political Islamism and democratization? Variables identified by current research such as autonomy, “moderation”, and cooperation with secular actors can cut both ways depending on various political-institutional conditions and prerogatives. Particularly, the article argues that preoccupation with “conquering the state from within as opposed to democratizing it” has been a key priority and intervening variable undermining the democratizing potential of the main Turkish and Tunisian political Islamic actors – primarily the AKP and Ennahda. These actors have prioritized acceptance by and ownership of their respective nation states over other goals and strategies, such as revolutionary takeover or Islamization of the state and confrontations with state elites. This has led to a relative neglect of designing and building institutions, whether for Islamic or democratic transformation. Hence, while contributing to democratization at various stages, these actors have a predisposition to adopt and regenerate, reframe and at times augment the authoritarian properties of their states. Research should ask how secular and religious actors can agree on institutions of vertical and horizontal state accountability that would help to address the past and present sources of the interest of political Islamists in conquering rather than democratizing the state.     

What is democracy? A reconceptualization of the quality of democracy

Works on the quality of democracy propose standards for evaluating politics beyond those encompassed by a minimal definition of democracy. Yet, what is the quality of democracy? This article first reconstructs and assesses current conceptualizations of the quality of democracy. Thereafter, it reconceptualizes the quality of democracy by equating it with democracy pure and simple, positing that democracy is a synthesis of political freedom and political equality, and spelling out the implications of this substantive assumption. The proposal is to broaden the concept of democracy to address two additional spheres: government decision-making – political institutions are democratic inasmuch as a majority of citizens can change the status quo – and the social environment of politics – the social context cannot turn the principles of political freedom and equality into mere formalities. Alternative specifications of democratic standards are considered and reasons for discarding them are provided.     

Globalization,democratization, and the Arab uprising: the international factor in MENA's failed democratization

What explains the almost wholly negative impact of international factors on post-uprising democratization prospects? This article compares the utility of rival “diffusionist” and neo-Gramscian political economy frames to explain this. Multiple international factors deter democratization. The failure of Western democracy promotion is rooted in the contradiction between the dominance of global finance capital and the norm of democratic equality; in the periphery, neo-liberalism is most compatible with hybrid regimes and, at best, “low intensity democracy”. In MENA, neo-liberalism generated crony capitalism incompatible with democratization; while this also sparked the uprisings, these have failed to address class inequalities. Moreover at the normative level, MENA hosts the most credible counter-hegemonic ideologies; the brief peaking of democratic ideology in the region during the early uprisings soon declined amidst regional discourse wars. Non-democrats – coercive regime remnants and radical charismatic movements – were empowered by the competitive interference of rival powers in uprising states. The collapse of many uprising states amidst a struggle for power over the region left an environment uncongenial to democratization.     

Islamism and the state after the Arab uprisings: Between people power and state power

This paper examines the trajectories of different Islamist trends in the light of the Arab uprisings. It proposes a distinction between statist and non-statist Islamism to help understand the multiplicity of interactions between Islamists and the state, particularly after 2011. It is outlined how statist Islamists (Islamist parties principally) can contribute to the stabilization and democratization of the state when their interactions with other social and political actors facilitate consensus building in national politics. By contrast when these interactions are conflictual, it has a detrimental impact on both the statist Islamists, and the possibility of democratic politics at the national level. Non statist-Islamists (from quietist salafi to armed jihadi) who prioritize the religious community over national politics are directly impacted by the interactions between statist Islamists and the state, and generally tend to benefit from the failure to build a consensus over democratic national politics. Far more than nationally-grounded statist Islamists, non-statist Islamists shape and are shaped by the regional dynamics on the Arab uprisings and the international and transnational relations between the different countries and conflict areas of the Middle East. The Arab uprisings and their aftermath reshaped pre-existing national and international dynamics of confrontation and collaboration between Islamists and the state, and between statist and non-statists Islamists, for better (Tunisia) and for worse (Egypt).     

International Recognition and Religion: A Quantitative Analysis of Kosovo’s Contested Status

Recognition from other recognized states is the key to becoming a fully fledged member state of the international system. Although many new states are quickly and universally recognized, the recognition of other aspiring states remains highly contested. In these cases of contested sovereignty, some countries but not others extend recognition. However, research on what shapes a country’s decision to recognize a claim to sovereign statehood remains relatively sparse. This article focuses on how religion shapes the incentives of states to extend or withhold recognition to aspiring states in cases of contested sovereignty. It posits two mechanisms, one at the domestic level through religious institutions and one at the international level through transnational religious affinities. The article uses new data on all state decisions regarding the international recognition of Kosovo to test these propositions. The results provide strong support for these two pathways through which religion shapes state decisions regarding international recognition.     

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.     

Exchange Rate Volatility and Democratization in Emerging Market Countries

We examine some of the consequences of financial globalization for democratization in emerging market economies by focusing on the currency markets of four Asian countries at different stages of democratic development. Using political data of various kinds—including a new events data series—and the Markov regime switching model from empirical macroeconomics, we show that in young and incipient democracies politics continuously causes changes in the probability of experiencing two different currency market equilibria: a high volatility "contagion" regime and a low volatility "fundamentals" regime. The kind of political events that affect currency market equilibration varies cross-nationally depending on the degree to which the polity of a country is democratic and its policymaking transparent. The results help us better gauge how and the extent to which democratization is compatible with financial globalization.     

Democratization in Mozambique: Trends and practices

This article explores the nature of party political competition four years after Mozambique's first democratic national elections, with particular attention being accorded to the democratization of local government. It commences with an overview of the nature of contemporary party politics in Mozambique. Secondly, the democratization of local government is reviewed. Thirdly, recent political developments are located within the context of major economic reconstruction and escalating corruption. It is concluded that whilst Mozambique does have a stable multi‐party system in the formal sense at least, the substance of genuine multi‐partyism remains elusive, given the near‐total lack of policy alternatives and the proliferation of corruption at the highest levels of political life.     

Can America Finance Freedom? Assessing U.S. Democracy Promotion via Economic Statecraft

Recent discourse on U.S. efforts to promote democracy has focused on military activities; especially the strategic and normative perils of democracy promotion at the point of bayonets. This paper explores the United States' use of economic statecraft to foster democratization, with particular attention to democracy incentive and assistance strategies. Incentive approaches attempt to promote democracy from the top-down, by leveraging aid and trade privileges to persuade authoritarian leaders to implement political reform. Assistance approaches aim to induce democratization from the inside , through funding and technical assistance to state institutions, and from the bottom-up , by providing support to civil society and elections. This study finds that while top-down incentive approaches can stimulate democratic change, this strategy tends to work only when aid and trade benefits are conditional; that is, when benefits are withheld until recipient states meet rigorous democratic benchmarks. Washington has historically eschewed democratic conditionality, however, and thus can claim very few aid-induced or trade-induced democratization events. Scant evidence exists to demonstrate that inside approaches—that is, institutional aid—possesses significant capacity to induce democracy. It is the bottom-up approach—empowering the masses to compel democratic change—that has registered the greatest number of democracy promotion successes.     

Caste and democratization in postcolonial India: an ethnographic examination of lower caste politics in Bihar

This article examines the case of lower-caste politics in the populous north Indian state of Bihar in order to show the ways in which the liberal democratic model fails to capture the realities of democracy in postcolonial India. In order to explain the rise of lower-caste politics, I examine the ways in which relationships between state institutions, caste networks and locally dominant groups shape contemporary political possibilities, necessitating a re-evaluation of the relationship between liberalism and democracy in India. With state institutions being unable to effectively enforce rights, a caste-based notion of popular sovereignty became dominant – as an idea (the lower-caste majority should rule) and as the everyday rough-and-tumble of an electoral politics that ultimately revolves around the force of numbers. It is inadequate, and actually unhelpful, to simply point out the obvious fact that the enforcement of rights is routinely and systematically undermined in practice and to call for more effective implementation. In fact, I argue that effective implementation in places such as Bihar could only be possible through a radical restructuring of local power that can only come from below, through democratic practice itself.