Party systems in Latin America: institutionalization,decay, and collapse,edited by Scott Mainwaring

Although coming of age under a totalitarian regime drastically reduces the chances of acquiring democratic values or supporting democracy, factors other than the formal nature of the political regime shape political values as well. The informal structure of the political regime, which consists of rules developed in political practice and economic and human development, may shape individual values and attitudes and produce different attitudes towards democracy in different totalitarian regimes. This article focuses on the effect of early socialization on the support for democracy among citizens who have been ruled under two different non-democratic regimes. We compare the dynamics in Spain and Romania during the post-totalitarian period with the aim of identifying how coming of age operated in these two different totalitarian regimes and how each type of non-democratic regime affected the legitimacy of the new democratic rule. Using survey data from various sources (Standard Eurobarometer, Central and Eastern Eurobarometer and Candidate Countries Eurobarometer) that allow both longitudinal and cross-sectional comparisons, we decompose the social change in support for democracy over the post-totalitarian period in both countries using cross-classified fixed effects models. The analyses demonstrate the different effects of socialization on support for democracy in these two different totalitarian contexts.     

Institutional stepping stones for democracy: how and why multipartyism enhances democratic change

Scholars of electoral authoritarianism and comparative institutions have emphasized how authoritarian regimes implement multiparty elections to stabilize authoritarian rule and diffuse political opposition. Consequently, the literature has advised against the notion that multiparty elections constitute a general lever for democratization. This article presents evidence in support of a more positive understanding of multipartyism and democracy. We argue that multiparty elections create an institutional space for oppositional parties, instrumentally motivated to promote further positive democratic change. We hypothesize that multiparty regimes are (1) generally more likely to experience positive democratic change, and (2) more importantly, more likely to do so when faced by internal or external regime threats. We test these hypotheses using cross-section time-series data on 166 countries in the period 1973–2010. Our results show a general positive effect of multipartyism for democratic change, and that multiparty regimes are more likely to improve their levels of democracy when faced with demonstrations and economic crisis.     

How to understand Pakistan's hybrid regime: the importance of a multidimensional continuum

Pakistan has had a chequered democratic history but elections in 2013 marked a second turnover in power, and the first transition in Pakistan's history from one freely elected government to another. How do we best categorize (and therefore understand) political developments in Pakistan? Is it now safe to categorize it as an electoral democracy or is it still a hybrid case of democracy? Using the Pakistani case as an example, this article argues that hybrid regimes deserve consideration as a separate case (rather than as a diminished subtype of democracy or authoritarianism), but must be categorized along a multidimensional continuum to understand the dynamics of power within the political system.     

Democracy and Islam: Implications for Civilizational Conflict and the Democratic Peace

The extent to which democracy and Islam are mutually exclusive is tested empirically with implications for civilizational conflict and the democratic peace. Three measures of democracy are used: a political rights index, an index of liberal democracy, and a measure based on institutionalization. Environmental variables such as sea borders and rainfall that minimize external threat to democratic systems are found to predict better to the more rudimentary political rights index, while cultural variables, including Islam in a negative direction, are more clearly associated with liberal democracy. The measure of democratic institutionalization behaves in a manner intermediate between the two. Divergence of the structures of explanation for these measures suggests that conclusions concerning the likelihood of war between democracies can depend on the specific index of democracy employed. The absence of a significant negative association between Islam and the political rights index under controlled conditions suggests that the probability of civilizational conflict is low.     

Is democracy the only game in town? Tension between immigrants' democratic desires and authoritarian imprints

This article borrows from the literature on transitional democracies to examine levels of support for democracy and non-democratic alternatives among immigrants travelling from partly and non-democratic countries to Canada. It evaluates how immigrants who grew up under authoritarian rule come to adapt to democracy. The findings indicate that immigrants from partly and non-democratic countries experience tensions in their adaptation to democracy, expressing strong democratic desires but also manifesting what could be interpreted as lasting imprints of their socialization under authoritarian rule. Immigrants from partly and non-democratic countries exhibit strong support for democracy (they almost all believe it is a good form of government, the best one, and understand democracy in broadly similar terms as the rest of the population). Yet, if democracy is the main game in town for the immigrants, it is not the only one; immigrants from partly and non-democratic countries are significantly more likely than people socialized in a democratic political system to support other forms of governments that are non-democratic. The article thus argues for the lasting impact of authoritarianism on people's democratic outlooks despite the presence of strong democratic desires.     

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.     

In-between liberal authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism: Hong Kong’s democratization under Chinese sovereignty, 1997–2016

On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the handover, Hong Kong’s transition towards a full democracy remains unsettled. Drawing upon the contemporary theories of hybrid regimes, this article argues that manipulations adopted by electoral authoritarian governments have become increasingly common in Hong Kong today. As Hong Kong’s elections, opposition activities, and media have been increasingly put under electoral authoritarian-style manipulations, the city-state is now situated in the “political grey zone” in-between liberal authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism and its transition into a full democracy remains nowhere in sight. The case study of Hong Kong will help enrich the existing comparative literature on hybrid regimes by developing a new “in-between category” and offering an interesting case of democratization of sub-national polity.     

Caudillismo along the Nile

The “coup-volution” of 2011 removed President Mubarak but not his authoritarian regime, which is now guided by his successor, President Abd al Fattah al-Sisi. Both autocrats, there are nevertheless important differences between these two presidents and their respective regimes. Sisi’s tougher authoritarianism is analogous to the Latin American prototype of “delegative democracy”, a stalled phase of democratic institution-building in which voters delegate their authority to the president, who rules unconstrained by a balance of institutional powers. The primary feature of what in the Egyptian case might better be termed “delegative authoritarianism” is the decision-making autonomy of the president, who perceives himself as the “embodiment of the nation and the main custodian and definer of its interests”. This results in erratic, inconsistent and ineffective policymaking, which isolates the president yet more from institutions and political forces, while causing the entire polity to be suffused with a deep cynicism. Although the most probable scenario is that Sisi will continue for the foreseeable future as Egypt’s delegative dictator, as a one-man band his regime is inherently unstable and prone to coups, coup-volutions and outright revolutions.     

Political leadership and the construction of competitive authoritarian regimes in Latin America: implications and prospects for democracy

Recent developments have raised new concerns regarding the prospects of democracy in Latin America, particularly in what are often defined, although not unanimously, as cases of competitive authoritarianism, including Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. In light of their significance and diffusion on a global level, understanding how these regimes emerge is important, especially when they replace democratic or imperfectly democratic regimes such as in the cases examined in this study. What explains the emergence of competitive authoritarian regimes (CARs), particularly when the starting point is democratic or imperfectly democratic? What are the region’s democratic prospects after the emergence of various CARs in the last two decades? Through the comparative analysis of competitive authoritarian attempts in Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, I argue that the same passages and challenges required to transform a democratic regime into a CAR makes incumbents' features and strategies particularly important, especially the ability to weather potentially lethal institutional crises and limit the legitimacy costs associated with competitive authoritarian manipulations. Incumbents have proved more successful in these challenges and hence in their competitive authoritarian attempts when combining charisma and the elaboration of a democratic discourse including the diffusion of new democratic values.     

Democratic theory,the courts and the press

Powerful social forces block the transition from authoritarianism to democracy. Economic, political and social stability has not yet been achieved. The corporatist political and social structures have not been transformed to allow the vast majority to enjoy the basic necessities that ensure a life of dignity. Institutional structures of government, such as an independent judiciary, must be developed and stabilized. The rule of law and the guarantees of due process have to be consolidated and become an accepted, basic requirement of social interaction. Creating a specific kind of deliberative democracy based on the epistemic value of democratic decision making and discussion is the only way forward. This justificatory theory is more likely to allow for equal participation and rational discourse among all segments of the population. Objective information on important societal issues is a necessary prerequisite for such participation. This requires an independent press that adequately performs its democratic functions. Moreover, an independent judiciary has an indispensable role to play in this process, particularly in protecting the free flow of information to the people so that they can make informed choices on issues crucial to a democracy.     

Local actors in the driver's seat: Transatlantic democracy promotion under regime competition in the Arab world

In studies of political transition, scholars started to explore the effect of competition between foreign policies of antipodal regimes on the political trajectories of transition countries, notably between traditional Western donors such as the European Union and the United States of America and regional authoritarian powers such as Saudi Arabia. Drawing on existing accounts, this article studies the conditions under which external actors can effectively steer local elite towards democratic reforms despite illiberal regional powers’ potential counteractions. We argue that the reform-oriented political elites in the recipient country are the ultimate judges in this competition for influence. If democracy promotion is credible, they will decide in favour of democratization, but only if the expected costs and benefits of democratic engagement resist solicitation by authoritarian powers. A study of post-Arab Spring democracy promotion in Tunisia supports the pivotal role of the external donors’ credibility in times of complex donor constellations.     

Popular perceptions of political regimes in East and Southeast Asia

Political regimes in East and Southeast Asia run the full spectrum from liberal democracy through various hybrid democratic-authoritarian types and on to full-blown authoritarianism and totalitarianism. While political scientists have invested much effort and ingenuity in creating typologies of regimes to better understand the empirical diversity of political structures and processes, much less attention has been paid to what the citizens think. How do people in East and Southeast Asian countries perceive their own institutions and performance of governance? This article uses public opinion data derived from the AsiaBarometer 2006 and 2007 Surveys of 12 East and Southeast Asian countries to map what citizens actually think about their structures, processes, and outcomes of governance and compare these with the regime classifications of political scientists. The results revealed universal commitment to elections but disillusionment with political practice, positive estimations of the institutions of governance in Southeast Asia but much less enthusiasm in East Asia, and a preference for moderate opinions. There is no clear overall correlation between regime type and popular perception.     

Mapping ‘Hybrid Regimes’: Regime Types and Concepts in Comparative Politics

This article addresses the conceptual challenges involved in mapping political regimes. The first section offers a critique of regime typologies that adopt a uni-dimensional approach to differentiating between political regimes. The second section shows why a two-dimensional typology is better grounded in liberal democratic theory as well as for analytically grasping the empirical variation between political regimes and regime change. The penultimate section proposes a classificatory scheme on the basis of a clear set of defining attributes of the two constitutive dimensions of liberal democracy – electoralism and constitutionalism. Equipped with this two-dimensional classificatory device the article proceeds in the last section to propose a regime typology with four main types of regime: democratic, constitutional-oligarchic, electoral-autocratic, and authoritarian. This provides a conceptual map in which the categories and subcategories developed by the literature on hybrid regimes can be located and analytically related to each other. The last section further divides the category of democratic regimes into four subtypes: liberal, constitutional, electoral, and limited.     

Re‐inventing the rule of law: Human rights in El Salvador

Recent transitions from authoritarianism to democracy have been front‐page news. Often attention to such transitions has focused on efforts to create and sustain democratic elections and to guarantee open political competition between parties that are committed to majority rule. However, equally important in such transitions is the implementation of the rule of law. This article examines the efforts of one country, El Salvador, to re‐establish the rule of law as part of its passage to liberal democracy. The efforts to implement the Salvadoran peace accords that were signed in January 1992 provide the focus. The United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) was created to monitor compliance. One important consequence of the accords was the effort to achieve broad reform of the justice system. Salvador's progress here is evaluated both in respect of the degree of compliance with the accords, and, more importantly, in establishing an independent judiciary that will be capable of protecting human rights. Salvador's reforms are compared with other efforts to re‐establish the rule of law in some formerly authoritarian regimes.     

政治传统、宗教和殖民历史对东南亚民主政治的影响——以菲律宾和马来西亚为例

本文以菲律宾和马来西亚为例，分别讨论了政治传统、宗教和殖民历史对东南亚国家民主政治的影响。第二次世界大战后，东南亚国家虽继承了西方的民主政治形式，但文化、宗教的多样性与殖民历史对民主政治实践产生了不可忽视的影响。只有正视这些因素并善加利用，东南亚国家才能探索出一条适合本国国情的民主政治发展道路。     

Unpacking Autocracy: Political Regimes and IMF Program Participation

Why do some countries participate in IMF programs while others refuse to do so? We suggest an answer to the question by unpacking one side of the typical democracy–autocracy dichotomy. Specifically, we utilize the growing literature on the varieties of authoritarianism to develop an argument linking the different incentives and constraints that leaders in party-based, personalist, and military regimes face when considering whether to sign agreements with the IMF. Empirically, we demonstrate that distinguishing among autocracies uncovers important variations in the sensitivity of such regimes to the political costs incurred by IMF participation. Party-based autocracies, for instance, respond to both sovereignty costs and the benefits of program participation during severe economic crises. Personalist regimes, however, are not sensitive to the sovereignty costs incurred with IMF participation and thus only participate when doing so provides needed revenue during economic crises. The unique features of military juntas, by contrast, suggests that such regimes are not sensitive to either of these political costs and thus do not respond to economic crises in the same way as their autocratic counterparts.     

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.     

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.     

The New Antidemocrats

Democratization has lately received new rounds of criticism from antidemocrats on both the right and the left. As the prevalence of democracy throughout the world has surpassed that of dictatorship and other forms of undemocratic government, nostalgia for authoritarianism has blurred the realities of the depredations of dictatorship. Increasingly, the new antidemocrats suggest that the problems of democracy require nondemocratic solutions. But while all democracies will necessarily fall short of their ideal, the solution lies within democratic traditions. The challenge is to motivate future generations to improve on existing democracy, not to replace democratic structures with a system that is simpler, more comfortable, and less demanding of those who live under it.