Truth commissions,trials-or nothing? Policy options in democratic transitions

Gross human rights violations have constituted a hotly contested national issue in many recent transitions from authoritarianism to democracy. This article analyses how newly elected democratic governments have dealt with violations committed by officials of previous authoritarian regimes. Empirical evidence from around 30 (mainly) Latin American and African countries undergoing democratic transition after the mid-1970s shows that the government's choice of human rights policy largely depends on the relative strength of the public's demand for truth and justice and the outgoing regime's demand for amnesty and impunity. Policy choice will tend towards trials as the outgoing regime becomes weaker and away from trials as the outgoing regime becomes stronger. Truth commissions are the most likely outcome when the relative strength of the conflicting demands is roughly equal. Where human rights policy deviates from predictions, the government always does less than expected. These arguments hold true both at the time of regime change and during the consolidation phase, as power dynamics often change over time.     

Political Democracy: Conceptual and Measurement Traps

The movement toward democratic political systems in many nations in the 1980s has renewed interest in measurement of political democracy. This paper calls attention to the problems that surround both the definition and measurement of political democracy. The main conceptual problems are the failure to develop an adequate theoretical definition of this concept, the confounding of the concept with others, and treating democracy as a binary rather than a continuous concept. Four problems of measurement are: invalid indicators, subjective indicators, ordinal or dichotomous measures, and the failure to test reliability or validity. The paper offers several suggestions to improve measurement as well as a warning about the danger of repeating past errors. Kenneth A. Bollen is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His major research interests are in international development and statistics. He is the author ofStructural Equations with Latent Variables (1989), published in John Wiley's Series in Probability and Mathematical Statistics.     

Cultural and economic prerequisites of democracy: Reassessing recent evidence

The purpose of this article is to reassess two influential theories of democratic development: the theory of democratic culture and the theory of economic development. The leading predecessors in each domain—Ronald Inglehart and Adam Przeworski—are the prime targets of analysis. We take issue with recent evidence presented by these authors on three grounds: the evidence (1) confuses “basic” criteria of democracy with possible “quality” criteria (Inglehart); (2) conceptualizes democracy in dichotomous rather than continuous terms (Przeworski); and (3) fails to account for endogeneity and contingent effects (Inglehart). In correcting for these shortcomings, we present striking results. In the case of democratic culture, the theory lacks support; neither overt support for democracy nor “self-expression values” affect democratic development. In the case of economic development, earlier findings must be refined. Although the largest impact of modernization is found among more democratized countries, we also find an effect among “semi-democracies.” Axel Hadenius is professor of political science at Uppsala University in Sweden. He is the author ofDemocracy and Development (Cambridge University Press, 1992) andInstitutions and Democratic Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2001). Jan Teorell is associated professor of political science at Uppsala University. His articles on intra-party democracy, social capital, and political participation appear in international journals.     

Myanmar’s way to democracy and the limits of the 2015 elections

The general election held on 8 November 2015 marked a significant turning point in Myanmar’s ongoing regime transition. Under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy (NLD) overwhelmingly dominated the polls. Although the huge electoral mandate for the NLD suggests that further political liberalization in Myanmar is likely, the country is not yet undergoing a genuine democratization. Under the current constitutional framework, the military will remain a key actor within the government, thus a new power-sharing arrangement between the NLD and the military is inevitable. This article examines how Myanmar has transformed from a military regime into the military’s version of a ‘disciplined democracy’ and argues that the 2015 general election was not a precursor to a democratic government per se, but rather a re-affirmation of the military’s version of democracy, in which popularly elected civilian political parties are allowed to co-govern the country with the military.     

Unlikely candidates for democracy: The role of structural context in democratic consolidation

Many contributors to the new literature on democratic consolidation overemphasize the role of political leadership, strategic choices about basic institutional arrangements or economic policy, and other contingent process variables. Their focus on political crafting has encounraged an undue optimism about the possibility of consolidating democracies in unfavorable structural contexts. This article critiques the current literature and asserts the primary importance of structural context in democratic consolidation. The powerful influence of structural context is illustrated by using just two structural variables, economic development level and prior authoritarian regime type, to indicate a group of thirty-eight countries in which democracy has failed to consolidate during the third wave of democratization (1974-present) and is very unlikely to do so in the near or medium-term future. Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. J. Mark Ruhl is Gleen and Mary Todd Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. He has written extensively on Latin American politics and has specialized in the cases of Colombia and Honduras. Recent publications by Professor Ruhl includeParty Politics and Elections in Latin America (Westview, 1989), coauthored with R.H. McDonald of Syracuse University, and “Redefining Civil-Military Relations in Honduras”Journal of Intermerican Studies and World Affairs (Spring 1996).     

Development strategy and regime type: Why doesn’t democracy matter?

The development strategy literature argues that autonomous bureaucrats in authoritarian Asian NICs followed successful export-led growth strategies while Latin American policymakers were pressured by mobilized sectors to maintain doomed import substitution industrialization. What is more, this ISI strategy made the consolidation of democracy impossible. However, my research on Venezuela indicates that ISI and democracy can be made compatible—the democratic state was penetrated by business and labor, those avenues for penetration were protected from electoral politics, and the relative participation of business and labor remained fluid. How are recently established democracies being made compatible with a new market-oriented development strategy? Evidence from East Asia and Latin America indicates that the transition to market-oriented economies and the institutionalization of participation by key sectors have not gone together. Policymakers are trying to isolate bureaucrats from public pressure and centralize power away from bodies vulnerable to electoral oversight. The “deinstitutionalization” of democratic politics may make the relationship between regime type and development strategy unstable.     

Democratic states and authoritarian firewalls: America as a black knight in the uprising in Bahrain

Although history is replete with democracies supporting autocracies, democratic black knights have not been approached in a systematic manner. This article examines American rhetoric and policy towards the 2011 uprising and subsequent crackdown in Bahrain in order to further our understanding of how and why democratic states act to reinforce authoritarian firewalls. It finds that the USA was instrumental in providing diplomatic and political cover to the Bahraini government and ensuring that the regime paid no substantive costs for its counter-democracy actions. This case suggests that democratic states may be more effective at providing normative support for non-democratic regimes than their authoritarian counterparts and that democracies may have more in common with autocracies when choosing to act as a black knight than initially thought. Avenues for future research are identified.     

International diffusion and postcommunist electoral revolutions

Over the past decade, a number of elections in postcommunist regimes perched between democracy and dictatorship have led to the triumph of liberal oppositions over illiberal incumbents or their anointed successors. The international diffusion of these electoral revolutions reflects the interaction among five factors: the long term development of civil society, expanded opportunities for democratic political change, the rise of collaborative networks among international democracy promoters, regional exporters of democracy and local oppositions, and, finally, careful application of an electoral approach to regime transition. The cross-national diffusion of the electoral model in this region, however, may have run its course, largely because of less supportive local and international conditions.     

The 2011 presidential election in Peru: a thorny moral and political dilemma

The 2011 presidential elections in Peru was the third one held in the post-Fujimori era. A perusal of the campaign's political dynamics reveals pervasive anti-democratic behaviours, attitudes and rhetoric on the part of key political actors, showcasing the degree to which Peru remains an unconsolidated, precarious democracy. The second round presented a moral and political dilemma insofar as two unsavoury candidates of highly dubious democratic credentials vied for the presidency: Ollanta Humala, a former army lieutenant burdened by accusations of human rights violations who, additionally, led or supported two military uprisings; and Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of a convicted and jailed dictator who unabashedly touted the legacy of her father's authoritarian regime and surrounded herself with tainted fujimoristas. The paradox of this undesirable electoral outcome, which can be read as a popular rebuke of the status quo, is that it took place in the Latin American country posting the fastest economic growth over the past decade.     

The Political Regimes Project

The Political Regimes Project is a comprehensive effort to study the determinants and comparative performance of political regimes. The main goal of the project is to assemble and analyze a large cross-national dataset containing indicators of the three basic political regime types (democracy, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism) and a variety of politcal regime subtypes (e.g., parliamentary democracy, bureaucratic authoritarianism). This dataset will contain yearly measures of political regime type and subtype for 117 major countries from 1946 (or a country's first full year of independence) through 1988. The author plans to use this dataset as the basis for a comprehensive study of the determinants and performance of political regimes, and will eventually make the dataset available to other researchers. The comprehensive scope of the Political Regimes Database, its time series properties, and the elaborate typology of regimes that it is based upon will enable researchers to examine political regimes in novel ways that may yield valuable new insights. Mark J. Gasiorowski is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. He has published recent articles inComparative Political Studies International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, and other journals, and is the author of a forthcoming book on U.S. foreign policy toward Iran.     

Democracy and Development in a Globalized World: Thinking About Latin America from Within

The choice among paths that countries should follow has been a staple of political debates in Latin America and, over the past 40 years, Fernando Cardoso has brought his analysis to bear on these debates. This article summarizes and then assesses Cardoso’s argument about the choice of paths faced by Latin American countries, the consequences for democracy and development of following different paths, and the political position that is supported by this analysis of choices and their consequences. Though Cardoso explicitly supports the path of globalized social democracy over an anti-globalization option in the current period, I suggest that the current state of knowledge does not offer unequivocal support for the argument that choosing to follow the path of globalized social democracy—or that of anti-globalization—is the best political option for all countries in Latin America. Different countries might very well be doing what is best for them, given their circumstances, by following different paths.     

Is Mexican democracy consolidated?

In the wake of Mexico's electoral watershed of 2 July 2000, many scholars are willing to classify the country as an electoral democracy, yet debate persists over whether Mexican democracy is consolidated. This article seeks to advance this debate by clarifying the meaning of the term democratic ‘consolidation’ and how it should be operationalised. It argues that the concept should refer exclusively to a regime with a low probability of democratic breakdown. This avoids the conceptual confusion created by viewing consolidation as any change that improves the quality of democracy. In terms of measuring consolidation, it maintains the importance of placing greater weight on the proximate cause of regime instability, anti‐democratic behaviour, and discounting more remote causes of democratic breakdown, including economic performance, institution building, and attitudinal support. Based on this understanding, the article explains why Mexican democracy is fully consolidated.     

Explaining Ethnic Autonomy Regimes in Latin America

Through a systematic examination of nine cases, the author identifies factors that enabled indigenous movements in five Latin American countries to secure formal recognition of politico-territorial autonomy regimes. All nine cases occurred within the framework of a larger regime bargain—either (1) peace talks intended to end armed struggle when the regime faced a serious challenge to maintain political order or territorial control, or (2) a severe crisis of legitimacy and governability that forced political elites to renegotiate fundamental regime structures via the process of constitutional reform. In the five successful cases, changes in the political opportunity structure occurred that favored indigenous autonomy claimants. These changes were the opening of access to decision-making spheres and the emergence of an influential ally. Donna Lee Van Cott is assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is author ofThe Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics of Diversity in Latin America and editor ofIndigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin America.     

Ideals Without Institutions: Understandings of Democracy and Democratic Participation Among Ecuadorian Youth

Many scholars of democratization have identified citizen support for democracy as an important determinant of democratic consolidation and deepening. Fewer have explored in depth what everyday citizens actually understand democracy to mean. If mass values shape democratic prospects, what specific notion of “democracy” are the masses inclined to support? This study addresses this question through focus groups conducted with 186 young people in Ecuador, a country that has epitomized challenges of democratic discontent and instability in Latin America. As compared to the dominant survey-based literature, interactive focus group conversations offer a more complex and complete picture of youth democratic perspectives, thus sharpening our analysis of the link between citizen attitudes and democratic performance. Findings have relevance for contemporary debates about “authoritarian drift” in the region, showing youth as strongly invested in democratic freedoms, though highly skeptical of the institutions that allegedly guarantee them. More broadly, the analysis provides a window into how youth conceive of and practice democracy in contexts of unstable democratization.     

Multiple democracies: political cultures and democratic variety in post-enlargement Europe

Democratization studies endorses a liberal view of democracy and political culture. Insufficient notice is taken of alternative models of democracy. I argue that a ‘multiple democracies’ approach that takes potential variety in democratic political cultures into account has three advantages over the conventional approach: it is sensitive to the historical and contextual nature of democratic regimes, it takes a dual imaginary into account, and it is able to conceptualize the emergence of innovative forms of political culture. Instead of a ‘model approach’, I suggest a multiple democracies approach that identifies political cultures by means of available patterns of cultural repertoires or ethics of democracy.     

Economic policy elites and democratization

Is the authoritarian potential of policy elites a mortal threat to the consolidation of democracy in Latin America? This article suggests that in the context of democratic transitions, significant variations may exist in the performance of technocratic roles. In most countries in the region, elected governments faced the crisis of the 1980s by retaining markedly technocratic and exclusionary styles of policy-making. In Chile, a highly technocratic form of authoritarianism was succeeded by a novel pattern of pragmatic cooperation between technical and political elites. Democratic institutions were reestablished while a strong economic team enforced coherence and continuity in economic policy. Historical and institutional factors are used to show that Chile may now be nearer the democratic pole than other “hybrid” democratic-authoritarian regimes in the region.     

Dissecting the Attitudes of Political Science Students Towards Democracy and the 2004 Elections in Indonesia

Students’ attitudes towards Indonesia's transition from an authoritarian era to democracy varied from strong support for the democratic transition to nostalgia for the authoritarian era's strong leadership and economic prosperity. A sample of 317 students from three Indonesian universities was asked to rate the importance of political, economic, legal and social democratic principles. In addition to concerns about corruption, economic decline and security, students differed significantly centring on the importance of legitimate elections, representation, tolerance, accountability, human rights and gender equality. The majority of students were pessimistic about the elections; paradoxically some students optimistic about the general elections rated democratic principles the least important. After discussing the implications, political attitudes about democracy and elections were related to cognitive consistency and dissonance theory.     

Long Live Democracy: The Determinants of Political Instability in Latin America

We investigate the underlying causes of political instability in a panel of 18 Latin American countries from 1971–2000. We test whether regime type, regime durability, factionalism, income inequality, ethnic diversity, ethnic discrimination, regional spillover effects, urban growth and macroeconomic variables matter for instability. We find several important results: (1) democracy has a significant negative effect on instability that is robust to several alternative specifications; (2) factionalised political systems experience higher instability; (3) income inequality, ethnic fractionalisation, and urban growth have important nonlinear effects on instability; and (4) of the macroeconomic variables we study, only openness to trade has a significant negative effect on instability.     

Great expectations: the effect of democratic ideals on political trust in European democracies

While in the older literature, low levels of political trust were routinely interpreted as a lack of support for democracy, more recently authors have claimed that the value pattern of critical citizens is a hallmark for a mature and stable democratic system. In this paper we assess the empirical validity of this claim, by relying on the relative deprivation literature highlighting the relation between expectation and frustration. The 2012 wave of the European Social Survey included an extensive battery measuring democratic ideals, and using latent class analysis we identify a group with high ideals on how a democracy should function. Multilevel regression analysis shows that strong democratic ideals are associated with lower levels of political trust, and most strongly so in countries with low quality of government. We close with observations on how rising democratic ideals could be a cause for the occurrence of a new group of ‘critical citizens’.     

Minimal democratic audit of Islamic and other identitarian regimes

Empirical evidence overwhelmingly shows that democracy in Muslim societies is poorly institutionalized. Many scholars of democratization studies critique that the methodology of Western institutions that audit democracy and freedoms worldwide employs normative metrics which are insensitive to cultural particularisms and thus biased. This paper presents a minimal framework for democratic audit of electoral Islamic regimes that while being normative, answers to this criticism. It is also shown to be in the self-interest of modernizing elites in such regimes. This framework is premised on the transference of the burden of legitimacy from ‘majority consent’ to ‘minority concern’ by basing itself on the substantive ‘political equality’ proviso of Dahl. This is achieved without constraining the democratic capacity of the majority. Structured as a guarantee of rights and two guarantees of justice in a system of fairness, the framework can be used for democratic audit of a much larger set of electoral regimes.