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.     

Informal institutions,forms of state and democracy: the Turkish deep state

Democratization studies have proven that the main difference between autocracy and democracy is, counter-intuitively, not the basic regime structure, but rather, the function and validity of democratic formal institutions defined as rules and norms.1 For the institutionalist turn in democratization studies, see O'Donnell, ‘Delegative Democracy’; O'Donnell, ‘Another Institutionalization’; O'Donnell, ‘Polyarchies’; Lauth, ‘Informal Institutions’; Merkel and Croissant, ‘Formale und informale Institutionen’; Weyland, ‘Limitations’; Helmke and Levitsky, Informal Institutions. View all notes In ‘defective democracies’,2 Merkel, ‘Embedded and Defective’. View all notes or in the grey zone between authoritarian regimes and consolidated democracies, formal institutions disguise specific informal institutions which are usually ‘the actual rules that are being followed’.3 O'Donnell, ‘Illusions About Consolidation’, 10. View all notes Moreover, scholars have investigated the issue of stateness: ‘without a state, no modern democracy is possible’.4 Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 17. View all notes This article sheds light on this grey zone, particularly, on the type of state whose coercive state apparatus is autonomous. Its autonomy results primarily from the interplay between formal and informal institutions in post-transitional settings where ‘perverse institutionalization’5 Valenzuela, ‘Democratic Consolidation’, 62. View all notes creates and fosters undemocratic informal rules and/or enshrines them as formal codes. If the military autonomy reaches a threshold ranging from high to very high, constitutional institutions become Janus-faced and can enforce a sui generis repertoire of undemocratic informal institutions. Thus, the state exerts formal and informal ‘domination’,6 Weber, Economy and Society. View all notes Herrschaft in a Weberian sense. This modality of dual domination is what I call ‘deep state’.     

Bringing direct democracy back in: toward a three-dimensional measure of democracy

Most procedural definitions and measurements of democracy are missing one crucial component: direct popular decision-making. This is an important gap that does not allow users of data to ascertain some important variation among democracies. Thus, I propose a new measure that is strongly anchored in a procedural definition of democracy but includes this missing dimension. The proposed measure is well rooted in the literature and introduces a dimension whereby citizens may become the masters of their political fate at any time and without the consent of elected authorities, while avoiding the inclusion of extraneous attributes that are not highlighted in democratic theory. Tests of the validity of the new indicator, using Latin American cases, show that there is enough room for its inclusion without the typical collinearity problems this literature faces. This indicator is not only sound, but it is empirically appealing as it performs better than others when testing relevant hypotheses.     

The liberal in liberal democracy

This article argues that much of the work on democratization and democratic consolidation is obscured by a conceptual fog, when at the very least some of this confusion could be ameliorated by parsing out components that are obviously liberal in nature. An admission of the importance of liberalization and liberal consolidation as distinctly different in form and measurement from democratization and democratic consolidation are the first steps to better research on the varieties of causation that constitute and propel the dissolution of more authoritarian regimes towards more liberal democratic regimes. Acknowledging that the liberal in liberal democracy is unpopular for some, and that liberal democracy does not necessarily mean American liberal democracy, go a long way to freeing these terms from ethnocentric misconceptions, as well as cementing analytical clarification. Though all modern democracies have both liberal and democratic components, democratic consolidation does not guarantee liberal consolidation.     

Negotiating normative premises in democracy promotion: Venezuela and the Inter-American Democratic Charter

ABSTRACT

This article analyses negotiations on democracy promotion by looking at the case of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. It argues that Venezuela contested the concept of representative democracy during the Charter negotiations, advancing the notion of “participatory and protagonist democracy” and that, even if it was unsuccessful in its demands, the country contributed to deepening the debate on the concept of democracy, on which there is far from worldwide consensus. The article suggests that the main drivers of the negotiation process and the final agreement were domestic political changes in Venezuela, specific features of the negotiations, and the structural position of Venezuela in the field of democracy promotion in the global and regional contexts, which were, at the time, favourable to a compromising attitude to conclusion of the Charter, even if not to the concept of democracy.     

Assessing democracy from below: A framework and indonesian pilot study

The emerging crisis of both elitist and popular strategies of democratization calls for assessments of the problems and options in such a way that different arguments may be put to the test while facilitating debate on improved agendas. This article first discusses the development of a framework for such assessments in the context of the most populous of the ‘third wave democracies’, Indonesia. The best audit of institutional performance, that of Beetham, is developed further by adding the scope of the institutions and the will and capacity of the local actors to improve and use them. This is followed by a presentation of the salient results from a thus designed survey comprising 330 questions to about 800 experienced democracy workers in all 32 provinces. Indonesia's actually existing democracy is surprisingly liberal and accepted as ‘the only game in town’. It suffers, however, from defunct instruments to really facilitate political equality and popular control of public affairs. This is due to monopolization of most rights and institutions by the establishment and the political marginalization of the democratic agents of change. The problems, however, are not all ‘structurally inevitable’. The article concludes by specifying the potential for improvements.     

Popular understanding of democracy in contemporary China

By taking the official state ideology into consideration, this article seeks to contribute to the study of public opinion of democracy under non-democratic regimes by analysing both qualitative and quantitative evidence collected in China. An examination of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s discourse on democracy reveals that the CCP endorses popular sovereignty and political participation while denying political contestation. Meanwhile, the concept of democracy can have three distinctive meanings among ordinary Chinese: democracy as freedom, democracy as political participation to ensure government accountability, and democracy as good socio-economic performance. Survey data show that the majority of informed Chinese respondents treat democracy as political participation to ensure government accountability, which indicates that Chinese understanding of democracy has reached to a certain degree of consensus that is closer to universally-shared idea of democracy rather than being culturally distinctive.     

Citizen participation and democracy in the Netherlands

Although citizen participation is regarded widely as vital to democracy, some wariness may also be observed towards it in cases where democracy is equated with representative democracy. This article investigates the dominant view of the Dutch political–administrative and academic elites on the meaning of participation with respect to the quality of democracy. The analysis shows that various forms of participation that might improve the quality of democracy have been discussed in recent years, without, however, subjecting either the existing political institutions or the traditional hierarchical approach to policymaking to any form of critical review. Citizen participation is seen mainly as an instrument to strengthen and support the way representative democracy now works. Although citizen participation is thought to encompass more than merely voting in elections, participation is not seen as an essential feature of democracy, but at best, as an instrument to improve the current functioning of representative democracy.     

Political and ideological aspects in the measurement of democracy: the Freedom House case

While several studies have dealt with methodological aspects of measuring democracy, little attention has been devoted to the political and ideological issues that affect the construction and structure of these measuring instruments. The aim of this study is twofold: in analysing the cultural and economic dimensions of the Freedom House (FH) organization, it seeks to delineate the political background of FH, thus underlining its neoconservative bias. Secondly, by focusing on the changes over time in the checklists used by FH to measure democracy, this study aims to analyse to what extent these changes are ideologically driven, in particular, to what are they linked to the neoliberal paradigm. Indeed, the hypothesis is that the construction of FH's scales has been affected by the neoliberal climate in which they were conceived. In the first part, the work reconstructs the academic debate about FH's scales and the historical and political context which brought to the affirmation of neoliberal democracy. It also provides a discussion regarding the importance of measurement as a political tool. In the second part, the study provides an analysis of FH through the reconstruction of its political-ideological profile, beginning with the formation of FH to its current internal culture. The third part provides an analysis of the checklists used by FH for measuring democracy. Our findings show that because of the changes in methodology and the strict interconnection between methodological and political aspects, FH data do not offer an unbroken and politically neutral time series, such that their use for cross-time analyses both for research and policy is questionable.     

State of the world 2018: democracy facing global challenges*

This article analyses the state of democracy in the world in 2018, and recent developments building on the 2019 release of the V-Dem dataset. First, the trend of autocratization continues and 24 countries are now affected by what is established as a “third wave of autocratization”. Second, despite the global challenge of gradual autocratization, democratic regimes prevail in a majority of countries in the world (99 countries, 55%) in 2018. Thus, the state of the world is unmistakably more democratic compared to any point during the last century. At the same time, the number of electoral authoritarian regimes had increased to 55, or 31% of all countries. Third, the autocratization wave is disproportionally affecting democratic countries in Europe and the Americas, but also India’s large population. Fourth, freedom of expression and the media, and the rule of law are the areas under attack in most countries undergoing autocratization, but toxic polarization of the public sphere is a threat to democracy spreading across regimes. Finally, we present the first model to predict autocratization (“adverse regime transitions”) pointing to the top-10 most at-risk countries in the world.     

Why Hungary and Poland differed in 1989: The role of medium-term frames in explaining the outcomes of democratic transition

This article has two goals. First, it seeks to enhance our understanding of the factors underlying the divergent outcomes of the round-table negotiations that accompanied transition from communism in Hungary and Poland. It argues that existing explanations emphasizing aspects of the immediate negotiating context should be supplemented by a medium-term perspective focusing on the frames through which actors conceived the options available. The second goal is to argue for an understanding of democratization as the outcome of complex, contingent and prolonged processes of interaction among actors and between actors and context. This does not imply that parsimonious modelling is not useful in democratization studies. But to understand democratization processes fully, modelling approaches need to be combined with more configurative study of historical processes.     

Local participatory innovations and experts as political entrepreneurs: The case of China's democracy consultants

This study is concerned with understanding the dynamic behind participatory innovations in China. The case of China provides a contrast to the literature on participatory innovations in democracies. While participatory innovations in democratic countries are seen as a way to deepen and improve democracy, in China these innovations are to some extent developed in order to provide an alternative to electoral democracy. In this article I introduce the concept democracy consultant to describe expert political entrepreneurs involved in the development of participatory innovations. Research on local participatory innovation in China is abundant but the role that experts play in this process has previously not been analysed. Based on in-depth interviews with democracy consultants and local officials, the study finds that democracy consultants frequently act as bridges between central and local levels of government by providing expertise, information, legitimacy, and connections. This is especially true in localities where local leaders want to gain the attention of the central level but lack the required expertise and connections.     

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.     

Explaining mass support for democracy in Hong Kong

This article aims to identify the main causal factors that underlie the overall levels of mass support for democracy in Hong Kong in the light of two approaches of comparative politics. Using a common questionnaire in 2003, 2005, and 2008, analyses of their results reveal a more or less stable level of support by Hongkongers for democracy. Viewed from the perspective of a mass values approach, post-materialism and respect for authority are found to be consistently statistically significant factors in explaining the support across the three years. The future prospects for Hong Kong will thus in part rest on the future trends of post-materialism and respect for authority. Viewed from the perspective of a perceived performance approach, both perceived economic and political performance are found to have consistently exerted a causal effect on mass support for democracy. Thus, any attempt to suppress the popular demand for democracy by offering only economic sweeteners will not, it is argued, be enough. Also, the democrats’ ability to shape the public's perception of the performance of democracy is pivotal to raising mass support. However, it is shown here that the lack of relatively strong support among younger and more educated people in Hong Kong casts a pall over the prospects for Hong Kong's democratic development. Finally, the theoretical implications of the theory of post-materialism and the Asian values debate are discussed.     

A critique of quantitative measures of the degree of democracy in Israel

The question addressed in this study is: ‘How accurate and meaningful are quantitative measures of the degree of democracy in Israel?’ With the increasing use of such measures in studies of democracy, an answer to this question becomes increasingly important. The Freedom House and Polity IV measures of democracy in Israel contend that there is a very high level of democracy, but their characterization is contradicted sharply by the views of many scholars. In seeking to account for this contradiction, we will assess the accuracy and meaningfulness of the two quantitative measures. We find that both empirical and conceptual problems affect the utility of the measures. Empirical inaccuracies are suggested by three findings: the role in Israel's democracy of the largest minority group, the Israeli Arabs, is ignored or substantially discounted; the discrepancies between the two indices suggest that at least one of them is not capturing empirical reality accurately; and neither index seems very sensitive to democracy-related events in the country. The degree to which these empirical findings are indicators of inaccuracies is dependent upon the conceptualization of democracy. Conceptually, the indices differ from each other and from the concepts used by many others who examine Israeli democracy. Two conclusions are reached: the indices measure imperfectly what they call Israeli ‘democracy’. Furthermore, a prima facie look at the scores characterizing democracy in other countries suggests that the ‘democracy’ they measure in Israel is not the same as the ‘democracy’ they measure elsewhere. The implications are several: on the academic side, the accuracy of general knowledge developed using these measures becomes questionable. On the practical side, the indices contribute little to knowledge that may be applied to overcoming the complex problems democracy in Israel is facing or the building of democracy in other countries of the Middle East. Thus, their accuracy and meaningfulness is limited.     

An externally constrained hybrid regime: Hungary in the European Union

The paper focuses on the unique, role model characteristics of the Hungarian hybrid regime, the Hungarian political system’s new incarnation forged in the past years’ democratic backsliding process. Following the short review of the main hybrid regime literature and the key analyses putting the democratic quality of the Hungarian political system under the microscope, the paper argues that Hungary’s European Union (EU) membership, the competencies of EU institutions, and the scope of EU law have played a crucial role in the development of the system’s unique characteristics. Based on this argument, the paper qualifies Hungary as an “externally constrained hybrid regime”. However, the EU does not only fulfil system constraining functions regarding the Hungarian regime, but performs system support and system legitimation functions as well. Ultimately, the changing scope of these functions, determined by the European integration’s internal dynamics, influences first and foremost the Hungarian power elite’s strategic considerations about the country’s future EU membership.     

Engendering local democracy: The impact of quotas for women in India's panchayats

In 1992, India's Parliament enacted two constitutional amendments that sought to democratize local governance and engender it through quota-based reservations for women. This article asks whether participation in these institutions has enabled women to articulate and advance their interests. To evaluate this, the article deploys the distinction in feminist literature between strategic and practical gender interests. Through a survey of a wide range of studies conducted in different parts of India it points to the constraints, both of institutional design as well as of social inequalities of gender and caste, that inhibit a fuller and more effective participation by women. There is nevertheless evidence to suggest that the quotas have enabled women to address their practical gender needs and interests, even if the articulation and realization of strategic interests is moving at a somewhat slower pace.     

Military extrication and temporary democracy: the case of Pakistan

Pakistan's 1988 transition to democracy defies most of the conventional wisdom on democratization as well as the bulk of the literature on democratic transitions. This peculiar case can be understood as a case of ‘temporary democracy’, in which democracy emerges as a short-term outcome that is not likely to be sustained. Pakistan's military leaders chose to democratize because of the high short-term costs of repression coupled with the low long-term costs of allowing democracy. The authoritarian elite agreed to allow democratization knowing that the prospects of democratic consolidation were dim. In this sense, the same factors that made the consolidation of Pakistan's democracy unlikely made the transition possible.     

Defending democracy with international law: preventing coup attempts with democracy clauses

In recent decades many regional inter-governmental organizations have adopted agreements committing all member states to maintain democratic governments, and specifying punishments to be levied against member states that revert to authoritarianism. These treaties have a surprisingly high enforcement rate – nearly all states subject to them that have experienced governmental succession by coup have been suspended by the relevant IGO(s). However, relatively little is known about whether these treaties are deterring coups. This article offers an original theory of how these international agreements could deter coups d’état, focusing on the way that a predictably adverse international reaction complicates the incentives of potential coup participants. An analysis of the likelihood of coups for the period of 1991–2008 shows that states subject to democracy were on average less likely to experience coups, but that this finding was not statistically significant in most models. However, when restricting the analysis to democracies, middle-income states with democracy clauses were significantly less likely to experience coup attempts. Moreover, the African democracy regime appears to be particularly effective, significantly reducing the likelihood of coup attempts for middle-income states regardless of regime type.