Democracy and democratisation

What is Democracy

• democracy, “the will of the majority is supreme” - Aristotle

• “government of the people, by the people, for the people” - Abraham Lincoln 1863

• Procedural democracy

  • Karl Popper - “the ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. that is democracy”

    • not concerned with anything substantive, other than the holistic opportunity for people to vote a government out of office

  • Robert Dahl - idea of ‘Polyarchy’ (form of government where power is invested in multiple people), believes it has the following key conditions that ensure 1. the inclusion of different voices in deciding what happens, and 2. competition for power

    • freedom of association - eg, people coming together in political parties

    • freedom of expression and information - access to free media

    • universal suffrage - everyone can vote

    • right to stand as candidates

    • free and fair elections

• Substantive democracy

  • Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub and Limongi - engage in a large data collection to measure democracy to see what its causes and consequences are.

  • believe that a country is either democratic or non-democratic (no middle ground), use the following conditions to define whether a country is considered a democracy

  • the chief executive is elected

  • more than one party competing in elections

  • the legislature is elections

  • an alternation in power under identical electoral rules has taken place - forces countries to only be counted as democracies if they have a turnover of power - EG: UK general election 2024 tory to labour

  • Larry Diamond

    • free and fair elections

    • active participation of people

    • protection of human rights

    • rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens

Measuring democracy

• official stats, expert coders, citizens

• Polity V project - Expert codes

  • ‘polity score’ (-10 to +10)

  • scheme consists of six component measures that record key qualities of executive recruitment, constraints on executive authority and political competition

  • if a country scores between -10 to -6, it is defined as an autocracy, -5 to +5 it is defined as anocracy (hybrid regime, electoral autocracy etc), +6 to +10 is seen as a democracy

  • advantage of this is they can go back in time to see how countries have changed

    • have shown overtime majority of countries move towards becoming democracies, and sometimes shifting back to anocracies

• V-Dem - Expert codes

  • four fold differentiation - closed autocracy, electoral autocracy, electoral democracy, liberal democracy

  • grey zone exists, where there is a dispute between electoral autocracy and democracies

    • EG: Zambia, prior to 2021 election, clearly autocratising and then after election it arguably moved back to a electoral democracy because autocrat was voted out of power

  • analytically, we want to be sure of what category to place a country in, if we mislabel, all attempts to explain will fall apart

  • 1800s, mainly closed autocracies

  • electoral autocracies become more prominent in late 1800s, but drop during both world wars, then rose again late 1900s, early 2000s

  • electoral democracies and liberal democracies saw a rise in late 1900s beginning of 2000s, and have been rising since

    • this pattern is regarded as waves of democratisation - Huntington

Explaining democracy

• Stages of democratisation

  • Liberalisation: initiation of the reform sequence

  • Transition: arrangements that are made for a new system of government

  • Consolidation: widespread acceptance of the new system

  • Deepening: Democracy evolves from the superficial to the substantial

    • each of the stages may have different explanations

• Economic theories

• Seymour M. Lipset - “democracy is related to the state of economic development. The more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy

  • clear emphasis on economic development, and the size of a middle class that can manage expectations whilst exercise some type of accountability towards an elite group

• modernisation theory - as countries become wealthier, the economy transforms with the dominance of the large industry and service sector

  • modern society, higher education levels and larger urban middle classes

  • can use these theories to create a hypotheses

  • Hypotheses 1: (wealth correlates with democracy), democracy is more common in rich countries

    • Przeworski et al - commonality between the raising GDP, and the decreasing likelihood of dictatorships but the rise of democracies

  • Hypotheses 2: (democratic survival), transitions to dictatorship become less likely as wealth increases - reversal of democracy

    • Prezeworski et al - the wealthier a country is, the more likely it is to be a democracy; “once a country is sufficiently wealth, with per-capita of more than $6,000 a year, democracy is certain to survive” (1963)

• Cultural theories

• Almond and Verba - partook in cross national surveys, found certain countries had more of a civic culture (trust between others, and the predisposition to participate) and they were therefore more likely to be democratic

• Robert Putnam - “some countries are blessed with vibrant networks and norms of civic engagement, while others are cursed with vertically structured politics… and a culture of distrust”, believed this differences play a key role in explaining institutional success

  • found this to be true of north and south Italy - democracy worked in the north, due to more civic engagement, whereas in the south, there was higher chance of dictatorship

• Hypotheses 1: (classic cultural theory), democracy is more common in some cultures, which support democratic values; eg. individual liberty, freedom of expression, equality - democracy is based on the dominant culture of a country

  • Polity IV - in 2010, Christian countries have on average have better polity scores (6+), meaning more likely to foster democracy

    • Critique of this hypotheses is the question of why have some countries democratised despite their confucianist culture (eg. South Korea), and others not democratised despite christianity being the dominant religion

• Hypotheses 2: (cultural modernisation theory), combination of cultural and modernisation theory, explaining that economic development does not directly cause democracy, but it does lead to cultural change which in turn leads to democracy

  • this is due to the fact that when people have more material goods, they are less focused on survival and can focus more on self expression and therefore participate in politics

  • Inglehart-Welzel - 2022, the more focus on self-expression values and the standing of secular values the more likely said county will turn into a democracy, in comparison to a country focused on survival with standing traditional values

• Bargaining theories

• Strategic bargaining

  • builds closely to modernisation

  • Acemoglu and Robinson - for a leader to make a credible commitment to pro-majority policies in order to prevent revolution, they need to give away some power, and need to structure this through democratic institutions

  • Hypothesis 1: (credible commitment), elites cannot credibly commit to redistribute wealth without democratic institutions in place

  • Hypothesis 2: (wealth inequality), higher wealth inequality raises the risk of democracy for non-democratic elites, which leads to more efforts to suppress democracy

  • Hypothesis 3: (economic shocks), lead to transitions to democracy, but not transitions away from democracy

  • Evidence: Equal societies

    • democracy doesn’t redistribute much wealth; masses do not invest in revolution and the rich do not invest in repression

    • reforms are gradual

    • eg. complacent autocracies, Singapore

  • Evidence: Unequal societies

    • democracies redistributes much wealth; masses invest in revolution and the rich invest in repression

    • reform will depend on ability of the rich to repress

    • transitions tend to be violent and unstable

    • eg. South Africa, 1970s

  • Critique of strategic bargaining

    • Ansell and Samuel - challenge Acemoglu and Robinsons view that income inequality undermines democratisation

Is democracy in decline

• looking at public opinion data: European and World values surveys

  • found that more people are less willing to defend democracy, decline in the percentage of people who say it is essential to live in a democracy

    • EG: Britain, people born in 1930s, around 70% believed it to be essential, compared to people born in the 80s, only around 30% of people believed this

  • more people in countries want ‘strong leaders’, based on survey asking “a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections is a ‘good’ way to ‘run this country’

    • popular trend amongst many countries, this is constantly rising as well