IR5001 Theories and Concepts in International Relations PI5013 Contemporary Research Issues Week 11: DEMOCRATIZATION

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IR5001 Theories and Concepts in International
RelationsPI5013 Contemporary Research
IssuesWeek 11DEMOCRATIZATION

• Patrick Bernhagen
• Room F69, Edward Wright Building
• e-mail P.Bernhagen_at_abdn.ac.uk
• tel 27-2720

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Source Polity IV Country Reports 2003
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• Source Ronald Inglehart, Mansoor Moaddel and
  Mark Tessler (2006) 'Xenophobia and In-Group
  Solidarity in Iraq A Natural Experiment on the
  Impact of Insecurity', Perspectives on Politics,
  Vol. 4, Issue 03, pp. 495-505
• Note 14 countries with predominantly Islamic
  societies highlighted in bold.

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How to study democratization?

• Democracy
• What is it?
• Why want it?
• Democratization in historical perspective
• Are there waves?
• If so, how many?
• Driving forces and obstacles to democratic
  transition
• Statehood
• Economy
• Culture
• International context

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I. Democracy1. What is it?

• A democratic country is one in which the
  Sovereign and the people are one and the same
  person (J.-J. Rousseau, 1754).
• versus
• The democratic method is that institutional
  arrangement for arriving at political decisions
  in which individuals acquire the power to decide
  by means of a competitive struggle for the
  peoples vote (J.A. Schumpeter, 1943).
• Different things to different people (W.B.
  Gallie, 1964)?

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What is democracy?

• Dahls (1971) two dimensions of polyarchy
• Participation
• Competition
• Dahls (1989) five criteria
• Effective participation
• Equality in voting
• Enlightened understanding
• Exercising final control over the agenda
• Inclusion of adults
• Further reading Hyland 1995, ch. 3
• http//www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/notes07/Level3/PI3049/Hy
  land_ch3.pdf

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2. Why not something else (e.g., dictatorship,
monarchy, theocracy, technocracy, anarchy, ...)?

• Democracys instrumental value, promoting
• Human rights
• Personal freedoms
• Aggregate social happiness
• Self-determination and moral autonomy
• Human development
• Prosperity
• Peace
• Further reading Dahl 1998, ch. 5, Dahl 1989,
  ch. 6

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Democracys intrinsic value?

• Kants conception of the person as a morally
  autonomous agent
• Being a good person means being a morally
  autonomous person (MAP)
• Being a MAP consists in ordering ones life in
  accordance with ones conception of the good.
• Unproblematic in 1-person society, but ...
• Find a form of association ... in which each,
  while uniting himself with all, may still obey
  himself alone, and remain as free as before
  (Rousseau, 1754).
• Further reading Dahl 1989, chs. 3, 4, 5, 7
  Hyland 1995, ch. 7
• http//www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/notes07/Level3/PI3049/Hy
  land_ch7.pdf

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3. Can democracy be measured?

• Dichotomous regime classification (Przeworski et
  al. 1996)
• Freedom House political rights score (7 to 1)
• Polity IV measure of institutionalized Democracy
  (0 to 10)
• World Banks Political Institutions Database
  (-2.5 to 2.5)
• Vanhanens (2000) Polyarchy Index (1 to 100)
• LIT Berg-Schlosser, D. (2004d), 'The quality of
  democracies in Europe as measured by current
  indicators of democratization and good
  governance', Journal of Communist Studies and
  Transition Politics 20(1) 28-55
• Munck, G. L. Verkuilen, J. (2002),
  'Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy -
  Evaluating Alternative Indices', Comparative
  Political Studies 35(1) 5-34.

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II. Democratization in historical perspective

• Three major waves (e.g. Huntington)
• Early 1800s end of WWI
• 1945 to early 1960s
• 1974 to 1991
• Two long waves and three major positive
  conjunctures (Berg-Schlosser)
• First long wave Early 1800s WWI
• First conjuncture 1918/19
• Second conjuncture 1945/52
• Second long wave 1945 1990 (or ongoing?)
• Third conjuncture 1989-91

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Emergence of Democracies since 1800Based on
Jaggers and Gurr (1996), countries with 8 and
more points on the Polity III democracy scale
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(No Transcript)
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III. Driving forces and obstacles1) Statehood

• No state, no democracy (Linz 2007)
• Identity
• Nationhood

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2) Economy

• Modernization and economic development (Lipset
  1960, Vanhanen 1997)
• Growth of bourgeoisie
• rising social mobilization (literacy,
  urbanization, non-agricultural employment)
• Non-linear relationship (Kuznets curve of
  inequality)
• What about India?
• Or the Middle East?
• Investors prefer democracies (Boix 2003)
• Business actors contingent democrats (Bellin)

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3) Culture

• cultural homogeneity?
• if segmented, some consociational arrangements
  (Lijphart 1977)
• democratic political culture (Almond and Verba
  1963)

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4) International environment

• neighbourhood effects, diffusion and contagion
  (e.g. Daniel Brinks and Michael Coppedge (2006)
  Diffusion is No Illusion Neighbor Emulation in
  the Third Wave of Democracy Comparative
  Political Studies (May).
• The post-1975 international conjuncture
  (Przeworski et al., Sustainable Democracy, 1995)
• decline of the Bretton Woods gold/dollar peg
• oil price shocks, mounting foreign debt
• turn toward fiscal austerity in/by developed
  countries
• Globalization (Fukuyama)
• Democracy promotion
• US
• EU