Fortuitous By-Products

Abstract

At a moment when the institutions of competitive, electoral democracy appeared irrelevant in the developing world, Dankwart A. Rustow, in near splendid isolation, laid out what gives rise to and sustains the democratic process. His genetic theory provided for historical contingencies, accidents, and inadvertent decisions as the precursors to democratic transitions. He saw no necessary or sufficient socioeconomic or cultural preconditions of He stressed political stalemate and the acceptance of second-best solutions by bitterly opposed sides. Once underway, the transition required sustaining mechanisms quite different from what launched it. He was quite aware of the possibility of reversals, as his Turkish case exemplified. He posed as a background condition the need for national identity, with which I disagree and which I think weakened his argument. Nevertheless, his article stands as a prescient and well-specified rejection of the proposition of entrenched autocrats and ethnocentric social scientists: This country ain't ready for democracy. Rustow staked out a well-defined position in what might be called the contingency school in explaining the initiation and institutionalization of The opposing, structuralist school emphasizes socioeconomic and occasionally cultural preconditions for These schools are not warring camps, nor are their positions mutually exclusive. One emphasizes a combination of social structural variables-broad-based middle classes, private entrepreneurial groups, widespread literacy, and sustaining civic values-while the other stresses a kind of compromise between contending groups that have repeatedly failed to impose their will upon one another. Rustow first defined the latter position, and I propose to treat it here. I will examine five paths toward democratic transition: jump-starting the process in systems with no cultural predispositions and socioeconomic prerequisites for or historical experiences with democracy; extrication from stalemated winner-take-all struggles; bargaining and accountability between taxpayers and governments; bargaining for legal space in authoritarian systems; and inducing transitions by powerful third parties. In each, the transition is the by-product of some other process. It is therefore unintended and fortuitous. It must be stressed that not every path will automatically lead to a transition or that, once started, the transition will continue.