Review: The Construction of Democracy

Abstract

THE CONSTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY Lessons from Practice and Research Jorge Dominguez and Anthony Jones, editors Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. 272 pp, US $50.00 cloth (ISBN 978-0801885952)This book draws together papers and smaller contributions to a conference on democratic consolidation held in Madrid in fall of 2001, several weeks after terrorist attacks of 11 September. The editors of volume note that event was planned long before those terrible events and so the organizers of conference went ahead as scheduled, in part to affirm value of constitutional democracy as it faced yet another dramatic peril (5). The meeting was a combination of an academic conference of professors and political summit of former presidents and prime ministers of countries that had moved away from authoritarianism since 1970s. After meeting, several of political leaders organized of Madrid, an NGO devoted to strengthening democracy around world. Madrid itself became site of next major terrorist attack, on 11 March 2004, and it is understandable that with so much world historical substance on line, club decided to commemorate event by sponsoring a volume.I mention background to book because it is important for understanding its otherwise unconventional structure. Eight solid chapters written by academics in idiom of political science are followed by six much shorter commentaries by former and sitting presidents, prime ministers, and members of government from Latin America, Europe, and India. The academic chapters are useful summarizes about what we know about various aspects of democracy -building and democratic consolidation. Some take on voice of advice to prince but most have a deep appreciation for gap between comparative politics as a vocation and real world of political judgment.In a thoughtful contribution on participation in new democracies, Grzegorz Ekiert and Anna Grzymala- Busse discuss kinds of dilemmas involved in constructing a robust pluralism. For example, research has shown that a highly mobilized and active civil society can be used to consolidate and to destabilize democracies. In Poland, contentious politics contributed to speedy economic reform and democratic accountability when parliamentary and party institutions were still relatively weak. Whether popular mobilization and participation is good or bad for democracy depends on whether it is responsible (that is, it excludes extremists), representative (the gold standard here is universal suffrage and social inclusion), and responsive (it reacts to those it purports to represent). International support can help new democracies attain all of these goods by assisting nonviolent, pro-democratic associations that have unconstrained membership but, on other hand, authors note public authorities and international actors should steer clear of either interfering in internal affairs of civil society organizations or stifling their growth, mission, and relations with their own constituencies through financial or technical dependence (31). Assisting these organizations without interfering with them may, however, not be easy.In a valuable chapter on new politics of constitutionalism, Richard Simeon and Luc Turgeon note that constitution-writing is not as easy as it used to be. In past centuries, two dozen (white) men could sit in a room for weeks or months at a time with no broader input and come up with a document in name of people and have process and final product considered legitimate. This is no longer true. Constitution -making has been democratized (and complicated) in a number of ways. …