Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model

Abstract

I What conditions make democracy possible and what conditions make it thrive? Thinkers from Locke to Tocqueville and A. D. Lindsay have given many answers. Democracy, we are told, is rooted in man's innate capacity for self-government or in Christian ethical or Teutonic legal tradition. Its birthplace was field at Putney where Cromwell's angry young privates debated their officers, or more sedate House at Westminster, or rock at Plymouth, or forest cantons above Lake Lucerne, or fevered brain of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Its natural champions are sturdy yeomen, or industrious merchants, or a prosperous middle class. It must be combined with strong local government, with a twoparty system, with a vigorous tradition of civil rights, or with a multitude of private associations. Recent writings of American sociologists and political scientists favor three types of explanation. One of these, proposed by Seymour Martin Lipset, Philips Cutright, and others, connects stable democracy with certain economic and social background conditions, such as high per capita income, widespread literacy, and prevalent urban residence. A second type of explanation dwells on need for certain beliefs or psychological attitudes among citizens. A long line of authors from Walter Bagehot to Ernest Barker has stressed need for consensus as basis of democracy-either in form of a common belief in certain fundamentals or of procedural consensus on rules of game, which Barker calls the Agreement to Differ. Among civic attitudes