Democratic Breakdown Research Articles

Civil Society, Party Institutionalization, and Democratic Breakdown in the Interwar Period

The relationship between the strength of civil society and democratic survival in the interwar period has been much debated. Prominent studies have questioned the existence of a positive association, arguing that the relationship is conditioned by the level of party institutionalization. This revisionist perspective has been vindicated by case studies of important European cases, in particular Germany and Italy. But due to a lack of cross-national data, neither the direct effect of civil society nor the alternative perspective has so far been subjected to a comprehensive statistical analysis. In this paper we enlist novel data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project that enable us to carry out such an assessment of all democratic spells in the interwar years. Our survival analysis demonstrates that a vibrant civil society generally contributed to democratic survival in this period and that this effect was not moderated by the level of party institutionalization.

Panaceas After Pandemonium? Truth Commissions in the Wake of Protracted Conflicts

The third wave of democratization has meant the end of autocratic rule and oppressive state-sponsored practices in many countries around the world. Yet the transition from authoritarianism and state-sponsored terror to more open and participatory societies has its own imperatives. After autocratic rule and protracted conflicts, it is necessary to heal the wounds caused by years, sometimes decades, of mistrust, fear, and violence. Systematic violations of human rights, in the form of oppression, physical and psychological violence, and death, leave lasting individual and collective wounds. Transitional (or restorative) justice is designed to address and (hopefully) mitigate such legacies left by the previous regime. In doing so, it draws on a variety of instruments: criminal prosecutions, special tribunals, amnesties, apologies, memorials, lustrations, and truth commissions (TCs), among others. The end of the Cold War also gave a new impetus to international criminal justice. Special tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, for Rwanda, and for Sierra Leone were established, as was, most prominently, the International Criminal Court, originated in the 1999 Rome Treaty and based in The Hague. For many, this portends a major shift in international relations, one in which the traditional, Westphalian, and sovereignty-centered international system gives way to another, based on more porous units, in which individual and human rights have more sway and human rights abuses trigger a more proactive international reaction. In turn, these developments have given rise to a whole new field of study: transitional justice. This is an interdisciplinary field in which political science, law, sociology, history, anthropology, psychology, theology, and other disciplines converge. Not surprisingly, since transitional justice emerges as a result of the developments described above, it is, much like democratization and political transitions, also marked by contingency and paradox. Transitions are fluid and political action and the uses of the law find themselves under a different set of rules than under ordinary circumstances. Grasping the transformative opportunities presented by the conjuncture becomes a key test of political leadership. (1) Truth commissions have emerged as a popular tool of transitional justice, especially in cases where a delicate balance between the extant remnants of the previous regime coexist with the new dispensation. (2) TCs have come to the fore because of their flexibility, their open-endedness, and their ability to act as a bridge of sorts between an evil past and a democratic present, thus laying the foundations for a future society at peace with itself. At first, transitional justice was mainly concerned with transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule. However, after the large number of internal conflicts that arose in the post-Cold War era, it has also been applied within the wider panoply of nation- and peacebuilding instruments following the end of a war or conflict. This has been especially true for Africa. Some transitional justice tools, like TCs, have shown to be so prevalent and useful for a variety of reasons that they are now deployed in advanced Western democracies, like Canada, to investigate historical human rights abuses as well as to investigate the conditions that led to the breakdown of democracy, as happened with the TC set up in Honduras after the June 2009-January 2010 crisis. Especially in Latin America and Africa, TCs as well as truth and reconciliation commissions have been deployed to come to terms with past injustices while rebuilding trust in government and among social groups, although they have also been deployed in Asia, Europe, and North America. (3) While they share a number of common features, TCs must reflect local specificities to address the crimes of the past amidst the fluid, uncertain, and challenging conditions that are the hallmark of democratic transitions. …

Institutional Subsystems and the Survival of Democracy: Do Political and Civil Society Matter?

How do two central institutional subsystems of democracy – party systems and civil society – affect the persistence of democratic regimes? Despite the ability of each of these institutions to provide sources of countervailing power that make politicians accountable and thus responsive, distributionist accounts of democratic breakdown provide few insights on how such institutions may encourage parties to reach accommodation. We argue that these institutions provide credible threats against anti-system activities that would otherwise threaten the democratic compromise. We test our argument with newly available data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project by analyzing all episodes of democratic breakdown from 1900-2001. Using a split population event history estimator, we find evidence that these institutions not only forestall the timing of breakdowns among transitional democracies but also that a strong party system is critical to setting democratic regimes on the path of consolidation.

Security Assistance in Africa: The Case for More

Abstract: This article argues that political tampering with military recruitment and promotion practices, especially the construction and dismantling of ethnically based armies, has led African militaries to intervene in politics in order to block or reverse democratization efforts. The entrenchment of politically insulated, merit-based military institutions is thus necessary to deepen democracy in Africa. The United States can assist by offering protection, training, and financial incentives to encourage reform. ********** Promoting peace and security in Africa through the establishment of democratic institutions and good governance has been prioritized by the Obama administration as a key US foreign policy concern. (1) Weak and failed states threaten national security because they attract destabilizing forces. Unable to control their borders or police their territory internally, such states provide breeding grounds and transit routes for terrorist organizations, drug cartels, weapons traffickers, and other criminal networks. (2) For example, poor governance and rampant conflict in northern Nigeria and Somalia have given rise to two of the continent's most dangerous terrorist organizations, Boko Haram and al Shabaab, while persistent political instability and poverty in Guinea Bissau have led that country to become an international hub for drug trafficking. Democracy is seen as a long-term solution to this threat because democratic institutions remove many of the underlying causes of state weakness. Democracy creates peaceful channels for resolving social conflict, alleviating incentives for domestic strife. Democracies are more politically inclusive, remedying the systemic exclusion of ethnic groups from political power; this kind of exclusion is a known driver of insurgency, as often occurred at the hands of autocratic rulers. (3) Democracy is also associated with the rule of law, which both dampens popular grievances and provides a stable context for investment, entrepreneurship, and other determinants of economic growth, thereby raising populations out of poverty. Strengthening democratic institutions and protecting democratic gains have thus become core principles of both US policy toward Africa and the strategic approach adopted by Africa Command (AFRICOM). (4) Yet, democracy is in decline. Larry Diamond argues that since the turn of the 21st century, there has been a significant and, in fact, accelerating rate of democratic breakdown with at least 25 democracies having collapsed since 2000--a failure rate of 17.6 percent. (5) Africa, in particular, has struggled deeply with democratization. Despite the passing of over 20 years since most African countries took their indispensable first steps toward liberalization and adopting competitive elections, the latest Freedom House reports indicate that recent setbacks have left only 12 percent of the continent free today. (6) Of Diamond's collapsed democracies, 32 percent are in Africa, suggesting the continent contributes significantly to global trends of increasing authoritarianism. (7) Even Botswana, long considered a bulwark of democracy in Africa, has recently suffered government harassment of opposition candidates, interference with media reporting, and abuse of state resources during campaigning. (8) The continued absence of democracy in many African countries, and the loss of democratic institutions in others, threatens continued instability and conflict in a region already rife with the problems generated by weak states. For US policymakers and AFRICOM to reverse this trend, a deeper understanding of Africa's struggle to democratize is necessary. This article hopes to contribute to such an understanding by focusing on the role of African militaries in blocking or reversing democratization efforts. It then proposes a number of policy interventions that may help reform these institutions to be more compatible with democracy. …

Honeymoon or consolidation, or both?: Time dependence of democratic durability

Much research has been done to identify factors that facilitate or prevent democratic breakdown. Little attention, however, has been paid to the question of whether and how the baseline risk level (after controlling for the impacts of relevant factors) changes over time. Using a flexible parametric survival model, I analyse the duration of 149 democratic periods (1946–2008) and demonstrate that the baseline risk has an inverted-U shape, which provides evidence for the honeymoon effect and democratic consolidation. This finding has an important policy implication for democratic assistance programmes.

Reflections on uneven democracies: the legacy of Guillermo O'Donnell

The third wave of democratization produced a wealth of enduring social science. Beginning in the 1970s, it prompted scholars to develop important theories on authoritarian breakdowns and transitions to democracy. No one in the field was more influential than Guillermo O'Donnell (1936-2011), whose pathbreaking work shaped the scholarship of generations of social scientists. Reflections on Uneven Democracies honors the legacy of O'Donnell's research by advancing debates related to his work on democracy. Drawing together a veritable Who's Who of eminent scholars - including two of O'Donnell's closest collaborators, Philippe Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead - the volume examines issues related to democratic breakdowns and stability, the nature and quality of new democracies, institutional strength, the rule of law, and delegative democracy. This reexamination of some of the most influential arguments about democracy of the past forty years leads to original approaches and insights for a new era of democracy studies. Students of democracy and institutional performance, both Latin Americanists and comparativists more generally, will find this essential reading.

India, Sri Lanka, and the Majoritarian Danger

It is disturbing to acknowledge here, as we mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Journal of Democracy, that the question addressed by this special issue of the Journal is whether the trend toward democratization in the world has peaked and begun to recede. In the July 2014 issue, Marc F. Plattner noted that Freedom House’s “measurements of various aspects of political rights and civil liberties now show eight consecutive years of slow declines.”1 And of course, the world’s four most important nondemocratic powers—China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—are confidently exporting their values, while the United States, by contrast, is increasingly ambivalent about where it stands concerning democracy in such key Middle Eastern countries as Egypt and Syria. Plattner concludes his article with a warning: “Perhaps the most fatal blow to the cause of democracy would be the breakdown of democracy in a country where it has been strong and stable.”2 Could such a “fatal” breakdown happen in the world’s largest democracy, India? Those fearful of democratic erosion are worried by the ascension to power of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP won the May 2014 general elections in what is routinely called a landslide, even though the party actually garnered just 31 percent of the total vote, the “lowest such share to have produced a seat majority” in Indian history.3 It now enjoys, for the first time ever, an absolute majority (282 seats) in the 545-seat Lok Sabha, the crucial lower house of Parliament. Although the BJP is governing in coalition with several smaller parties, it is unlikely to be constrained by them to the degree that was the case between 1998 and 2004, when it could not form a majority without allies.4 The BJP’s “mother organization” is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak

The Democratic Entitlement in an Era of Democratic Recession

The global democratic boom, which transformed much of the world’s political landscape in the three decades between 1974 and 2004, has also had an indelible impact on international law, most notably in the development of the ‘democratic entitlement’ claim—namely, that in a world increasingly dominated by democracies there exists an emergent enforceable right to democratic governance in international law. But what would become of the democratic entitlement if the boom turned to bust? The question is no longer hypothetical. For a decade now the momentum of world politics has turned increasingly against democracy’s champions. While the dramatic gains of the late twentieth century have not been erased, the global democratic wave hit the shoal somewhere around 1999–2000, plateaued between 2000 and 2005, and has since suffered sustained reversals. This article re-examines the democratic entitlement thesis in light of these recent negative trends in democracy’s international fortunes. It argues that the right to democratic governance is a layered, and potentially severable, edifice, parts of which now seem to be eroding, but which is unlikely to be entirely undone by a reverse wave of democratic breakdowns and resurgent authoritarianism. The article then examines some of the main implications of the current democratic recession for the right to democratic governance in international law.

Legal-Administrative Responses and Democratic Deconsolidation

We deepen our understanding of democratic deconsolidation by understanding the legal-administrative responses to a security crisis. We expand prior “democratic breakdown” studies through a legal-administrative review of three countries which have experienced a security crisis: Peru, South Africa, and the United States. Using Freedom House and Polity IV scores, we discuss the initial crisis and the state’s legal-administrative responses. Different state responses offer a unique micro-political and administrative perspective on when, where, and why deconsolidation may or may not occur.

A Troubled Marriage? Divided Minority Government, Cohabitation, Presidential Powers, President-Parliamentarism and Semi-Presidentialism

Although semi-presidentialism is a popular form of governance in new democracies, we have little empirical evidence supporting its popularity. In this study, I attempt to reassess democratic performance of new semi-presidential regimes from 1974 to 2009 as a function of four broadly cited risk factors: divided minority government, cohabitation, presidential powers and president-parliamentarism. The results are more encouraging than previous research has suggested. First, divided minority government is positively associated with higher levels of democracy, even though it, along with a strong presidency and president-parliamentarism, makes executive instability more likely. Second, perils of cohabitation are not substantiated with regard to executive instability and quality of democracy. Third, none of the caveats against semi-presidential systems makes them more vulnerable to democratic breakdown. However, a failure to check presidential powers appears to be a serious risk for semi-presidentialism. As presidents enjoy more powers, the levels of democracy tend to decrease. This finding has a substantive implication for countries that already practise semi-presidential governance or contemplate a move in that direction: checking presidential powers is critical to facilitate democratic consolidation in semi-presidentialism.

Economic Origins of Democratic Breakdown? The Redistributive Model and the Postcolonial State

From Aristotle to Acemoglu and Robinson, scholars have argued that democracy possesses powerful redistributive impulses, and imperils itself accordingly. We challenge the validity of the redistributive model of democratic breakdown in the postcolonial world—the only cases where democracies have collapsed since World War II—because its assumptions regarding state power are questionable or even inapplicable in postcolonial settings. Our correlative analysis of cross-sectional time series data from 139 countries between 1972 and 2007 indicates that, contrary to the expectations of the redistributive model, redistributive taxation is negatively associated with the incidence of military coups and the likelihood of democratic breakdown. Furthermore, authoritarian takeovers do not appear systematically to result in reduced redistribution from the rich. More fine-grained historical evidence from Southeast Asia—a region where the redistributive model should be especially likely to hold true—further affirms that authoritarian seizures of power are neither inspired by successful redistributive policies nor followed by their reversal. Taken together, these quantitative and qualitative data offer significant support for our central theoretical claim: contemporary democratic breakdowns have political origins in weak states, not economic origins in class conflict.

Which Democracies Will Last? Coups, Incumbent Takeovers, and the Dynamic of Democratic Consolidation

This article develops a change-point model of democratic consolidation that conceives of consolidation as a latent quality to be inferred rather than measured directly. Consolidation is hypothesized to occur when a large, durable, and statistically significant decline in the risk of democratic breakdowns occurs at a well-defined point during a democracy's lifetime. This approach is applied to new data on democratic survival that distinguish between breakdowns due to military coups and incumbent takeovers. We find that the risk of an authoritarian reversal by either process differs both in its temporal dynamic and determinants. Crucially, new democracies consolidate against the risk of coups but not incumbent takeovers, suggesting that distinct mechanisms account for the vulnerability of new democracies to these alternative modes of breakdown.

Economic security and democratic capital: Why do some democracies survive and others fail?

We develop a theoretical framework where the chance of any given democratic society maintaining its democratic status is determined by two key factors: economic security and democratic capital. Our model predicts democracy breakdown is more likely (1) the lower the level of democratic capital, (2) the lower the anticipated growth in democracy, (3) the greater the anticipated growth after democracy breakdown, and finally, (4) the smaller the difference between anticipated growth in continued democracy and after democracy breakdown. We test the model using a newly constructed data set and the Polity IV data. We find that if expected economic growth under democracy is greater than anticipated economic growth under the alternative regime then the probability of breakdown is lower. Moreover, an increase in democratic capital decreases the probability of democracy breakdown. The country's most recent own democratic experience appears to have a more important impact on democracy survival, while the effect of foreign democratic capital cannot be distinguished from the time-specific shocks that are common to all countries in the world.

The Democratic Dividend of Non-Violent Resistance

Research suggests that nonviolent resistance (NVR) campaigns are more successful in deposing dictators than armed rebellions. However, ousting dictators is only the first step in the process of democratization. After deposing an autocratic regime, societies enter a transition phase where they must learn to consolidate the gains of democracy and bargain about the new rules of the democratic regime. But even if free, fair, and competitive elections are held, which indicate a successful transition to democratic rule, uncertainty about its stability remains salient. In the period that follows, democracy either survives and proves to be resilient, or an autocratic backlash occurs. In this article, we analyze the effect of NVR campaigns on the survival of democratic regimes. Building on the literature on modes of transitions and nonviolent resistance, we argue that those democratic regimes that come into being as a result of a NVR campaign are less prone to democratic breakdown. The main mechanism which produces this effect is that the organizational culture of NVR campaigns spills over to the subsequent democratic regime fostering conditions favorable for democratic survival. We test the effect of NVR campaigns on democratic regime survival using survival analysis and propensity score matching. The results show that democratic regimes that experience NVR during the transition phase survive substantially longer than regimes without NVR.

Explaining Government Turnover inAsian Democracies

What explains the Japanese experience of one‐party‐dominated democracy over the past five decades? More generally, and looking acrossAsian democracies, what explains variations in the degree of political volatility? We propose a theory of government turnover rate that not only explains political rigidity inJapan and the experience of precarious democracy inThailand and thePhilippines, but also explains changes of government in otherAsian democracies. Political volatility, defined as the rate of government turnover, ranges from very low, as seen in one‐party‐dominated democracies, to very high, as seen in troubled democracies that regularly suffer democratic breakdowns. With our theory, we argue that three major factors contribute interactively to political volatility: executive type, distributive power, and social cleavage. Through a comparative analysis of allAsian democracies, we conclude that the mechanisms resulting in political volatility can be generalized in a unifying theoretical framework.

Regeneración ética y compromiso político para una sociedad democrática avanzada

El comentario reflexiona sobre la responsabilidad política en el deterioro del sistema democrático e intenta contribuir a la regeneración ética del mismo. Puesto que la comunidad universitaria ha de jugar un papel esencial en la búsqueda y el diálogo que conducen a esa regeneración responsable, hemos de subrayar el papel de la educación cívica y política de los estudiantes universitarios para capacitarles en el ejercicio de ese arte como servicio al bien común.En el comentario partimos de la actual situación española de quiebra democrática y de deslegitimación de los partidos y de la “clase política” en su conjunto. La pregunta por la democracia representativa, en este momento en que muchos cuestionan los consensos constitucionales, es incisiva e inquietante. El editorial aborda también el análisis de la deslegitimación del sistema democrático y hace algunas propuestas para la regeneración democrática de nuestra sociedad, a partir de una cultura política de una democracia de calidad, impregnada de valores.

Learning to Love Democracy: Electoral Accountability and the Success of Democracy

This article explains why dissatisfaction with the performance of individual politicians in new democracies often turns into disillusionment with democracy as a political system. The demands on elections as an instrument of political accountability are much greater in new than established democracies: politicians have yet to form reputations, a condition that facilitates the entry into politics of undesirable candidates who view this period as their “one‐time opportunity to get rich.” After a repeatedly disappointing government performance, voters may rationally conclude that “all politicians are crooks” and stop discriminating among them, to which all politicians rationally respond by “acting like crooks,” even if most may be willing to perform well in office if given appropriate incentives. Such an expectation‐driven failure of accountability, which I call the “trap of pessimistic expectations,” may precipitate the breakdown of democracy. Once politicians establish reputations for good performance, however, these act as barriers to the entry into politics of low‐quality politicians. The resulting improvement in government performance reinforces voters’ belief that democracy can deliver accountability, a process that I associate with democratic consolidation. These arguments provide theoretical microfoundations for several prominent empirical associations between the economic performance of new democracies, public attitudes toward democracy, and democratic stability.

Lessons from Latin America: Democratic Breakdown and Survival

Abstract: Why do democracies survive or break down? In this paper, we return to this classic question with an empirical focus on Latin America from 1945 to 2005. Our argument deviates from the quantitative literature and a good part of the qualitative literature on democratic survival and breakdown. We argue that structural variables such as the level of development and inequalities have not shaped prospects for democratic survival in Latin America. Nor, contrary to findings in some of the literature, has economic performance affected the survival of competitive regimes. Instead, we focus on the regional political environment and on actors’ normative preferences about democracy and dictatorship and their policy radicalism or moderation. We argue that 1) a higher level of development did not increase the likelihood of democratic survival in Latin America over this long time; 2) if actors have a normative preference for democracy, it is more likely to survive; and 3) policy moderation facilitates democratic survival.

Enforcing Democracy at the Regional Level: Paraguay's Suspension before the Mercosur Court

Inaugurated in 1991 as a regional trade agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (M4), the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) followed an increasingly familiar pattern, serving as an institutional framework for harmonisation of wider economic and social policies between its members. In 1998, following allegations of an attempted coup in Paraguay, the M4, Chile and Bolivia agreed on a Protocol on Democratic Commitment in Mercosur (Ushuaia Protocol),1 whose Article 5 empowers parties to regional agreements, acting by consensus, to respond to a `breakdown of democracy' in one of them by suspending the latter's rights under the relevant agreements. On 29 June 2012, following a hasty deposition of Paraguay's President by the country's Congress, the presidents of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay (M3) decided to suspend Paraguay's rights to participate inMercosur decision-making. Paraguay responded by initiating a dispute before Mercosur's Permanent Review Court (Mercosur Court), invoking the emergency procedure provided for in Article 24 of the 2002 Olivos Protocol for the Solution of Controversies in the Mercosur (Olivos Protocol).2 Paraguay claimed that its suspension was null and void and, more importantly, that one of its consequences—the accession of Venezuela to Mercosur—should be reversed as a result. In less than two weeks,

The Spanish Second Republic revisited: from democratic hopes to civil war (1931-1936)

The Spanish Civil War is one of the most studied events in modern European history. Its origins, that is to say the politics of the Second Republic (1931-1936), have been much debated. The republican period has been much idealised and in particular the myth of Spanish democracy beset by fascism, of which Franco was its leading figure, has been much cultivated. But was this really the case? Recently historians of the Republic have proposed a new and non-ideological perspective on the 1930s. Spain's path was at once different yet in many ways similar to that of Europe during the inter-war period. This book brings together leading and innovative specialists to analyse the main obstacles to the consolidation of democracy in Spain and to debate the principal stereotypes of the traditional historiography of both left and right. The issues addressed include: the breakdown of democracy; whether the CEDA was an opportunity or a threat; the centrist appeal under the Republic; how the elections were viewed and conducted; the transformation of fascism; new revelations about the Communist party; the politics of exclusion at the local level; the perceived necessity for repression; new perspectives on the Civil Guard; the role of intellectuals in the Republic; and revisionism and sectarian history. The book offers a new and dynamic vision of why Spanish democracy failed to consolidate itself and why it finally fell into the terror of civil war. Essential reading for all those interested in modern European history.