Unstable Democracy Research Articles

Constitutional Courts as Mediators: Generals, Judges, and Democracy in Latin America

The legacy of military interventions and authoritarism in Latin America has produced the unstable democracies that characterize the region. A distinctive feature of this legacy is the prevalence of uncertainty surrounding civil-military relations. Specifically, civilian and military leaders are uncertain about the appropriate degree of autonomy for the military under a democratic regime. Moreover, civilian governments are unsure about the military’s willingness to build and sustain the democratic regime, and the armed forces doubt to what extent civilian leaders are willing to build a strong army respecting its institutional sprit de corps. This paper argues that unbiased, accesible, and powerful constitutional courts can credibly provide relevant information to reduce the uncertainty sorrounding civil-military relations, thus promoting cooperation between them. When these conditions are not met, it is more likely that constitutional courts update or even expand an old jurisprudence of lack of accountability of the military. The argument is illustrated in the case of constitutional jurisprudence on the scope of military jurisdiction in Colombia from 1958 to 2010.

Testing the Logic of Strategic Defection: The Case of the Philippine Supreme Court—An Empirical Analysis (1986–2010)

It has been argued that, under certain conditions, judges are motivated to engage in strategic defection against their appointer once they perceive the latter to be losing effective power. This behaviour should generate a clustering of decisions unfavourable to the incumbent administration at the end of their term, when they are perceived to be weak. In this article we investigate empirically the application of the strategic defection model on the Philippine Supreme Court in the period 1986–2010. Our results do not seem to strongly corroborate this model. We discuss these empirical results in the context of the Philippines' unstable democracy and general implications for comparative judicial politics.

New Modes of Environmental Governance in Central America: Constructing a Biological Corridor Policy in Honduras

New modes of governance, such as network governance or public-private partnership have gained ground in environmental policy. While typically associated with long-term, well-established democracies, these interorganizational processes are emerging in countries with weak democracies such as those in Central America. Scholars on environmental governance are pondering if these new modes of environmental governance make decision-making more inclusive, transparent and accountable, while at the same time promoting effective environmental policy performance. We partially address this question by focusing on public and private actors' articulations of the issue surrounding biological corridors in Honduras. We draw on the institutional analysis framework of policy arrangement developed by Leroy and Ars to provide perspective on the main challenges that network governance confronts in unstable democracies. The case presented here highlights that persistent traditional political forms at the national level hinder network governance. At the same time, emerging collaborative attitudes promoted at local and international level are slowly challenging these traditional forms.

Free Trade Agreements and the Consolidation of Democracy

We study the relationship between participation in free trade agreements (FTAs) and the sustainability of democracy. Our model shows that FTAs can critically reduce the incentive of authoritarian groups to seek power by destroying protectionist rents, thus making democracies last longer. This gives governments in unstable democracies an extra motive to form FTAs. Hence, greater democratic instability induces governments to boost their FTA commitments. In a dataset with 116 countries over 1960-2007, we find robust support for these predictions. They help to rationalize the rapid simultaneous growth of regionalism and of worldwide democratization since the late 1980s.

Corruption: Democracy, Autocracy, and Political Stability

The recent empirical literature on corruption has identified a long list of variables that correlate significantly with corruption but only five were distinguished by Learner’s Extreme Bounds Analysis as robust to various samples, measures of corruption, and regression specifications. Among these five factors that were found to reduce corruption are decades-long tradition of democracy and political stability. In today’s world, however, there are many countries that combine one of these two robust determinants of corruption with the opposite of the other: politically stable autocracies or newly formed and unstable democracies. The central question raised in this paper is: Is it worth, in terms of corruption, for a country to trade stability with autocratic rule for political freedoms but with transitional instability? We find that the answer to this question is in the affirmative – the level of corruption is indeed lower in unstable democracies than in stable dictatorships. Our results are robust to various measures of corruption, alternative regressor indices, and regression specifications. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…” (Sir John Acton, 18872)

Judicial Politics in Unstable Democracies: The Case of the Philippine Supreme Court, An Empirical Analysis 1986-2010

In this paper we investigate empirically the determinants of judicial behavior at the Philippine Supreme Court in the period 1986-2010. Our results show some alignment between individual Justices and the interests of the presidential appointers, although it varies across presidential terms. We discuss these empirical results in the context of the Philippine’s unstable democracy and the implications for the comparative literature on judicial behavior.

<em>Electoral Politics and Religious Parties in Sudan:</em> An Analysis of the April 2010 Election

This paper analyzes the results of the April 2010 Sudanese elections, focusing on the evolution of the party system in Northern Sudan. It is argued that the most relevant element emerging from the polls has been the virtual disappearance of the religious-based traditional parties that had dominated the political scene since independence and the consolidation of the Islamist-military coalition at in Khartoum since 1989. This outcome is the result of the combined effect of state policies pursued during the last two decades and of long-term socioeconomic changes. The disappearance of the “sectarian system” marks a structural change in the political development of the country, which has been characterized by a seemingly inescapable circularity between an unstable democracy and military regimes. Nevertheless, the vote has failed to meet the expectations of those who hoped that multiparty elections could create an inclusive political space and, hopefully, “make unity attractive.”

Soldiers, chiefs and church: unstable democracy in Fiji

The qualities of democracy in Fiji are strongly influenced by ethnic divisions and indigenous sources of power and legitimacy in society. Periods of constitutional democracy interrupted by successive coups garnering conflicting support suggest that a more stable Fijian democracy requires a delicate balance of tribal, religious, ethnic and military interests. Successful democratic and governance reform requires the inclusive deliberation of all major groups in civil and political society, and not merely one that purports to represent all. Only by improving the qualities of democracy in Fiji will Fijian politics emerge from its cycle of coups and offer a more stable form of government.

The Role of the Supreme Court in Unstable Democracies: The Case of the Philippine Supreme Court - An Empirical Analysis 1986-2010

The Role of the Supreme Court in Unstable Democracies: The Case of the Philippine Supreme Court - An Empirical Analysis 1986-2010

A Unasul como Instrumento de Solução Pacífica dos Conflitos: O Caso Boliviano

This article analyzes the peaceful solutions of international conflicts from the perspective of the contribution of UNASUR to unstable democracy in Bolivia, in September 2008, since the episode demonstrates the supremacy of peaceful mecha­nisms over the use of force. To this end, the research shows the origins of peaceful solutions, the political, diplomatic, and legal mechanisms, and the traditional Brazilian position, evidenced by the current government. The examination of UNASUR is developed from its historical antecedents, its constituent treaty and the influence of Brazil in the organization. The analysis of the Bolivian case presents the origins of the crisis that generated the conflict and the stance taken by UNASUR to resolve the crisis. The work is permeated by the perspective that the democratic regime is the best suited to peacefully resolve conflicts and promote political stability.

Facing Off

In 1926 Weimar photographer László Moholy-Nagy predicted that the illiteracy of the future would be ignorance not of reading or writing, but of photography. Five years later theorist Walter Benjamin described the ability to compare facial types via portrait photobooks as a vitally important skill. As Germany endured an interregnum identity crisis, the photographic book proved an effective alternative to what were perceived to be the more subjective, traditional “fine arts” of painting and sculpture. More than innocuous collections of fine art photography, these books functioned as physiognomic guidelines for the representation of national identity during Germany's turbulent transition from unstable democracy to totalitarian state. As conservative writer Ernst Jünger observed in 1934, portrait photobooks offered “a particularly effective means of tracking down the enemy's individual character,” because it is “easier to change one's views than one's face.” This essay charts portrait photography's exploitation as evidentiary support for nineteenth-century physiognomic theory and examines a resurgent interest in this outmoded “pseudoscience” in 1920s Germany. My analysis of the production and reception of two popular photobooks, one by Weimar photographer August Sander (The Face of Our Time), and the other by Nazi photographer Erna Lendvai-Dircksen (German Folk Faces), reveals the degree to which both progressive and reactionary factions relied on photography and physiognomy to help redefine a stable or “authentic” face of the nation in an otherwise unstable time. While Hitler's devotion to both photographic propaganda and biological determinism is well known, the fact that progressive Weimar photographers like Sander also believed in the medium's power to lay bare the nation's “true” character and corporeal countenance indicates a surprising cultural continuity between the two regimes downplayed by art history's focus on the Führer's repudiation of modern art. By exploring the way that two ideologically opposed photographers shared a reliance on physiognomic theory, this research demonstrates portrait photography's central importance within the discourse of modern German visual culture and challenges art history's persistent emphasis on aesthetic rupture, rather than cultural continuity, between Weimar and the Third Reich.

Development of Press Freedom in South Korea since Japanese Colonial Rule

The history of press freedom in South Korea (hereafter Korea) has been characterized by periods of chaos. The major media companies in Korea have written a history of shame. Since Japanese colonial rule, freedom of the press has been more often restricted than protected by the laws and policies. There have been four main features of press freedom since 1910: severe restriction during the Japanese colonial rule; experiencing freedom with unstable democracy under the American military rule and the First and Second republics; oppression of the military regimes; and the struggle with capital power since the advent of civilian government. Several decades of Japanese colonial rule, American military rule, and military dictators have influenced the Korean society and the media politically, economically, socially and culturally.

Creating Legal Space for Refugees in India: the Milestones Crossed and the Roadmap for the Future

The whole of South Asia is devoid of any standards and norms on any dimension of refugee reception, determination and protection. The fact that a quarter of the world's refugees find themselves in a non-standardized, if not hostile, refugee regime is a situation which does not augur well for either the mandate of UNHCR or for any civilized society. The South Asian nations have their own apprehensions, real or imaginary, about the utility of CSR 1951 to their situations. Because of historical mishaps, political ignorance, unstable democracies and exaggerated concern over national security, there is hardly any motivation for, or any environment in which there is a possibility for, the enactment of national legislation.Non-governmental agencies, in their own way, have been trying to influence the States to accede to the Convention and, also, to promulgate national laws. The most noticeable contribution is the draft national law for India, ‘Refugees and Asylum Seekers Act’, discussed and approved by the Fourth Informal Consultations on Refugees and Migratory Movement Sessions in their Dacca Session. The draft legislation has been under consideration by the Indian government for some time but the issue, nonetheless, remains both important and urgent. There is an almost complete absence of discussion about it in any forum, even the media. This paper is an attempt to examine the provisions of the draft law, insofar as it conforms to the international standards, and to show where it is found wanting. The paper also evaluates the competence of the draft law to answer security considerations after 9/11. The paper suggests suitable amendments that may make the enactment of national law a reality, so that the void in the international regime of refugee protection can be filled effectively and fast.

Unstable democracies in Southeast Asia

Recent developments in Thailand and the Philippines – the two countries once seen as Southeast Asia’s leading lights in terms of political reform – have demonstrated that ‘democratisation’ is not necessarily an irreversible or sufficient solution to problems of political development. More fundamental reforms and safeguards are also needed.

Peacebuilding Through Election Assistance in Unstable Democracies: Observations from the Venezuelan Process

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The Fate of Africa's Democratic Experiments: Elites and Institutions

Contents Preface 1. Elites, Institutions, and the Varied Trajectories of Africa's Third Wave Democracies Peter VonDoepp and Leonardo A. Villalon 2. Repetitive Breakdowns and a Decade of Experimentation: Institutional Choices and Unstable Democracy in Niger Leonardo A. Villalon and Abdourahmane Idrissa 3. The Tribulations of a Successful Transition: Institutional Dynamics and Elite Rivalry in Mali Leonardo A. Villalon and Abdourahmane Idrissa 4. Democratic Legitimacy in Benin: Institutions and Identity in a Regional Context Bruce A. Magnusson 5. The Collapse of the Democratic Experiment in the Republic of Congo: A Thick Description John F. Clark 6. The Shaky Foundations, Adverse Circumstances, and Limited Achievements of Democratic Transition in the Central African Republic Andreas Mehler 7. The Fate of Madagascar's Democracy: Following the Rules while Eroding the Substance Richard R. Marcus 8. Institutions, Resources, and Elite Strategies: Making Sense of Malawi's Democratic Trajectory Peter VonDoepp 9. Democracy Unrealized: Zambia's Third Republic under Frederick Chiluba David J. Simon 10. Assessing Adaptation to Democratic Politics in Mozambique: The Case of Frelimo Carrie Manning 11. Democratization in a Divided Urban Political Culture: Guinea-Bissau Joshua B. Forrest 12. Democratic Governance in Africa at the Start of the Twenty-first Century: Lessons of Experience Michael Chege References List of Contributors Index

Lipset's Legacy

Lipset’s Legacy Cynthia McClintock (bio) The Democratic Century. By Seymour Martin Lipset and Jason M. Lakin. University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. 478 pp. During a scholarly career that has spanned more than half a century, Seymour Martin Lipset pioneered the comparative analysis of why democracies emerge and endure. In The Democratic Century, coauthored with Jason M. Lakin, Lipset continues to make outstanding contributions to the field of comparative politics. This volume revisits Lipset's many pathbreaking works and provides an extraordinarily thoughtful, data-rich, and up-to-date synthesis of scholarly knowledge about the correlates of democracyworldwide. Lakin, who was Lipset's research assistant at the time of his mentor's debilitating stroke in 2001, has done a remarkable job of communicating Lipset's vision and his fervent hope that the first hundred years of the third millennium will indeed be the democratic century. Almost fifty years ago, in a much-cited 1959 article in the American Political Science Review and in his landmark study Political Man (1960), Lipset demonstrated the correlation between economic development and democracy. Distinguishing among stable democracies, unstable democracies, unstable dictatorships, and stable dictatorships both in Europe and the Americas, he showed how these regime types correlated with indices of wealth, industrialization, education, and urbanization. In essence, his argument was that the richer a nation is, the greater its chances of developing and sustaining democracy. This analysis became known as "modernization theory"—arguably the only work in the field of comparative politics that has ever truly [End Page 163] earned the accolade of "theory." Lipset's argument was widely accepted in the 1960s, then contested in the 1970s after the breakdown of democratic regimes in Latin America's wealthier nations, and ultimately reaffirmed in the 1990s as these and many other nations transited to democracy. In 2000, Lipset's argument was reassessed by political scientist Adam Przeworski and his collaborators, who argued that economic development explains why democracy endures, but not why it emerges. In 2003, however, this argument was strongly rebutted by Carles Boix and Susan Stokes in the journal World Politics. While Lipset will always be known as the founder of modernization theory, he relentlessly emphasizes—both in previous works and in The Democratic Century—the complex interplay between economic and cultural variables in influencing the chances of democratic government. His books Agrarian Socialism (1950) and Union Democracy (with Martin Trow and James Coleman, 1959) stressed the importance of independent voluntary associations for the development of robust political parties and democracy. In his influential edited volume Elites in Latin America (1967), Lipset argued that in the context of a predominantly feudal and Catholic region, elite values were ascriptive and anti-entrepreneurial, and that only when the power and privilege of traditional landholding elites were reduced would either economic growth or democracy markedly advance. The Democratic Century displays Lipset and Lakin's interest in the mix of economic and cultural variables, as well as political factors, that influence democracy. As they put it in the book's introduction, "The study of democratization is, quite simply, an exercise in multivariate thinking." The authors are adamant that although economic variables correlate more strongly with democracy than do cultural variables, this means not that the latter are unimportant, but rather that they are much harder to conceptualize and measure. In The Democratic Century, Lipset and Lakin compare democracy to a kickball game, and the book's three parts address different issues related to that game. The first part assesses the rules and the playing field (electoral and executive systems), the players (the political parties), and the spectators (civil society). The second part examines the socioeconomic and cultural factors that determine whether the game is played according to the rules from start to finish, or whether "the opposing sides and fans butcher each other, steal each other's resources, and head for the hills." The third part explores why the game has been played more successfully in the United States than in Latin America. After thoroughly reviewing recent empirical research, Lipset and Lakin forcefully reaffirm the fundamental idea behind modernization theory: "national wealth is the single most consistent predictor of democratic success." Compared to Latin America, the United...

How Solid is Mass Support for Democracy—And How Can We Measure It?

A decade has passed since the Third Wave of democratization brought an avalanche of new, relatively unstable democracies into being, raising the question, “How solid is support for democracy in these countries?” In the intervening years, public support for democracy has faded in some countries, many of which are democratic in name only. It is unclear how long even the pretense of electoral democracy will survive in the Soviet successor states, apart from the Baltics (Brzezinski 2001). The prospects for democracy in Islamic countries seem particularly poor, with some writers arguing that the basic values of Islamic publics may be incompatible with liberal democracy (Huntington 1993, 1996). This article examines this claim, using the 1999–2001 wave of the World Values Survey, which includes 10 Islamic countries, making it possible for the first time to compare the Islamic world with other major cultural zones. We find surprisingly widespread support for democracy among Islamic publics—at least by conventional measures.

Ideology, uncertainty and the rise of anti‐system parties in post‐communist Russia

Despite widespread Western expectations that post‐communist politicians in Russia would become increasingly ‘pragmatic’ as a result of the failure of Marxism‐Leninism, the leaders of Russia's two best‐organized parties continue to rely on extremist rhetoric and conspiracy theories in order to mobilize support. This phenomenon is poorly explained by the three major theories of post‐communist party formation, none of which sees party ideology as exerting an independent influence on party organization. However, in order to account for the success of ideological party building, party formation in an unstable new democracy must be analysed as a kind of collective‐action problem. Ideology potentially overcomes this collective‐action problem by artificially lowering the rate at which converts discount the potential future gains from co‐operation with other converts. In a highly uncertain environment where high discount rates generally prevail, and free‐rider problems undermine most attempts at political institutionalization, ideological explicitness and consistency can be a crucial organizational advantage. Evidence for this hypothesis can be found by comparing the relative failure of ‘pragmatic’ would‐be party‐builders such as Rutskoi, Lebed, Chernomyrdin and Rybkin in comparison to the ‘ideologues’ Zyuganov and Zhirinovskii.

Mass alienation under state socialism and after

This paper examines the development and endurance of mass alienation under state socialism and its aftermath. It argues that mass alienation was originally a reaction to the defects of the state socialist system, and later developed into a pattern of behavior that is harder to transform than the political and economic institutions that created it. Moreover, the paper argues that although widespread mass alienation may either help the opposition movement to achieve the establishment of a democratic political system or considerably erode the governing ability of the regime, it does not help to create a normal market system, nor does it help to create stable democratic institutions. In most cases, the most likely scenario is a period of “corrupt markets” and “unstable democracy.”