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Democracy and Development

Adrian Leftwich
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Political Economy, 7:2, 269-281

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 New Political Economy, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2002
DEBATE:
DEMOCRACY AND
DEVELOPMENT
A Contradiction in the Politics of
Economics
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ADRIAN LEFTWICH
Insofar as they are analytically isolable
from other social processes, all political
systems are best understood as systems of
power in that they generate, legitimise,
distribute and seek to control (political)
power in different ways. Likewise, econ-
omic systems are best understood as sys-
tems of wealth in that they, too, generate,
legitimise, distribute and seek to control
wealth in different ways. In practice, of
course, systems of power and wealth over-
lap and, in doing so, coincide, comp-
lement, balance or con ict with each other,
or a mix of these. From the point of view
of achieving social stability, the macro-
political trick is to maintain some kind of
equilibrium between them. For stability
can be threatened where wealth and power
are concentrated in the same hands (as in
pre-revolutionary France or Russia and in
much of Latin America during the twenti-
eth century), thus provoking pervasive
popular opposition. Equally, stability can
be threatened where wealth and power are
concentrated in different hands, provoking
the politics of stand-off or worse (as in
Malaysia in the 1960s and Nicaragua in
the 1980s), or in the barely suppressed
tension between wealth and power in post-
apartheid South Africa. It is this relation
between systems of power and systems of
wealth, crudely stated, and its implications
for the political economy of development,
Adrian Leftwich, Department of Politics, University of York, Heslington, York YO1 5DD, UK.
ISSN 1356-346 7 print; ISSN 1469-9923 online/02/020269-1 3 Ó
DOI: 10.1080/1356346022013887 1
which is my concern, plus the associated
imperative of bringing political science to
the core of development studies, and vice
versa. 1
However uncomfortable a thesis it may
be, I argue that democracy (especially, but
not only, in its more limited but almost
universally practised representative and
Schumpeterian form2) is a conservative
system of power. Democracy (at least in
its liberal form) is also, of course, radical
in that no other political systems have
promoted and protected individual political
rights and civil liberties to the same ex-
tent.3 In their struggles to deŽ ne, win or
protect such rights in the political domain,
countless millions of people have died or
suffered appallingly at the hands of auth-
oritarian regimes. These are the human
dramas which illustrate so powerfully the
‘narrative’ of the struggle for democratisa-
tion from the late 18th century to the pre-
sent. This should never be underestimated.
Whatever the virtues of their radical
properties, stable and hence enduring
democracies are conservative systems of
power. As Przeworski observes, ‘social
and economic conservatism may be the
necessary price for democracy’.4 There are
at least two important respects in which
this is the case. First, while democracies
have established the principle and practice
of at least some civil and political rights in
2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd 269
 Adrian Leftwich
their political systems (though not all, such
as gender equality, have been fully imple-
mented), they have not, to the same extent,
been able to deŽ ne, agree on or institution-
alise social and economic rights (although
the record of some democracies, especially
social democracies, in these matters is gen-
erally better than most authoritarian
regimes). Such rights (which the Chinese,
at least before the end of the ‘iron rice
bowl’ era, called ‘subsistence rights’) in-
clude job security or universal and equal
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access to health and welfare systems and
adequate pension. There are, again, many
reasons for this, but as a general rule it is
in the nature of governments in democra-
cies to tread warily when seeking to ex-
tend their political power in the public
domain into the private domain of the
system of wealth which would inevitably
be required to foot the bill. This is a point
to which I will need to return substantively
when discussing the developmental impli-
cations of democracies or the prospects for
developmental democracy.
Democracy may be considered ‘con-
servative’ in a second, and perhaps more
troubling, sense, at least from a develop-
mental point of view. Democracies have
great difŽ culty in taking rapid and far-
reaching steps to reduce structural inequal-
ities in wealth which new democratic
governments (as in post-apartheid South
Africa) or born-again (and again) demo-
cratic governments (as in Brazil or the
Philippines) may have inherited, whether
they be based on class, colour, ethnicity,
religion or a combination of them. In
short, and uncomfortably, the system of
power which democratic politics repre-
sents seldom promotes the politics of rad-
ical change in the system of wealth, even
though this may be vital for establishing
developmental momentum, especially in
late developing societies. Democracies,
that is, have few of the characteristics of
what David Apter long ago referred to as
‘mobilization’ systems, as opposed to ‘rec-
onciliation systems’5 and this is one of the
key reasons why the relationship between
democracy and development is so prob-
270
lematic and often tense. For consolidated
democratic politics is characteristically the
politics of accommodation, compromise
and the centre; and its political logic is
generally therefore necessarily consensual,
conservative and incremental in the change
it brings about. For many that is its virtue:
for others, its vice.
Why should democracy be a conserva-
tive system of power? To answer this is to
remember the complex structural condi-
tions which underpin and, indeed, deŽ ne
democratic politics. There are many, in-
cluding, Ž rst, a variety of forms of legiti-
macy—geographic, constitutional and
political. Geographical legitimacy involves
citizens accepting their physical place in
the territorial state in which they live
(which Chechens, Basques, Sri Lankan
Tamils and Southern Sudanese, for exam-
ple, do not) and not wanting to secede or
establish irredentist movements. Likewise,
constitutional legitimacy requires accept-
ance of the political system, that is the
constitutional provisions that provide a
durable set of rules for the political game
and that distribute and control power in
acceptable and hence legitimate ways.
These are intensely difŽ cult to establish, as
the complex constitutional bargaining in
South Africa after 1991 illustrated, and—if
not sufŽ ciently acceptable—can easily
produce democratic breakdown (often re-
peated), as in Ulster, Fiji, many parts of
postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa, the
Lebanon or countless other societies. Fi-
nally, political legitimacy entails agree-
ment that the outcome of the political
game, according to the operation of its
rules, is and remains fair. The absence of
such agreement brought about the end-
game for Mr Marcos in the Philippines in
1986 and Mr Milosovic in Serbia in 2000,
and deep doubts about fairness of the 1992
election brought uneasy postelectoral poli-
tics for President Moi in Kenya.
Such multifaceted legitimacy has never
been easy to establish or sustain. Com-
monly, one or more of its elements (geo-
graphic, constitutional or political) has
been missing, deŽ cient or just plain weak.
 Debate
Moreover, such legitimacy has proved to
be very difŽ cult (though not impossible, as
in India, though even there it is highly
conditional and under both religious and
regional threat) to institutionalise in soci-
eties where poverty is gross and pervasive,
where wealth and income inequality is not
only bruising but also not declining, and
where the social order is sharply striated
by ethnic, religious or racial cleavages.6
Already, from these few infrastructural
preconditions for democracy, it can be
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seen why and how democratic politics veer
towards procedural conservatism.
Two further intimately related and bal-
ancing binary operational conditions of
democratic politics make it almost certain
that democracy will normally be a con-
servative system of power. These oper-
ational conditions are Ž rst, and most
simply, that losers must accept the out-
come of the political game, knowing that
they have the right to come again, within a
given and constitutionally stipulated period
of time (usually in a range from two to six
years’ time). Losers cannot return to the
gun, the foco or the bomb (if that is what
they did before democratisation).
The distinguished American political
scientist, Adam Przeworski, has theorised
democratisation as ‘a process of institu-
tionalizing uncertainty, of subjecting all
interests to uncertainty’.7 By deŽ nition,
no-one can know the outcomes of electoral
politics but, while this may be true at some
level of theory, it is seldom true in prac-
tice, for it is highly unlikely that any group
or party would come to accept the rules of
the electoral game if it knew that losing
meant that it or the interests it represented
would lose too much. In short, no group or
interest would enter the democratic politi-
cal game if it believed that one possible
outcome of electoral defeat would result in
its effective elimination, politically or
otherwise. Thus the quid pro quo for the
Ž rst operational condition (losers’ accept-
ance of defeat) constitutes the second of
the two balancing binary operational con-
ditions for democratic endurance, namely
that winners must exercise restraint.
Democratic electoral victory is not the
same as a licence for the winners to under-
mine, attack or eliminate the vital interests
or resources of the losers; on the contrary,
there are signiŽ cant limits to what they can
do with their newly-won power.
This condition means that sustained and
sustainable democratic politics thus de-
pends on victorious parties exercising re-
straint when in government, although the
temptation (and sometimes the develop-
mental or egalitarian need) is often to
rewrite the policy book. That is to say,
new or born-again democracies are more
likely to consolidate and prosper if the
new government does not pursue highly
contentious policies too far or too fast,
especially where these policies seriously
threaten other major interests. Indeed, such
agreed limits on policy change are often
established before democratisation can be
completed, in the course of negotiations
about the rules of the game, and are thus
part of that process itself.8 The case of
Venezuela aptly illustrates this when, in
1958, two extraordinary ‘pacts’ (the
Worker–Owner Accord and the Pact of
Punto Fijo) were concluded between the
three main parties, excluding the Commu-
nist Party.9 These pacts (‘pacted’ democ-
racy) framed the directions and limits of
policy change and effectively tied the ma-
jor parties into a consensus on the broad
limits of developmental policy choice and
provided for a sharing of power which, for
almost 30 years, sustained democracy in
Venezuela, something rare in Latin Amer-
ica during the period. They did so by
guaranteeing that the main parties would
all have a stake in the government and that
neither they nor their supporters would
ever lose too much through electoral de-
feat.
The problem is that development is both
by deŽ nition and in practice a radical and
commonly turbulent process that is con-
cerned with often far-reaching and rapid
change in the structure and use of wealth,
and which—if successful—must transform
it. But the prospects of combining such
transformation in the structure of wealth
271
 Adrian Leftwich
with democracy are slim. For in laying the
foundations for, or re-starting, develop-
ment (certainly the kind of rapid and
catching-up development so urgently
needed in so many societies), it is inevi-
table that non-consensual steps will have
to be taken, especially where a new devel-
opmentally committed regime comes to
power facing a legacy of immense in-
equality in the structure of wealth and
opportunity (illustrated dramatically by the
cases of South Africa or the Philippines
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after the fall of Marcos).
Land reform is a good example of the
kind of non-consensual step often necess-
ary, since it is widely recognised that
this can be an important condition for
both rural and industrial development.
But landowners in general do not consent
to land reform! As in Latin America
and Asia, they have often constituted a
very powerful interest with intimate con-
nections to the dominant parties and the
state. In consequence, Third World
democracies have seldom been effective
in overcoming such vested rural interests
to achieve the restructuring of both
rural wealth and power which land reform
is designed to bring about. Land
reform failed in the Philippines after the
restoration of democracy in 1986,10 and
proved impossible in Pakistan under
the Bhutto regime in the 1970s.11 Indian
democracy, too, has had very little
success in pushing through national land
reforms (though some states, such as Ker-
ala, have been more successful). More-
over, at the level of more general
redistributive policy and practice in India,
there has been ‘hardly any signiŽ cant
taxation of agricultural income and
wealth’.12 Indeed, the general attempt in
India under the dominance of Congress
governments for almost 30 years to organ-
ise development of what was in effect a
‘continental political economy, more em-
pire than nation’, was undertaken ‘with
one arm tied behind its back by its com-
mitment to liberal democracy’, as Herring
puts it,13 producing relatively limpingly
slow development as re ected in what Raj
272
Krishna once described as ‘the Hindu rate
of growth’.14
In conclusion, under most circum-
stances, the rules and operational condi-
tions of stable democratic politics will
tend to restrict policy to incremental
and accommodationist options. On the
other hand, developmental requirements
(whether liberal or radical) will be likely
to pull politics and policy in the direction
of quite sharp (and, for some, unpleasant)
changes affecting the structure of wealth
of the society and hence important
interests within it. It is this structural con-
tradiction between the conservative re-
quirements of stable democratic survival
and the urgent transformative imperatives
of late development which makes the com-
bination of democracy and development so
difŽ cult, and which makes the establish-
ment and continuity of democratic devel-
opmental states so rare. For these reasons,
no-one should hold their breath for an
imminent great leap forward in develop-
ment performance in the Third World, fol-
lowing contemporary western insistence
on democratisation as a condition for
growth (and aid). Effective development
will not depend on regime type, but on the
character of the state, whether democratic
or not. But that is a different story.
Notes
1. Adrian Leftwich, States of Development (Polity
Press, 2000).
2. J.A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and
Democracy (Unwin, 1965), p. 269.
3. R.G. Gastil, Freedom in the World, 1985–6
(Greenwood Press, 1986); and Charles Humana,
World Human Rights Guide, 3rd edn (Oxford
University Press, 1992).
4. Adam Przeworski, ‘Democracy as a contingent
outcome of con icts’, in: J. Elster & R. Slagstad
(eds), Constitutionalism and Democracy (Cam-
bridge University Press, 1988), p. 80.
5. David Apter, The Politics of Modernization (Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1965).
6. Adam Przeworski et al., Sustainable Democracy
(Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Adam
Przeworski, M. Alvarez, J.A. Cheibub & F.
Limongi, ‘What Makes Democracies Endure?’,
Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1996), pp.
39–55.
 Debate
7. Adam Przeworski, ‘Some problems in the study
of the transition to democracy ’, in: G. O’Donnell
et al., (eds), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule:
Comparative Perspectives (The Johns Hopkins
Press, 1986), p. 58.
8. S. P. Huntington, ‘How Countries Democratize’,
Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 106, No. 4
(1991/1992), pp. 609–15.
9. See Jennifer McCoy, ‘The State and the Demo-
cratic Compromise in Venezuela’, Journal of
Developing Societies, Vol. 4 (1988), pp. 85–133.
10. B. J. Kerkvliet, ‘Land Reform in the Philippines
since the Marcos Coup’, PaciŽ c Affairs, Vol. 47
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(1974), pp. 286–304; and J. Moran, ‘Patterns of
Corruption and Development in East Asia’, Third
Two Elaborations on the Argument
EVELYNE HUBER
The general point of Leftwich’s piece is
very well taken. Formal democracy does
not necessarily bring substantive democ-
racy in the sense of progress towards pol-
itical and social equality, but its survival
may on the contrary demand the absence
of efforts to advance popular participation
and economic redistribution. I would like
to elaborate on two points related to the
general argument. First, one needs to dis-
tinguish clearly between democracies in
advanced industrial countries and democ-
racies in the developing world. Second, the
same social forces that push for formal
democracy generally also push for ad-
vances towards participatory and social
democracy, but other variables may favour
formal democracy while at the same time
undermining progress towards meaningful
participation and redistribution.1
In advanced industrial countries, it has
Evelyne Huber, Department of Political Science, CB#3265, University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill, NC 27599–3265, USA.
World Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1999), pp.
569–87.
11. Ronald J. Herring, ‘ZulŽ kar Ali Bhutto and the
“Eradication of Feudalism” in Pakistan’, Com-
parative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 21,
No. 4 (1979), pp. 519–57.
12. Pranab Bardhan, The Political Economy of De-
velopment in India (Blackwell, 1984), p. 46 and
ch. 6.
13. Ronald J. Herring, ‘Embedded particularism: In-
dia’s failed developmenta l state’, in: Meredith
Woo-Cumings (ed.), The Developmenta l State
(Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 306–34.
14. Stuart Corbridge & John Harriss, Reinventing
India (Polity Press, 2000), p. 173.
been possible to institutionalise social and
economic rights, though democracies in
these countries vary tremendously in the
extent to which they protect their citizens
from poverty and reduce inequality
through the tax and transfer system. The
key causal variables that made the estab-
lishment of redistributive safety nets poss-
ible are long-term incumbency of social
democratic parties or Christian democratic
parties (particularly if in competition with
social democratic parties). A further con-
tributing factor has been a constitutional
structure that concentrates power and min-
imises the availability of veto points.2
Democracies in advanced industrial coun-
tries also vary greatly in the extent to
which people participate in the political
process, and those differences are particu-
larly stark among the lower classes. One of
the main factors that reduce class differ-
273
 Evelyne Huber
ences in rates of political participation is
organisational involvement, particularly in
unions. 3 Unions have also been the main
bases of support of social democratic par-
ties. Thus a strong labour movement con-
tributes both to higher levels of political
participation and to the establishment and
maintenance of redistributive social policy.
In developing countries, in contrast, the
trade-off between redistribution and sur-
vival of formal democracy has been a real
one. One of the primary reasons is that the
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enemies of democracy and redistribution
have been stronger relative to the support-
ers of democracy and redistribution than in
advanced industrial countries. For the most
part, the same forces that have demanded
inclusive formal democracy (not to be con-
fused with the types of restricted democ-
racy that were prevalent, for instance, in
Latin America before the military take-
overs of the 1960s) have also demanded
social democracy—and not infrequently
socialism outright, and the enemies of re-
distribution have at best tolerated democ-
racy as long as it did not entail a threat to
their economic interests. In many develop-
ing countries, particularly in Latin Amer-
ica and Asia, large landowners have
retained much economic and political
power and have used it to obstruct
democratisation and land reform to the
best of their abilities. On the opposite side,
organised labour and social democratic or
radical left parties have mostly been weak
and thus incapable of effectively pushing
for democratic procedures and of compet-
ing successfully for political power
through elections. Where organised labour
was numerically moderately large, it was
frequently co-opted or controlled by the
state and thus had little autonomous mobil-
isation capacity to support leftist parties.
If we examine the forces behind instal-
lation and survival of formal democratic
regimes, we have to take into account
three clusters of power: the balance of
power in civil society, the balance of
power between civil society and the state,
and the power constellations in the inter-
national economic and political system.4
274
Having just discussed the Ž rst of them, and
given the limited space available, I shall
concentrate on the last in the remainder of
these remarks. Since the end of the Cold
War, it is fair to say that the international
system has been very favourable for the
establishment and maintenance of formal
democracy. However, it has done little to
raise the quality of democracy in formal–
legal dimensions, and one could argue that
it has been outright counter-productive in
terms of fostering democratic participation
and economic redistribution.5
American policy has shifted from sup-
port for any type of strong anti-communist
regime, no matter how authoritarian, to a
clear preference for formally democratic
regimes, and newly (re)-established demo-
cratic regimes have used regional associa-
tions to put pressure on governments
threatening to deviate from that norm. At
the same time, the Ž nancial crises suffered
by most developing countries at some
point during the past two decades have
given the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank tremendous in uence on
policy making in countries requesting as-
sistance. Essentially, imposition by these
institutions of their preferred policies has
drastically narrowed the room for political
choice and thus for democratic political
participation. It has not eliminated this
room, as there has been resistance to such
policy imposition, but it certainly has re-
duced it. Moreover, the neoliberal struc-
tural reforms imposed have generally had
a regressive impact on income distribution.
Economically and politically, they have
strengthened large capitalists and weak-
ened both middle and working classes and
their organisations. Thus they have con-
tributed to the survival of formal democ-
racy by reducing the threat to the essential
interests of propertied groups, while at the
same time severely undermining the devel-
opment of participatory and social democ-
racy.
Notes
1. This argument is developed in Evelyne Huber,
Dietrich Rueschemeye r & John D. Stephens, ‘The
 Debate
Paradoxes of Contemporary Democracy: Formal,
Participatory, and Social Dimensions’, Compara-
tive Politics, Vol. 29, No. 3 (1997), pp.
323–42.
2. There used to be an argument about the redistribu-
tive nature of the welfare state, with some claim-
ing that it only distributes across generations, not
social classes. Research done over the past decade
has shown conclusively that some welfare states
indeed are highly redistributive. See, for example,
Deborah Mitchell, Income Transfers in Ten Wel-
fare States (BrookŽ eld, 1991); Anthony B. Atkin-
son, Lee Rainwater & Timothy M. Smeeding,
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Income Distribution in OECD Countries (Organi-
zation for Economic Co-operation and Develop-
ment, 1995); and Evelyne Huber & John D.
Fundamental Tensions in the
Democratic Compromise
MUSHTAQ HUSAIN KHAN
In his statement Leftwich points out that
for a democracy to be stable, there has to
be an understanding that the losers in elec-
tions will not be wiped out by the winners.
This inevitably ensures that stable democ-
racies are conservative, based on consen-
sus and therefore unlikely to carry out the
structural changes necessary for develop-
ment to take off. While this is undoubtedly
a problem for developing countries trying
to institutionalise democracy, a compari-
son of developing countries with more
advanced ones suggests a more fundamen-
tal problem with trying to construct
democracy at an early stage of develop-
ment. This more fundamental problem has
to do with who the winners of democratic
contests are likely to be in a developing
country, not so much that they are likely to
have to compromise with their immediate
contestants. Societies, of course, contain
Mushtaq Husain Khan, Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, Univer-
sity of London, Russell Square, London WCIH 0XG, UK.
Stephens, Development and Crisis of the Welfare
State (University of Chicago Press, 2001).
3. Sidney Verba, Norman Nie & Jae-on Kim, Partici-
pation and Political Equality (Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1978).
4. Dietrich Rueschemeyer , Evelyne Huber Stephens
& John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and
Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1992).
5. For the problems with the quality of formal–legal
democracy in Latin America, see Guillermo
O’Donnell, ‘Polyarchies and the (un)rule of law in
Latin America’, in: Juan E. Mendez, Guillermo
O’Donnell & Paulo Sergio Pinheiro (eds), The
(Un)Rule of Law and the Underprivilege d in Latin
America (University of Notre Dame Press, 1999).
different interests, and the main economic
interests constitute different social classes.
Leftwich is right to argue that much of
development involves structural change,
and a key component of this structural
change is the emergence of new classes as
the economy develops, usually in the di-
rection of capitalism.
In advanced countries, a well-estab-
lished capitalist class exists and dominates
the economy. This fact has tremendous
implications for understanding the viability
of democracy in an advanced capitalist
economy. The economic domination of the
capitalist class and the domination more
generally of the capitalist economic system
ensures that democratic politics oscillates
around a narrow range of options which
are essentially pro-capitalist, but which
may differ at the margin in terms of distri-
bution. There are several reasons for this,
275
 Mushtaq Husain Khan
of which the two main ones will have to
sufŽ ce here. First, the dominance of the
capitalist sector ensures that most of the
resources for running politics (rent-seeking
expenditures in the economic jargon)
comes directly or indirectly from capital-
ists. If, as a class, they are the biggest
political spenders (not just in contributing
to parties, but also in more subtle ways
such as funding think-tanks, lobbyists and
so on), it is unlikely that the outcome of
the political process will systematically
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damage them. Second, and more impor-
tantly, the economic dominance of capital-
ism means that the welfare of most people,
even if they are not capitalists, depends on
the health of the capitalist sector. If they
are workers, their employment and wage
growth depends on the health of the capi-
talist sector. If they are professionals, the
purchasers of their services are most often
capitalists. If they are public sector work-
ers or professionals, their wages and
salaries come from taxation, which again
depends on the health of the capitalist
sector. Thus, even when the substance of
politics is about how to redistribute the
fruits of growth, most ‘responsible’ partic-
ipants understand that redistribution has to
happen within a regime that is conducive
to capitalist growth. In that sense, New
Labour in the UK and the ‘Third Way’
more broadly has simply formalised an
insight that is as old as social democracy
itself. These considerations, as much as, or
more than, the need to Ž nd the compro-
mises that Leftwich identiŽ es, are the rea-
sons why democratic politics appears to be
based on conservative compromises in
most democratic countries, which are after
all mostly advanced capitalist countries.
The key thing is that these compromises
are not necessarily destructive for growth,
even though they may not be radical.
The nature of the democratic compro-
mise in developing country democracies is
fundamentally different. Here, by
deŽ nition, capitalism is not the dominant
sector and capitalists are not numerous
enough to dominate the economy politi-
cally, even though individually they may
276
be obscenely rich. The paucity of capital-
ists means that it is unlikely that they can
collectively spend enough to ensure that
their interests dominate in deŽ ning the
objectives of politics and rent-seeking.
More importantly, and again because of
the underdevelopment of capitalism, the
welfare of most people is not directly tied
to the welfare of the capitalist sector. True,
if the capitalist sector grew rapidly, then in
a generation or two most people would
beneŽ t from that, but there is a qualita-
tively weaker correspondence between the
living conditions of most people and the
health of capitalism. In such a context,
political populism in extreme cases can
easily kill off the capitalist sector without
anyone in power caring too much, even
though a very severe capitalist collapse
may eventually touch almost everyone.
For instance, Leftwich points out as an
example of democratic conservatism the
fact that the Bhutto regime in Pakistan
failed to carry out land reform. This is
true, but the Bhutto regime is also a very
good example of Third World populism
where large-scale nationalisations, clien-
telist job creation and a redistributive
rhetoric had seriously damaging effects for
local capitalism. This kind of politics is
virtually unknown in advanced capitalist
countries, short of a revolutionary situ-
ation. Thus the critical feature of develop-
ing countries is that, while the democratic
contestants do have to make compromises
with each other, there are no systematic
reasons why these compromises will pro-
tect the interests of the capitalist sector or
promote growth.
The interests which dominate politics
(and rent-seeking) in this context are both
different from and much more complex
than what we Ž nd in advanced countries.1
In many cases, although not all, the groups
which dominate politics (and not just elec-
toral politics) are a motley collection com-
ing from what may collectively and
loosely be described as the ‘intermediate
classes’. These include the educated
classes with college or university edu-
cation, the petty bourgeoisie and middling
 Debate
to rich peasants. This middle strata may be
numerically small (possibly as small as 10
per cent of the population) and economi-
cally weak, but in terms of legitimacy and
organisational power they are collectively
the most powerful group in most develop-
ing countries. Without their leadership and
participation, electoral politics, in particu-
lar, is impossible. In practice, what we see
most frequently in the democratic domain
are contests between multi-class factions
led and dominated by members of the
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intermediate classes.
The objective of these contests is to
replace an existing group with another one,
and Leftwich is right to point out that
democracy will only stabilise if the losers
are assured of a chance of returning in a
few years. This does not in itself identify
the more fundamental problem, which is
that the objectives of these competing
groups may simply be to capture public
resources and engage in very destructive
types of corruption and primitive accumu-
lation designed as immediately as possible
to enrich their faction. This, rather than
innate conservatism, is what is destroying
most developing countries. Democracy is
not the cause of many of these problems
since value-reducing rent-seeking can op-
erate without democracy, but the evidence
certainly belies the argument that democ-
racy in any simple way makes these prob-
lems less serious, for instance through
greater ‘accountability’. Such an expec-
Conservative Elites and State
Incapacities
JEAN GRUGEL
Adrian Leftwich offers a succinct and in-
cisive account of the difŽ culties of com-
Jean Grugel, Department of Politics, University of ShefŽ eld, Northumberland Road, ShefŽ eld S10
2TU, UK.
tation is based on a naive view of democ-
racy as a system whereby the ‘people’
elect leaders to translate their preferences
into policy. As Leftwich points out, the
Schumpeterian view of democracy as com-
petition between organised parties is more
accurate, and the critical question is which
groups have the organisational, Ž nancial or
other powers to dominate party politics?
While democracy is a goal which is valu-
able in itself, the idea that democracy will
help to solve the fundamental problems of
value-reducing rent-seeking in developing
countries is not supported by the evidence.
Indeed by legitimising and intensifying
contestation between essentially unproduc-
tive groups, democracy can in many con-
texts make the damaging rent-seeking
worse. These observations are not argu-
ments ‘against democracy’, but simply
point out that the construction of political
settlements which may allow more rapid
economic development in developing
countries has nothing necessarily to do
with either promoting democracy or over-
throwing it.
Note
1. A comparative examination of these class and
group interests in Asian countries and their conse-
quences for rent-seeking is presented in Mushtaq
Khan & K.S. Jomo (eds), Rents, Rent-seeking and
Economic Development: Theory and Evidence in
Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
bining growth with democracy in
developing countries. In so doing, he goes
277
 Jean Grugel
to the heart of a strategic dilemma facing
not only governments but also social
actors—labour, NGOs, rural movements,
etc.—in the developing world. How
far will mobilisation to advance the
grievances of particular sectors upset the
fragile institutions upholding the new sys-
tems of elected rule and destroy the
chances of building a democratic state?
Nevertheless, I would argue that Leftwich
is wrong to attribute the barriers to equi-
table development to the constraints im-
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posed by democracy. State capacity may
be at least as much an obstacle to redistri-
bution as the formal political system.
Moreover, Leftwich suggests that democ-
racy can only be understood in the limited
sense of electoral politics and elite consen-
sus. In this, he follows Adam Przeworski,
the most spirited contemporary defender of
minimalist democracy.1 But democratic
systems have the potential to be much
more than simply a conservative mode of
governance. Indeed, it is precisely its rad-
ical edge that accounts for democracy’s
enduring ideological appeal. Development,
understood as a project of empowerment,
citizenship and balanced growth, requires
the implementation of the emancipatory
potential inherent within democracy.
Rather than existing in contradiction, then,
democracy and development constitute
mutually enhancing utopian projects.
Democracy is ‘a mode of decision-
making about collectively binding rules
and policies over which the people exer-
cise control’.2 The most democratic
arrangements, therefore, are those that
make possible to the greatest conceivable
degree the principles of popular control
and equality in policy making.3 Measured
against this yardstick, the new systems of
rule that have emerged since the 1980s are
by and large very limited in terms of their
democratic content. The reasons for this
are complex and multiple. They include
the fact that globalised systems of pro-
duction make for a ‘weak’ version of
democracy because they strengthen the
hand of capital vis-à-vis the working class,
the traditional ‘bearers’ of democracy.4 At
278
the same time, the increasingly in uential
institutions of global governance, most no-
tably the IMF and the World Bank, are
generating, at best, formalistic models of
democracy in which the introduction of
liberal democracy is tied functionally to
economic growth. This is the case notwith-
standing the rhetoric of consultation and
‘ownership’ espoused by the governance
agencies. In sum, the capacity of the pro-
ponents of limited democracy to push their
vision globally and the difŽ culties of
building systems of genuine equality can-
not be doubted. Nevertheless, this should
not be taken to mean that elite democracy
is the only possible version. In fact, there
are growing signs that the governance ca-
pacities of conservative democracy are
exhausted—as in Argentina, for exam-
ple—as well as very visible popular disen-
chantment with it. A number of radical
democratic projects are now emerging, the
best known of which is perhaps the Zap-
atista movement in Mexico. Moreover,
there are a range of movements that be-
long to a new and exciting public sphere,
that of global civil society, engaged ac-
tively in a struggle to decouple democracy
from capitalism, corporations and exclu-
sionary systems of elite consensus with the
aim of relocating it within discourses of
autonomy and citizenship.5 Organisations
within global civil society, then, offer both
a critique of the inappropriate imposition
of the institutions of liberal democracy and
a source of inspiration for the generation
of alternative models.
Leftwich is certainly right to suggest
that limited democracies, especially in de-
veloping countries, have a poor record in
implementing the rapid and far-reaching
programmes that effectively address struc-
tural inequality—though, of course, it is
worth remembering that dictatorships have
generally performed even worse in this
respect. He attributes these difŽ culties to
the nature of the pacts, formal or informal,
that make possible the introduction of
electoral politics. As democratisation theo-
rists have consistently noted, the deals
struck during transitions provide the mould
 Debate
for politics later. But attention must also
be paid to the question of the state. The
obstacles to development after transition
are frequently embedded state practices of
clientelism and predation and very real
limitations on the state’s capacity to de-
liver goods and services. Perhaps more
than anything else, a genuine process of
democratisation relies on the transform-
ation of the state, since it is only through
the state that the promises of equality,
accountability and citizenship inherent
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within democracy can be made real and
delivered upon.6 Yet transforming the state
is a herculean task, especially in the devel-
oping world. Changing the institutions of
government is relatively easy—especially
given the range of inducements for devel-
oping countries to introduce elections and
the paraphernalia of liberal democracy—
by comparison with the comprehensive set
of reforms that are required to democratise
the state more broadly. Reforms are
blocked by elites who rely on money and
status to deliver excessive political
in uence. Moreover, and perhaps even
more pertinently, states need infrastruc-
tural power, that is—‘collective power,
power through society’, the capacity to
work with and through society7—in order
to deliver development and democracy.
This is a kind of state capacity that devel-
oping states notoriously lack. This absence
of capacity and legitimacy is just as likely
to be the reason why developing states fail
to deliver development and democracy.
Perspectives from Village Democracy
in China
BAOGANG HE
Adrian Leftwich examines the ‘structural
contradiction between the conservative re-
Baogang He, School of Government, University of Tasmania, Box 252–22, Hobart 7001, Tasmania,
Australia.
To sum up, most contemporary experi-
ments in democratisation are partial and
limited. This does not mean that democ-
racy is essentially conservative but rather
suggests that processes of political and
economic change are currently controlled
by local or global conservative elites. De-
spite this, a growing number of local, na-
tional and transnational movements that
contest the conservative attempt to lay ex-
clusive claim to democracy are emerging.
It is not democracy, then, that can be held
responsible for the lack of development in
the South, but rather conservative policies
allied to state incapacity.
Notes
1. Adam Przeworski, ‘Minimalist conceptions of
democracy : a defense’, in: Ian Schapiro & Cas-
siano Hacker-Cordo n (eds), Democracy’s Value
(Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 23–55.
2. David Beetham, ‘Liberal Democracy and the Lim-
its of Democratization’, Political Studies, special
issue, Vol. 40 (1992), pp. 40–53.
3. Ibid.
4. Dietrich Rueschemeyer , Evelyne Huber Stephens
& John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and
Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1992).
5. See Mary Kaldor, ‘Transnational civil society’, in:
Timothy Dunne & Nicholas Wheeler (eds), Human
Rights in Global Politics (Cambridge University
Press 2000), pp. 195–213.
6. For a fuller development of this argument , see
Jean Grugel, Democratization: A Critical Intro-
duction (Palgrave 2001).
7. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: The
Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760–1914,
Vol. 2 (Cambridge University Press 1993), p. 59.
quirements of stable democratic survival
and the urgent transformative imperatives
279
 Baogang He
of late development’ and concludes that
the contradiction ‘makes the combination
of democracy and development so
difŽ cult’. Indeed, the experience of China
as a late developmental country fully sup-
ports this conclusion. To reduce structural
inequality, the totalitarian regime of Mao
Zedong took rapid and far-reaching steps,
such as land reforms, which did not take
place in a democratic India. China’s econ-
omic success since the 1980s has also been
achieved under the authoritarian regime of
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Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin. At the
local level, economic development de-
manded an able, upright and authoritarian
local leadership. There is a trade-off be-
tween democracy and development, and
peasants’ demand for money appears to
override the demand for democracy.
Leftwich’s contradiction thesis, never-
theless, can be improved by drawing a
distinction between the earlier and later
stages of economic development for ‘later
developmental’ countries. Obviously, his
thesis does not apply to the later stage
of development. Take the experience of
village election and democracy in China.
As a village reaches a certain level of
development and as its wealth accumu-
lates, farmers demand public accountabil-
ity, democratic control of wealth and
fair distribution of collective wealth. Be-
cause of the deŽ ciency of local democratic
institutions, corruption often occurs
amongst authoritarian village leaders and
village funds are often misused, leading
such rich villages to ruin. This
conŽ rms Mancur Olson’s argument else-
where that autocracy will rarely have good
economic performance for more than a
generation. 1
The demand for village election and
democracy also stems from a desire for
relatively equal redistribution of village
wealth. When a village has accumulated
enormous wealth, say from compensation
payments for land, it is necessary to put
the village committees under the supervi-
sion of the people so as to institute a
degree of accountability.2 Here, following
Huntington, 3 I would like to revise the old
280
modernisation theory and emphasise that
the mode of distribution of wealth is as
important as the level of wealth in under-
standing the democratisation push.4 It is
observed that, if village leaders distribute
village wealth in a paternalist way so that
each family in the village will have a
relatively equal share of village wealth, the
farmers’ demand for elections will de-
crease. By contrast, when inequality in
wealth distribution is signiŽ cant, particu-
larly when corruption as a mode of distri-
bution in favour of village cadres is
rampant, elections sponsored by the cen-
tral government offer disadvantaged farm-
ers an opportunity to demand a relatively
equal distribution of village wealth. Vet-
eran soldiers, the young, the educated and
experienced political and business activists
demand elections because they want a
relatively equal distribution of collective
wealth and some control over village af-
fairs in order to protect their interests. Poor
farmers see elections as a way of gaining
monetary beneŽ t (up to 60 yuan for a vote)
and advancing their interests.
This structural contradiction, according
to Leftwich’s analysis, derives from the
conservative nature of democracy. He dis-
cusses two forms of its conservatism. First,
‘they [democracies] have not, to the same
extent, been able to deŽ ne, agree on or
institutionalise social and economic
rights’. Second, ‘democracies have great
difŽ culty in taking rapid and far-reaching
steps to reduce structural inequalities in
wealth’. However, there is a third form
of conservatism. In the case of village
democracy, the village assembly usually
does not endorse proposals of risk-
involved investment or other develop-
mental projects. Village and township
leaders hence complain that the demo-
cratic institution of the village assembly
has slowed down economic develop-
ment. It should be stressed that this
conservative attitude towards development
is to do with the contingent opinion of
villagers, electors and village represent-
atives, not with the structure of democracy
itself. If the villagers’ attitude toward
 Debate
risk changes, they are likely to support
risk-involved development.
Moreover, Leftwich’s argument about
the conservative nature of democracy is
only true in some areas but false in others.
Here it is extremely important to dis-
tinguish the four dimensions of wealth and
power (generating, legitimising, distribut-
ing and seeking to control) in discussing
the conservative nature of democracy. Al-
though Leftwich mentions these four di-
mensions, it is not clear whether he makes
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a distinction when he examines the conser-
vatism of democracy.
The democratic control of village
wealth, for example, is not conservative,
for village democracy ensures that farmers
have the right to access village accounts
and the right to question the village leaders
in the assembly about the use of village
wealth. Indeed, Leftwich recognises the
radical element of democracy in protecting
individual political rights and civil liber-
ties. The democratic distribution of wealth
is not conservative either in that farmers
are able to discuss, debate and vote on the
policies relating to their interests, and to
demand a relatively fair distribution of
collective wealth through their representa-
tives in the assembly. These two dimen-
sions should be distinguished from the
other two forms of power and wealth in
terms of production and legitimisation. It
is in these two areas that the conservative
tendency of village democracy is most
apparent. Village democracy is conserva-
tive is so far as it does not necessarily
support risk-involved development, es-
pecially when the majority village as-
sembly representatives reject proposed
development programmes. It is also con-
servative in the sense that it enables pri-
vate capitalists and the new rich to win
power through elections. In sum, their ac-
quisition of wealth can be legitimised in
this democratic process and further rein-
force structural distribution inequalities.
In conclusion, Leftwich’s main argu-
ment can be improved by making three
distinctions. The Ž rst distinction is the ear-
lier versus later stages of development. His
contradiction thesis holds true in the ear-
lier stage of development, but not in the
later development of ‘late developmental’
countries. To sustain economic develop-
ment, the democratic control and distri-
bution of wealth is required. Without a
democratic guarantee, any benign authori-
tarian Ž gure is likely to abuse power and
the rapid development will come to ruin.
Second, the democratic control and distri-
bution of wealth should be distinguished
from the production of development and
the democratic legitimisation of wealth.
The former tends to be radical, while the
latter is conservative. Third, three forms of
the conservatism can be distinguished. The
two forms identiŽ ed by Leftwich are struc-
tural ones, while the third form identiŽ ed
by this author is contingent. By making
these three distinctions, I would argue that
democracy contains both radical and con-
servative elements in different areas: rad-
ical in both the democratic control of
wealth and the demand for the fair distri-
bution of wealth, but conservative in both
the maintenance of structural inequalities
and the production of development.
Democracy and development are thus po-
tentially compatible or even inescapably
complementary, even whilst there is per-
manent tension between them.
Notes
1. Mancur Olson. ‘Dictatorship. Democracy, and De-
velopment’, American Political Science Review,
Vol. 87, No. 3 (1993), pp. 567–76.
2. This is particularly true in Guangdong. See South
China Morning Post, 19 November 1999.
3. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democra-
tization in the Last Twentieth Century (University
of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
4. Jean Oi and Scott Rozelle have made their contri-
bution to the literature when they emphasised the
importance of the source of income. See Jean C.
Oi & Scott Rozelle, ‘Elections and Power: The
Locus of Decision-makin g in Chinese Villages’,
The China Quarterly, No. 162 (2000), pp. 513–39.
Here I would highlight the importance of the mode
of distribution of wealth.
281