What is democracy?

A reconceptualization of the quality of

democracy

Gerardo L. Munck∗
School of International Relations, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA
(2014)
Conceptual attributes of democracy
• Competition
• Participation
• Civil rights
• Responsiveness
****(Dahl)****
• Sources of authority for government
• Purposes served by the government
• Procedures for constituting government
****(Huntington)****
• Inclusion of vertical and horizontal accountability, and the rule of law, is due in part to
****(O’Donnell)****
How does Munk defines democracy?
• Political systems are democratic if they embody the
values of political freedom and political equality.
What is the quality of democracy?

• Quality of democracy = democracy

• Political systems are democratic if they embody the values of political
freedom and political equality.
• Government decision-making-- political institutions are democratic
only if citizens can change the status quo.
• Social environment of politics—social context cannot turn the
principle of political freedom and equality into mere formalities.
• What is the sense of the quality of democracy? (i.e., content of the
construct).
Conceptualizations
of the quality of
democracy: Terms
and conceptions.
• What is the reference of the quality of democracy? (i.e., objects
referred to by the construct).
Conceptualizations
of the quality of
democracy: Sense
and reference.
How far does the concept of democracy extend?

• Government decision-making (who makes decision?)

“the only way a meaningful discussion of democracy, as distinct from all forms of autocratic
government, is possible is to consider it as characterized by a set of rules (primary or basic) which
establish who is authorized to take collective decisions and which procedures are to be applied.”
(Bobbio)

• What criticism this view generate?

• The majoritarian conception (What is at stake is who decides what
laws and how, or the structure of government?)
• The juridical-constitutional conception:
• In line with the well-known contrast between the rule of law and the
rule of men, primacy should be given to the law over politics, and
hence democracy should be subordinated to the rule of law.
• The social environment of politics:
• The principles of political freedom and equality are routinely affected
by the social environment of politics.
What additional attributes should be included in the concept of democracy?

• Socio-economic factors
• According to Dahl “inequalities in economic and social resources” are
a problem for democracy “because those with greater resources
naturally [tend] to use them to influence the political system to their
advantage”
Approaches to Democratic
Transitions: Modernization
Theory and its Critics
modernization
• A body of theory that became prominent in the 1950s and 1960s in
relation to understanding issues of economic and social
development.
• Transformation from traditional or underdeveloped societies to
modern societies.
 • In the post-World War II period, the historic
political debate as to the best system of rule
was given a new formulation that reflected
the division of the world's political systems
into:
1. The First World
Post-WW II 2. was the modern, developed, liberal-
democratic states, mostly of the West but

Debate including Japan as well.

3. The Second World

(1950s- 4. included the developed communist states

led by the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe (actually, these countries turned
out to be not nearly so developed as
1980s) thought at the time).
5. The Third World
6. consisted of the poor or authoritarian
states (e.g., Africa, Asia, Latin America, and
the Middle East and North Africa).
The Great Debate
• Marxist theory of modernization
proclaimed that the abolition of private
property would put an end to
exploitation, inequality, and conflict.
• Capitalist theory held that economic
development would lead to rising living
standards and democracy.
• A version of modernization theory emerged in the United States that
portrayed underdevelopment as a direct consequence of a country's
psychological and cultural traits.
 • modernization is not linear;
• modernization is not irreversible (economic
collapse can reverse it, e.g., Great Depression in
Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain and in 1990s in
A modified most of the Soviet successor states);
• self-expression and more participation in decision
version of making;
• social and cultural change is path dependent:
modernization history matters ( e.g., Protestantism, Catholicism,
Islam, Confucianism, or communis left a lasting
(Inglehart and imprint on its worldview). religion and ethnic
traditions are resilient although the publics of
industrializing societies are becoming richer and
Welzel) more educated.
Argument
• modernization does not automatically
lead to democracy.
• attaining a high level of per capita
GDP does not produce democracy
 According to World Value Survey, 95% of people
surveyed believed in God.

Economic 90% of the people surveyed believed that men

development have more of a right to a job than women do.

and mass The cross-national differences are robust and

correlated with a society’s level of development:
values
People in low-income societies are much likelier
to emphasize religion and traditional gender
relations than people in rich countries.
 The shift from traditional to secular-rational
values =shift from agrarian to industrial.

The
consequences The shift from survival to self expression =rise of
postindustrial societies
of
modernization Data indicate that mass priorities have shifted
from an emphasis on economic and physical
security to an emphasis on subjective self-
expression, participation in decision-making, etc.
 • Rich countries are much more likely than poor to be
democracies

Wealth & • Are rich country likely to be democratic because

Democracy democracy makes countries rich or is development
conducive to democracy?
 • In 1990s: Among countries that democratized, most were
middle
Wealth & countries: almost all the high-income countries already were
democracies, and few low-income countries made the
Democracy transition.
• Economic development is conducive to democracy
What makes
Education
economic
development
conducive to
Economic security =
democracy?
self-expression values
increase
Waves of democracy between 1985 and 1995

• Inadequacy of "electoral democracy," "hybrid democracy," "authoritarian

democracy”
• The essence of institutionalist definition of democracy is measured by the
extent to which civil and political rights exist on paper .
• The Freedom House annual rankings: if a country holds free elections,
Freedom House tends to rate it as "free," giving it a score at or near the top
of its scale.
 Do self-expression values lead
to democracy, or does
democracy cause self-
expression values to emerge?

Class Discussion
 • Economic development and the dynamics of
political regimes.

MODERNIZATION: • What makes political regimes rise, endure, and

THEORIES AND fall? Do democracies emerge as a consequence
FACT of economic development? Does rapid
Przeworski and economic growth destabilize democracies? Is
there some level of development beyond which
Limongi democracies are more likely to fall? Is European
history unique or is it repeating itself in
contemporary less developed countries?
Two
alternative
views of the
relation • Endogenous
between • Exogenous

development
and
democracy
 • Huntington and O'Donnell argued that there is a level
beyond which further development decreases the
Other views of probability that democracy will survive.
• Huntington argued that both regimes become unstable
democratic when a country undergoes modernization, which occurs at
some intermediate levels of development.
development • O'Donnell, claimed that democracies tend to die when a
country exhausts "the easy stage of import substitution,"
again at some intermediate level.
Conclusion

• Comparing the "new" and the "old" countries shows that democracies are more brittle in the new
countries while dictatorships are more likely to die in the old ones.
• The emergence of democracy is not a by-product of economic development.
• Democracy is or is not established by political actors pursuing their goals.
• It can be initiated at any level of development.
• Only once it is established do economic constraints play a role: the chances for the survival of democracy
are greater when the country is richer.
• Democracy is more likely to survive in a growing economy with less than $1,000 per capita income than in
a country with an income between $1,000 and $2,000 that declines economically.
• If they succeed in generating development, democracies can survive even in the poorest nations.
 • High level of economic wealth
What explains • Equal distribution of wealth/income
democratization? • A market economy
• Th absence of feudalism in the society
• A strong middle class
• High level of literacy and education
• Protestantism
• Low level of civil violence
• Low level of polarization and extremism
• Pluralism
• Communal heterogeneity/homogeneity
• Elite desire to emulate democratic nations
 Crucial factors 1. Deepening legitimacy problems of authoritarian regime (in the
context of globalization of dem. values);
(independent
variables) 2. Unprecedented economic growth of the 1960s followed by
crises in the 1970s;
caused
democratization 3. Religious changes, particularly in an antiestablishment
direction in the Roman Catholic Church;

in 1970’s and 4. New policies of external actors' subversive authoritarianism

1980s: (e.g., democratic shifts associated with Gorbachev’s leadership
in the Soviet Union);

predisposing or 5. Demonstration of snowballing effects of democratization (in

the context of post-1960s media and communication
causal? technology).
SOME SOCIAL REQUISITES
OF DEMOCRACY

Seymour Lipset
 Political

Economic

What Educational
sustains
democratic Cultural

institution? Religious (Judeo-Christian heritage and attitudes)

If this is so then why would Italy and Germany, despite

strongly religious populations and traditions, fell to fascism?
How is democracy defined?

• “a political system which supplies regular constitutional opportunities

for changing the governing officials.”
This definition implies several specific conditions:
• “political formula," a system of beliefs, legitimizing the democratic
system and specifying the institutions- parties, a free press, and so
forth-which are legitimized, i.e., accepted as proper by all;
• one set of political leaders in office; and
• one or more sets of leaders, out of office, who act as a legitimate
opposition attempting to gain office.
Classification of countries as democratic or not

• Measures of democracy for the European democracies: uninterrupted continuation of

political democracy since WWI and the absence over the 25 years of a major political
movement opposed to the democratic “rule of the game.” (prerequisites of
democracy, election results are sufficient)
• Measures of democracy for the Latin American countries: a history of more or less
free elections for most of the post-WWI. (prerequisites of democracy, impressionistic
assessment based on fairly well-known facts of history are sufficient)

• Most countries which lack an enduring tradition of political democracy lie in the
traditionally underdeveloped sections of the world. (Max Weber suggested that
modern democracy in its clearest forms can only occur under the unique conditions of
capitalist industrialization)
 Economic development
(comprising industrialization,
Two wealth, urbanization, and
education)
characteristics
of social Legitimacy (the degree to
systems which institutions are valued
for themselves, and
considered right and proper)
 • Germany is an example of a nation in which
the structural changes growing
industrialization, urbanization, wealth, and
education-all favored the establishment of a
democratic system.
• A series of adverse historical events
Legitimacy prevented democracy from securing
legitimacy in the eyes of many important
segments of society, and thus weakened
German democracy's ability to withstand
crisis.