PSIR 101

Week XIII
Fall 2022

Fatih Erol
Overview
o Liberalization or Democratization
o Three Characteristics of Democracy
o Other Categorization
o Emergence
Liberalization or
Democratization?
Liberalization or Democratization?
o Late 1980s and early 1990s witnessing the
diffusion of multiparty elections (in Kenya,
Mexico, Russia, …).
• Competitive elections where the opposition forces using the
democratic institutions to contest vigorously BUT these regimes
were not democratic.
 Electoral manipulation
 Unfair media access Playing the field in favor of the
incumbents
 Abuse of state resources
 Varying degrees of harassment and violence
Liberalization or Democratization?
Liberalization → Democratization requires a paradigm shift (Ottoway, 2008) :
o Change in the distribution and exercise of political power.
o Change in the relationship between the citizen and the state.

Three key conditions here, creating horizontal accountability mechanism (Tilly, 2007):

1. Competitive multiparty elections, principles of “breadth and equality.”

o Universal adult franchise
o Political rights of association and freedom of speech, …

2. Protection from the arbitrary rule of the state.

o Despite economic liberalization measures in the early periods of Russia, Mikhail Khodokovsky’s imprisonment
and punishment by heavy taxation and annexation of his company in 2003, after financing the opposition.

3. Mutually binding consultation between the citizen and the state (i.e., rule of law).
o The relationship based on law not on bribery or some third-party interventions.
o Russia, greater degree of bribing or reliance on personal connections while accessing education or housing
facilities (Rose & Shin, 2001).
 Liberalization or Democratization?
o Liberalization does not ensure democratization.

Authoritarianis Competitive Democracy

m Authoritarianis
With no viable m Free & fair
channels of - Civilian regimes where elections
opposition to formal democratic +
contest legally institutions exist. Civil liberties
for the executive
office. - Those democratic
institutions are seen as
primary means of gaining
power.

- BUT the incumbent’s abuse

of the state resources put the
opposition at a significant
disadvantage.
 Liberalization or Democratization?
o Liberalization does not ensure democratization.

Authoritarianis Competitive Democracy

m Authoritarianis
m
Different from Different from
- Elections are authoritarianism democracy because - Free elections
because at least one of the
held regularly.
three is violated - Broad
- Opposition protection of
parties are not civil liberties
legally barred
from the - A reasonably
contestation. level playing
field
Three Characteristics of
Democracy
Three Characteristics of Democracy
1. Elections
o In democracies:
• Free election ~ where there is virtually no fraud or intimidation of voters.
• Fair election ~ where the opposition parties can campaign on relatively even footing.
 No exposure to repression or harassment.
 No systematic denial of access to the media or other critical resources.
o In authoritarian regimes: multiparty elections either nonexistent or noncompetitive.
• Noncompetitive elections
 Major candidates being formally barred or effectively excluded on a regular basis.
 Repression or legal controls effectively preventing opposition parties from running the campaigns.
 Massive fraud, making no relationship between votes and election results.
o Competitive authoritarian regimes between the two extremes.
• Competitive elections with no barring of major opposition candidates or massive fraud.
• YET STILL, unfree and unfair elections.
 Manipulation of voter lists, ballot-box stuffing and/or falsification of results; Ukraine in 2004.
 Intimidation of opposition activities, voters, poll watchers; opposition “no-go” areas; Cambodia and
Zimbabwe.
 Unequal access to finance and media, incumbent abuse of state institutions.
Three Characteristics of Democracy
2. Civil liberties (e.g., the rights of free speech, press, and association)

o In democracies: protection.

o In authoritarian regimes: systematic violation, making the opposition

activities underground or in exile.

o Competitive authoritarian regimes: nominal existence (i.e., independent

media and civic and opposition activities operate above the ground) BUT
• Frequent violations of civil liberties.
• Opposition parties, independent judges, journalists, human-rights activists and other
government critics subject to harassment, arrest, and violent attack.
• Independent media being frequently threatened, attacked, suspended or closed.
• Sometimes, overt repression: the arrest of opposition leaders, killing of opposition
activists and the violent repression of the protesters.
Three Characteristics of Democracy
3. An even playing field; its reverse image is uneven playing field:
o State institutions being widely abused for partisan ends.
o The incumbents being systematically favored at the expense of the opposition (e.g., monopolization of
access to private-sector finance).
o The opposition’s ability to organize and compete in the elections being handicapped.

Access to resources.
o The incumbents making use of state resources (state finances and machinery).
o Monopolized access to private-sector finance (e.g., discretionary control over credit, licenses, state
contracts, … benefiting crony or proxy-owned firms).

Access to media.
o Partisan and biased coverage in the state-controlled broadcast media.
o Major media outlets linked to the incumbent (via proxy ownership, patronage, …).

Access to law.
o Blackmailing, bribing, and/or intimidating judiciaries, electoral commissions, and other independent
arbiters.
Other Categorization
Classification
Hybrid regimes, semi-democracy, partly-free: Cases falling in-between
democracy and authoritarianism.

Some other categorization:

o Constitutional oligarchies, with basic features of democracy but limited
franchise.
o Tutelary regimes, with competitive elections but the elected government’s power
being limited by nonelected authorities (e.g., religious authority as in Iran, miliary
as in Guatemala, and monarchies as in Nepal during the 1990s).
o Restricted or semi-competitive democracies, where elections are free but a
major party is banned (such as Argentina between 1957 and 1966).
o Electoral democracies, with reasonably fair elections and also weak rule of law
and uneven protection of human and civil rights (as in Brazil, India, …).
o Illiberal democracies, cases with democratically elected governments routinely
ignoring the constitutional limits on power and violating civil rights.
o Defective democracies, managed democracies, quasi-democracies, …
Classification
Hybrid regimes “… violate minimal democratic norms so severely that
it makes no sense to classify them as democracies, however qualified.
These electoral regimes … are instances of authoritarian rule. The time
has come to abandon misleading labels and to take their
nondemocratic nature seriously” (Schedler, 2002, p. 36).

… “the addition of adjectives to ‘authoritarianism’ rather than to

‘democracy’” (Linz, 2000, p. 34).
Emergence
The rising tide of competitive authoritarianism
Coincidence with the end of Cold War → Major changes in the
international environment undermining the stability of many closed
regimes and encouraging electoral ones.

1. The end of Cold War subsidies.

o Soviet-backed Leninist regimes and US-backed anti-communist regimes saw
decline in external military and economic assistance.
• Lacking Cold War subsidies → State bankruptcies → disappearance of patronage
resources → disintegration of coercive tools → little choice but liberalization or
abandoning power.
The rising tide of competitive authoritarianism
Coincidence with the end of Cold War → Major changes in the
international environment undermining the stability of many closed
regimes and encouraging electoral ones.

2. The shift in the global balance of power in favor of the US.

o Diffusion of liberal capitalist democratic principles.
• Political conditionalities for the development assistance.
• Military and diplomatic pressure to defend democracy.
The rising tide of competitive authoritarianism
Coincidence with the end of Cold War → Major changes in the
international environment undermining the stability of many closed
regimes and encouraging electoral ones.

3. The emergence of a transnational infrastructure promoting

democracy.
o International organizations (IOs), international non-governmental
organizations (INGOs) on election monitoring, human rights violations
o New information technologies (the internet, social media)
The rising tide of competitive authoritarianism
After the Cold War, greater external cost of authoritarianism and
incentives to mimic the Wester—style democracy, at least its bare
minimum, the multiparty elections.

HOWEVER, authoritarianism is STILL present. WHY?

o Limited (or selective or inconsistent) external democratizing pressure (as in
China and the Middle East); political economic considerations.
o Superficial external pressure, with exclusive electoralism and ignorance of
civil liberties.
• Authoritarian leaders learning the partial liberalization.

Full democratization requires a strong democratic push!

The international dimension
Five mechanisms:
1. Diffusion, facilitated by new information and communication
technologies.
2. Direct democracy promotion by Western states.
3. Multilateral conditionality, meaning anchoring external assistance
and/or membership in international organizations to democratic
performance.
4. Democracy assistance, greater funding for civic-education, electoral
assistance, legal and legislative reforms, independent media, civic
organizations.
5. Transnational advocacy networks (by human-rights, democracy,
and election monitoring non-governmental organizations [NGOs]) to
report norm violations and lobby for punitive punishments.
A state’s extent of connection with
the Western states.

Economic, intergovernmental,
technocratic, social, information,
civil-society

A state’s extent of vulnerability to

the Western states’ punitive action

Key factors:
military and economic power;
competing Western foreign policy
objectives;
“black knights”