The Changing Nature of Democracy

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The changing nature of democracy
The changing
nature of
democracy
Edited by Takashi Inoguchi,
Edward Newman, and John Keane
a United Nations
University Press
TOKYO u NEW YORK u PARIS
( The United Nations University, 1998
The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors

and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations
University.
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ISBN 92-808-1005-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The changing nature of democracy / edited by Takashi Inoguchi,

Edward Newman, and John Keane.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9280810057 (pbk.)
1. Democracy—History—20th century. I. Inoguchi, Takashi.
II. Newman, Edward, 1970– III. Keane, John, 1949–
JC421.C43 1998
321.8–ddc21 98-9061
CIP
Contents
1 Introduction: The changing nature of

democracy 1
Takashi Inoguchi, Edward Newman, and John
Keane
Definitions and criteria 21

2 Some basic assumptions about the consolidation
of democracy 23
Philippe C. Schmitter
3 Fifty years after the ‘‘Great Transformation’’:
Reflections on social order and political
agency 37
Claus Offe
4 Toward consolidated democracies 48
Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan
Democracy and social framework 69

5 Democracy and constitutionalism 71
Jean Blondel
6 Mass media and participatory democracy 87
Elihu Katz
v
Contents
7 Party representation in the United Kingdom,

Australia, and Japan 101
J.A.A. Stockwin
Democracy and global forces 117

8 The democratization process and the
market 119
Mihály Simai
9 Political representation and economic
competitiveness: Is a new democratic synthesis
conceivable? 136
Ian Marsh
10 A structure for peace: A democratic,
interdependent, and institutionalized order 157
Bruce Russett
Regional characteristics of democracy 171

11 Asian-style democracy? 173
Takashi Inoguchi
12 Post-communist Europe: Comparative
reflections 184
Alfred Stepan and Juan J. Linz
13 Religion and democracy: The case of Islam, civil
society, and democracy 213
Saad Eddin Ibrahim
Invigorating democratic ideas and

institutions 229
14 The Philadelphia model 231
John Keane
15 Democracy at the United Nations 244
Daniele Archibugi
vi
Contents
16 A meditation on democracy 255

Bernard Crick
Contributors 266
Index 270
vii
1
Introduction: The changing
nature of democracy
Takashi Inoguchi, Edward Newman, and John Keane
Democracy is widely advocated and sought, but its meaning is widely

contested. At a time when democracy is proliferating geographically
it is appropriate to re-examine the perennial debates of established
democracies and the tensions and opportunities evident in transi-
tional societies as they embrace democratic institutions and norms. Is
democracy fulfilling its promise both in established democracies and
in transitional societies? A re-examination is timely also because the
nature of democracy is diversifying as it proliferates and is condi-
tioned by cultural and political differences and varying stages of eco-
nomic and social development. In turn, as democracy evolves in this
way, a standard definition or model of democracy is increasingly elu-
sive. Furthermore, as the global political, economic, and technolo-
gical environments rapidly change, we need to examine how these
changes have affected the nature of democracy.
The language and aspirations of democracy are increasingly seen
within the context of an emerging global ethos which purports to find
points of unity in the human condition and perhaps even a fledgling
global citizenship. Transparency, accountability, and performance
more than ever before form the benchmark for authority, legitimacy,
and ‘‘good governance,’’ promoted by global media and communica-
tions. Subsequently, democracy is recognized as the primary vehicle
for the fulfilment of individual and collective aspirations, the articu-
lation of interests, and the nurturing of civil society. In turn, the ful-
filment of human material and spiritual aspirations is increasingly
seen to underpin both domestic and international peace and security.
The wider conception of peace and security embraces all spheres of
1
life – economic, political, social, and environmental in addition to

territorial and military security – and democracy is increasingly seen
as an integral part of this matrix. Autocratic authority has been chal-
lenged across the globe in a ‘‘worldwide movement toward democ-
racy.’’1 As a part of the same process, the concept of democracy has
been internationalized as never before, as state boundaries permeate
issues that cause repercussions on all spheres of life across the globe.
In addition to the geographic widening of democracy as a political
system, there is a debate concerning its sphere of applicability. What
areas of life are, or should be, subject to democracy and to the non-
violent controversies about power within public spheres of debate
and controversy?
Definitions and criteria

Democracy and democratic theory are largely conditional on differ-
ing conceptions of citizenship, social needs, and human nature. These
conceptions are in turn the result of social, cultural, and ideological
variables. Clearly, the world reflects great diversity: the definition and
criteria of democracy represent a major problem. Even the notion of
a ‘‘definition’’ is contentious: should such foundational criteria be
based upon procedural factors and institutions, or abstract outcomes?
Yet, without an accepted definition of democracy, there will be no
consensus in identifying problems associated with democracy and
democratization. Without solid measures or concepts of democracy,
the processes of democratization and democratic consolidation cannot
be effectively monitored. However elusive and context dependent
a definition of democracy is, the chapter by Juan Linz and Alfred
Stepan on democratic consolidation (ch. 4) argues that certain gen-
eral conditions must exist for a political system to be reasonably
described as democratic. From the time of the Greek city democ-
racies, perennial tensions have existed in trying to apply the ideal of
government by the people: individual freedom and rights, collective
goods, state cohesion, minority rights, and social justice all compete
in this. Indeed, the central dialectic is the achievement of col-
lective public goods and the aggregation of common values with-
out threatening private individual rights and freedoms. Yet, what is
the ‘‘common good’’? Where does the balance lie between efficiency
and representation and legitimacy? The balance between these
values represents a significant challenge for many political societies,
as Bernard Crick’s ‘‘Meditation on Democracy’’ (ch. 16) observes.
2
Introduction
Moreover, the presence of identity groups – such as ethnicity and

nationality – within many democratic polities exerts strains over and
above these perennial democratic paradoxes.
The history of democratic theory and practice has reflected a
number of political models, often categorized as direct participatory
democracy, one-party people’s democracy, social democracy, and
liberal representative democracy. In the immediate post-Cold War
context and with the ethos of the ‘‘end’’ of ideological history, the
widely held assumption, especially in the West, has been that liberal
democracy in the free-market context is the most efficient and equit-
able organizing principle of modern society. Social and people’s
democracies have effectively ceased to be contenders in the democ-
racy debate in the post-Cold War world, and the demise of Keynesian
welfare economics is now terminable. However, Claus Offe’s contri-
bution on social order and political agency (ch. 3) argues that the
‘‘neo-liberal’’ environment is not necessarily conducive to equal
access to public goods, opportunities, or democratic processes. In
an attempt to address this problem, Ian Marsh (ch. 9) examines the
tension between democratic values – particularly representation –
and economic competitiveness in the hope of achieving a synthesis.
Specifically, it is possible to question the extent to which liberal
democratic institutions and norms hold all the answers for transi-
tional and fledgling democratic societies. Post-communist, post-
conflict, and other developing societies have been undergoing two
symbiotic processes – the transition to political democracy, and the
transition to the free market as the primary mechanism of economic
production and distribution. These societies are also balancing
domestic and international pressures. In considering experiences of
democracy worldwide, especially within this post-Cold War ethos,
there is also a danger of ethnocentrism in the West. The liberal,
atomistic, and pluralist conception of democracy stresses individual
freedom and safeguards against excessive governmental control and
power. Accordingly, civil and political rights, in a free-market eco-
nomic context, have greater emphasis than more communitarian
ideas of duty and social justice. Yet this does not have universal
acceptance.
Something of a paradox exists. Democracy is recognized as the
prerequisite for legitimate authority and governance, and democracy
covers an unprecedented geographic area of the world. The number
of countries worldwide that might reasonably be described as meet-
ing basic democratic criteria has jumped from 10 in 1896 to roughly
3
100 in 1996. Leaps of technology in electronic communication – some

might even suggest a communications revolution – provide new
opportunities for the transference of ideas and information and, per-
haps, even opportunities for a revival of some form of direct partici-
patory democracy. Simultaneously, however, a certain amount of dis-
illusionment and stagnation has been observed in the structures and
practices of the oldest democracies. While more and more countries
in the developing world are moving toward democratic governance,
old democracies have increasingly revealed their own deficiencies. In
particular, the substance and scope of democracy appear to be thin-
ning. As democracy prospers, so it declines.
Democracy is the political machinery that translates public prefer-
ence into public policy. Without active participation on the part
of citizens, democratic institutions cannot produce intended policy
results. In many leading democratic countries, however, public dis-
enchantment with politics and government has noticeably grown,
seriously hampering the performance of political institutions. As the
participants in democratic politics increase, a number of factors have
emerged that have contributed to the undermining of democratic
mechanisms. First, universal suffrage has reduced the incentives for
privileged élites to participate in democratic politics. As economic
globalization accelerates, the incentives for transnational businesses
to voice their discontent in the national political arena diminish. Sec-
ondly, narrowing party cleavages and programme differences, and
corruption, have rendered party competition less meaningful and
even, in some cases, outright controversial or irrelevant.
‘‘Old’’ democratic countries in Europe and North America, as well
as Japan, have recently experienced tremendous electoral volatility
as political parties are abandoned for new formations and leaders.
The established democratic institutions and party systems of the old
democracies have been put into question and even challenged by
electorates and extra-constitutional groups; the liberal democratic
premise of government of the people, by the people, and for the
people must be examined anew. Low turnouts in elections, declining
membership for political parties and a general dealignment of estab-
lished political structures, and an increased resort to private local
associations may reflect a waning of democratic vitality. The advance-
ment of international communications has made political leaders
more vulnerable to public opinion controversies. On the positive side,
instant electronic communication has contributed to undermining
authoritarian regimes by exposing their deficiencies and weaknesses.
4
Introduction
Elihu Katz’s chapter on mass media and participatory democracy

(ch. 6) shows the historical impact of the various media upon the
nature of public and private discourse and the modalities of democ-
racy, offering a mixed conclusion about the relationship. CNN-style
live coverage has reduced the efficacy of outdated propaganda and
eroded the ability of political leaders to manipulate public opinion,
while activating grass-roots movements all around the world. On the
negative side, however, oversimplified, biased, distorted mass-media
coverage has flourished, making political leaders today increasingly
vulnerable to public moods.
Within the system, vested interests have become deeply institution-
alized in entangled webs of bureaucracies that can hamper effective
policy implementation. Moreover, the rise of global market forces
has weakened the central role of the domestic body politic. Popular
apathy and cynicism towards politics have subsequently grown. In
a number of cases, unaccountable and unresponsive bureaucracies
and institutionalized interests could lead one to conclude that the
democratic process involves little more than a legitimizing of élites.
Two decades ago, Theodore J. Lowi presented a critical analysis of
America’s interest group politics and bureaucratic expansion in his
seminal book The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the
United States. Despite repeated attempts to downsize government
and undertake privatization, government bureaucracies remain major
obstacles to reform and to new policy initiatives at the national, state,
and local levels in the United States. There and elsewhere, govern-
ment bureaucracies were originally designed to implement public
policy in the most efficient way, but have taken on a life of their own
and represent entrenched interests. In newly democratizing countries,
the complex bureaucratic structures nurtured over decades under un-
democratic regimes likewise pose a formidable challenge to political
leaders. As many democratic institutions fail to perform around the
world, the efficacy of political systems has become an important issue.
Even democratically elected leaders often cannot implement their
policies, owing to political gridlock between the executive and legis-
lative branches, continuous bureaucratic intensification, and bargain-
ing between parties and interest groups. In highly institutionalized
societies, political efficacy has become harder to attain. In some
quarters, it is observed that democracy is not necessarily an efficient
political system.
Under these circumstances, the performance of political institutions
inevitably will be called into question. However, there are clearly
5
methodological problems in testing the ‘‘declining democracy’’ thesis,

in terms of identifying tangible indicators. Party membership and elec-
toral support are convenient quantitative indicators. However, they
do not convey attitudinal factors or illustrate a distinction between
levels of support for parties, personalities, and policies and support
for democratic processes and structures themselves. A distinction
should also be made between the institutions and procedures of
democracy – such as elections, freedom of speech, the rule of law –
and the content or substance of democracy. In any situation, the
emphasis should be not just on the institutional criteria of democracy
but on the results. Does it serve to fulfil the aspirations of citizenship
– whatever these are defined as – and does it serve peace, respect for
human rights, and development?
One can approach these problems by focusing on legitimacy and
efficacy – two components of democratic governance, according to
Seymour Martin Lipset. Currently, the most fashionable definition of
democracy is a minimalist one, which merely requires holding free
elections in a multi-party setting. This has been more or less achieved
recently in a number of countries, including Cambodia and Bosnia.
Yet, such a minimal democratic requirement has conflicting con-
sequences for political legitimization: it renders the process of democ-
ratization easy in the first instance but more difficult to sustain in a
meaningful and substantive way in the long term; it both requires the
sociopolitical preconditions of democracy and understates the extent
to which democracy is an unfinished, never-ending, political project.
Regional characteristics of democracy and democratic

transition
The prevailing global movement is clearly towards liberal-democratic

procedures. However, do transitional societies have the social and
cultural prerequisites necessary to support a participatory or repre-
sentative democratic process? Can the alienation that existed amongst
many sections of post-communist societies and those racked by
(un)civil war be reversed in such a way as to cultivate a culture of
civic competence and democratic empowerment? In the wake of
overwhelming state intervention in post-communist societies, can
social movements and the ethos of civil society fill the vacuum as the
state recedes? In former communist societies there tends to be a lack
of networks of non-state associations and movements of civil society
that define citizenship and the community in a participatory and vol-
6
Introduction
untary manner. This is not to suggest that post-communist societies

have no traditions of civil society; more, that this tradition was muted
and suppressed for many years in its relationship with the state and
the one-party system. Indeed, in the Cold War context, civil society
represented a vehicle of opposition in some situations and it is now
being rediscovered as part of the fabric of citizenship in a more har-
monious relationship with the state.
However, simply having elections and a constitution, and other
such ‘‘top-down’’ mechanisms, does not necessarily create this culture
of democracy where there has been a negative relationship between
civil society and the state over a prolonged period of time. ‘‘Bottom-
up’’ private associations, local democracy, and civil society evolve
through a process of political socialization over many years. In soci-
eties where such activities have been stifled, the freedom and oppor-
tunities of liberal democracy may not necessarily be taken up,
because the norms of civic activism and responsibility must be
(re)learned. Similarly, there may not be a tradition of ‘‘loyal opposi-
tion’’ akin to the ‘‘Westminster model’’ of democracy. In post-conflict
societies and former colonies, opposition has often been based on a
tradition of extra-constitutional (and sometimes violent) forms of
activism. In some contexts, opposition is reflected in street demon-
strations and even riots, which can border on the anti-constitutional.
This can represent an obstacle to the consolidation of fledgling
democracy, which requires support from government and opposition
alike. Thus, public politics in transitional societies may not always
reflect the moderate mainstream – it may reflect the extremes. In
such a context, the normalization of procedures and social norms –
the institutionalization of both uncertainty and certainty, according to
Philippe Schmitter’s concept of democratic consolidation (ch. 2) – is
the primary challenge.
Clearly, post-communist and post-conflict societies experience the
dilemmas of competing agendas. A paradox exists: there are often
parallel paths to market economics and democracy, yet the insecuri-
ties of economic transition can threaten and distort fledgling demo-
cratic structures. None the less, demands for effective public admin-
istration have continued to grow as the relationship between the state
and the market has been turning towards the latter’s favour. In many
respects, the tyranny of the market seems much stronger than the
tyranny of the state these days. Moreover, the relationship between
the state and civil society has been changing towards the latter’s
favour as well. In transitional societies, security and economic devel-
7
opment must be balanced against political freedom and social wel-

fare. The role of the state in this balance is debatable: it can nurture
public dialogue and organize the modalities of transition at the same
time as bargaining between competing domestic and international
interests. In economic terms, the liberal thesis of Friedrich Hayek is
often the guiding light of prosperity and development, but the eco-
nomic rewards of this approach may not filter down evenly. The
rolling back of public structures and uneven economic development
have not been conducive to the consolidation of social cohesion and
civic unity, in many societies. Moreover, the tenets of liberal democ-
racy – an informed and motivated citizenship, a progressive party
system, and a loyal opposition – have been slow to take root. Mihály
Simai’s chapter, ‘‘The Democratization Process and the Market’’
(ch. 8), explores these tensions in the post-communist states of
Eastern and Central Europe, highlighting numerous fragilities.
Subsequently, some elements of post-communist societies look back
to earlier and more secure times, to a paternalistic command economy
that at least offered a modicum of security. Arguably, many voters in
Russia were attracted to the Communist Party during national elec-
tions in 1996 as a result of the uncertainties inherent in the symbiotic
transition to democracy and the market. As an extension of this,
democracy can promote instability and even extremism; parallels can
be made with the volatility of the interwar period in Europe. In
transitional contexts there must also be a balance between the rural
and urban societies. The social repercussions of economic and politi-
cal transition have exacerbated the disjuncture between town and
countryside, at the cost of the latter. Again, this is not conducive to
social cohesion or the distribution of prosperity and can accelerate the
alienation and regression of rural life. The consequences of modern-
ization – of which democracy is an integral part – are not beneficial to
all sections of society.
In many spheres of life, our conception of political space is defying
the traditional state-centric enclosure. Within this context, democracy
increasingly is a concept that extends beyond the domestic polity,
partly as a condition of the globalizing trends of ideas and inter-
action. The internationalization of human rights and ideas of ‘‘good
governance,’’ in addition to the belief that the spread of democracy
will underpin international peace and stability, have made demo-
cracy a legitimate issue of international relations. This can be seen
as an evolution beyond the Westphalian conception of an interna-
tional society of states: the classical criteria of sovereign state legiti-
8
Introduction
macy did not specify any domestic conditions of governance. The

post-Cold War language of multilateralism has often reflected the
belief in an inexorable march, even a crusade, towards liberal politi-
cal democracy as if it is a universal human right. However, there
has clearly been resistance to the universalization of a cosmopolitan,
liberal conception of human rights and democracy, especially in
some non-Western cultures. A sensitivity to neocolonial, paternalist,
or hegemonic designs has accompanied the internationalization of
democracy. Some groups have rejected this crusade as an ethno-
centric and paternalistic – perhaps arrogant – scheme of the West,
with manipulative overtones. Rudyard Kipling’s idea of the ‘‘White
man’s burden,’’ a civilizing mission with superior pretensions, has
been conjured up in this respect. Non-Western voices have certainly
expressed concern towards the interventionist connotations attached
to ideas of ‘‘good governance’’ and democracy, especially when
these are seen as a pretext for interference or intervention. Takashi
Inoguchi’s chapter (ch. 11) explores the cultural dimension of de-
mocracy in an analysis of ‘‘Asian’’ norms and values, yet questions
the validity of an East–West cultural dichotomy and its application to
democracy.
This controversy threatens to distort the democracy debate. It is,
therefore, essential to recognize that, beyond certain minimum criteria,
there are different, even diverse, models of democracy, with equal
worth. On the basis of basic human needs and aspirations, certain
universal foundational criteria must exist for a society to be reason-
ably considered to be a democracy. However, the concept of rights,
values, and governance will inevitably reflect the culture, history, and
social processes of each society. Accordingly, sovereign statehood is
not just a legal construct; it is an expression of community and should
be respected on moral grounds. This communitarian thesis is an im-
portant counterbalance to globalizing forces and universalist ideas of
human rights. The world is not homogeneous, and the democracy
debate (as John Keane observes in chapter 14) must embrace cultural
relativity. Democracy must stem from, and serve, local conditions;
there is no comprehensive universal model. At the same time, cultural
relativity should not be a normative barrier behind which states deny
democracy or basic human rights. Clearly, a balance must be found
that embraces both the communitarian instincts of all societies and
cultures to find their own conception of democracy and the cosmo-
politan belief that humans everywhere aspire to have some control
over their destiny.
9
Democracy and global forces
At the international level, the changing conception of democracy has

a number of implications. According to the Kantian thesis and its
modern adherents, republican or liberal democracies are most
unlikely to go to war with each other. This provides the normative
basis for the spread of democracy and liberal economics, for democ-
racy within states will underpin a more peaceful and stable inter-
national society. Bruce Russett’s contribution on a democratic, inter-
dependent, and institutionalized order (ch. 10) elaborates upon the
democratic peace thesis and argues that there are opportunities to
strengthen and promote peaceful interaction between democratic
societies on an institutional basis. Clearly, the wider conception of
peace and security blurs the distinction between domestic and inter-
national peace and security; the existence of stable governance,
empirical sovereignty, and human security are all integral to this.
Democracy is a vehicle for the fulfilment of the political, economic,
and social tenets of human security and therefore underpins the
comprehensive and integrated conception of peace and security.
Upon this basis, the hope is that democracy supports the idea of a
peaceful society of states. However, transition to the market and
democracy is inherently fragile within states and, as an extension of
this, may introduce an element of uncertainty in the relationships
between states. History has demonstrated that new democracies can
be aggressive and expansionist. Therefore, democratic safeguards are
essential for the society in question and for the wider international
society – mechanisms that ensure that the adverse social and political
consequences of transition do not undermine the processes of democ-
racy and cause repercussions in the international system.
In practical terms, ideas of democracy and ‘‘good governance’’
have been attached to international trade, aid, and diplomatic rela-
tions. This emerging conditionality is evident in the United Nations,
in international economic institutions such as the World Bank, in
regional organizations, and in bilateral relationships. The ‘‘most
favoured nation’’ status, international investment, loan approval, and
membership of some regional organizations have reflected the con-
cept of conditionality. This practice has generated disharmony in
international relations and, again, indicates the extent to which the
democracy debate is politicized. There are concerns that external
intervention or manipulation through the vehicle of democracy is the
hidden agenda of the democracy crusade. Crusades usually involve
10
Introduction
the imposition of values or institutions. Moreover, the manner in

which sanctions are imposed and conditionality is attached in the
areas of diplomacy, trade, or aid is clearly inconsistent. A comparison
of the cases of Indonesia, Haiti, and Nigeria demonstrates this. This
inconsistency serves only to contribute to the worries that these
practices reflect an agenda that is not entirely humanitarian. The
debate on conditionality and sanctions also highlights an interesting
division of opinion and policy towards democracy and international
relations. There is the rough distinction between the cosmopolitan
and nation-state/communitarian traditions. Adherents of the former –
often in the West – advocate norms that transcend state bound-
aries and are applicable irrespective of cultural, social, and religious
factors. This thesis is often accompanied by the belief that democracy
within states forms the foundations of domestic and international
peace. Accordingly, this approach sees international pressure – con-
ditionality, sanctions, and even intervention – as a legitimate means
of promoting domestic reform and democratization in the most
recalcitrant cases, although cooperative methods are more ideal. In
contrast, communitarian thinking rejects abstract and universal
notions of rights and governance in favour of local processes and
local solutions. This approach is, therefore, resolutely against ideas of
conditionality, sanctions, and intervention, rejecting these as arrogant
and hypocritical. This debate has been clearly reflected in a number
of high-profile cases, and it is at the heart of the changing nature of
democracy.
There is also often a tension between idealism and realpolitik in
state decision-making, where statesmen and politicians employ the
language of good governance and democratization when it suits but
whose policy is determined by the effects that imposing conditionality
and sanctions would have upon the balance-of-trade accounts. The
Western countries cannot forego the market opportunities of un-
democratic countries and usually defend this stance on the basis that
if they did not deal with regressive or undemocratic states – on the
basis of ‘‘constructive engagement’’ – then a competitor would.
Moreover, there is a common argument that isolating undemocratic
states is not the most effective way to encourage change. There is
often a difference between words and deeds on the part of govern-
ments. It is important, therefore, to encourage even-handedness in
the multilateral context in promoting democracy within states and not
to allow democracy to be an instrument of external manipulation.
The acknowledgement of different models of democracy according to
11
different social contexts is the first step in the process; the second step
is imbuing a sense of responsibility and accountability in leading
states and in international organizations and avoiding a manipulation
of the democracy debate.
International organizations have played an important role in
promoting and supporting democracy and pluralism, especially in
transitional societies. The practical assistance of the UN system and
regional organizations – often in conjunction with non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) – has taken a wide variety of forms. For the
United Nations, assistance in establishing democratic institutions and
a culture of democracy is conceived of in the context of the organ-
ization’s comprehensive approach to peace-building and to social and
economic development. Accordingly, the United Nations subscribes
to a wide conception of peace and human security within which
democracy is an integral component. The range of its activities in
transitional societies includes assistance in monitoring and supervis-
ing peace settlements; establishing civil and legal institutions, human
rights and humanitarian issues; and assistance with (re)building infra-
structure. Organizing, supervising, monitoring, and validating elec-
tions are crucial activities in assisting the practicalities of – and giving
confidence to – a fragile process. Historically, the United Nations’
assistance in domestic transition to democracy may transpire to be
comparable in importance to its role in decolonization, although it
would be premature to pronounce all cases successful. The United
Nations can assist in the establishment of the institutions and proce-
dures of democracy and in giving a degree of confidence to demo-
cratic transition, but it cannot determine the content or substance. In
addition, long-term commitment on the part of multilateral organ-
izations is necessary to support the consolidation of democracy, yet
the fatigue which pervades many international organizations is not
conducive to this.
The impulse in the UN Security Council, for example, is to with-
draw as soon as possible – to save money and to avoid complicated
political entanglements. The message from many recent examples is
that this is a false economy: democratization in post-conflict societies
is not irreversible, and pulling out early can result in a loss of the
effort expended. Unless the international community is satisfied with
establishing merely cosmetic democracy, it must stick the course; this
was one lesson learned in Central America. There is a paradox here:
multilateral organizations are embracing a wider conception of peace
and security which embraces democracy and human security and are
12
Introduction
less preoccupied with the distinction between the domestic and

international realms; yet multilateral fatigue and a shortage of money
are imposing severe constraints upon what organizations can do on
the ground.
A further issue relating to the increasing prominence of inter-
national organizations is the question of accountability and democ-
racy within these organizations. Traditionally, the concept of democ-
racy did not extend beyond the domestic arena, and a different set
of norms governed international relationships. According to some
observers, this tradition has evolved into a democratic deficit in many
organizations. Even in the case of those that can wield enormous
leverage upon the domestic policies of some states and exert a sig-
nificant impact upon the lives of many millions of people, there is
little transparency or public input into the policy of such organiza-
tions. Why should international organizations be exempt from dem-
ocratic accountability and public participation? Daniele Archibugi
(ch. 15) thus highlights the hypocrisy inherent in the structure of the
United Nations and argues for an extension of democratic principles
and procedures into the organization. There are pressures for change
within and outside many international organizations, including the
United Nations, where the reform agenda embraces various ideas
to increase representation and participation. The Commission for
Global Governance likewise encouraged proposals to reverse the
democratic deficit.
The traditional conception of a dichotomy between domestic and
international politics, where international politics is the realm of dip-
lomats and statesmen, has created a vacuum of public involvement:
the private citizen was seen as having no right or opportunity to be
involved in international politics. This vacuum is being filled gradu-
ally by the proliferation of NGOs in a wide spectrum of activities,
which represents a transnational – sometimes even global – mobi-
lization of non-governmental opinion. This network of organizations
exerts leverage upon governments and governmental organizations in
agenda setting, in providing advice and information, and in adminis-
tering policy, and it provides a forum for public discussion. The
respective fate/logic of governmental organizations and NGOs has
become closely intertwined, and the functional expertise of NGOs is
now relied upon in many issue areas, such as the environment, human
rights and humanitarian assistance, social and economic develop-
ment, de-mining and disarmament, and refugee issues. The UN system
has developed various mechanisms which embrace this expertise,
13
although NGOs are not formally enfranchised; the United Nations is

state centric and this is still its organizing principle. NGOs are not
necessarily democratic but, if one sees them as social initiatives that
encourage participatory public politics, then this may lead to the idea
of an emerging international civil society that imparts values which
transcend the traditional agenda of state-centric international politics.
The implications of this for a democratic ethos at the international
level and in encouraging the norm of democracy within state borders
are interesting, because NGO networks embrace a wide spectrum of
public involvement and, arguably, reflect an emerging cosmopolitan
spirit or global ethos. Drawing upon the Kantian ethic of inter-
national peace and security, NGOs may serve to promote inter-
national cultural, economic, and political exchange and, therefore,
affinities across borders. It has long been accepted that NGOs have a
bearing upon the unit of analysis debate in international relations,
but it appears that they are moving towards the mainstream of the
international agenda. There is certainly room for research into the
future role of NGOs in the matrix of international networks. Of
course, the proliferation of NGOs has not been entirely positive: the
motives and practices of some of these organizations have been
questionable, and many suffer from a democratic deficit at least
as severe as that of governmental organizations. Nevertheless, in
tandem with the UN system, NGOs have the potential to be a major
force for social and economic development and democratic pluralism.
Democracy and the social framework

Gender is a relatively recent focus to the study of democracy and a
part of the new agenda. The application of gender to political theory
has encouraged the re-examination of established notions of social
structures and the distinction between the public and private spheres.
Democracy is inextricably linked with the concept of equality, but
political equality – in the sense of enfranchisement – has not reversed
the underrepresentation of women in public political life, despite
their prominent and vital role in private life and in the economy of
most countries. In established countries there have long been efforts
to redress this imbalance through various corrective measures,
including anti-discriminatory legislation and positive discrimination.
However, progress has been slow, although attitudinal changes are
occurring towards an equal citizenship between the sexes. The role of
gender in post-conflict and transitional societies is interesting. In a
14
Introduction
number of cases, women played a major role in liberation struggles –

including the adoption of traditionally ‘‘male’’-oriented tasks – and,
with the return of normality, the issue is whether women should
maintain momentum for public political leverage or revert to the
traditional private spheres of activity.
Transitional societies may well be among those that have to con-
tend with the development of democracy in the context of social
fractures and different identities. Ethnicity, religion, and nationalism
are examples of subgroups or identities that have a bearing upon the
consolidation of a democratic culture and democratic institu-
tions. Whilst these forces are integral to the state-building process in
many circumstances, they can harbour an ideology of exclusion and
‘‘otherness’’ towards minorities which obstructs the development of a
healthy culture of democratic equality among citizens. The phenom-
enon of fragmentation and identity politics inevitably finds expression
in the democratic process; arguably, democracy and democratization
even encourage fragmentation and identity politics. They can also
lead to expressions of majoritarianism and resentment. If religious,
ethnic, or national minorities do not feel that they are represented in
the political process, there can be conflict. In particular, in situations
of ethnic cleavages and irredentist pressures, the democratic process
can be threatened by the resurgence of identity politics. In giving
expression to, and encouraging, identity politics and majoritarianism,
the democratic process can itself promote disharmony in multi-
national and fractious states. The ‘‘common good’’ is elusive. Again,
democratic safeguards are necessary.
Amongst the myriad forms of identity politics, religion is often
singled out as having a bearing upon the theory and practice of
democracy. Religion is inherently exclusionary in the sense that it
distinguishes between believers and non-believers. Religion, there-
fore, has a bearing upon the relationship amongst people and
between citizens and the state. Religion clearly imparts a particular
conception of the rights and duties of citizenship, and, in societies
which embrace a number of religions, this has an impact upon public
dialogue and democratic processes. When religion and public policy
occupy the same space, questions can be asked regarding governance
and democracy; if multiple religions share the same space, the out-
come can be more delicate. The typical liberal or secularist con-
ception of democracy has seen a separation of church and state.
However, religion, along with all other identities and associations, is
not inherently antithetical to democracy when the democratic process
15
and the public sphere of the society are able to accommodate differ-
ent – and even competing – conceptions of citizenship. It is only when
incommensurable ideas and practices clash that democracy is threat-
ened. Incommensurable ideas can occupy the same space, if the
democratic process allows the expression of all views and if there is a
culture of tolerance from the bottom up. In particular, some com-
mentators have questioned if Islam – especially in its Islamist inter-
pretation – is compatible with democracy, owing to its world view,
its prescriptions regarding gender relationships, and its exclusivist
tendencies. If a religion does not accept equality and inviolable rights
to all, can it be truly democratic? However, in the West there is the
danger of generalizing from a few Islamic states and groups to the
Islamic world as a whole. Indeed, some of the ‘‘most’’ democratic
countries in the world have Islamic majorities and enjoy representa-
tive legislatures and governments, including the representation of
women at the highest office. Saad Eddin Ibrahim’s chapter (ch. 13)
explores the area of Islam, civil society, and democracy and argues
that Islamic societies are experiencing a sociopolitical transition that
can put religion at odds with democracy. Nevertheless, in its truest
interpretation, Islam is the epitome of tolerance and can coexist with
other faiths in a democratic context. And there are contexts, such as
Turkey, where the revival of Islam may have democratic effects.
In post-conflict societies, the transition to democracy and recon-
struction can be particularly fragile. The continuation of fear, suspi-
cion, and hostility; the need for justice; and the presence of groups
that do not support the peace process, can undermine the transition
and reignite violence. The balance between reconciliation and justice
is fragile: justice is necessary for reconciliation and reconstruction,
but the search for justice can hamper reconciliation. The holding of
free and fair elections is essential in giving confidence and reflecting
desires, but elections themselves may not bring democracy other than
in a cosmetic sense. Elections do not create a culture of democracy if
there is no general will for reconciliation or for an emerging civic
competence which transcends past enmities. The situation in Bosnia–
Herzegovina is one such example, where the election process may
merely reflect the social and nationalist discord that still remains.
The role of party-political leadership is crucial to the post-conflict
peace-building process in supporting and encouraging an inclusive
democratic process and cohesive social reconstruction. A revisionist
leadership can undermine fledgling democracy and processes of
reconstruction by manipulating latent enmities and causing panic. An
16
Introduction
impartial and independent judiciary, armed forces, and police force

are similarly critical factors in the establishment and consolidation of
democracy.
The media have a major, if unpredictable, role in established
democracies. An informed citizenship is the basis of a healthy
democracy, and the media serve the function of communication of
ideas, cultivating civic awareness and public discourse. Moreover, the
media form the most significant arena of public debate for the
majority and one of the most direct forms of interface of communi-
cation between the people and the government. Thus, the media can
help to create and sustain political democracy and serve civil society.
Yet the relationship between the media and the democratic process
is an ambivalent one: the media inevitably filter information and
represent their own political agenda; they can be an instrument of
control or of instability and subversion, especially in a conflict or
post-conflict situation.
The new agenda: Invigorating democratic ideas and institutions

It is not easy to establish a framework for analysis for the study of
democracy and democratization. Democracy involves tangible char-
acteristics, such as free and fair elections, legislatures, the rule of law,
and an independent judiciary. It also involves less tangible factors
regarding culture and participation. How does one measure democ-
racy and attitudes towards participation and democratic processes, as
distinct from personalities and parties? Is it possible to construct a
methodology through which it may be possible to investigate these
issues?
This volume embraces a plethora of ideas which reflect the breadth
of the democratic debate. A number of issue areas form the agenda
for a re-examination of democracy in the context of a number of
changes and pressures: globalizing pressures and global issues; the
expansion of the sphere of activity which is considered to be legiti-
mately conditioned by democracy; the resurgence of identity politics
and fragmentation; the proliferation of market economic systems;
developments in thinking relating to peace and security and, in par-
ticular, the emphasis on human security; changes in leadership style
and expectations; and the blurring of the distinction between public
and private, and domestic and international, are some such issues. To
make democracies perform, social scientists and policy makers need
to examine the causes of democratic decay and explore the means of
17
revitalizing democratic political processes. The challenge for transi-

tional societies and the consolidation of democracy is to achieve
safeguards against the worst rigours of economic change and to foster
a sense of public empowerment in the changes. In turn, confidence in
public-life changes helps to achieve support for democratic norms
and institutions and to avert support for anti-democratic and regres-
sive movements. The role of the state will, in time, reach an equili-
brium, and the participatory culture of democracy will determine the
balance between top-down governmental structures and bottom-up
movements. It is within this context that the development of civil
society weaves together a matrix of governmental and non-
governmental activity.
In an era of democracy, academic communities must devise a
widely applicable analytical framework for increasingly diverse
democracies and establish criteria to compare various types of dem-
ocratic societies. In this regard, the importance of synthesizing the
results of previous empirical studies on both old and new democ-
racies cannot be overemphasized. Furthermore, we must critically
examine the changing environment for democracy in this information
age and study its implications for democratic politics. Democracy
may be an obsolete idea, an atavistic instinct, and an outdated insti-
tution. Nevertheless, it seems to be the only feasible institutional
arrangement to promote civil and political freedoms, social and eco-
nomic rights, human dignity, and international harmony. Perhaps, we
still cannot rebut Winston Churchill’s dictum that democracy is an
inefficient system, but it is better than any other alternative. The main
areas of concern and interest that arise from the contributions to this
project pose a number of questions and issues:
. How have the oldest democracies evolved in terms of content and
procedure; is there disillusionment towards established party struc-
tures, institutions, or even the democratic system itself? Is dis-
illusionment a natural phase of mature democracies or can it be
reversed? Can democracy be revitalized?
. How can transitional societies safeguard against the most adverse
effects of political and economic change? How does the market
shape the democratization process and the consolidation of democ-
racy? Where is the balance between development and prosperity,
and social support? How can such societies safeguard against the
alienation of sections of society brought about by the transition
process? As the transition to democracy and market economics
18
Introduction
accelerates the divisions between rural and urban life, how can the
adverse effects of this process be cushioned?
. What is the role of civil society in transitional societies, and are
voluntary associations and movements fulfilling a different function
here than in mature democracies?
. What is the role for external actors – and particularly international
organizations – in assisting the transition to democracy and in
militating against the problems and tensions of this process?
. Are there universal foundations of democracy? How are religion,
culture, and social contexts reflected in different models of democ-
racy? Where is the balance between universal cosmopolitan and
communitarian conceptions of democracy and citizenship? Is there
a global ethic of democracy?
. Are democratic systems and fledgling democracies successfully
accommodating the challenges posed by fractious states?
. Is gender a viable focus for the study of democracy? Has the
renaissance of democracy fulfilled its pretensions of equality?
. How can the opportunities of the communications revolution be
harnessed for increased levels of participation? Are globalizing
forces de-territorializing democracy?
. How can the pressures for democracy and accountability beyond
the state be utilized? Do NGOs reflect and embrace an emergent
international civil society? How can accountability and trans-
parency in international organizations be improved?
. As democracy evolves, has its sphere of applicability enlarged?
What areas of life are, or should be, conditioned by democratic
processes? Are there attitudinal changes regarding this sphere of
applicability, and are institutions and procedures responding to
such changes? Are conceptions of ‘‘public’’ and ‘‘private’’ evolving?
Notes
1. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, ‘‘Democracy: A Newly Recognized Imperative,’’ Global Governance
Winter 1995; 1(1): 4.
19
Definitions and criteria
2
Some basic assumptions about
the consolidation of democracy
The notion of a ‘‘consolidated democracy’’ seems oxymoronic – a

contradiction in terms. Democracies are never supposed to be fully
consolidated: unique among regime types, they should contain within
themselves the potentiality for continuous evolution and, eventually,
self-transformation. By a process of deliberation and collective choice,
citizens can both peacefully remove governments from power and,
presumably, choose to alter their governments’ basic rules and struc-
ture. They can even – as happened several times in the history of
the Athenian polis and Roman republic – democratically decide to
become a different form of regime. Indeed, the very concept of dic-
tatorship originated in democratic practice.
This ‘‘historico-theoretical’’ reflection clashes, however, with the
everyday experience of well-established democracies. Not only have
their patterns and norms become routinized into a highly predictable
de facto structure, but considerable effort is expended de jure to make
it quite difficult to change these structures. The formative, so-called
‘‘founding,’’ generations wrote constitutions which sought to bind
subsequent ones to a specific institutional framework and set of rights
and they deliberately made them difficult to amend. They also drafted
statutes and codes which rendered certain kinds of political behaviour
punishable, created specific constituencies and rewarded particular
clientele, and made the entry of new parties into the electoral arena
difficult or impossible, and thus conferred monopolistic recogni-
tion upon certain associations and élites. Whilst constitutions can
be ignored, policies can be reversed, and laws can be changed in
response to pressures from the demos, one should not exaggerate
23
how easily and frequently this can occur in even the most loosely
structured of democracies.
Uncertainty may well be, as Adam Przeworski has argued, a
central characteristic of this type of regime, but it is a form of relative
uncertainty.1 For citizens to tolerate the possibility that unexpected
persons or groups may occupy governance over them and that these
newly empowered authorities may pursue different, possibly damag-
ing, courses of action requires a great deal of mutual trust, backed by
a great deal of structural reassurance.
Democratic consolidation can be conceptualized as the process – or
processes – that underlies such trust and reassurance and, therefore,
makes regular, uncertain, and yet circumscribed competition for office
and influence possible. It seeks to institutionalize uncertainty in one
subset of political roles and policy arenas, while institutionalizing
certainty in others.
Defining the challenge

How does democracy accomplish and legitimize such a delicate task?
What is the underlying principle that provides the essential elements
of trust and reassurance? The simple answer is ‘‘the consent of the
people’’; the more complex one is that it depends on ‘‘the contingent
consent of politicians and the eventual assent of citizens – all acting
under conditions of bounded uncertainty.’’2
The challenge for democratic consolidators, therefore, is to create
and maintain a set of institutions which embody contingent consent
among politicians, are capable of invoking the eventual assent of
citizens, and can limit the high degree of uncertainty that is charac-
teristic of the transition from autocracy. They do not necessarily have
to agree upon a set of goals or substantive policies that command
widespread consensus. This ‘‘democratic bargain,’’ to use Robert
Dahl’s felicitous expression,3 can vary a great deal from one society
to another, depending on inequalities and cleavage patterns as well
as on such subjective factors as the degree of mutual trust between
the government and citizens, the standard of fairness, the willingness
to compromise, and the legitimacy of different decision-making rules.
It may even be compatible with a great deal of dissent on specific,
substantive policy issues.
My self-assigned task in this essay is to try to understand where
these generic democratic principles come from and how they become
embodied in regular practices and rules without becoming distorted
24
The consolidation of democracy
or undermined by the legacies of autocracy or the compromises

between competing interests.
Establishing some assumptions

Before turning to a more detailed elaboration of what is involved in
the consolidation of democracy,4 it may be useful to establish some
general assumptions:
1. The consolidation of democracy poses distinctive problems to
political actors and, hence, to those who seek to understand –
usually retrospectively – what they are doing. It is not just a pro-
longation of the transition from authoritarian rule. To a significant
extent, the consolidation of democracy engages different actors,
behaviours, processes, and, perhaps, even new values and resour-
ces. This is not to say that everything changes when a polity
‘‘shifts’’ towards democracy: many of the people and collectivi-
ties will be the same, but they will be facing different problems,
making different calculations and, it is hoped, behaving in different
ways.
2. This opens up the possibility – but not the inevitability – of con-
tradictions and tensions within the process of regime change. As
O’Donnell and I have stressed in previous work,5 the conditions
which encouraged the demise of authoritarian regimes are not
always, and not necessarily, those most appropriate for ensuring a
smooth and reliable transition to political democracy. Concor-
dantly, those ‘‘enabling conditions’’ most conducive to reducing
and managing the uncertainty of this crucial interim period may
turn into ‘‘confining conditions’’ that can make the consolidation
of what has been accomplished more difficult. Moreover, the shift
in problem–space may reduce the significance of actors who pre-
viously played a central role and enhance that of others who, by
prudence or impotence, were marginal to the demise and tran-
sition. Revolutions have a tendency to ‘‘eat their own children’’;
more peaceful and less consequential regime changes seem likely
to ‘‘disavow their own parents.’’6
3. Even more provocative is the possibility that the study of dem-
ocratization requires an epistemological shift on the part of the
analyst to accompany the behavioural changes that the actors
themselves are undergoing. During the transition, an exaggerated
form of ‘‘voluntaristic political causality’’ tends to predominate in
a situation of rapid change, high risk, shifting interests, and inde-
25
terminate strategic reactions. Actors believe that they are engaged

in a ‘‘war of movement,’’ where dramatic options are available
and the outcome depends critically on their choices. They find it
difficult to specify ex ante which classes, sectors, institutions, or
groups will support their efforts. Indeed, most of these collec-
tivities are likely to be divided or hesitant about what to do.
Once this heady and dangerous moment has passed, some of the
actors begin to ‘‘settle into the trenches.’’7 They organize their
internal structures more predictably, consult bases more reliably,
and consider the long-term consequences of their actions more
seriously. In so doing, they are compelled to experience the con-
straints imposed by deeply rooted material deficiencies and nor-
mative habits that have not changed with the fall of the ancien
régime.
For the theorist/analyst, this implies shifting from a raw form of
‘‘political causality,’’ characterized by singular and even unprece-
dented choices taken by unpredictable and often courageous indi-
viduals,8 towards a more settled form of ‘‘bounded rationality.’’
This is conditioned by capitalist class relations, long-standing
cultural and ethnic cleavages, persistent status conflicts, and inter-
national antagonisms and is staffed by increasingly professional
politicians filling more predictable and less risky roles. From the
heady excitement and underdetermination of the transition from
autocracy comes the adjustment to the prosaic routine and over-
determination of consolidated democracy.9
4. The consolidation of democracy requires explicit treatment as a
theoretical subject and as an object of empirical inquiry. One can
draw more confidently from previous scholarly work than when
trying to make sense of the demise of authoritarian regimes or the
initial transition to democratic ones. However, there remains a
great deal of difficult and delicate work in explaining to the actors
how to become more predictable and prosaic and why so many of
them may have to find another way of making a living.
Defining the subject

When a society changes from one political regime to another, it ini-
tially passes through a period of considerable uncertainty during
which regression to the status quo ante remains possible and the des-
tination to which the efforts of the actors are leading remains unclear.
The transition period can vary in length, depending in large measure
26
on the manner of regime change that has been adopted, but even-
tually it must end. The costs – both psychological and material – are
simply too great for the actors to endure indefinitely. While there will
always be some for whom the exhilaration of participating in a con-
tinuous ‘‘war of movement’’ remains an end in itself, most actors look
forward to settling into a ‘‘war of positions’’ with known allies,
established lines of cleavage, and predictable opponents – or to
getting on with other careers or pursuits.
The genus of social processes of which the consolidation of de-
mocracy is a subspecies has been given a number of labels. ‘‘Struc-
turation’’ is the currently fashionable one, thanks to the growing
influence of the work of Anthony Gidden.10 Routinization, institu-
tionalization, and stabilization – not to mention reification – were
concepts earlier used to refer to this process. The basic idea common
to these phenomena is that social relations can become social struc-
tures or institutions (the two will be used interchangeably in this
text). Patterns of interaction can become so regular in their occur-
rence, so endowed with meaning, so capable of motivating behaviour,
that they become autonomous in their internal functioning and resist-
ant to externally induced change. In ordinary parlance, structures/
institutions are collectivities in which ‘‘the whole has become greater
than the sum of its parts.’’ The strategies and norms of individuals
within these collectivities are constrained by the whole. Their actions
and goals are not reducible to those of its component parts: structures
and institutions cannot be understood purely by aggregating the
decisions – least of all, the preferences – of the individuals within
them.11
These notations are rather elementary and much of the theorizing
about them is quite abstract and devoid of clear statements from
which one could derive discretely researchable propositions. At best,
they can be exploited for a few broad guidelines and orienting
hypotheses. For our purposes, this very generic approach has an
unfortunate tendency to overlook the specificities of political action
in general and democratic processes in particular. A subtle analyst
like Gidden may well insist on the relative freedom of choice which
actors have even in highly ‘‘structurated’’ contexts, on the ambiguity
of the rules that bind them, and the indeterminacy of the resources
that they can bring to bear upon collective decisions. Yet this is still a
long way from conceptualizing the intrinsic competitiveness and
dynamic uncertainty of democratic politics. What we need is a more
specific definition and theory of the processes embraced by structu-
27
ration, institutionalization, stabilization, and routinization that cap-

tures these features and explains not only how they come to be
adopted, but also why actors might willingly prefer them.
Focusing on the state

The consolidation of democracy involves the structuration of a par-
ticular regime type. Democracies, in turn, come in several different
types and they can exist at various levels of aggregation and
autonomy. Nevertheless, all democracies presumably share certain
characteristics. The ones which interest us here are all regimes of the
state in the sense that they are organized at the level of the most
comprehensive, ‘‘sovereign,’’ unit of authority and collective choice
in the present world-system. In our work on transition, O’Donnell
and I defined a regime as follows:
The ensemble of patterns, explicit or not, that determines the forms and
channels of access to principal governmental positions, the characteristics of
the actors who are admitted and excluded from such access, and the
resources and strategies that they can use to gain access.12
Retrospectively, I would add only that a state regime must also have
some explicit rules for determining how collective decisions are
made. Regime consolidation, then, reflects a transformation of the
accidental arrangements, prudential norms, and contingent solutions
that have emerged during the uncertain struggles of the transition
into institutions, and relationships that are reliably known, regularly
practised, and normatively accepted by the participants/citizens/
subjects of such institutions.
When actors change from some form of autocracy to democracy,
the problem of consolidation takes on special characteristics.13 The
number and variety of persons who are potentially capable of pro-
posing new rules and practices increase greatly. Moreover, these
empowered citizens, and the groups they form, have much more
autonomy in deciding whether they will accept the rules and practices
that are being offered to them. This is not to suggest that modern
political democracies are anarchies in which everyone is free to
choose his or her own norms and to act without regard for the norms
of others. Yet the problem of reducing uncertainty and ensuring the
orderly governance of the unit as a whole is likely to be more acute
than, for example, in the aftermath of implanting an autocracy.
Democracy does not, however, seek to remove all sources of
28
uncertainty. A polity in which there was no uncertainty about which

candidates would win elections, what policies the winners would
adopt, or which groups would be likely to influence those policies
could hardly be termed ‘‘democratic.’’14 But the uncertainty that
is embedded in all democracies is bounded. There are limitations
to which actors can enter the competitive struggle, raise issues, co-
operate with others, and expect to hold office or exercise influence.
There are limitations to what can be decided by any procedure, even if
the procedure reflects the majority and the minority was represented
in the making of the decision. What the exercise of democracy begins
to do during the transitional period is to reduce ‘‘abnormal’’ uncer-
tainty to ‘‘normal’’ uncertainty, through the generation of formal rules
and informal practices. Rules and practices that manage to acquire
some autonomy and to reproduce themselves successfully over time
become institutions.
As a process, democratic consolidation involves choosing these
institutions. Much of this takes place in an open and deliberative
fashion and manifests itself in formal public acts – the drafting and
ratifying of a constitution, the passing of ‘‘framework legislation’’
by parliament, the issuance of executive decrees and administrative
regulations. Some of it, however, emerges more incidentally and
unselfconsciously from the ongoing ‘‘private’’ arrangements within
and between the organizations of civil society and from the inter-
actions between them and various agencies of the state.
Disaggregating the process into partial regimes

Rather than ‘‘a single regime,’’ modern democracy should be con-
ceptualized as a composite of ‘‘partial regimes.’’ As the consolidation
of democracy progresses, each of these partial regimes becomes
institutionalized in a particular sequence, according to distinctive
principles, and around different sites. All, however, concern the
representation of social groups and the resolution of their conflicts.
Parties, associations, movements, localities, and various clientele
compete and coalesce around these different sites in an effort to
capture office and influence policy. Their structured activity has the
effect of channelling conflicts toward the public arena, thereby
diminishing recourse to such private means as settling disputes by
violence and imposing one’s will by authoritarian fiat. Authorities
with different functions and at different levels of aggregation interact
with these representatives, base their legitimacy upon their account-
29
ability to different citizen interests (and passions), and reproduce that

special form of authority that stems from exercising an effective
monopoly over the use of violence.
Constitutions are efforts to establish a single, overarching set of
‘‘meta-rules’’ that would render these partial regimes coherent, assign
specific tasks to each, and impose some hierarchical relation among
them. But such formal documents are rarely successful in delineating
and controlling all such relationships. The process of producing an
acceptable draft and ratifying it by vote and/or plebiscite undoubtedly
represents a significant moment in the consolidation of democracy,
but many partial regimes will be left undefined. For it is precisely in
the interstices between different types of representatives that constitu-
tional norms are most vague and least prescriptive.15 Imagine trying
to deduce from even the most detailed of constitutions – and they are
becoming more detailed – how parties, associations, and movements
will interact to influence policies, or trying to discern how capital and
labour will bargain over income shares under the new meta-rules.
If political democracy is not a regime but a composite of regimes,
then the appropriate strategy for studying its consolidation must be
disaggregated. This is both theoretically and empirically desirable.
Figure 2.1 attempts to sketch out the property–space that is involved
and to suggest some of the specific partial regimes that are likely to
emerge. On the vertical axis, the space is defined in terms of the
institutional domain of action, ranging from authoritatively defined
state agencies to self-constituted units of civil society. Horizontally,
the variance concerns the power resources that actors can bring to
bear on the emerging political process: numbers in the case of those
relying primarily on the counting of individual votes; intensities for
those that are based on weighing the contribution of particular
groups of citizens.
Competing theories of democracy – liberal–statist, majoritarian–
consociational, unitary–federal, presidential–parliamentary – have
long argued the merits of the particular locations cited in figure 2.1.
In my view, all are potentially democratic, provided that they respect
the overarching principles of citizenship and the procedural minimum
of civil rights, fair elections, and free associability. Given the growing
diversity of tasks performed by public authorities, the number and
variety of partial regimes has tended to increase. Most scholars still
place the party and electoral systems – the arrangements regulating
government formation and executive–legislative relations and the
formula for the territorial division of authority – at the core. It has
30
Fig. 2.1 Property–space involved in the consolidation of whole and partial regimes
in modern democracies
31
been argued that the system of interest intermediation deserves

equivalent attention,16 and that, given the specific circumstances of
most transitions from autocracy, it would seem prudent to include the
nature of civil–military relations in that inner circle.17
Putting the pieces back together
The consolidation of democracy, then, consists of transforming the ad

hoc political relations that have emerged partially into stable struc-
tures in such a way that the ensuing channels of access, patterns of
inclusion, resources for action, and norms about decision-making
conform to an overriding standard:
. . . that of citizenship. This involves both the right to be treated by fellow
human beings as equal with respect to the making of collective choices and
the obligation of those implementing such choices to be equally accountable
and accessible to all members of the polity. Inversely, this principle imposes
the obligation on the ruled to respect the legitimacy of choices made by
deliberation among equals (or their representatives), and the right for the
rulers to act with authority (and, therefore, to apply coercion when neces-
sary) in order to promote the effectiveness of such choices and to protect the
regime from threats to its persistence.18
Conformity to the principle of citizenship and its corollary rights and
obligations by no means guarantees that regime structuration will
result in a particular or unique set of institutions. Lots of different
decision-making rules, inclusion formulas, distributions of resources,
forms of participation, strategies of influence, and so forth, can claim
to embody this generic principle. Across time and space – not to
mention culture and class – opinions have differed concerning what
institutions and rules are to be considered democratic. The concrete
institutions and rules which have been established in different
‘‘democratic’’ countries have similarly differed. Given the positive
connotation which the term has acquired, each country tends to claim
that the way its institution and rules are structured is the most dem-
ocratic. The ‘‘others,’’ especially one’s enemies and competitors, are
accused of having some inferior type of democracy or another kind of
regime altogether. With the United States of America, this meant
that the particular – not to say, peculiar – configuration of its regime
was often taken as ‘‘the’’ model of conformity to the citizenship
principle. Not so long ago it was Great Britain, the ‘‘mother of Par-
liaments,’’ that was regarded as the model. In the contemporary
32
period, the appeal of both American and British practices has dimin-
ished considerably. Neodemocracies are likely to look elsewhere for
their institutions – to France, Germany, Sweden, and now Spain.
Coping with the plurality of institutions

The major implication of the preceding discussion is that no single set
of institutions and rules – and, above all, no single institution or rule –
defines political democracy. Not even such fundamental character-
istics as majority rule, territorial representation, competitive elec-
tions, parliamentary sovereignty, a popularly elected executive, or a
‘‘responsible party system’’ can be taken as its distinctive hallmark.
Needless to say, this is a serious obstacle when it comes to measuring
the consolidation of democracy. One cannot simply seize on some
key ‘‘meta-relation’’ such as the manner of forming executive power –
for example presidentialism versus parliamentarianism – and trace its
transformation into a structure, assuming that all the others – such as
the party system, the decision-making rules – will fall into line once it
has crossed some critical threshold. What must be analysed is an
emerging gestalt, a network of relationships involving multiple pro-
cesses and sites. It may not be difficult to agree on what Robert Dahl
has called the ‘‘institutional guarantees’’ and others have called the
‘‘procedural minimum’’ without which no democracy could be said to
exist – secret balloting, universal adult suffrage, regular elections,
partisan competition, associational freedom, and executive account-
ability.19 Yet underlying these accomplishments and flowing from
them are much more subtle and complex relations which define both
the substance and form of nascent democratic regimes.
Of course it is important that elections be held; that parties com-
pete with varying chances of winning; that voter preferences be
secretly recorded and honestly counted; that associations be free to
form, recruit members, and exercise influence; that citizens be allowed
to contest the policies of their government and hold leaders respon-
sible for their actions. The longer these structures and rules of the
‘‘procedural minimum’’ exist, the greater is the likelihood they will
persist. Polities that have had regular elections of uncertain outcome
for, say, 40 years are more likely to continue having them in the future
than is a polity which has only had them for, say, 10 years. Therefore,
it is probably correct, ceteris paribus, to assume that Italian democ-
racy is more consolidated than Portuguese or Spanish democracy.
But the sheer longevity of such structures and rules is an inad-
33
equate base upon which to build an understanding of the consolida-

tion of democracy. Indeed, it does not adequately answer why or how
they have persisted; it just records the fact ex post. A more serious
accusation is that such an approach tends to privilege one set of
democratic institutions – usually political parties and elections – and
reifies (not to say, fetishizes) their presence at the expense of others.
It could even lead to adopting a historically or culturally peculiar
outcome as the standard against which to measure the progress of
contemporary new democracies. The obvious danger is to consider
the popular election of the chief executive and competition between
two centrist ‘‘catch-all’’ parties as the norm for institutions, and rota-
tion in exclusive responsibility for governance as the hallmark of
success: that is, to apply the US model to evaluate what is happening
in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Whatever metric one
applies, it must be capacious enough to embrace the emergence of a
wide range of possible types of democracy.
Notes
1. For this emphasis on uncertainty as ‘‘the’’ characteristic of democracy, see Adam Przeworski,
‘‘Some Problems in the Study of the Transition to Democracy,’’ in Guillermo O’Donnell
and Philippe C. Schmitter (eds) Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democ-
racy, Vol. III (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 57–61.
2. See Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, ‘‘What Democracy is . . . and is not,’’
Journal of Democracy Summer 1991; 3(3): 75–88.
3. Robert Dahl, After the Revolution: Authority in a Good Society (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1970).
4. Throughout this essay I refer to ‘‘the consolidation of democracy’’ and never to ‘‘demo-
cratic consolidation’’ because I am convinced that much that is done to consolidate this
particular type of state regime is not itself democratic. In other words, it may be occasion-
ally necessary to use undemocratic means to accomplish democratic ends. For an early
statement of this conundrum, see my ‘‘Patti e transizioni: Mezzi non-democratici a fini
democratici?,’’ Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica December 1984; 14(3): 363–382.
5. G. O’Donnell and P. C. Schmitter, op. cit.
6. One might refer to the ‘‘Suarez Factor’’ and its presumed inhibiting effect upon possible
candidates to lead the transition. Named for its first ‘‘victim,’’ Spain’s Adolfo Suarez, it
implies that the politician who is initially appointed or elected and who accepts public re-
sponsibility for governing during the highly uncertain period of transition to democracy will
be subsequently and massively rejected by the electorate. The reason is simple: this political
entrepreneur will have to bear the concentrated costs of disturbing established practices,
while the eventual benefits will come later and be dispersed over a wider public.
In the case of Suarez, despite having led a relatively successful regime change, he suffered
the greatest electoral defeat in Spanish history (a decline in 29.3 percentage points between
1979 and 1982), from which his UCD party never recovered. Presumably, if the Suarez
factor were well known and reliable, all ambitious politicians would prefer to have someone
else form the first government so that he or she could benefit from the inevitable backlash
and even manage to win several successive elections, as has Suarez’ successor, Felipe
Gonzalez.
34
Although the Suarez Factor has worked in Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia,
Ecuador, Uruguay, Bulgaria, Romania, and Lithuania, where the incumbent president or
prime minister was unable to pass on the succession to someone of his own party, there are
recent signs that it might be waning: the Chilean Christian Democrats were able to pass on
the mantle to one of their own in 1994; no one seems to have doubted that Carlos Salinas
would be succeeded by a PRI candidate of his choosing; Corazon Aquino handed over to
someone in her own government – admittedly, under ambiguous circumstances. South
Korea and Taiwan seem to be headed for even greater executive continuity. Singapore has
seen so much of it that it is questionable to classify this polity as democratic, given the fact
that the margin for the victorious governing party has been so consistent and large.
7. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. by Q. Hoare and G. N.
Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), pp. 105–120, 229–239.
8. A book that brilliantly captures this situation is J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). Put in Machiavelli’s language, the transition
places a high premium on the ‘‘crafting’’ skills of individual politicians. Once consolidation
has set in, such individual initiatives become less frequent and less consequential; routines
and rituals take over.
9. Once challenged at a conference to stop spinning elaborate webs around the concept of
‘‘consolidation of democracy’’ and to produce a simple definition that everyone would
understand, I reflected a moment and answered: ‘‘You know that a democracy has con-
solidated itself when its politics has become boring.’’ De Tocqueville once made a dis-
tinction between two kinds of politics: one based on ‘‘the will of certain men’’; the other
based on ‘‘the never-ending action of institutions.’’ The consolidation of democracy
involves the movement from the former to the latter.
10. Anthony Gidden, The Constitution of Society. Outline of a Theory of Structuration
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984).
11. Another way of expressing this difference has been explored by James March and Johan P.
Olsen in their distinction between ‘‘normal’’ institutionalized politics rooted in a predictable
and internalized ‘‘logic of appropriateness’’ and a less well-structured type of politics based
on a more contingent and opportunistic ‘‘logic of choice.’’ Rediscovering Institutions: The
Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1989).
12. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain
Democracies, p. 73, note 1. Note that the subject is regime, not order, which means that it is
confined to certain mechanisms of political choice and authoritative coercion. What
accounts for the ensemble of social, economic, and cultural institutions and how they relate
to each other in a given society to produce ‘‘order’’ is quite a different matter. Confined in
this fashion, the existence of a democratic regime at the national level is no guarantee that
families, firms, religions, schools, tribes, clubs, associations, parties, trade unions, villages,
and even competent political units will all be governed democratically. Following de
Tocqueville, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that equality tends to be contagious, i.e
that once the citizenship principle is firmly entrenched in national political institutions, it
will place pressure on other institutions to conform to it. Nevertheless, the time since he
wrote his monumental De La Démocratie en Amerique has clearly shown the functional
limits and the successful resistance by privileged groups to further equality.
13. For the purpose of this essay, democracy will be defined as ‘‘a regime or system of gover-
nance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens,
acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their representatives.’’ For
further explication, see Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, ‘‘What Democracy is . . .
and is not’’, op. cit.
14. Hence, the reluctance of most observers to classify Singapore as a democracy, despite its
holding regular elections and respecting – most – procedural niceties.
15. For a fascinating argument that it is often the ‘‘silences’’ and ‘‘abeyances’’ of constitutions –
their unwritten components – that are most significant, see Michael Foley, The Silence of
35
Constitutions. Gaps, ’Abeyances’ and Political Temperament in the Maintenance of Govern-

ment (London: Routledge, 1989).
16. See Peter Lange and Hudson Meadwell, ‘‘Typologies of Democratic Systems: From Politi-
cal Inputs to Political Economy,’’ in Howard Wiarda (ed.), New Directions in Comparative
Politics (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), pp. 80–111.
17. For the best general comparative treatment, see Filipe Agüero, ‘‘Democratic Consolidation
and the Military in Southern Europe and Latin America,’’ in R. Gunther, P. N. Dia-
mandouros, and H.-J. Puhle (eds), The Politics of Democratic Consolidation. Southern
Europe in Comparative Perspective (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995),
pp. 124–165.
18. Ibid., pp. 7–8.
19. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. 2–4.
36
3
Fifty years after the
‘‘Great Transformation’’:
Reflections on social order and
political agency
Claus Offe
Neo-liberal orthodoxy has targeted the ‘‘strong’’ state and ‘‘big gov-
ernment’’ as the chief culprits responsible for social malaise and eco-
nomic malperformance, and as a consequence of democratic over-
load. However, it is not evident what is meant by ‘‘big’’ government.
The question of size can be considered in two ways – structural and
functional – and both hold implications for citizenship and the rela-
tionship between democracy and the market. Both seem to be
orthogonally related – that is, at least potentially unrelated.
The structural concept of big government concerns indicators such
as the number of intervention points, the size of the state apparatus
(in terms of personnel), and the size of the budget. The functional
measurement involves an analysis of the number of people being
affected by state policies, as well as the intensity of the impact of such
interventions.
Using these two rough measures, we see interesting plus/minus
combinations. One such effect could be an inflated state apparatus
with little regulatory and governance capacity. The other would be the
result of a policy of deregulation, withdrawal, neglect, and inaction –
such as the set of policies often associated with ‘‘Thatcherism’’ –
which has, and is intended to have, a major and often devastating
impact upon the life chances of great numbers of people. After all,
privatization and marketization are ‘‘policy’’ interventions, not a
return to an allegedly innocent and natural state of ‘‘undistorted’’
37
Claus Offe
social order. The market is here used as a political weapon targeted,

for reasons that may be deemed legitimate or illegitimate, against
particular categories of people for particular purposes. It is exactly
the function and purpose of neo-liberal orthodoxy to conceal this
discretionary use of market forces that is employed by political
authorities for strategic purposes not self-evidently natural or legit-
imate. One might well argue that, at the time before economic regu-
lation and social policy redistribution were ever experimented with or
even conceived of, the tool kit of public policy was so limited that
nobody could even think of policy choices of a more interventionist
sort. At that time, the market was actually ‘‘outside of’’ and ‘‘prior
to’’ policy choices, although historians of ideas (such as Hirschman)
have forcefully argued that the rule of market-mediated interests was
itself the outcome of a powerful moral, political, and ideological
campaign by the eighteenth century bourgeoisie and intellectual
protagonists. After these allegedly ‘‘innocent times’’ were over and
the Keynesian welfare state became an ideological and practical
reality, marketization has been turned into a policy as much as any of
its alternatives.
If marketization is seen as one policy instrument among many
others, what combination of structural and functional indicators is
most rational, beneficial, and desirable? The answer is not one that
can be given in the form of a compelling economic or philosophical
argument, but only in the course, and as the outcome, of democratic
deliberation. The answer is a matter of ‘‘voice,’’ rather than ‘‘proof.’’
As a consequence, almost any assertion or model of the proper role
and size of macro-social organizing principles will be controversial
and contested. If the market – and its extensions – is thus a matter of
public policy, the relative size, scope, and intensity of the market
versus the government versus the community must correspondingly
be a matter and a consequence of democratic politics. It is this syllo-
gism to which the neo-liberal orthodoxy is radically and consistently
opposed. Rather than providing an input into the conduct of demo-
cratic debate, thereby raising the level of discourse and improving
the quality of ‘‘voice,’’ the proponents of such orthodoxy silence or
emasculate this process by claiming superior insight. Hence, the
epistemological principle of Thatcherism: ‘‘There is no alternative.’’
The (anti-)politics of neo-liberal orthodoxy is to disenfranchize
citizens and to pre-empt potential issues of public debate in the name
of truth and scientific insight. It closes the agenda by imposing non-
decisions. As Lindblom observed, it uses the market as a prison. If,
38
Fifty years after the ‘‘Great Transformation’’
however, the state is reduced to a contract-enforcing agency sub-

servient to market forces, democracy becomes either pointless or
distorted. This distortion I have in mind is the displacement of issues
of public debate. Issues of justice, prosperity, and the distribution of
life chances – the core issues of what Lipset refers to as ‘‘the demo-
cratic class struggle’’ – are silenced, and what flourishes instead is the
politics of morality, religion, identity, and (ultimately) personalistic
populism. Under the intellectual and political regime of neo-liberal
orthodoxy, elections turn into shallow – though sometimes passionate
– moral beauty contests over issues that have nothing to do with
the core question of how to organize the political economy. A con-
comitant phenomenon is the vanishing of the institutional and actual
role assigned to collective intermediary actors of all sorts, from trade
unions to city councils, from business associations to universities. This
in turn makes the orderly reconciliation of conflict more difficult, the
institutional vacuum of interest intermediation giving rise to symp-
toms of social disorganization.
Polanyi’s concern in The Great Transformation – which first
appeared in 1944 – was to demonstrate that ‘‘the institutional
arrangements of market societies cause them to be inherently unsta-
ble.’’1 This is the famous ‘‘satanic mill’’ argument. It derives in turn
from the ‘‘fictitious commodities’’ argument that labour,2 land, and
money are commodities that differ from all other commodities in that
they do not come into being as commodities, that is, as the outcome
of an acquisitive production process aimed at the sale of its results for
profit.3 The market cannot create ‘‘social order’’ because some of the
key ingredients of social order cannot be the result of market inter-
action. The market is, both genetically and structurally, the creation
of non-market actors.
On the basis of the ‘‘satanic mill’’ argument, we can draw the
inverse conclusion. If a market economy actually develops into a
sustainable social order, this must be due not to its quality of kosmos
– spontaneous order due to the operation of the invisible hand – but
of taxis – consciously arranged, instituted, and controlled order – to
employ an important distinction introduced by Hayek.4 The question
then becomes one of who creates and manages the taxis, and of how
the social institutions in which the market is embedded come into
being.
Polanyi argued that it is the state which is the guardian of integra-
tion, coherence, and solidarity. How does the state come to perform
that function? There is a strong functionalist argument in The Great
39
Claus Offe
Transformation: ‘‘objective reasons of a stringent nature forced the

hands of the legislators.’’ But legislators as social actors must be
conscious of those objective reasons, and they must also be able and
willing to comply with what these reasons mandate. The necessary
protective devices on which a market society depends for its integra-
tion and sustainability do not become operative automatically, nor
are they self-evident and determinate. No outside observer can tell
what measures of what scale and scope must be adopted in order to
make a market economy a viable social order. Any practical answer
to this question must be willed, and the ultimate source of this will is
a theory of social justice that guides political action within society.
The protective institutional devices must be instituted and enacted in
accordance with such a theory .
Polanyi has shown, in his analysis of Speenhamland and its repeal
in 1832–1834, that market capitalism is not something that comes into
being by the force of evolutionary superiority alone; rather, it origi-
nates from conscious efforts and strategic interests on the part of the
holders of state power to create institutional and administrative
arrangements that are best suited to it, and, most importantly, the
marketization of labour. Capitalism, and the commodification of
labour as its core prerequisite, is thus a political construction.
The protective regulatory framework that eventually emerged is
also a political construction, based upon the experience that market
society, if left wholly unregulated, does not result in a stable social
order. This is the ‘‘powerful counter-movement’’5 by which political
actors within market society react to its instabilities. If, as Polanyi
insists time and again, ‘‘the market has been the outcome of a con-
scious and often violent intervention on the part of government
which imposed the market organization on society for non-economic
ends,’’ why should the same not be true for the reverse process in
which markets are contained and regulated? There is an incon-
sistency here: while Polanyi is very specific as to the agents that
brought about marketization, he lapses into the anonymity of func-
tionalist logic in explaining the reverse process: ‘‘ultimately what
made things happen were the interests of society as a whole.’’ He
maintains that it was not class interests which gave rise to protective
regulation and self-preservation, but that ‘‘such measures simply
responded to the needs of industrial civilization with which market
methods were unable to cope.’’ Again, the question is who under-
stood those needs, acted upon them, and eventually succeeded in
addressing them?
40
Contrary to the simplistic reading of Marxism of which Polanyi was

utterly critical, this self-correcting tendency within market society
cannot be attributed to class actors alone. Yet it must be attributed to
specific actors, the means and opportunities available to them, and
the ideas that guided them. Let me briefly turn to a review of the
principal actors which played a role in the creation of the various
kinds of protective economic and social policy regimes in Europe as it
emerged from the horrors of the Second World War. These are the
centres of agency which have shared – or at any rate partially over-
lapping – projects of social order. I shall then turn to the question of
whether the order imposed by these social and political forces is likely
to be a permanent one, or whether (and, if so, for what reasons) we
are now in the midst of a second Polanyi cycle of disorganization with
the need for reorganization still unanswered.
The post-war settlement of the problem of social order in West
European countries was helped by a number of favourable factors, all
of which have now virtually disappeared. The first of these factors
was the unique historical condition of sustained economic growth
supported by a social order in which the experience and expectation
of a lasting positive-sum game imposed relative, not absolute, sacri-
fices. Second, a consolidated system of nation-states provided the
opportunity for building economic and social policy regimes within
each country, without reason to fear adverse transnational repercus-
sions in terms of diminished competitiveness. Third, the memories
of the horrors of the war and the Nazi regime, as well as the anti-
totalitarian consensus that emerged from the Cold War, all helped to
solidify the alliance of political forces which, with only minor varia-
tions, endorsed patterns of regulatory state intervention and a quali-
fied collectivism involving corporate groups.
Within these conditions, an inter-class alliance of Liberal, Christian,
and Socialist normative traditions emerged, embodying, respectively,
the justice intuitions of desert, needs, and rights. Taken together,
these three intuitions make up the model of what in the German
terminology is called ‘‘social market economy,’’ which has parallels
in most other advanced capitalist economies and their respective
‘‘welfare state regimes.’’6
Today, we see the atrophy of this alliance, due to the disintegration
of the normative theories on which society can rely in order to pro-
tect itself from the destructive impact of the market. There are three
regulatory paradigms of a just social order, which have their respec-
tive political proponents. In order to simplify, one can employ the
41
Claus Offe
conceptual triplets of liberalism and the concomitant ethos of desert

and the market, socialism and positive rights in the context of the
state, and Christian politics associated with community-based needs.
Liberalism honours desert as measured by, and rewarded through,
the market. In the original theories of political liberalism, what peo-
ple deserve includes not only the uninhibited use of property rights
and the fruits of such use, but also equal and universalistic admission
to opportunities and market access, such as schools and health
services. In the absence of these universalistic premises – as well as
others, such as conditions of reasonably full employment – liberty
may well exist to some extent, but is rendered worthless to all those
who are not in a position to make choices as to their place in society.
Today’s liberals have largely turned libertarian, shedding off the
egalitarian component of ‘‘equal liberty’’ which embraces equal
opportunity and entitlement to compensation. Market libertarians
have also discarded traditionalist admixtures of social conservatism;
the fate of the British ‘‘one-nation Tories’’ under Thatcher illustrates
this. Or they have turned from cosmopolitan liberalism to chauvinism
(as in Austria), promising the protection of national citizens through
the exclusion of those who do not belong to that community. Ironi-
cally, the stronger that inclusive and egalitarian liberalism has become
as a sophisticated moral and political theory, the more deficient it has
become in practice.
Socialists originally had a vision of how distribution should be
organized on the basis not only of positive rights but also of produc-
tion, both through the use of state power. Apart from some ‘‘green’’
caveats concerning how production should not be organized, the
theme of production and how best to organize it has virtually van-
ished from the socialist or social democratic agenda.7 As socialist
distributive projects are today widely seen as being parasitic upon
growth and production – and so cannot promote growth in any dis-
tinctive socialist ways – these distributive projects become dubious
and easily discredited. As the inherited corporatist rights of workers
often stand in the way of economic performance, Social Democrats,
exposed to the pressures of fiscal crisis, find themselves in the
embarrassing situation of having to tolerate the sacrifice of status and
distributive rights for competitiveness and performance. In southern
Europe – Spain, Italy, also France – Socialists even seem determined
to outcompete Market Liberals in their emphasis upon deregulation.
Indeed, it is hardly possible to recognize a specifically ‘‘socialist’’
concept of industrial organization, modernization, and the promotion
42
of industrial prosperity from any of its competitors. The concepts of

intelligently regulating production in ways that guarantee workers’
rights at the point of production, together with full employment, are
similarly difficult to come by in today’s open economies. For instance,
the core concept of post-war social democratic economic policy-
making, the concept of full employment, was conspicuously absent
from the rhetoric of the Social Democrats during the German 1994
election campaign, only to be replaced with the more modest and
realistic call for creating more jobs.
Finally, Christian politics in general, and Roman Catholic-inspired
politics in particular, are based upon the protection of the needs of
individuals and communities, preferably not directly through the
state but in indirect ways that help the community to help itself in the
context of subsidiarity. In particular, a form of protection from the
market is envisaged upon the family and the natural law entitlements
that supposedly are to govern the relations between the sexes, gen-
erations, and social classes. Many of the doctrines invoked in support
of this kind of protection from the market are so grotesquely out of
touch with demographic conditions, actual gender, and intergenera-
tional relations that they hardly qualify as a plausible rationale for an
effective control of the ‘‘satanic mill’’ of the market.
The post-Second World War period came to a definitive end with
the year 1989, if not even earlier with the oil price shocks of the mid-
seventies. Its end has marked the end of a broad consensus concern-
ing the regulatory regimes underpinning social order and the mode in
which disruptive market forces should be contained. While grand
coalitions reflecting a broad conservative–social democratic con-
sensus on the basics of social order have become rare, the failure of
each of the three ideological ‘‘camps’’ to provide for, and implement,
a coherent concept of order is also manifest. Thatcher’s infamous
claim that there is no British ‘‘society,’’ just British individuals and
families, actually denies the very object of any effort to establish a
‘‘social order.’’ This denial is complemented by her refusal to
acknowledge the existence of a society as a subject of the creation
of such order as public policy. According to her – and to many of
her libertarian followers – public policy cannot be guided by demo-
cratic representation and collective choice, but by some meta-social
logic.
No potentially hegemonic vision of a just social order is at hand,
other than that presumably brought about through the unfettered
operation of market forces within and between irrevocably open
43
Claus Offe
economies. This applies to the West as well as to the East. The

breakdown of state socialism has rendered obsolete a model of statist
authoritarian protection, leaving behind, according to Vaclav Klaus, a
craving for a ‘‘market economy without an adjective’’ in many of the
post-socialist societies. Many of the post-communist élites in Eastern
Europe follow the belief that problems of social order and social
protection can be postponed until after an adjective-less market
economy is firmly installed. In the meantime, they stare in disbelief
upon the electoral resurgence of the advocates of paternalistic social
protectionism.
The great virtue and attraction of market forces and private prop-
erty consist not in their being the medium of private profit maximi-
zation but in their capacity for collective loss minimization. Markets
eliminate in a smooth, continuous, and inconspicuous way all those
factors of production that fail to perform according to current stan-
dards of efficiency. These failing factors are thus forced to adapt and
to find alternative and more productive uses. The power that drives
this continuous search is more potent than any political authority or
planning agency, be it authoritarian or democratic. This is so because
the market is an anonymous power that we cannot talk to: it is not to
be irritated by election results or any other kind of ‘‘voice.’’ The
potency of market forces derives from their anonymity and non-
intentionality: if factors of production fail in a particular allocation,
nobody can be blamed for having caused this event. The market
inflicts damage upon inefficient producers that even the most total-
itarian system of governance would not dare to impose. Hence, as
‘‘no one else’’ can be blamed for negative market outcomes, the
market invites self-attribution of individual failures. The market is a
powerful socializing agent. It constantly brings to mind the maxim
proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln: ‘‘If you need a helping hand, look
at the lower end of your right arm!’’ Adaptation, however, does not
come automatically: it depends on adaptivity-enhancing infrastruc-
ture, assistance, and incentives.
The market invites victim-blaming. As we know, anonymous
efficiency-enhancing pressure is just one side of the market. The
other side is the tendency of the market to spread to every aspect of
social life: the market cannot easily be contained or kept in its
‘‘proper place’’ while respecting the autonomy of the ‘‘life world’’ of
culture, socialization, and the shape of human biographies. Moreover,
the market, far from being the favourite arrangement of producers,
44
is, wherever possible, undermined by cartelization and monopolies,

or distorted by clientelistic favours extracted from the holders of
political power. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what speaks
against the market as a generator of social order is its blindness: it
fails to register and to translate into price signals both present and
future externalities, including the external effects which result in the
permanent exclusion of people and entire regions. It is these three
classes of market deficiencies and market failures which must be
addressed in any attempt to integrate market societies and impose
upon them a viable social order.
To turn to the central question, how do we explain the apparent
disarticulation of the political camps and forces that have shaped
political processes? A traditional – and highly optimistic – view of the
competitive democratic process – the ‘‘political market-place’’ – has
been that it brings to power those forces that are best capable of
contributing to the integration and thus to the long-term sustain-
ability of industrial societies. Electoral competition is a mechanism in
which the best problem solver wins and the loser will consequently
have to learn from the winner and eventually try to outbid him on the
next election day. Today, a more realistic picture is that of a down-
ward spiral of fatalistic routines, in which each party relies on the fact
that its competitor does not have any promising ideas either, which
renders unnecessary efforts to develop those of its own. The side-
effects of this spiral are mass political cynicism, low electoral turnout,
the decline of stable political support, the denunciation of the ‘‘political
class’’ as corrupt and self-serving, and an increasing structural pre-
mium on the populist politics of resentment.
The explanation for the atrophy of not just socialist doctrines but
also of competing doctrines must be addressed on the levels of both
the micro-motives and the macro-context of politics and public policy.
Within Western civil societies – centres of political agency – collective
action based upon recognized similarities of status, interest, culture,
and the potential for solidarity have largely eroded. If anything,
communities based on consumption and lifestyle are more likely to
arise than those based on similarities within the sphere of production
and division of labour. The image that emerges from the vast socio-
logical literature on ‘‘post-modern’’ social structures – as well as from
the communitarian critique of liberal individualism – is that of rapid
fluctuations of loyalties, allegiances, and commitments between indi-
viduals and diachronically across generations and along the life
45
Claus Offe
course of individuals. Again, structural disembeddedness and atom-

ization are prevailing features of both West and post-communist East
European societies. The threat of marginalization through unem-
ployment dominates these societies, and the resulting insecurities and
anxieties generate a rational preference for social advancement and
social security through individual rather than collective means. These
feelings and perceptions in turn inculcate a lifeboat logic into social
life that reckons with the absence or unreliability of communal or
state-provided safety nets.
The macro-context of economic, technical, and cultural globaliza-
tion is mediated, respectively, by the ‘‘three non-verbal Ms’’ of money,
mathematics, and music, to which we might add the fourth M of
migration. This context discourages any effort to invest in, or develop
commitments toward, social order, for it is feared that such efforts
and commitments will precipitate adverse transnational repercus-
sions. It is increasingly uncertain to what extent a tight domestic reg-
ulatory regime is actually helping international competitiveness, for
example through the reliable protection of social peace and infra-
structural advantages. Beyond which, such a regime offers oppor-
tunities for dumping to tertii gaudentes, or otherwise becomes vul-
nerable to exploitation by others. As borders are increasingly unable
to provide a bulwark against the outward flow of capital and the
inward flow of labour, the sense of a loss of sovereignty undermines
the tightly confined nation-state, within which the social democratic
welfare state must be seen to be parasitic. Moreover, this loss of
domestic sovereignty is essentially not compensated through effective
mechanisms of territorial and functional representation at the level of
transnational regimes.
What results from both the micro- and macro-contexts that I have
briefly sketched is the apparent impotence of state power, as well as
the political forces and ideas that are willing and capable of using it in
the continuous process of creation and fine-tuning social order.
Again, this applies to East and West alike. Needless to say, the cures
of these ills are as well known as they are hard to administer: they
involve the cultivation of the associative life of civil society and its
legal premises on the one hand, and the development of democrati-
cally accessible and responsive transnational regimes on the other.
In the meantime, it remains a case of misplaced concreteness to ask
the time-honoured question of what is to be done: the real – and
logically prior – question is whether there is anybody who can do
anything.
46
Notes
1. Michael Hechter, ‘‘Karl Polanyi’s Social Theory: A Critique,’’ Politics and Society 1981;
10(4): 405; Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971).
2. Some consequences of the fictitiousness of the commodity form for the socio-economics of
labour markets are explored in Claus Offe and Karl Hinrichs, ‘‘The Political Economy of the
Labour Market,’’ in Claus Offe, Disorganized Capitalism (Oxford: Polity, 1995).
3. That is to say, human beings as the bearers of labour power are not manufactured, but born
as children. Land and the resources it contains are provided by geological and other pro-
cesses; these resources are limited and cannot be augmented. Money (as well as taxes, tariffs,
and exchange rates) is legislated into being and administered by central banks and other
authorities.
4. Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1976), chapter 2.
5. Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers, ‘‘Beyond the Economistic Fallacy: The Holistic Social
Science of Karl Polanyi’’, in Theda Skocpol (ed.) Vision and Method in Historical Sociology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 57.
6. The details and diverse configurations of these regimes have been analysed by Gösta Esping-
Anderson in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990).
7. See the apt warning of Joel Rogers and Wolfgang Streeck: ‘‘Leaving efficiency to capital and
limiting Left intervention to distributive justice not only surrenders the Left’s claim for
power, but results in less than optimal efficiency and thus hurts society as a whole.’’ In
‘‘Productive Solidarities: Economic Strategy and Left Politics,’’ in David Miliband (ed.)
Reinventing the Left (Oxford: Polity, 1994), p. 143.
47
4
Toward consolidated
democracies
Three minimal conditions must obtain before there can be any pos-
sibility of speaking of democratic consolidation. First, in a modern
polity, free and authoritative elections cannot be held, winners cannot
exercise the monopoly of legitimate force, and citizens cannot effec-
tively have their rights protected by a rule of law unless a state exists.
In some parts of the world, conflicts about the authority and domain
of the polis and the identities and loyalties of the demos are so
intense that no state exists. No state, no democracy.
Second, democracy cannot be thought of as consolidated until a
democratic transition has been brought to completion. A necessary
(but by no means sufficient) condition for the completion of a demo-
cratic transition is the holding of free and contested elections (on the
basis of broadly inclusive voter eligibility) that meet the seven insti-
tutional requirements for elections in a polyarchy that Robert A.
Dahl has set forth.1 Such elections are not sufficient, however, to
complete a democratic transition. In many cases – in Chile as of 1996,
for example – in which free and contested elections have been held,
the government resulting from elections like these lacks the de jure as
well as de facto power to determine policy in many significant areas
because the executive, legislative, and judicial powers are still deci-
sively constrained by an interlocking set of ‘‘reserve domains,’’ mili-
tary ‘‘prerogatives,’’ or ‘‘authoritarian enclaves.’’2
Third, no regime should be called a democracy unless its rulers
govern democratically. If freely elected executives (no matter what
This chapter is reprinted, with changes, by permission of the authors and the Johns Hopkins
University Press, from the Journal of Democracy April 1996; 7(2): 14–32.
48
Toward consolidated democracies
the magnitude of their majority) infringe the constitution, violate the

rights of individuals and minorities, impinge upon the legitimate
functions of the legislature, and thus fail to rule within the bounds of
a state of law, their regimes are not democracies.
In sum, when we talk about the consolidation of democracy, we
are not dealing with liberalized non-democratic regimes, or with
pseudo-democracies, or with hybrid democracies where some demo-
cratic institutions coexist with non-democratic institutions outside the
control of the democratic state. Only democracies can become con-
solidated democracies.
Let us now turn to examining how, and when, new political systems
that meet the three minimal conditions of ‘‘stateness,’’ a completed
democratic transition, and a government that rules democratically
can be considered consolidated democracies.3
In most cases, after a democratic transition is completed there are
still many tasks that need to be accomplished, conditions that must be
established, and attitudes and habits that must be cultivated before
democracy can be regarded as consolidated. What, then, are the char-
acteristics of a consolidated democracy? Many scholars, in advancing
definitions of consolidated democracy, enumerate all the regime
characteristics that would improve the overall quality of democracy.
We favour, instead, a narrower definition of democratic consolida-
tion, but one that none the less combines behavioural, attitudinal, and
constitutional dimensions. Essentially, by a ‘‘consolidated democracy’’
we mean a political regime in which democracy – as a complex system
of institutions, rules, and patterned incentives and disincentives – has
become, in a phrase, ‘‘the only game in town.’’4
Behaviourally, democracy becomes the only game in town when no
significant political group seriously attempts to overthrow the demo-
cratic regime or to promote domestic or international violence in
order to secede from the state. When this situation obtains, the
behaviour of the newly elected government that has emerged from
the democratic transition is no longer dominated by the problem of
how to avoid democratic breakdown. (Exceptionally, the democratic
process can be used to achieve secession, creating separate states that
can be democracies.) Attitudinally, democracy becomes the only
game in town when, even in the face of severe political and economic
crises, the overwhelming majority of the people believe that any
further political change must emerge from within the parameters of
democratic procedures. Constitutionally, democracy becomes the
only game in town when all of the actors in the polity become habi-
49
tuated to the fact that political conflict within the state will be resolved
according to established norms, and that violations of these norms
are likely to be both ineffective and costly. In short, with consolida-
tion, democracy becomes routinized and deeply internalized in social,
institutional, and even psychological life, as well as in political calcu-
lations for achieving success.
Our working definition of a consolidated democracy is then as
follows. Behaviourally, a democratic regime in a territory is con-
solidated when no significant national, social, economic, political, or
institutional actors spend significant resources attempting to achieve
their objectives by creating a non-democratic regime or by seceding
from the state. Attitudinally, a democratic regime is consolidated
when a strong majority of public opinion, even in the midst of major
economic problems and deep dissatisfaction with incumbents, holds
the belief that democratic procedures and institutions are the most
appropriate way to govern collective life, and when support for anti-
system alternatives is quite small or more-or-less isolated from pro-
democratic forces. Constitutionally, a democratic regime is consoli-
dated when governmental and non-governmental forces alike become
subject to, and habituated to, the resolution of conflict within the
bounds of the specific laws, procedures, and institutions sanctioned
by the new democratic process.
We must add two important caveats. First, when we say that a
regime is a consolidated democracy, we do not preclude the possi-
bility that at some future time it could break down. Such a break-
down, however, would be related not to weaknesses or problems
specific to the historic process of democratic consolidation but to a
new dynamic in which the democratic regime cannot solve a set of
problems, a non-democratic alternative gains significant supporters,
and former democratic-regime loyalists begin to behave in a constitu-
tionally disloyal or semiloyal manner.5
Our second caveat is that we do not want to imply that there is only
one type of consolidated democracy. An exciting new area of research
is concerned with precisely this issue – the varieties of consolidated
democracies. We also do not want to imply that consolidated
democracies could not continue to improve their quality by raising
the minimal economic plateau upon which all citizens stand, and by
deepening popular participation in the political and social life of the
country. Within the category of consolidated democracies there is a
continuum from low-quality to high-quality democracies. Improving
50
the quality of consolidated democracies is an urgent political and

intellectual task, but our goal in this essay, though related, is a dif-
ferent one. As we are living in a period in which an unprecedented
number of countries have completed democratic transitions and are
attempting to consolidate democracies, it is politically and concep-
tually important that we understand the specific tasks of ‘‘crafting’’
democratic consolidation. Unfortunately, too much of the discussion
of the current ‘‘wave’’ of democratization focuses almost solely on
elections or on the presumed democratizing potential of market mech-
anisms. Democratic consolidation, however, requires much more than
elections and markets.
Crafting and conditions

In addition to a functioning state, five other interconnected and mutu-
ally reinforcing conditions must be present, or be crafted, in order for
a democracy to be consolidated. First, the conditions must exist for
the development of a free and lively civil society. Second, there must
be a relatively autonomous political society. Third, throughout the
territory of the state, all major political actors, especially the gov-
ernment and the state apparatus, must be effectively subjected to the
rule of law that protects individual freedoms and associational life.
Fourth, there must be a state bureaucracy that is usable by the new
democratic government. Fifth, there must be an institutionalized
economic society. Let us explain what is involved in crafting this
interrelated set of conditions.
By ‘‘civil society,’’ we refer to that arena of the polity where self-
organizing and relatively autonomous groups, movements, and in-
dividuals attempt to articulate values, to create associations and sol-
idarities, and to advance their interests. Civil society can include
manifold social movements – women’s groups, neighbourhood asso-
ciations, religious groupings, and intellectual organizations – as well
as associations from all social strata, such as trade unions, entrepre-
neurial groups, and professional associations.
By ‘‘political society,’’ we mean that arena in which political actors
compete for the legitimate right to exercise control over public power
and the state apparatus. Civil society by itself can destroy a non-
democratic regime, but democratic consolidation (or even a full
democratic transition) must involve political society. Democratic
consolidation requires that citizens develop an appreciation for the
51
core institutions of a democratic political society – political parties,

legislatures, elections, electoral rules, political leadership, and inter-
party alliances.
It is important to stress not only the difference between civil society
and political society but also their complementarity, which is not
always recognized. One of these two arenas is frequently neglected in
favour of the other. Worse, within the democratic community, cham-
pions of either civil society or political society all too often adopt a
discourse and a set of practices that are implicitly inimical to the
normal development of the other.
In the recent struggles against the non-democratic regimes of
Eastern Europe and Latin America, a discourse was constructed that
emphasized ‘‘civil society versus state’’ – a dichotomy that has a long
philosophical genealogy. More importantly for our purposes, it was
also politically useful to those democratic movements emerging in
states where explicitly political organizations were forbidden or
extremely weak. In many countries, civil society was rightly consid-
ered to be the hero of democratic resistance and transition.
The problem arises at the moment of democratic transition. Dem-
ocratic leaders of political society quite often argue that civil society,
having played its historic role, should be demobilized to allow for the
development of normal democratic politics. Such an argument is
not only bad democratic theory, it is also bad democratic politics. A
robust civil society, with the capacity to generate political alternatives
and to monitor government and state, can help start transitions, help
resist reversals, and deepen democracy. At all stages of the democ-
ratization process, therefore, a lively and independent civil society is
invaluable.
But we should also consider how to recognize (and thus help
overcome) the false opposition sometimes drawn between civil soci-
ety and political society. The danger posed for the development of
political society by civil society is that normative preferences and
styles of organization perfectly appropriate to civil society might be
taken to be the desirable – or, indeed, the only legitimate – style of
organization for political society. For example, many civil-society
leaders view ‘‘internal conflict’’ and ‘‘division’’ within the democratic
forces with moral antipathy. ‘‘Institutional routinization,’’ ‘‘inter-
mediaries,’’ and ‘‘compromise’’ within politics are often spoken of
pejoratively. But each of the above terms refers to an indispensable
practice of political society in a consolidated democracy. Democratic
52
consolidation requires political parties, one of whose primary tasks is

precisely to aggregate and represent differences between democrats.
Consolidation requires that habituation to the norms and procedures
of democratic conflict-regulation be developed. A high degree of
institutional routinization is a key part of such a process. Inter-
mediation between the state and civil society, and the structuring of
compromise, are likewise legitimate and necessary tasks of political
society. In short, political society – informed, pressured, and periodi-
cally renewed by civil society – must somehow achieve a workable
agreement on the myriad ways in which democratic power will be
crafted and exercised.
The need for a Rechtsstaat

To achieve a consolidated democracy, the necessary degree of auto-
nomy of civil and political society must be embedded in, and sup-
ported by, our third arena, the rule of law. All significant actors –
especially the democratic government and the state apparatus – must
be held accountable to, and become habituated to, the rule of law.
For the types of civil society and political society we have just
described, a rule of law animated by a spirit of constitutionalism is
an indispensable condition. Constitutionalism, which should not be
confused with majoritarianism, entails a relatively strong consensus
regarding the constitution, and especially a commitment to ‘‘self-
binding’’ procedures of governance that can be altered only by excep-
tional majorities. It also requires a clear hierarchy of laws, inter-
preted by an independent judicial system and supported by a strong
legal culture in civil society.6
The emergence of Rechtsstaat – a state of law, or perhaps more
accurately a state subject to law – was one of the major accom-
plishments of nineteenth-century liberalism (long before full democ-
ratization) in continental Europe and to some extent in Japan. A
Rechtsstaat meant that the government and the state apparatus would
be subject to the law, that areas of discretionary power would be
defined and increasingly limited, and that citizens could turn to courts
to defend themselves against the state and its officials. The modern
Rechtsstaat is fundamental in making democratization possible, since
without it citizens would not be able to exercise their political rights
with full freedom and independence.
A state of law is particularly crucial for the consolidation of
53
democracy. It is the most important continuous and routine way

in which the elected government and the state administration are
subjected to a network of laws, courts, semi-autonomous review and
control agencies, and civil-society norms that not only check the
state’s illegal tendencies but also embed it in an interconnecting web
of mechanisms requiring transparency and accountability. Freely
elected governments can, but do not necessarily, create such a law-
bound, constraint-embedded state. Indeed, the more that all the
institutions of the state function according to the principle of the
state of law, the higher the quality of democracy and the better
the society.
Constitutionalism and the rule of law must determine the offices to
be filled by election, the procedures to elect those office-holders, and
the definition of (and limits to) their power in order for people to be
willing to participate in – and to accept the outcomes of – the demo-
cratic game. This may pose a problem if the rules, even if enacted by
a majority, are so unfair or poorly crafted and so difficult to change
democratically that they are unacceptable to a large number of citi-
zens. For example, an electoral law that gives 80 per cent of the seats
in parliament to a party that wins less than 50 per cent of the vote, or
an ideologically loaded constitution that is extremely difficult to
amend, is not likely to be conducive to democratic consolidation.
Finally, a democracy in which a single leader enjoys, or thinks he
or she enjoys, a ‘‘democratic’’ legitimacy that allows him or her to
ignore, dismiss, or alter other institutions – the legislature, the courts,
the constitutional limits of power – does not fit our conception of the
rule of law in a democratic regime. The formal or informal institu-
tionalization of such a system is not likely to result in a consolidated
democracy unless such discretion is checked.
Some presidential democracies – with their tendency toward pop-
ulist, plebiscitarian, ‘‘delegative’’ characteristics, together with a fixed
term of office and a ‘‘no re-election’’ rule that excludes account-
ability before the electorate – encourage unconstitutional or anti-
constitutional behaviour that threatens the rule of law, often democ-
racy itself, and certainly democratic consolidation. A prime minister
who develops similar tendencies toward the abuse of power is more
likely than a president to be checked by other institutions – votes of
no confidence by the opposition, or the loss of support by members of
his own party. Early elections are a legal vehicle available in parlia-
mentarianism – but unavailable in presidentialism – to help solve
crises generated by such abusive leadership.
54
A usable bureaucracy
These three conditions – a lively and independent civil society, a

political society with sufficient autonomy and a working consensus
about procedures of governance, and constitutionalism and a rule
of law – are virtually definitional prerequisites of a consolidated
democracy. However, these conditions are much more likely to be
satisfied where there are also a bureaucracy usable by democratic
leaders and an institutionalized economic society.
Democracy is a form of governance in which the rights of citizens
are guaranteed and protected. To protect the rights of its citizens and
to deliver other basic services that citizens demand, a democratic
government needs to be able to exercise effectively its claim to a
monopoly of the legitimate use of force in its territory. Even if the
state had no other functions than these, it would have to tax com-
pulsorily in order to pay for police officers, judges, and basic services.
A modern democracy, therefore, needs the effective capacity to
command, to regulate, and to extract tax revenues. For this, it needs a
functioning state with a bureaucracy considered usable by the new
democratic government.
In many territories of the world today – especially in parts of the
former Soviet Union – no adequately functioning state exists. Insuffi-
cient taxing capacity on the part of the state, or a weak normative and
bureaucratic ‘‘presence’’ in much of its territory, such that citizens
cannot effectively demand that their rights be respected or receive
any basic entitlements, is also a great problem in many countries in
Latin America, including Brazil. The question of the usability of the
state bureaucracy by the new democratic regime also emerges in
countries such as Chile, where the outgoing non-democratic regime
was able to give tenure to many key members of the state bureaucracy
in politically sensitive areas such as justice and education. Important
questions about the usability of the state bureaucracy by new demo-
crats inevitably emerge in cases where the distinction between the
Communist Party and the state had been virtually obliterated (as in
much of post-communist Europe), and the party is now out of power.
Economic society
The final supportive condition for a consolidated democracy concerns
the economy, an arena that we believe should be called ‘‘economic
society.’’ We use this phrase to call attention to two claims that we
55
believe are theoretically and empirically sound. First, there has never
been, and there cannot be, a consolidated democracy that has a
command economy (except perhaps in wartime). Second, there has
never been, and almost certainly will never be, a modern consoli-
dated democracy with a pure market economy. Modern consolidated
democracies require a set of sociopolitically crafted and accepted
norms, institutions, and regulations – what we call ‘‘economic society’’
– that mediate between the state and the market.
No empirical evidence has ever been adduced to indicate that a
polity meeting our definition of a consolidated democracy has ever
existed with a command economy. Is there a theoretical reason to
explain such a universal empirical outcome? We think so. On theo-
retical grounds, our assumption is that at least a non-trivial degree of
market autonomy and of ownership diversity in the economy is nec-
essary to produce the independence and liveliness of civil society that
allow it to make its contribution to a democracy. Similarly, if all prop-
erty is in the hands of the state – along with all decisions about pricing,
labour, supply, and distribution – the relative autonomy of political
society required for a consolidated democracy could not exist.7
But why are completely free markets unable to coexist with mod-
ern consolidated democracies? Empirically, serious studies of modern
polities repeatedly verify the existence of significant degrees of mar-
ket intervention and state ownership in all consolidated democ-
racies.8 Theoretically, there are at least three reasons why this should
be so. First, notwithstanding certain ideologically extreme – but sur-
prisingly prevalent – neo-liberal claims about the self-sufficiency of
the market, pure market economies could neither come into being
nor be maintained without a degree of state regulation. Markets
require legally enforced contracts, the issuance of money, regulated
standards for weights and measures, and the protection of property,
both public and private. These requirements dictate a role for the
state in the economy. Second, even the best of markets experience
‘‘market failures’’ that must be corrected if the market is to function
well.9 No less an advocate of the ‘‘invisible hand’’ of the market than
Adam Smith acknowledged that the state is necessary to perform
certain functions. In a crucial but neglected passage in The Wealth of
Nations, Adam Smith identified three important tasks of the state:
First, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of
other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as pos-
sible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every
other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of
56
justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public
works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of
any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain;
because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small
number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it
to a great society.10
Finally, and most importantly, democracy entails free public contest-
ation concerning governmental priorities and policies. If a democracy
never produced policies that generated government-mandated public
goods in the areas of education, health, and transportation, and never
provided some economic safety net for its citizens and some allevia-
tion of gross economic inequality, democracy would not be sustain-
able. Theoretically, of course, it would be anti-democratic to take
such public policies off the agenda of legitimate public contestation.
Thus, even in the extremely hypothetical case of a democracy that
began with a pure market economy, the very working of a modern
democracy (and a modern advanced capitalist economy) would lead
to the transformation of that pure market economy into a mixed
economy – or that set of norms, regulations, policies, and institutions
which we call ‘‘economic society.’’11
Any way we analyse the problem, democratic consolidation
requires the institutionalization of a politically regulated market. This
requires an economic society, which in turn requires an effective
state. Even a goal such as narrowing the scope of public ownership –
through privatization – in an orderly and legal way is almost certainly
carried out more effectively by a stronger state than by a weaker one.
Economic deterioration due to the state’s inability to carry out
needed regulatory functions greatly compounds the problems of eco-
nomic reform and democratization.12
In summary, a modern consolidated democracy can be conceived
of as comprising five major interrelated arenas, each of which, to
function properly, must have its own primary organizing principle.
Rightly understood, democracy is more than a regime: it is an inter-
acting system. No single arena in such a system can function properly
without some support from another arena, or often from all of the
remaining arenas. For example, civil society in a democracy needs the
support of a rule of law that guarantees to people their right of asso-
ciation, and needs the support of a state apparatus that will effectively
impose legal sanctions on those who would illegally attempt to deny
others that right. Furthermore, each arena in the democratic system
has an impact on other arenas. For example, political society man-
57
ages the governmental bureaucracy and produces the overall regu-

latory framework that guides and contains economic society. In a
consolidated democracy, therefore, there are constant mediations
among the five principal arenas, each of which is influenced by the
others.
Two surmountable obstacles

Two of the most widely cited obstacles to democratic consolidation
are the dangers posed by ethnic conflict in multinational states and by
disappointed popular hopes for economic improvement in states
undergoing simultaneous political and economic reform. These are
real problems. Democratic theorists and crafters alike must recognize
that there is often more than one ‘‘awakened nation’’ present in
the state, and that there can be prolonged economic reversals after
democratic transition begins. None the less, we are convinced, on
both theoretical and empirical grounds, that democracy can still make
significant strides toward consolidation under such conditions. We
are, furthermore, convinced that if democratic theorists conceptualize
what such obstacles mean and do not mean, this may lessen the
dangers of democratic disenchantment and help to identify obstacle-
reducing paths. That is our task in the rest of this essay.
Under what empirical conditions do ‘‘nation-states’’ and ‘‘democ-
ratization’’ form complementary logics? Under what conditions do
they form conflicting logics? If they form conflicting logics, what types
of practices and institutions will make democratic consolidation most,
or least, likely?
Many political thinkers and activists assume that Weberian states,
nation-states, and democracy cohere as part of the very grammar of
modern polities. In a world where France, Germany, Portugal,
Greece, and Japan are all Weberian states, nation-states, and democ-
racies, such an assumption may seem justified. Yet in many countries
that are not yet consolidated democracies, a nation-state policy often
has a logic differing from that of a democratic policy. By a nation-
state policy we mean one in which the leaders of the state pursue
what Roger Brubaker calls ‘‘nationalizing state policies’’ aimed at
increasing cultural homogeneity. Consciously or unconsciously, the
leaders send messages that the state should be ‘‘of and for’’ the
nation.13 In the constitutions they write and in the politics they
practise, the dominant nation’s language becomes the only official
language and occasionally the only acceptable language for state
58
business and for education; the religion of the nation is privileged

(even if it is not necessarily made the official religion); and the culture
of the dominant nation is privileged in state symbols (such as the
flag, national anthem, and even eligibility for some types of military
service) and in state-controlled means of socialization (such as radio,
television, and textbooks). By contrast, democratic policies in the
state-making process are those that emphasize a broad and inclusive
citizenship that accords equal individual rights to all.
Under what empirical conditions are the logics of state policies
aimed at nation building congruent with those aimed at crafting
democracy? Empirically, conflicts between these different policies are
reduced when almost all of the residents of a state identify with one
subjective idea of the nation, and when that nation is virtually co-
extensive with the state. These conditions are met only if there is no
significant irredenta outside the state’s boundaries, if there is only
one nation existing (or awakened) in the state, and if there is little
cultural diversity within the state. In these circumstances – and,
we will argue, virtually only in these circumstances – leaders of the
government can simultaneously pursue democratization policies and
nation-state policies. This congruence between the polis and the
demos facilitates the creation of a democratic nation-state; it also
virtually eliminates all problems of ‘‘stateness’’ and should thus be
considered a supportive condition for democratic consolidation.
Under modern circumstances, however, very few states will begin a
possible democratic transition with a high degree of national homo-
geneity. This lack of homogeneity tends to exacerbate problems of
‘‘stateness.’’
Democracy is characterized not by subjects but by citizens; thus, a
democratic transition often puts the question of the relation between
polis and demos at the centre of politics. From all that has been said
thus far, three assertions can be made. First, the greater the extent to
which the population of a state is composed of a plurality of national,
linguistic, religious, or cultural societies, the more complex politics
becomes, since an agreement on the fundamentals of a democracy
will be more difficult. Second, while this does not mean that con-
solidating democracy in multinational or multicultural states is
impossible, it does mean that especially careful political crafting of
democratic norms, practices, and institutions is required. Third, some
methods of dealing with the problems of ‘‘stateness’’ are inherently
incompatible with democracy.
Clear thinking on this subject demands that we call into question
59
some facile assumptions. One of the most dangerous ideas for

democracy is that ‘‘every state should strive to become a nation-state
and every nation should become a state.’’ In fact, it is probably
impossible for half of the territories in the world that are not now
democratic ever to become both ‘‘nation-states’’ and ‘‘consolidated
democracies,’’ as we have defined these terms. One of the reasons for
this is that many existing non-democratic states are multinational,
multilingual, and multicultural. To make them ‘‘nation-states’’ by
democratic means would be extremely difficult. In structurally
embedded multicultural settings, virtually the only democratic way
to create a homogeneous nation-state is through voluntary cultural
assimilation, voluntary exit, or peaceful creation and voluntary
acceptance of new territorial boundaries. These are empirically and
democratically difficult measures and hence are exceedingly rare.
The other possibilities for creating a homogeneous nation-state
in such settings involve subtle (or not-so-subtle) sanctions against
those not speaking the language, wearing the attire, or practising the
religion of the titular nation. Under modern circumstances – where
all significant groups have writers and intellectuals who dissemi-
nate national cultures, where communication systems have greatly
increased the possibility for migrants to remain continuously con-
nected to their home cultures, and where modern democratic norms
accept a degree of multiculturalism – such sanctions, even if not
formally anti-democratic, would probably not be conducive to demo-
cratic crafting.14 If the titular nation actually wants a truly homoge-
neous nation-state, a variant of ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’ is too often a
temptation.
Another difficulty in building nation-states that are also democ-
racies derives from the manner in which humanity is spatially dis-
tributed across the globe. One building block for nations is language.
But, as Ernest Gellner observed, there are possibly as many as 8,000
languages (not counting important dialects) currently spoken in the
world.15 Even if we assume that only 1 out of every 10 languages is a
base for a ‘‘reasonably effective’’ nationalism, there could be as many
as 800 viable national communities.16 But cultural, linguistic, and
religious groups are not neatly segmented into 8,000 or 800 nation-
alities, each occupying reasonably well-defined territories; on the
contrary, these groups are profoundly intermixed and overlapping.
We are not arguing against democratically crafted ‘‘velvet di-
vorces.’’ We should note, however, that relatively clear cultural
boundaries facilitate such territorial separations. Latvia would like to
60
be a nation-state, but in none of its seven most-populous cities is

Latvian spoken by a majority of the residents. In Tallinn, the capital
of Estonia, barely half the people of this aspiring nation-state speak
Estonian. For these and many other countries, no simple territorial
division or ‘‘velvet divorce’’ is available.17
Democracy and multinational states

Some analysts were happy when the separate nationalities of the
USSR became 15 republics, all based on ‘‘titular nationalities,’’ on
the assumption that democratic nation-states might emerge. In fact,
many political leaders in these republics sounded-out extreme
nationalist – rather than democratic – themes in the first elections.
One possible formula for diminishing conflict between titular nation-
alities and ‘‘migrants’’ is what David Laitin calls the ‘‘competitive-
assimilation game.’’ That is, it becomes in the best interests of some
working-class migrants to assimilate in order to enhance the life
chances of their children in the new environment. This may happen
to Spanish working-class migrants in culturally and economically
vibrant Catalonia, but is it likely to occur among Russians in Central
Asia? In 1989 in Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, Russians con-
stituted 59 per cent of the population, and the Kazakhs, the titular
nationality, only 22.5 per cent. Less than 1 per cent of the Russians
spoke the titular language. In Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, the
comparable percentages were virtually identical. In such contexts,
shaped by settler colonialism, it is utterly implausible that a nation-
state would emerge voluntarily through a process of competitive
assimilation.18
So how can democracy possibly be achieved in multinational
states? We have a strong hypothesis about how not to consolidate
democracy in multinational settings: the greater the percentage of
people in a given state who either were born there or arrived without
perceiving themselves as foreign citizens, and who are subsequently
denied citizenship in the state (when their life chances would be hurt
by such denial), the more unlikely it is that this state will consolidate
democracy. Phrased more positively, our hypothesis is that in a
multinational, multicultural setting, the chances of consolidating
democracy are increased by state policies that grant inclusive and
equal citizenship and give all citizens a common ‘‘roof’’ of state-
mandated and state-enforced individual rights.
Such multinational states also have an even greater need than other
61
polities to explore a variety of non-majoritarian, non-plebiscitarian

formulas. For example, if there are strong geographic concentrations
of different groups within the state, federalism might be an option
worth exploring. The state and the society might also allow a variety
of publicly supported communal institutions – such as media and
schools in different languages, symbolic recognition of cultural diver-
sity, a variety of legally accepted marriage codes, legal and political
tolerance for parties representing different communities, and a whole
array of political procedures and devices that Arend Lijphart has
described as ‘‘consociational democracy.’’19 Typically, proportional
representation, rather than large single-member districts with first-
past-the-post elections, can facilitate representation of geographically
dispersed minorities. Some strict adherents to the tradition of politi-
cal liberalism, with its focus on universalism and individual rights,
oppose any form of collective rights. But we believe that in a multi-
national, multicultural society and state, combining collective rights
for nationalities or minorities with individual rights fully protected by
the state is the least-conflictual solution.20
Where transitions occur in the context of a non-democratic, multi-
national federal system, the crafting of democratic federalism should
probably begin with elections at the federal level, to generate a legiti-
mate framework for later deliberations on how to decentralize the
polity democratically. If the first competitive elections are regional,
the elections will tend to favour regional nationalists, and ethno-
cracies rather than democracies may well emerge.21 However, the
specific ways of structuring political life in multinational settings
need to be contextualized in each country. Along these lines, we
believe that it is time to re-evaluate some past experiments with non-
territorial autonomy, such as the kinds of partially self-governing
ethnic or religious communities exemplified by the Jewish Kabal of
the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the millets of the Ottoman
Empire, or the ‘‘national curias’’ of the late Hapsburg Empire. These
mechanisms will not eliminate conflict in multinational states, but they
may moderate conflict and help make both the state and democracy
more viable.
We also believe that some conceptual, political, and normative
attention should be given to the possibility of ‘‘state-nations.’’ We
call ‘‘state-nations’’ those multicultural or even multinational states
that none the less still manage to engender strong identification and
loyalty from their diverse citizens. The United States is such a multi-
cultural and increasingly multilingual country; Switzerland is another.
62
Neither is strictly speaking a ‘‘nation-state,’’ but we believe both

could now be called ‘‘state-nations.’’ Under Jawaharlal Nehru, India
made significant gains in managing multinational tensions by the
skilful and consensual use of numerous consociational practices.
Through this process India became, in the 1950s and early 1960s, a
democratic ‘‘state-nation’; but if Hindu nationalists win power in the
1990s and attempt to turn India (with its 115 million Muslims) into a
Hindu nation-state, communal violence would almost certainly
increase and Indian democracy would be gravely threatened.
Multiple identities
Let us conclude with a word about ‘‘political identities.’’ Many writ-
ings on nationalism have focused on ‘‘primordial’’ identities and the
need for people to choose between mutually exclusive identities. Our
research into political identities, however, has shown two things.
First, political identities are not fixed or ‘‘primordial’’ in the Oxford
English Dictionary’s sense of ‘‘existing at (or from) the very begin-
ning’’; rather, they are highly changeable and socially constructed.
Second, if nationalist politicians (or social scientists and census-takers
with crude dichotomous categories) do not force polarization, many
people may prefer to define themselves as having multiple and com-
plementary identities.22 In fact, along with a common political ‘‘roof’’
of state-protected rights for inclusive and equal citizenship, the
human capacity for multiple and complementary identities is one of
the key factors that makes democracy in multinational states possible.
Because political identities are not fixed and permanent, the quality
of democratic leadership is particularly important. Multiple and com-
plementary political identities can be nurtured by political leadership,
as can polarized and conflictual political identities. Before the con-
scious use of ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’ as a strategy to construct nation-
states in the former Yugoslavia, Sarajevo was a multinational city
whose citizens had multiple identities and one of the world’s highest
interfaith-marriage rates.
Our central proposition is that, if successful democratic con-
solidation is the goal, would-be crafters of democracy must take into
careful consideration the particular mix of nations, cultures, and
awakened political identities present in the territory. Some kinds of
democracy are possible with one type of polis, but virtually impos-
sible if political élites attempt to build another type of polis. Political
élites in a multinational territory could initiate ‘‘nationalizing poli-
63
cies’’ that might not violate human rights or the Council of Europe’s
norms for democracy, but would have the effect, in each of the five
arenas of polity, of greatly diminishing the chances of democratic
consolidation.
An example of such ‘‘nationalizing policies’’ in each of five arenas
would be the following. In the arena of civil society, schooling and
mass media could be restricted to the official language. In the arena
of political society, nationalizing citizenship laws could lead to a
significant overrepresentation of the dominant nationality in elected
offices. In the arena of the rule of law, the legal system could subtly
privilege a whole range of nationalizing customs, practices, and insti-
tutions. In the arena of the state bureaucracy, a rapid changeover to
one official language could decrease other nationalities’ participation
in, and access to, state services. Finally, in the arena of economic
society, the titular nationality, as the presumed ‘‘owners’’ of the
nation-state, could be given special or even exclusive rights to land
redistribution (or voucher distribution, if there was privatization). In
contrast, if the real goal is democratic consolidation, a democratizing
strategy would require less majoritarian and more consensual policies
in each of the above arenas.
A final point to stress concerns timing. Potentially difficult demo-
cratic outcomes may be achievable only if some pre-emptive policies
and decisions are argued for, negotiated, and implemented by politi-
cal leaders. If the opportunity for such ameliorative policies is lost,
the range of available space for manoeuvre will be narrowed, and
a dynamic of societal conflict will be likely to intensify until demo-
cratic consolidation becomes increasingly difficult, and eventually
impossible.
Democracy and the quality of life

While we believe that it is a good thing for democracies to be con-
solidated, we should make it clear that consolidation does not neces-
sarily entail either a high-quality democracy or a high-quality society.
Democratic institutions – however important – are only one set of
public institutions affecting citizens’ lives. The courts, the central
bank, the police, the armed forces, certain independent regulatory
agencies, public-service agencies, and public hospitals are not gov-
erned democratically, and their officials are not elected by the citi-
zens. Even in established democracies, not all of these institutions are
controlled by elected officials, although many are overseen by them.
64
These institutions operate, however, in a legal framework created by

elected bodies and thereby derive their authority from them.
In view of all this, the quality of public life is in great measure a
reflection not simply of the democratic or non-democratic character
of the regime but of the quality of those other institutions. Policy
decisions by democratic governments and legislators certainly affect
the quality of life, particularly in the long run, but no democracy
can ensure the presence of reputable bankers, entrepreneurs with
initiative, physicians devoted to their patients, competent professors,
creative scholars and artists, or even honest judges. The overall
quality of a society is only in small part a function of democracy
(or, for that matter, a function of non-democratic regimes). Yet all
those dimensions of society affect the satisfaction of its citizens,
including their satisfaction with the government and even with
democracy itself. The feeling that democracy is to blame for all sorts
of other problems is likely to be particularly acute in societies in
which the distinctive contributions of democracy to the quality of life
are not well understood and perhaps not highly valued. The more
that democrats suggest that the achievement of democratic politics
will bring the attainment of all those other goods, the greater will be
the eventual disenchantment.
There are problems specific to the functioning of the state, and
particularly to democratic institutions and political processes, that
allow us to speak of the quality of democracy separately from the
quality of society. Our assumption is that the quality of democracy
can contribute positively or negatively to the quality of society, but
that the two should not be confused. We, as scholars, should, in our
research, explore both dimensions of the overall quality of life.
Notes
1. See Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1971), p. 3.
2. For military prerogatives, see Alfred Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the
Southern Cone (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 68–127. For the elector-
alist fallacy in Central America, see Terry Lynn Karl, ‘‘The Hybrid Regimes of Central
America,’’ Journal of Democracy July 1995; 6: 72–86. Dahl, in his Polyarchy, has an eighth
institutional guarantee, which does not address elections as such, but rather the require-
ment that ‘‘[Institutions] for making government policies [should] depend on votes and
other expressions of preference,’’ (p. 3). This addresses our concerns about reserve
domains.
3. Some readers have accused our work – and other studies of democratic transition and con-
solidation – of being teleological. If this means advocating a single end-state democracy, we
decidedly do not share such a view. If, however, teleological means (as the Oxford English
65
Dictionary says) ‘‘a view that developments are due to the purpose or design that is served
by them,’’ our analysis is in part teleological, for we do not believe that structural factors
per se lead to democracy and its consolidation. Social actors (and, in some measure, par-
ticular leaders) must also act purposefully to achieve a change of regime leading to some
form of governing that can be considered democratic. The design of democracy that these
actors pursue may differ from the one resulting from their actions but, without action whose
intent is to create ‘‘a’’ democracy (rather than the particular institutionalized form that
results), a transition to – and consolidation of – democracy are difficult to conceive. The
processes that we are studying do, therefore, involve a ‘‘teleological’’ element that does not
exclude important structural factors (or many unpredictable events). In addition, there is
not a single motive but a variety of motives for pursuing democracy, as we define it, as a
goal.
4. For further discussions about the concept of democratic consolidation, see Scott Mainwaring,
Guillermo O’Donnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela (eds) Issues in Democratic Consolidation:
The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective (Notre Dame: Univer-
sity of Notre Dame Press, 1992).
5. In essence, this means that the literature on democratic breakdown, such as that found in
Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan (eds) The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), would be much more directly relevant to analysing
such a phenomenon than this essay or related books on democratic transition and con-
solidation. This is not a criticism of the transition literature; rather, our point is that the
democratic-transition and democratic-breakdown literature needs to be integrated into the
overall literature on modern democratic theory. From the perspective of such an integrated
theory, the ‘‘breakdown of a consolidated democracy’’ is not an oxymoron.
6. On the relationships between constitutionalism, democracy, legal culture, and ‘‘self-
bindingness,’’ see Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad (eds) Constitutionalism and Democracy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 1–18.
7. Robert A. Dahl, in a similar argument, talks about two arrows of causation that produce
this result; see his ‘‘Why All Democratic Countries Have Mixed Economies,’’ in John
Chapman and Ian Shapiro (eds) Democratic Community, Nomos XXXV (New York: New
York University Press, 1993), pp. 259–282.
8. See, for example, John R. Freeman, Democracies and Market: The Politics of Mixed
Economies (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989).
9. For an excellent analysis of inevitable market failures, see Peter Murrell, ‘‘Can Neoclassical
Economics Underpin the Reform of Centrally Planned Economies?’’ Journal of Economic
Perspectives 1991; 5: 59–76.
10. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, Everyman’s Library,
1910), Vol. 2, pp. 180–181.
11. Robert A. Dahl’s line of reasoning follows a similar development. See his ‘‘Why All
Democratic Countries Have Mixed Economies,’’ op. cit. pp. 259–282.
12. In post-communist Europe, the Czech Republic and Hungary are well on the way to
becoming institutionalized economic societies. In sharp contrast, in Ukraine and Russia the
writ of the state does not extend far enough for us to speak of an economic society. The
consequences of the lack of an economic society are manifest everywhere. For example,
Russia, with a population 15 times larger than that of Hungary and with vastly more raw
materials, received only 3:6 109 US$ of direct foreign investment in 1992–93, whereas
Hungary received 9 109 US$ of direct foreign investment in the same two years.
13. See Roger Brubaker’s ‘‘National Minorities, Nationalizing States, and External National
Homelands in the New Europe,’’ Daedalus Spring 1995: 124: 107–132.
14. See, for example, the outstanding monograph by Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen:
The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976),
which analyses in extensive detail the wide repertoire of nation-state mandated policies in
the schools, the civil service, and the military that were systematically designed to repress
66
and eliminate multilingualism and multiculturalism and to create a nation-state. From

today’s perspective, similar endeavours of modern states appear far from admirable and
represent a cost that many of us would not like to pay. However, it is not just a question of
how we evaluate such efforts of state-based nation-building, but of how feasible these
efforts are in the contemporary context.
15. See Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983),
p. 44.
16. This conjecture is developed by Gellner in Nations and Nationalism, op. cit, pp. 44–45.
17. See the excellent, and sobering, book by Anatol Lieven, The Baltic Revolution: Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993),
p. 434.
18. For David Laitin’s analysis of what he calls a ‘‘migrant competitive-assimilation game’’ in
Catalonia and his analysis of a possible ‘‘colonial-settler game’’ in the Central Asian
republics of the former Soviet Union, see his ‘‘The Four Nationality Games and Soviet
Politics,’’ Journal of Soviet Nationalities Spring 1991; 2: 1–37.
19. See Arend Liphart’s seminal article ‘‘Consociational Democracy,’’ World Politics January
1969; 21: 207–225.
20. For the argument that some notion of group rights is, in fact, necessary to the very
definition of individual rights and necessary to the advancement of universal norms in
rights, see the work by the Oxford philosopher Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 165–217. Also see Will Kymlicka, Multi-
cultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995), pp. 107–130.
21. We develop this point in greater detail in our ‘‘Political Identities and Electoral Sequences:
Spain, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia,’’ Daedalus Spring 1992; 121: 123–139; and in our
Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation in the chapters on Spain, on
‘‘stateness’’ in the USSR, and on Russian speakers’ changing identities in Estonia and
Latvia.
22. In our Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, we show how in Catalonia
in 1982, when respondents were given the opportunity to self-locate their identities on a
questionnaire offering the following five possibilities – ‘‘Spanish,’’ ‘‘more Spanish than
Catalan,’’ ‘‘equally Spanish and Catalan,’’ ‘‘more Catalan than Spanish,’’ or ‘‘Catalan’’ – the
most-chosen category, among respondents with both parents born in Catalonia, as well as
among respondents with neither parent born in Catalonia, was the multiple and comple-
mentary category ‘‘equally Spanish and Catalan.’’ We also show how identities in Catalonia
were becoming more polarized and conflict ridden before democratic devolution.
67
Democracy and
social framework
5
Democracy and
constitutionalism
Jean Blondel
The question of the relationship between democracy and constitu-

tionalism has raised many controversies – indeed, almost as many as
the parallel problem of the relationship between equality and liberty.
The two sets of concepts seem to belong to a common family: they
are both concerned with attempts to give answers to the question of
the relationship between the bottom and the top, between the ruled
and the rulers. On democracy and constitutionalism, viewpoints have
varied between two extremes: on the one hand, noted constitutional
lawyers such as Ely and Holmes have claimed that the two concepts
were close to each other and perhaps indissolubly linked. Ely stated,
to quote S. Holmes, that ‘‘constitutional restraints, far from being sys-
tematically anti-democratic, can be democracy reinforcing.’’1 Mean-
while, S. Holmes, having examined the views of Hayek and Shapiro,
says that democrats and constitutionalists should be regarded as
mutually supportive. Others, on the contrary (including many of the
‘‘classics’’ such as Rousseau, Paine, or Jefferson), have felt that the
two concepts were fundamentally opposed. They believed that they
were incompatible because they regarded constitutionalism as a means
for the dead to control the living. S. Holmes notes, for instance, that
Jefferson stressed that ‘‘the earth belongs to the living and not to the
dead.’’ The conclusion which is drawn is therefore that constitution-
alism is undemocratic.
The marked difference between constitutionalism and democracy is
epitomized historically by the manner in which, during a large part of
the nineteenth century, most members of the ‘‘better classes’’ tended
to consider democracy as ‘‘mob rule’’ that rendered ‘‘civilized’’ gov-
71
Jean Blondel
ernment impossible, while, on the contrary, constitutionalism was

deemed to achieve orderly and just government. Democracy had a
negative connotation, rather like anarchy: it conjured up visions of
uneducated masses storming the fashionable houses of the enlight-
ened middle classes. This view continued to be widely held through-
out Europe up to the latter part of the nineteenth century; even in the
United States, similar views had been broadly held, at least at the
time the constitution was drafted.
One does not need to go as far back, however: in the post-Second
World War period, constitutionalism was often attacked by leaders of
the third world as being an obstacle on the road to democracy. These,
as well as Communist rulers, may have had occasionally to pay lip
service to constitutionalism but they reduced and, in some cases,
wholly undermined such constitutional bodies as legislatures and
courts, on the alleged ground that these had the effect of perpetuating
the privileges of the ruling classes of the past. As a result, in large
parts of the third world, constitutionalism was in disrepute and was
labelled as a mere Western ‘‘invention’’ designed to maintain impe-
rialism. In the West, on the contrary, the prevailing sentiment was
that the two concepts reinforced each other. For decades after the
Second World War, both sides remained on these positions, with little
scope for the development of a common understanding.
A middle course was occasionally proposed, which was embodied
in the expression ‘‘constitutional democracy.’’ This meant that in
some cases democracy might be ‘‘constitutional’’ while in others it
might not be: there could be democracy without constitutionalism;
there could also be constitutionalism without democracy, as had
manifestly been the case in some countries of Western Europe in the
first half of the nineteenth century. Such a view was held by Friedrich,
who gave the title of Constitutional Government and Democracy to
the second edition of his comparative government text published in
1942.2 In that conception, there is merely an area of intersection
between the two concepts; no less, but also no more. Such a sugges-
tion does not go to the heart of the problem, however: the question of
the nature of the link between the two concepts continues to arise.
Not surprisingly, those firmly committed to there being a close link
were not likely to be satisfied.
Suddenly, after decades of difficulties, the controversy seems to be
over: with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in
Europe (in turn following the collapse of dictatorships in Southern
Europe in the 1970s and, in the 1980s, the end of military rule and
72
Democracy and constitutionalism
other forms of authoritarianism in most of Latin America, in parts

of Black Africa, and in some Asian states), constitutionalism and
democracy appear to go hand in hand. The end of communism in
Europe played a central role in this process, as communist leaders
had been among those who had led the attack against the ‘‘bourgeois’’
values which were held to be embodied by the constitutionalism of
the West. Given that military regimes and socialism had come to be
very widely regarded as tragic mistakes and that, in general, author-
itarian regimes seemed to have little to commend themselves, con-
stitutionalism, however ‘‘old-fashioned’’ and ‘‘bourgeois,’’ began to
be viewed as an improvement. Its benefits came to be recognized as
universal and not limited to some types of societies. Constitution-
alism may have produced Western ‘‘bourgeois’’ democracy, but the
balance sheet of ‘‘bourgeois’’ democracy appeared rather positive in
comparison with that of other regimes. Indeed, the notion that
Western democracy had to be qualified as ‘‘bourgeois’’ ceased to
prevail as a result of the demise of ‘‘proletarian’’ or ‘‘popular’’
democracy. It seemed more reasonable to conclude that constitu-
tionalism helped to bring about – or perhaps even to characterize –
democracy tout court.
When regimes tumble in the context of the collapse of an entire
ideology, the pendulum often swings sharply – indeed, too sharply.
The difficulties under which the victorious regimes operate are, for a
time, forgotten; in such a context, these regimes cease to be assessed
realistically. This is, to an extent, what occurred in the 1990s. Such
enthusiasm is a welcome breath of fresh air, but it must not be
allowed to dominate thinking and to obscure the fact that the prob-
lems which existed in the past continue to exist. Since democracy and
constitutionalism have been viewed as distinct, as antagonistic, per-
haps as incompatible, well before communism appeared on the scene,
the reasons for this antagonism need to be explored. The problems
which are posed by the opposition between the two concepts do not
depend on whether ‘‘real socialism,’’ communism, or military regimes
are in existence or not.
The distinction between constitutionalism and democracy cannot
be given here the full treatment it deserves, but we can at least con-
sider the three planes on which this distinction arises and must be
analysed. The first plane is that of the fundamental difference about
‘‘human nature in politics’’ between supporters of constitutionalism
and democrats, the first holding a pessimistic and the second an
optimistic standpoint about social relations. The second plane is that
73
Jean Blondel
of the goals to which priority is to be given: is the major emphasis to

be placed on establishing and maintaining rules or are the key ques-
tions who holds and who should hold power? Finally, the third plane
relates to the nature of the bond which is felt to exist between the
members of the society: is society exclusively composed of individuals
living side by side or is there also a ‘‘communitarian’’ element which
goes beyond – and occasionally against – what the members of the
society may desire as individuals?
Human nature in politics

Perhaps the most obvious way in which democracy and constitu-
tionalism differ from each other stems from a sharp contrast between
the manifest pessimism about human nature of constitutionalists and
the equally basic optimism of the supporters of democracy. Such a
contrast was particularly marked in the past but it continues to con-
stitute a major source of distinction. It was, indeed, pessimism about
human nature in politics which accounted for the fact that con-
stitutionalism was used to attempt to stop the spread of democracy.
Indeed, in the United States, the arrangements devised in the 1787
constitution were in part designed as a means to control the masses,
especially the ignorant masses. Although the American polity was
founded on the basis of a broadly optimistic standpoint, this optimism
was not sufficiently widespread to lead to a fully democratic order at
the outset. Many held the views expressed in the Federalist papers,
which clearly stated that government had to be limited to avoid the
dangers which might otherwise result from majority rule. The indirect
election of the president and of the senate were part of this plan; the
separation of powers was to ensure that the tyranny of the few would
become impossible, but it also provided a barrier against the possible
tyranny of the many. Constitutionalism was thus elaborated and
implemented in order to limit the power of both monarchs and peo-
ple, not to bring about democracy and broadly based participation.
Democracy, on the contrary, is based on an optimistic view. It
makes no sense to support democracy unless one feels that all human
beings – at least, those above a certain age – are able to make intel-
ligent use of political power. The eventual result of popular involve-
ment, balanced against any possible negative consequences, is in
benefiting the polity. For ‘‘true’’ democrats, society has to be opened
up, as social problems result from the state of subservience in which
most human beings find themselves. Once liberated from this sub-
74
servience, individuals will work for the common good. Thus, to return
to the contemporary scene, it is not sufficient to accept democracy
because it is no longer practically possible to avoid universal suffrage
and a degree of popular participation. Such a view still constitutes a
pessimistic standpoint, as it amounts to stating that, a dose of
democracy being inevitable, it is better to cut one’s losses and try to
prevent the worst which might occur. ‘‘True’’ democrats hold the
different and markedly more positive view that the participation of all
will enhance the quality of life in the polity and render citizens both
better and happier.
Thus, constitutionalism and democracy correspond to profoundly
distinct approaches. They are not distinct merely because the former
started in the oligarchical context of late eighteenth century Europe
and North America; they are distinct because they are rooted in dif-
fering views of humankind. Contrary to the somewhat restricted ideal
of limited government propounded by constitutionalists, supporters
of democracy propound the more expansive ideal of a participatory
polity whose members share a common destiny.
This has a natural corollary. To achieve limited government, con-
stitutionalism has to focus on protection. The ‘‘vital elements’’ of
political and social life might be in jeopardy if full democracy is
installed, as everything would become subject to challenge. Mecha-
nisms must therefore be devised to ensure that these ‘‘vital elements’’
are as close to being untouchable as possible and are protected for
ever. The way in which this protection is achieved is by entrenching
the ‘‘vital elements’’ in the constitutional document and thus ensuring
that change cannot take place without going through complex proce-
dures. Other instruments, such as laws and regulations, also play a
part in the defence of what has been set up. This protection of the
‘‘vital elements’’ of social and political life means that constitution-
alism is mainly turned towards the past, especially towards those
glorious moments during which the constitution was drafted. The past
has, therefore, a hold on the present. ‘‘Pre-commitment’’ is inevi-
table: it is the very essence of constitutionalism.
While constitutionalism turns towards the past to regulate the
present, democracy, on the contrary, is concerned with promotion
and looks at the future as an open book in which improvements are
gradually made. In theory, at least, the past must not be allowed to
commit the present. Moreover, if there is to be improvement, this is
because there can be progress; and, if there is to be progress, it is
based on the belief that democracy will unfold gradually. Democracy
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Jean Blondel
cannot be established instantly; indeed, it is not likely to be quickly,

or even easily, established. There may be strong opposition on the
part of those who monopolize power or as a result of the low material
and educational attainments of many citizens – largely, in turn,
because the society has kept them in a state of ignorance. Such a sit-
uation has to be redressed and it can be redressed if consistent efforts
are made in the right direction.
The belief that the polity is in a continuous process of development
constitutes a further major difference between the basic tenets of
democracy and the basic tenets of constitutionalism. Because the
concept of constitutionalism links the present to the past, it tends to
be ‘‘declarative’’ and static: the people saw the light at one very spe-
cial moment; the constitution was drawn and, as the ‘‘Tables of the
Law,’’ it must be followed for ever. On the contrary, because
democracy is to be promoted and therefore inevitably looks to the
future and at the conditions under which it will operate in the future,
change and progress are central to the democratic ideal; in truth,
democracy is based on a dynamic vision. Constitutionalism and
democracy thus represent radically contrasting approaches to politics
and society.
This is not the whole story, however, at present in particular. In the
course of the twentieth century, an interaction began to take place
between constitutionalism and democracy. This occurred because the
very idea of democracy came to be attacked or, more insidiously,
profoundly undermined from inside by rulers who claimed that they
wished to install popular participation but found ways of stealing this
power for themselves. In such a context, democracy came to need
protection; constitutionalism could offer such protection. Meanwhile,
with the passing of time, constitutionalists came to accept a number
of democratic principles – especially the idea of universal suffrage –
and their opposition to democracy declined. They realized, first, that
democracy could be ‘‘tamed,’’ so to speak, and did not necessarily
mean ‘‘mob rule’’ after all. They then began to see that democracy
could be an important – even an essential – part of the justification of
constitutionalism. In an age in which the virtues of the ‘‘common
man’’ (and woman) were extolled, it was becoming clear that con-
stitutionalism was relevant only if it, too, endorsed democratic prin-
ciples; indeed, constitutionalism could discover a new mission for
itself by protecting democracy against those who tried to subvert it.
To an extent, therefore, constitutionalism has had to incorporate
democratic elements in order to remain acceptable, while democracy,
76
too, has needed constitutionalism to ‘‘survive.’’ A compromise has been

struck and a modus vivendi has been found. This does not mean fusion
between the two concepts, however; only an alliance has been forged.
Process versus substance

There is clearly a profound unease – perhaps even suspicion – in the
relationship between constitutionalism and democracy, because of
diametrically opposed views about human nature in politics: this
unease is prolonged at a more practical level as well. Constitu-
tionalism is primarily a juridical concept; democracy is a social and
political concept. Since it is essentially juridical in character, con-
stitutionalism is principally concerned with rules, with procedures,
and with process; since it is fundamentally a social and political con-
cept, democracy’s concern is with the distribution of power, and, first
and foremost, with the distribution of political power in society.
As constitutionalism is mainly directed towards protecting, it is
essentially interested in an overall endeavour to ensure that decisions
are taken and implemented on the basis of regular arrangements.
These arrangements, naturally, must be decided in advance of their
introduction; hence, the fact that two of the main tenets of con-
stitutionalism are the rule of law and the existence of a hierarchy of
rules. There cannot be protection unless ‘‘inferior’’ rules are drafted
in conformity with ‘‘superior’’ ones, the whole edifice being ulti-
mately based on the constitution. On the other hand, the content of
these rules is not primarily of concern to constitutionalists; what is
crucial to them is the manner in which they are elaborated. Con-
stitutionalism has, therefore, been able to support – or even pro-
pound – rules which are constitutionally valid but are undemocratic
in content. In nineteenth century Europe, most constitutions sharply
restricted the right to vote while constitutional rules which Friedrich
described as ‘‘monarchical’’ also gave major powers – of veto, for
instance – to monarchs who were not democratically elected. Several
Latin American constitutions have markedly restricted the right to
vote in a perfectly ‘‘constitutional’’ manner up to the last decades of
the twentieth century. Most restrictive of all, the harsh rules under
which apartheid was organized in South Africa did not necessarily
violate constitutionalist principles; if they may be regarded as being
close to having done so, this is more because they were arbitrary in
much of their implementation rather than because they limited the
citizenry to a minority.
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Jean Blondel
In a general manner, the philosophy behind constitutionalism can

be described as being associated with the concept of ‘‘good govern-
ment’’: it is a government which abides by the rules on the basis of
which it has been organized. At the limit, constitutional rule can
merely be government for the people and not government by the
people, a government which is regarded as ‘‘civilized’’ because it is
based on the rule of law and on ‘‘rational,’’ Weberian, principles.
While some of the forms which such rule might take may well be
regarded as being constitutional in name rather than in spirit, they
can be praised by some constitutionalists as helping the social and
economic development of the country concerned and even, perhaps,
its political development. These views stretch the concept of con-
stitutionalism to its most undemocratic limit, to be sure, but they do
not abandon it altogether.
It is valuable to stress the ‘‘rational’’ directions in which con-
stitutionalism may go in order to contrast more sharply these direc-
tions with those of democratic government. Democratic government
is not primarily concerned with rules, even at the limit with legalism,
let alone with efficiency of administration: it is concerned with the
distribution of political power and with achieving a more equal dis-
tribution of that power. The goal is to ensure that ‘‘the people’’ be
brought ‘‘back in.’’ This means changing the substance of the political
process in two ways, one being more formal than the other. In the
first instance, there must be formal political equality, the most obvi-
ous step being universal suffrage, but there must also be a degree of
social and even economic equality. While one can, and should, dis-
tinguish political democracy from social and economic democracy,
the socio-economic conditions in which the population lives must be
such that it is possible for that population to exercise political rights
meaningfully in a democracy; hence, the importance given to educa-
tion as a key underpinning.
Political democracy also involves a substantial amount of partici-
pation on the part of the population. It cannot be limited exclusively
to the introduction of universal suffrage and to the right to vote at
elections. This right must be accompanied by others and by concrete
facilities designed to give the people the opportunity to be involved
in discussing, criticizing, and opposing the government. There can be
– and there have been – many disagreements among supporters of
democracy as to what should be the limits and levels of participation,
but there can be no doubt about its importance if a society is to be
democratic.
78
Given such contrasts over the fundamental goals and over the
practices, what brings constitutionalism and democracy closer to each
other in the life of many contemporary governments? Such a rap-
prochement results from the realization, on both sides, that practical
necessities make it currently very difficult, if not impossible, to
achieve one of the goals without adopting at least some elements of
the other.
There are two principal reasons why supporters of democracy have
had to recognize the positive part which constitutionalism can play.
First, experience – often, bitter experience – has made democrats
realize that democracy has to be protected and, furthermore, that it is
probably not possible to build democracy in the context of a political
system which is not constitutional. Democracy does not merely need
protection, it needs established institutions; as a result, it also needs
rules. The idea that democracy does not entail any kind of ‘‘pre-
commitment’’ is not only unrealistic, it is wrong. As S. Holmes states:
‘‘A collectivity cannot have coherent practices apart from all decision-
making procedures.’’3 Building democracy outside a constitutional
framework is, at the limit, impossible, as S. Holmes also observes that
‘‘It is meaningless to speak about popular government apart from
some sort of legal framework which enables the electorate to have a
coherent will . . . Formulated somewhat facetiously: without tying
their own hands, the people will have no hands.’’4
Second, perhaps even more importantly from a substantive stand-
point, constitutionalism has a more positive value for democracy, as it
enables citizens to acquire a sense of ‘‘autonomy.’’ Only constitu-
tionalism can do so, because, while limiting the powers of govern-
ment, it is the one form of political system that gives human rights
real importance. The limitations on government are introduced in
order to enable human beings to fulfil their destiny. Democracy
needs autonomous citizens. In his analysis, Constitutional Domains,
R.C. Post states: ‘‘We could not plausibly characterise as democratic
a society in which ‘the people’ were given the power to determine
the nature of their government, but in which the individuals who
made up ‘the people’ did not experience themselves as free to choose
their own political fate.’’5 He adds: ‘‘The essential problematic of
democracy thus lies in the reconciliation of individual and collective
autonomy.’’6
Democracy cannot truly exist if relationships are heteronomous.
This is, indeed, why we are, rightly, quick to denounce as a sham a
regime in which the relationships between the political ‘‘class’’ and
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Jean Blondel
the bulk of the population are essentially clientelistic. That clien-

telism cannot ever be wholly eradicated is highly probable; that there
is a substantial dose of clientelism in ‘‘advanced democracies’’ is also
very likely. Yet clientelism has also been declining in these democ-
racies and this decline has meant that the autonomy of citizens has
increased. Half a century ago, Piaget noted the uniqueness of
democracy in this respect: ‘‘The essence of democracy resides in its
attitude towards law as a product of collective will and not as some-
thing emanating from a transcendent will or from the authority
established by divine right.’’7
To ensure that the autonomy of citizens is maintained, democracy
needs to be buttressed. Typically, this must be done by somewhat
artificial means, as the autonomy of citizens does not exist naturally
in a polity, especially if it is large and complex. This is achieved by
introducing safeguards aimed at combating the tendency of the few to
establish their authority over the many, whether these few are the
central government or local landlords, whether they are a techno-
cratic élite or a local party establishment. Constitutionalism is the
mechanism by which these attempts at ‘‘controlling’’ the people can
be overcome. The experience of much of the third world since inde-
pendence has shown that, indeed, the autonomy of citizens does not
develop spontaneously and that it is repressed in a context in which
there is little respect for constitutionalism. Thus, democracy typically
needs constitutionalism to be established and maintained, as it needs
constitutionalism to establish the autonomy of citizens. In this way,
constitutionalism becomes part of the fabric of democracy. A Latin
American scholar, J. Faundez, rejoices in noting that there is cur-
rently a ‘‘timely revival of constitutionalism.’’8 Democracy may need
a socio-economic base which constitutionalism cannot give, but it
also needs a political base that only constitutionalism seems able to
provide.
On the other hand, constitutionalism has come to need democracy
and to recognize this need. The point has been seen particularly in
the United States, as Post noted: ‘‘American constitutional law is
exceptional in the intensity of its commitment to the social order of
democracy.’’9 Yet, while American constitutionalism is more intensely
democratic than constitutionalism elsewhere, constitutionalism else-
where recognizes – or has come to recognize – that it does need
democracy.
By doing so, constitutionalism has gradually modified its basic
premise: instead of being exclusively concerned with process, it has
80
begun to be involved to an extent with substance. Thus A. A. Boron

can state that we are now witnessing the existence of a ‘‘mixed con-
stitutionalist corpus.’’10 According to this, constitutionalism comes to
be committed to ‘‘the social order of democracy’’; this means taking
on board at least part of the substance of the laws and of the rights
which constitutionalism defends, and defending the substance together
with the process according to which these laws are elaborated. In a
sense, it could be argued that this has always been the case, merely
because ‘‘pure process’’ does not exist and one always has to look at
the substance when one judges whether a rule or regulation conforms
to constitutional principles. There are no principles which are so
‘‘disembodied’’ that they bear no relationship at all with the concrete
reality.
There have been attacks from both sides. The ‘‘traditionalists’’
wish constitutionalism to be pure and to remain on the plane of form
and process; the ‘‘critical legal theorists’’ are opposed to these moves
on the ground that rights achieve little on their own. Thus, the ground
for an ‘‘understanding’’ between constitutionalists and supporters of
democracy remains shaky. The common ‘‘domain’’ remains some-
what limited and it is continuously subjected to contention. This
uneasy relationship is inevitable, given the basic contrast which still
remains valid – namely, that constitutionalism is ultimately based on
legal instruments while democracy has to be concerned primarily
with the organization of political power.
Is society merely a collection of individuals?

The greatest problem posed by the relationship between constitu-
tionalism and democracy is probably on the third plane: it results
from profound differences with respect to the nature of society.
Constitutionalism is connected to an individualistic conception of
society: constitutions protect and defend individuals against encroach-
ments; this is, indeed, why they can foster individual autonomy.
The democratic ideal is not as clearly and as exclusively related to
individualism as it also has a communitarian dimension. There is,
admittedly, ambiguity and, perhaps, conflict among democrats on this
subject. Occasionally, the communitarian aspect is given great stress;
occasionally, on the contrary, the main stress is placed on an individ-
ual. The collective conception suffered a major setback with the fall
of the Soviet Union and the end of communism in Europe, which
appeared to be a facade for dictatorship. Yet the collective con-
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Jean Blondel
ception has not been eliminated altogether, not merely because it is

part of a long tradition, starting from Rousseau at least, but also
because it is the expression of the point that democracy in a group
must result in the coming together of the views – and, indeed, the
minds – of the members of the group.
There has at least to be a dialogue between the individualistic and
collective conceptions of democracy; constitutionalism has great dif-
ficulty in entering this dialogue, however. Post distinguishes commu-
nity from democracy. He states:
Three forms of social order are especially relevant to understanding our

constitutional laws. I call these community, management, and democracy.
To put the matter briefly and aphoristically, one might say that law creates
community when it seeks authoritatively to interpret and enforce shared
mores and norms; it is managerial when it organises social life instrumentally
to achieve specific objectives; and it fosters democracy by establishing social
arrangements that carry for us the meaning of collective self-determination.9
He thus suggests that what he calls ‘‘community’’ is an alternative to

democracy, not part of it. Community is a domain of the law and,
presumably, of constitutions, but a domain that is concerned with
enforcement. This suggests that Post does not accept that democracy
could manifest itself through shared mores and norms, perhaps
because this would be an example of ‘‘heteremony’’ – an outside set
of values would be imposed on the citizen from above.
Yet this conception of shared values and norms is one-sided:
‘‘community’’ and ‘‘communitarianism’’ are not imposed from above
only; mores and norms can be voluntarily adhered to in a society in
which citizens are concerned with the ‘‘general will.’’ It might be
argued that such a view of the general will at best is a utopia and at
worst is more likely to be in the realm of propaganda than in that of
the reality of modern societies. However, two points need to be
noted. The first is that many wish to see democratic order established
on the basis of these principles: they may be ‘‘unrealistic’’ about the
probability that such principles will prevail, but the fact that this
conception of democracy exists in the minds of many citizens makes it
relevant. What needs to be understood is why there is such a yearning
among many democrats for a communitarian ideal and that the desire
to implement the communitarian ideal is real, although it is probably
more real in some societies than in others. Secondly, while a fully
communitarian conception of democracy may be a ‘‘brave new
world’’ or may indeed be ‘‘totalitarian,’’ to use Talmon’s expression,
82
there are in practice partial versions of this formula in the reality of

democratic life. Indeed, one might even claim that every society
which is democratic embraces at least some fragments of the com-
munitarian version in common goals and commonly held values.
This means that, in reality, the two conceptions – individualistic
and collective – are not antinomic: they are not two opposed views
which exclude each other. The collectivist communitarian and the
wholly individualistic pole do not correspond to any existing polity;
societies are located in intermediate positions in which trade-offs
occur between these extreme standpoints. The reason why the
extreme individualistic position is not adopted is that, while a wholly
collective position may be totalitarian, a wholly individualistic posi-
tion would result in a wholly atomized society with nothing to cement
citizens together. At best, such a form of democracy would be purely
negative: those who would benefit from the arrangements would be
those who would, for a variety of reasons, best understand and best
‘‘play the system.’’ More deeply, moreover, a purely individualistic
position also depends on a commonly held standpoint. Yet there will
always be those who will not accept fully the individualistic stand-
point, and it has then to be imposed on these citizens. Others will
have to accept the standpoint as a result of their socialization; this
means that there will be rules which did not emerge autonomously.
An individualistic conception of society is thus based on an ideology:
it cannot be said to stem ‘‘naturally’’ from the experience of most
citizens; the experience which these have had is more likely to have
been communitarian, be it in the family, club, or workplace.
The fact that the individualistic conception of democracy is based
on an ideology explains why this conception has been attacked as
being ‘‘Western’’ rather than universal. It explains in particular why it
has been criticized as being part of an attempt by the West to impose
its values upon the rest of the world. Such an interpretation is almost
certainly incorrect and at least highly exaggerated. The individualistic
conception of society may prevail more in the West than elsewhere,
but it is also ‘‘imposed’’ to an extent in the West as well. On the other
hand, both Westerners and non-Westerners might have differing
views concerning what democracy should be and, in particular, as to
whether it should be more individualistic or more communitarian
than it is. What is probably true is merely that individualistic views of
democracy are more common in the West, where they originated, and
communitarian views of democracy are more common elsewhere, as
what is felt to be at stake is the defence of cultures that are also felt to
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Jean Blondel
be threatened. The 1990s are probably not a typical period to assess

the relative strength of individualistic and communitarian values of
democracy, since in the post-Cold War context the individualistic
conception has been regarded as paramount. Meanwhile, some
leaders of non-Western nations have continued to emphasize a com-
munitarian approach. Yet it is not always clear how genuine the claims
made by some rulers are, for instance those made in favour of an
Asian form of democracy by a number of South-East Asian leaders
or those that have been made along similar lines in sub-Saharan
Africa. It is not at all clear that these leaders are followed in their
claims by the bulk of the populations whom they rule, although this is
not to say that these standpoints are not valuable or important.
Support for the collective conception of democracy may have been
somewhat toned down in the 1990s, yet it simmers under the surface.
It will surely re-emerge with force in the future, because it is part of
the human tradition. It may lead to excesses. If communitarianism
dominates, society may indeed be totalitarian: there is no longer
autonomy of the citizens, but complete heteronomy. However, there
is a great difference between recognizing the dangers inherent in a
dominant communitarian conception of democracy and stating that
the communitarian conception should be wholly rejected.
The constitutionalist approach to democracy forms an essential
ingredient in this debate, although it is only an ingredient. It is an
essential ingredient because it provides the individualistic view with
intellectual support as well as with legal protection: again, protection
is the key contribution which constitutionalism makes to democracy.
As democracy entails having at least a dose of individualism, con-
stitutionalism is crucial because it defends this individualism and
gives teeth to the defence which it puts forward.
One can go somewhat further and suggest that constitutionalism
does not need to be wholly individualistic. This is true even if con-
stitutions and laws are easier to implement when they are used to
protect individuals while their vagueness makes them difficult to
implement when they are concerned with communities. Some con-
stitutionalists have begun to recognize and to incorporate the view
that an individualistic approach to democracy cannot fully encompass
all the facets of democracy. Groups exist: in particular, there are
ethnic and other minorities which are in need of protection as groups
and not merely as collections of individuals. One should not deny that
groups have elements in common over and above the sum of the
desires of the individuals which compose them at a given moment. To
84
do so would also be to ignore an important part of what constitutes

the ‘‘quality of life’’ for large sections of the human race, with possi-
bly serious consequences for the stability and welfare of communities.
Constitutionalism and democracy need each other, but they are
profoundly distinct concepts. Their basic aims have been, and remain,
different in many respects. The relationship between constitution-
alism and democracy has therefore to be viewed as having, first and
foremost, a pragmatic character. On the one hand, without con-
stitutionalism, democracy is likely to be impotent because it needs the
protection of the law; on the other, constitutionalism without
democracy lacks one of its main justifications in the contemporary
world at least. Without democracy, support for what constitution-
alism represents would vanish. The relationship between the two
concepts will therefore continue to be both strong and ambiguous.
Although they are currently mostly silent, those among the sup-
porters of democracy who used to discredit constitutionalism still
have grounds for stressing the distinction between the two concepts;
they will no doubt persist in attempting to drive a wedge between
them. Meanwhile, those who prefer constitutionalism (whether with,
or at the limit without, democracy) can find a seemingly valid anti-
dote by stressing the need for rationality – a rationality which has to
be based entirely on individuals if it is to exist.
For the two concepts to be harnessed together for the common
good, supporters of democracy must recognize that constitutionalism
has to be continuously part of their agenda because it brings about
protection and meaningfulness; it must not be rejected or reduced in
scope on the grounds that it is exclusively procedural and that it is
therefore only a technique. At the same time, supporters of con-
stitutionalism must have the modesty to recognize that democracy is
a great adventure – indeed, that it is the great adventure of human-
kind. They must therefore recognize that democracy transcends con-
stitutions and rules, however sophisticated these may be. Only if both
sides are accommodating in this manner can there be some hope that
constitutionalism and democracy will continue to act in tandem in the
future as they have begun to do in most parts of the world.
Notes
1. J. H. Ely, Democracy and Distrust (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 197.
2. C. Friedrich, Constitutional Government and Democracy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1941).
3. S. Holmes, ‘‘Precommitment and the paradox of democracy,’’ in J. Elster and R. Slagstad (eds)
Constitutionalism and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 230.
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Jean Blondel
4. Ibid., p. 231.
5. R.C. Post, Constitutional Domains (Cambridge: Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).
6. Ibid.
7. J. Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child (1948), Marjorie Gabain translation, p. 188.
Republished, Free Press, 1985.
8. D. Greenberg and Stanley N. Katz (eds) Constitutionalism and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993), pp. 354–360.
9. R.C. Post, op. cit., p. 2.
10. A. A. Boron, in D. Greenberg and Stanley N. Katz (eds) op. cit., p. 349.
Further reading
Bellamy, R., ed. 1996. Constitutionalism, Democracy and Sovereignty. Aldershot,
Hants: Avebury.
Buchanan, J. M., and G. Tullock. 1962. The Calculus of Consent. Ann Arbor, Mich.:
University of Michigan Press.
———, and R. E. Wagner, eds. 1978. Fiscal Responsibility in Constitutional Democ-
racy. Boston, Mass.: Nijhoff.
Halowell, J. H., ed. 1976. Prospects for Constitutional Democracy. Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press.
Preuss, U.K. 1993. Constitutional Aspects of the Making of Democracy in the Post-
communist Societies of Eastern Europe. WP Bremen.
Schumpeter, J. 1961. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: Allen and
Unwin.
86
6
Mass media and participatory
democracy
Elihu Katz
There is an old joke about a wife who reported, with pleasure, that
she and her husband had an ideal relationship based on a good division
of labour. ‘‘My husband,’’ she said, ‘‘makes the big decisions, and I
make the small ones. He decides things like whether China should be
admitted to the United Nations, while I decide such things as where we
should live and what schools the children should attend.’’ The story
means to imply that the husband is ineffective, delusional, maybe
lonely, and compliant. Yet, he is obviously interested in politics and
some empirical research might code him politically engaged.
The problem of citizen participation in large-scale democracies is
inadequately conceptualized. The agora and the town meeting are
metaphors of direct democracy, yet are of little use when applied to
modern, complex, large-scale societies. Habermas’ conception of the
public sphere has had a great vogue but it, too, is little more than an
idealized reminder that we have an unsolved problem on our hands.
Even in the golden age of the bourgeois public sphere, it is ques-
tionable whether newly empowered citizens actually put self-interest
aside in order to engage in rational, critical debate over the common
weal. We know that such gatherings were exclusionist, but we know
very little about the extent of participation, or whether the inter-
action that did take place was as disinterested, ascetic, or egalitarian
as prescribed. Nor do we know enough about the spaces in which
these interactions took place, what functions the newspaper fulfilled,
how public opinion was formed, how it was aggregated over the
myriad discussions, in what form it was conveyed to the powers that
be, and what kind of attention it received.
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Elihu Katz
These problems are still with us in the version of the modern rep-
resentational public sphere which we are said to inhabit, where
intrusive government, big business, and the technologies of commu-
nication and public opinion all intervene between the citizen and the
policy maker. It is facile to speak of electronic town meetings in
today’s world or to say that public broadcasting is the modern equiv-
alent of bourgeois public space. Indeed, it is downright offensive to
hear talk of these possibilities while we are so busy segmenting and
privatizing the channels of public communication, and seeing to it
that commercial television drives the news out of prime time. In fact,
it is appropriate to state at the outset that television, as the locus of
nationally shared experience of politics and culture, is dead or dying
in most of the Western democracies. Moreover, the number of
newspaper readers is on the decline in the West,1 and so is the num-
ber who join or strongly identify with political parties.2 Increased
cynicism is thought to prevail. Robert Entman’s Democracy Without
Citizens provides a good title for the enigma of an allegedly partic-
ipatory democracy whose members are regularly out of touch with
their political institutions.3
Approach to media functions and dysfunctions:

Introducing G. Tarde
There are a number of ways to approach the functions and effects of

mass media in relation to democracy. The least profitable of these
approaches, I submit, is the one that concentrates on mass persua-
sion, on how the media tell us what to think in the short term – who
to vote for, for example. More interesting is to look at the ways in
which the media tell us what to think in the long term, how they
inculcate values, and influence what we take for granted. This is the
so-called hegemonic approach, which is thought, intentionally or not,
to induce false consciousness in the masses in the interests of the
ruling class. A third approach, the liberal or functional one, views the
media as a public utility, serving not only individuals but the institu-
tions of the society. A fourth approach is called technological: this
looks at how the unique properties of the dominant media – news-
paper, radio, television – affect our social and political arrangements.
What follows will combine the latter two of these approaches, the
functional and technological, to discuss the media as social organiza-
tions that interact with, and serve, the other institutions of democratic
politics and as technologies that, I fear, are undermining the very
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Mass media and participatory democracy
institutions they are serving. This follows the lead of Gabriel de

Tarde, French social psychologist and jurist, who proposed a theory
of the public sphere long before Habermas and, in my opinion, more
realistically. Tarde’s essay of 1898, La Conversation, written in the
throes of the Dreyfus Affair, sought to understand the links among
the elements of a participatory democracy, which include a body
politic or polity, government, parliament, voluntary associations,
media, places of conversation, public opinion, and social action.4 One
hundred years later, scholars are examining Tarde’s model of public
opinion and mass communication to see if we know any different, or
are better informed than he was. There are other political philos-
ophers who were no less wise in their observations than Tarde, but
his particular emphasis on the media and public opinion is especially
attractive. By reference to Tarde, I will illustrate media functions and
dysfunctions.
How media serve democratic institutions

Tarde’s functional model concentrates on the nexus among press,
conversation, opinion, and action. He argues that the press provides a
menu for the myriad everyday conversations that take place in the
cafés, coffee-houses, and salons;5 this is what we have come to call
the agenda-setting function of the press, reflecting also the concerns
of government and parliament. Tarde proposes that conversation in
this sense is a modern phenomenon. Based on norms of open process
and equality, conversation is itself a cultivator of equality and, thanks
to the press, its subject matter is both uniform throughout the polity
and rapidly changing.
Unlike austere Habermassian speech, the rhetoric of Tarde’s con-
versations provides its own pleasures, and slips in and out of politics
much more casually. Indeed, for Tarde, political conversation is a less
noble form, and a less elegant concern, than conversation about the
arts, for example. The political function of conversation, according to
Tarde, is to percolate opinion – that is, to refine individual opinion
so that it becomes more ‘‘considered’’ and, in ways unspecified, to
generate one or two national opinions on a particular subject. Such
considered opinion then finds itself once again represented in the
pages of the newspaper and constitutes a basis for individual action,
which for Tarde – reverting to the role of social psychologist – is
essentially the making of political and economic choices, such as
choosing a leader or choosing a product.
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Elihu Katz
Thus, Tarde’s model not only links press, conversation, opinion,

and action systematically, but also points to the ways in which each
element propels the next in linear order. It also connects this nexus
with government, emphasizing the social control implicit in inde-
pendent press coverage of an issue and in delivering feedback from
public opinion. Tarde implies that everybody talks about politics. He
is casual about the problems of opinion aggregation and consensus
formation, but that is something we, ourselves, know very little about,
except in so far as we allow survey technology to define public opin-
ion. Stated otherwise, if public opinion is the process by which men
and women outside government consider that they have the right to
communicate with each other about public affairs and the right to
express their thoughts to the authorities, then Tarde has dealt in
detail with the dynamics of horizontal expression in small groups, less
with the dynamics that lead to consensus in the larger society, and
least with the vertical process of feedback to government. But that is
better than most; indeed, in this sense, Tarde is the forefather of
Lazarsfeld’s two-step flow of communication that is still holding its
own after these 50 years.
Tarde’s analysis of the functions of the press altogether fails to
address the problematic relationship between journalists and politi-
cians, as Blumer and Gurevitch keep reminding us,6 although he does
assume the independence of the press as a prerequisite to participa-
tory democracy. Important questions about the professional status of
journalism arise in this connection. Are journalists professionals, in
the classic sense of being specially trained in basic theory and clinical
practice that is then applied altruistically to identifying social troubles
and addressing them, or are they simply part of a business, or ideol-
ogy, or a populist art form?
Tarde does not deal at all with current concerns over balance,
fairness, and objectivity, for example, which occupies so much of
communications research and which, in one way or another, occupies
philosophy and all of the sciences as well. Is objectivity possible, it is
being asked, and how can minorities be given a voice? Another way
of stating the question is: ‘‘Who has the right to tell my story?’’ The
performance of the press in representing the distribution of opinion7
and, indeed, of images of them and us – whether of internal dissent or
external enemies – is being called into question.8 The effects of the
presence of the news cameras or the press on social and political
action is a related issue. The press is of special importance in the
representation of political gesture and political ceremony, such as the
90
moon landings, for example, or the Watergate hearings.9 Indeed, one

of the best functions of a democratic press is to make political process
transparent,10 as well as to teach political norms: that the constitution
has made provision for the impeachment of a president, or for succes-
sion in case of assassination. Even in the East European revolutions
of 1989, the difference between a democratic and a totalitarian heri-
tage could be seen in the behaviour of television in Wenceslas Square
– where the tradition of democratic debate and newly re-liberated
media was in evidence – and the parallel scenes in Romania, where
one junta simply replaced and executed its predecessor on television.
One wonders why journalists have such a poor record in anticipat-
ing events – in the Black suburbs of Los Angeles, for example, or in
the outbreak of Arab violence in the territories occupied by Israel, or
in Eastern Europe in 1989, or in Rwanda. Tarde might have pon-
dered this, although it is certainly not explicit. But social scientists do
not have a very proud record in this respect, either. Nor could Tarde
have anticipated the changing structure of the communications
industry. He did not foresee the monopolizing trends in the news-
paper business; or the widespread diffusion of radio, then of tele-
vision; or of computer-mediated communications, though he did find
interest in the telephone. Nor was he sensitive to the genres that are
characteristic of the several media and the messages implicit in these
narrative and technological forms. One suspects that he would not be
surprised, however, by the modern tendency to blur the boundaries
between news and entertainment, for the very reason that he saw the
press by analogy to conversation – in some ways a continuation of con-
versation itself – and he posted no such boundaries for conversation.
How the media undermine democratic institutions

Technological considerations in the press and broadcasting have
implications for politics and especially for political integration. As a
technological theorist, Tarde saw the newspaper as the medium that
defined the body politic. Others have similarly remarked that the
printed vernacular of the press, together with its portability, create
the common linguistic and discursive denominators around which
incipient nations can rally in spite of local and regional accents.11 The
press thereby defined the polity, focused all eyes on the centre,12 and
made citizens of the inhabitants. It made them privy to the goings-on
in the nation. In this sense, the press is the major operational force in
the imagined community which is the nation.13
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Elihu Katz
In this process (says Tarde), full of technological determinism, the

press overthrew the king. Tarde’s king is not Habermas’ king, bloated
by representational pomp and ceremony. For Tarde, the king’s power
is based on knowledge of exactly what village A and village B were
thinking and doing without them being aware of each other. The
king’s mind, not only his regalia, defined the state. The press, says
Tarde, usurped the king of this function; now village A and village B
could see themselves, and each other, in the pages of the newspaper.
In this bold mode, Tarde argues further that the press was no less
influential in shaping parliament. Prior to the press, says Tarde, the
parliament consisted of representatives of regional and sectoral
interests, who did not acknowledge that they had much in common.
This segmentation is reflected in the voting pattern whereby each
representative had veto power. Majority rule came only as a result of
the perception of a common national denominator, says Tarde, which
in turn is the result of the sense of nationhood engendered by the
press. In other words, the legislature perceived the organic basis of its
interdependence and the legitimacy of its corporate decision-making.
Inspired by this technological aspect of Tarde, let us consider the
influence on politics of the broadcast media that followed television.
We have an equally strong picture of the integrative power of radio.
Alluding to John Reith’s great social invention, a public medium
supported by a quasi-tax but independent both of government and
business, scholars describe how early BBC radio ‘‘called in’’ sounds
and voices from each of the British regions so that the national holi-
days could be celebrated in pluribus unum.14 They tell of the annual
Christmas message of the King, whose presence at every dining table
united the country in common tradition and shared citizenship. These
were live broadcasts based on the new technology of simultaneity.
This is the same simultaneity that allowed American listeners to hear
Edward R. Murrow broadcasting the war from London and to panic
at the imminent invasion from Mars.
This is also the era of Roosevelt and Hitler. Roosevelt invented the
fireside chat, in which he coaxed Americans via radio to accept his
New Deal and, later, to agree to enter the war on the side of the
Allies. He succeeded in this partly by talking to the people over the
heads of Congress, which did not always share his views.15 This, of
course, is also what Hitler did in his strident summons to the German
people, having dismissed their parliament and other intermediaries.16
In the spirit of Tarde, then, we are impelled to ask whether radio –
the medium of electronic simultaneity – overthrew parliament in the
92
way that the newspaper overthrew the king. Is this the beginning of
the imperial presidency which backfired on Nixon? Is this the begin-
ning of an era of the disintermediation of parliaments by charismatic
leaders appealing directly to the people?
There is another aspect to simultaneity that deserves mention in
the context of a discussion of the functions of radio: a function, or
rather dysfunction, which will be strongly exacerbated by television.
This is the illusion of being there, or altogether of being ‘‘in’’ – so
much so that one confuses the in-ness and up-to-the-minuteness with
actual participation. Thus, in their famous 1948 essay – the classic
statement of the modern sociology of mass communication – Lazars-
feld and Merton warn against the ‘‘narcotizing dysfunction’’ of radio
news, which certainly may create involvement and a sense of
belonging but by no means equals political participation.17
Television inherited the task of unifying the polity from its prede-
cessors. Border-to-border broadcasting of soap operas and situation
comedies cemented cultural solidarity. New genres, such as the pres-
idential debates on the eve of elections, gave the nation a better look
at the candidates.18 Indeed, the live broadcasting of ‘‘historic’’ events
– such as the Coronation of 1952, the Kennedy assassination and
funeral, the Olympic Games, the Pope’s first visit to Poland – restored
a new sense of national belonging, even if they raised the spectre of
fascist political spectacle (which they are not) and of the narcotizing
dysfunction. These events display television’s surprising power to
declare a holiday – a time out – in which a whole nation is expected
to interrupt its daily routine, turn on the TV set, and commune with
some central value, aware that everybody else is performing the same
ritual at the same time, just like a holiday.
Television has moved politics – or the illusion of politics – inside.
Briggs points out that the early days of television in Britain (1950–
1954) saw a 50 per cent drop in attendance at political party meet-
ings.19 By now, the personality of the leader was ubiquitous, and,
often enough, the choice between candidates is simply personal. That
personality has superseded ideology, and that grass-roots politics has
all but disappeared,20 suggest that television may have something to
do with the undermining of party organization.21 Party political con-
ventions have lost much of the interest they had in the early days of
television, and a desperate effort is being made to salvage them as
coronations, even if they have lost their function as nominating con-
tests. Electioneering is done through paid political advertising of a
highly personal kind, and mostly on television. In the irreverent spirit
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Elihu Katz
of our earlier generalizations – that the newspaper beheaded the

king, and that radio disintermediated the parliament – we now pro-
pose that television has undermined the political party.22
Voluntary associations such as trade unions and political parties
are key elements in participatory democracies, as de Tocqueville sug-
gested even before Tarde. Recently, political scientist Robert Putnam
has blamed television for the decline that he says he observes in
organizational membership in general and, consequently, in the civic
trust and social support they engender.
Putnam is just the latest in a long line of academics and publicists
who make their living decrying the destructive effects of television.
Another of the famous names on this list is Neil Postman: his tech-
nological thesis is that television is incapable of, or at least inhos-
pitable to, sustained rational argument. Thus, the elementary requi-
site of the Habermassian public sphere is undone, according to
Postman, who mourns the TV viewers who are ‘‘amusing themselves
to death.’’
It is likely that both Putnam and Postman are wrong in their single-
mindedness23 and that, in fact, television both contributes and discon-
tributes to democracy. Nevertheless, research suggests in their favour
that television has shortened political statements,24 has accelerated
journalistic coverage of campaign strategies rather than issues,25 has
disconnected parties from candidates,26 has liberated candidates from
party platforms, and has blurred the issue differences between the
candidates themselves, as in presidential debates. Targeting everyone
and the ‘‘undecideds’’ has a homogenizing effect.
But television is not standing still, either: as with its predecessors,
its integrating functions are waning. In part, this is due to the temp-
tation to multiply channels and to privatize them, encouraged by big
business and big government – especially Conservative governments,
who might have been expected to weigh patriotism and cultural pride
against economics. In larger part, it is due to the technology of satel-
lites, cable, and computer communications, which make multiple
channels so easy. Indeed, the new media technology is tending in two
directions. Individuation or segmentation is one, whereby program-
ming will be so individually tailored that no two people will see the
same film at the same time; the other is globalization, whereby the
whole world will see the same international blockbusters and the
occasional global event. Three implications seem to follow: the first is
that television as we knew it – the shared national experience – is well
on its way out; the second is that, unlike newspapers and radio, no
94
new medium of national integration is waiting in the wings; the third

is that, from the point of view of technological determinism, the nation
is walking the plank. Stated otherwise, the teleology of the new
media – especially satellite and computer – and the multinational
channels that result, point to globalization and individuation, neither
of which has much to say about the state. Whether the Internet will
define new international polities – or, indeed, diasporas – will not be
explored here, but, technically speaking, the lack of fit between media
and the body politic is sounding the death knell of the state.
Opposition to the king, the parliament, the political party, and now
the state, seems like enough damage for a single chapter on the rela-
tionship between mass media and democracy. There remains only
one thing to do, and that is to consider a case study of these processes
at work.
A case study of the media and Israeli democracy

Radio broadcasting moved out of the Israeli Prime Minister’s office in
1965, and became a BBC-like broadcasting authority, with certain
unfortunate deviations from the original. Even before 1965, however,
a vigorous debate was being conducted in Israel’s animated public
sphere over the likely merits and demerits of television. The oppo-
nents insisted that television would undermine the effort to rebuild a
national culture rooted in the Hebrew language, would displace party
politics with personality politics, and would encourage materialism;
advocates said television would promote national integration and
indigenous cultural creativity; of course, both sides were right and
wrong. As in other countries, imported television soon provided most
of the entertainment, but national political integration was certainly
enhanced by the 9 p.m. news.27 Each night, religiously, some two-
thirds of the population switched off the telephone, hushed the chil-
dren, and joined the guests to view and debate the agenda of civic
issues proposed by the well-crafted televised newsmagazine. It was
also highly credible: Israeli Arabs found it almost as acceptable as
Israeli Jews, and it offered a common agenda to hawks and doves for
discussion and newspaper commentary the next morning. In short, it
came close to the dream of a national town meeting.
But the critics and American experts asked how a democracy could
allow itself only one television channel and one ‘‘government owned’’
TV news programme. And then there were two: a second channel
and a second news programme, and only stylistic differences between
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Elihu Katz
the two. But now, instead of assembling 70 per cent of the pop-
ulation, each channel manages to gather some 18 per cent, for a total
of about 35 per cent – about half the number that used to view the
news when there was only one channel. The best explanation for the
drop seems to be that, if there is a choice of news programmes, one
can choose either – or neither – without feeling the civic obligation
one previously felt or the need to ‘‘prepare’’ for the next morning’s
political discussion.
In the meantime there were the 1991 elections, which provide a lot
of insight into the role of the media in democracies. The media
played a powerful role in determining the outcome of this election,
without directly changing anybody’s vote. In other words, media
influence has more to do with their technologies and the rules of their
deployment than with their persuasive power. The rules hark back
to the British inheritance, whereby candidates may not appear on
the screen for three weeks before the election, that party political
broadcasts are the sole form of political advertising on radio and TV
(divided in proportion to party strength in the outgoing parliament),
and that broadcast journalists are largely neutralized during this
period. Of course, these rules interact with the election system which,
for the first time in 1996, included party primaries and a two-tier
voting pattern – one for the Prime Minister (Peres versus Netanyahu)
and a second vote for political parties.
The new election system required that left and right sides of the
political spectrum unite around their most promising candidate. In
the case of the right, the choice fell to their only obviously televisual
candidate. Thus, the two-tier system, plus television, played a large
role in the Netanyahu candidacy. Secondly, because of these com-
bined conditions – the direct election for Prime Minister and tele-
vision – what was expected to be the most ideological elections in
Israeli history rapidly became a personality campaign, with both
candidates (advised by the usual American experts) looking and
sounding more centrist than either ever dreamed to be. In the party
political broadcasts and in personal appearances, Netanyahu was
a near-dove and Peres a near-hawk, thus confirming the worst fears
of those who foresaw that the introduction of television would de-
ideologize politics.
Thirdly, television legitimated the candidacy of the hardly known
opposition leader. Although he originated from a strong ideological
background, Netanyahu himself leap-frogged his way into politics
without climbing the party ladder – much as recent American presi-
96
dents have done in the weakened party climate. The ritual debate
(in which Peres had the ostensible advantage) legitimated the Neta-
nyahu candidacy even further, not only by applauding the underdog
but by making the two men equal – as television contests are sup-
posed to do – in spite of their unequal credentials.
Fourth, the persistent forecast of a Labour victory by a small margin
led the ethnic and religious Arab parties to embark upon last-minute
campaigns to mobilize their most remote members. There seems little
doubt that the high visibility of the predictions of the most responsi-
ble polls in the most widely diffused media, broadcasting and press,
made a difference in the turnout of the radical and religious right
(as well as the Arab left).
Finally, the media played a role in augmenting the fear appeal of
the right. The bus bombings in several cities just weeks before the
election more than offset the memory of the Rabin assassination and
the hopes of the televised peace ceremonies. By fuelling and refuel-
ling the fear of terror – the major theme of the Netanyahu campaign
– television helped defeat the candidate of peace.
It is difficult to avoid taking sides in this matter. The media
influence that most researchers are seeking is not where they think it
is – in the political advertising, the rhetoric of the candidates, or the
jingles. It lurks elsewhere: in the very presence of the media them-
selves, in the rules which govern them, and in the role assigned them
in the design of election campaigns in democratic societies – which
leave very much to be desired. Ironically, the first announcement
of the new Prime Minister’s Government was that it will privatize
television, thus to complete the de-politicization – and, perhaps, the
internationalization – of the Israeli polity and economy.
Summary: Unanticipated consequences

Alluding to Gabriel Tarde, this chapter has sought to accomplish two
things. The nostalgic first part re-examines a theory of the functional
contributions of the media to a classical model of participatory
democracy: the media survey the goings-on at the centre and the
periphery, bringing an agenda of issues to the coffee-house table and
stimulating political talk, and thereby generate considered opinion.
By reflecting the distribution of opinion, the media exercise influence
and control on the establishment in the name of the citizenry. This
implies that participatory democracy at the very least requires not
only an informed citizenry but an interactive one and, in the Tarde
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Elihu Katz
and Speier models, a citizenry that communicates its opinion

upwards, directly and indirectly. It also considers various aspects of
contemporary relations between media and government that Tarde
did not (or could not) anticipate.
The second part of the chapter considers media effects on demo-
cratic institutions from the technological point of view. Alluding to
Tarde once more, it shows how the newspaper strengthened the
national self-consciousness, undermined the power of the king, and
caused parliament to consider itself the national decision maker.
Applying this approach to the media that succeeded the newspaper, it
appears that the technology of radio ultimately weakened the parlia-
ment while favouring the national leaders, that television weakened
the political party system and grass-roots participation, and that new
media – cable, satellite, and computer-mediation – are presently
undermining the solidarity of the nation from both within and without.
Thus, by juxtaposing the liberal function approach and techno-
logical approach, I am raising the question of whether the mass media
have, themselves, contributed to the undermining of their own func-
tions – or, more precisely, whether in the course of fulfilling their
functions, they – and their controllers – have subverted the very
institutional systems that they were supposed to be serving.
Notes
1. Seymour M. Lipset, ‘‘Malaise and Resiliency in America,’’ Journal of Democracy July 1995;
6(3).
2. Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic
Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955); Roper
Center, The Public Perspective, Special Report, 1996.
3. Robert Entman, Democracy Without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
4. Gabriel Tarde, ‘‘Opinion and Conversation,’’ in L’Opinion et la Foule, translation by Ruth
Morris (Alcan, 1901).
5. Daniel Roche, The People of Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
6. Jay G. Blumler and Michael Gurevitch, The Crisis of Public Communication (London:
Routledge, 1995).
7. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion, Our Social Skin
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
8. Tamar Liebes and W. Gamson, ‘‘Disaster Marathons,’’ in Tamar Liebes, J. Curran, and
Elihu Katz (eds) Media, Ritual, and Identity (London: Routledge, 1998).
9. Kurt Lang and Gladys Lang, The Battle for Public Opinion: The President, the Press, and the
Polls During Watergate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
10. Yaron Ezrahi, The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary
Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).
11. Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing
1450–1800. (London: Atlantic Highlands, 1976); Elizabeth Eisenstein, ‘‘Some Conjectures
98
About the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report,’’
Journal of Modern History 1968; 40(1): Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, the
Extension of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).
12. Edward A.Shils, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1975).
13. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
14. D. Cardiff and P. Scannel, ‘‘Broadcasting and National Unity,’’ in J. Curran, A. Smith and
P. Wingate (eds) Impacts and Influences (London: Methuen, 1987); Desmond Bell,
‘‘Communications, Corporatism, and Dependent Development in Ireland,’’ Journal of
Communication 1995; 45(4): Also Elihu Katz, ‘‘Television Comes to the People of
the Book,’’ in Irving Louis Horowitz (ed.) The Use and Abuse of Social Science (New
Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1971).
15. FDR did this by using radio to ‘‘report, review and explain’’ his New Deal policies; see
Edward Chester, Radio, Television and American Politics (New York: Sheed and Ward,
1969), p. 33; Elmer Cornwell, Presidential Leadership of Public Opinion (Bloomington:
Indiana University, 1965), p. 263. These addresses, most of which occurred when Congress
was not in session, helped to privilege FDR as the interpreter of the New Deal rather than
Congress, and allowed him to build a consensus over time for his programmes that afforded
him a measure of political clout when Congress was in session. Perhaps just as impor-
tant, Roosevelt used radio to go over the heads of Republican newspapers who he felt
framed his speeches unfavourably. Indeed, Roosevelt wrote to a friend that he wished
‘‘the advent of television could be hastened’’ to give him more ability to counter adverse
press coverage.
16. Although Hitler did not gain control of the radio until becoming Chancellor in January
1933, he used the medium in a single incident that effectively overthrew Parliament. Hitler
needed Parliament to approve an Enabling Act granting his cabinet exclusive legislative
powers for a four-year period. To do this, he used the ceremony surrounding the opening of
the new Reichstag to create a media event heard immediately (on radio) and seen later
(in Nazi-controlled press and newsreels). The Potsdam ceremony was rife with Germanic
ritual, being held at Bismarck’s burial site and in a town that Germans associated with their
greatest national triumphs. Hitler made a grand show of genuflecting to Hindenberg, who,
flushed with the moment, anointed him with his praise. A week later Parliament granted the
Enabling Act and ended the Republic’s experiment with democracy; see William Shirer,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960) and Ian
Kershaw, The Hitler Myth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
17. Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton, ‘‘Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Orga-
nized Social Action,’’ in Wilbur Schramm (ed.) Mass Communication (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1948); see also Roderick P. Hart, ‘‘Easy Citizenship: Television’s Curious
Legacy,’’ The Annals July 1996; 546.
18. Elihu Katz and Jacob J. Feldman, ‘‘The Kennedy–Nixon Debates: A Survey of Surveys,’’
in Sidney Kraus (ed.) The Great Debates: Background, Perspective, Effects (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1962).
19. Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vols I–IV (Oxford: Oxford
20. Mass demonstrations such as abortion rallies in the late 1980s and the Million Man March
suggest that, for marginalized groups, television may have actually moved politics outside.
For example, faced with a mainstream media that refuses to cover them and/or use them as
sources, gay and lesbian activists are forced into the streets to garner media attention. If the
press will not come to them, they will go to the press. This is the strategy behind demon-
strations at the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City: activists know they can get their
message on the air by showing up at an established and routine news event guaranteed to
attract cameras.
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Elihu Katz
21. Third parties may be an exception. Without television, for example, Ross Perot could never
have got onto the public agenda, much less garner 19 per cent of the vote. Of course, he
went around the party structure, but on the other hand this would appear to be an example
of television performing its liberal democratic function.
22. But note that the post-1969 rules for selecting convention delegates and the post-1968
expansion of the primary system, as well as cynicism-inducing events such as the revelations
of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, may have contributed significantly to the decline in
party identification.
23. Roper Center, op. cit.
24. Mary Stuckey, The President as Interpreter-in-Chief (Chatham, New Jersey: Chatham
House Publishers, 1991); Thomas Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1993).
25. Kathleen Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction and Democracy (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992).
26. Anthony Smith, ‘‘Mass Communications,’’ in David Butler, Howard R. Penniman, and
Austin Ranney (eds) Democracy at the Polls (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise
Institute, 1981).
27. Elihu Katz and George Wedell, Broadcasting in the Third World: Promise and Performance
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).
100
7
Party representation in the
United Kingdom, Australia,
and Japan
J.A.A. Stockwin
As a means of organizing and facilitating political representation,

political parties are an almost universal feature of contemporary
democratic states. Parties exist widely in non-democratic states also,
though they tend to be little more than instruments of dictatorial rule
or organizations without power retained for propaganda purposes.
Parties, however, are a relatively recent historical phenomenon,
reflecting the transformation of many societies over the past 200 years
or so in the context of industrialization and the dramatic broadening
of the political base that this seminal development entailed. Their
emergence reflected the fact that it was becoming less possible to
organize a state on the basis of narrow court politics or a coalition of
local dignitaries, feudal power-holders, or warlords.
In the broadest of terms, political parties are thus an organizational
response to the trend of politics to become an affair for everybody. In
a modern state – whether democratic or not – virtually everybody is
affected by politics, even though not everybody may influence it.
Politics even influences the lives of those who profess no interest in it,
which is significant since political apathy appears to be increasing in a
number of developed countries. Since there are, in principle at least,
as many political opinions and political interests as there are people,
political parties are a means of aggregating diverse opinions and
interests into a coherent programme, which may then form the basis
of a bid to attain and exercise power through whatever process of
election to office happens to exist in the state concerned. Crudely put,
the principle upon which most parties are formed is that there is
strength in numbers. The idea whereby parties seek a parliamentary
101
J.A.A. Stockwin
majority in order to put into practice a programme reflecting the

interests and opinions of their supporters may, of course, be too rosy
a picture. There are many parties where the platform, party member-
ship, and the intention to represent a section of the electorate, are
essentially window-dressing; what is important is the interests of the
party leaders, or party apparatus, bent on using the electoral process
in a bid for power. Nevertheless, if a democratic system of politics
and government is working properly, it should be possible for the
electorate to see through such naked power-seeking and call politi-
cians to account.
There is, however, one qualification that needs to be made in
respect of the argument so far. It tends to assume that the location of
political power is to be found essentially within the body to which the
representatives of the people have been elected, namely parliament
(or whatever it may be called in a particular state). As the business of
modern states has become more and more complex, it is widely
asserted that effective power has tended to drain away to other loca-
tions – including ministries of state, major interest groups, multi-
national corporations, international financial markets, or even inter-
national crime syndicates. It would be idealistic to suggest that
parliaments are always supreme arbiters of policy and power.
Parliaments, however, are not themselves interest groups. They
are, rather, arenas where contests over policy and power are fought
out, typically between (and at times within) the parties of whose
members they are constituted. Therefore, the argument that parlia-
ments are losing power is not always as persuasive as it might seem to
be at first glance. In so far as legislation, to be valid, has to be endorsed
by parliament, and in so far as the law of the land is primarily what
matters, then parliaments are likely to remain central. Whether gov-
ernments are losing influence in the face of various kinds of trans-
national phenomena is another question, but that need not occupy us
here.
The states which will be addressed in this chapter are the United
Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. In a certain broad sense, all three
may be conceived of as belonging to a common democratic tradition.
This may appear fairly obvious in the case of the United Kingdom
and Australia, where the historical linkages were direct and perva-
sive, at least in the formative stages of Australian democracy. In the
case of Japan, since the cultural and historical background is widely
divergent from that of either the United Kingdom or Australia, the
similarities are, perhaps, less obvious but none the less significant.
102
Party representation in the UK, Australia, and Japan
In institutional terms, all three states share the characteristics of

what may be termed the ‘‘Westminster model.’’ That is to say, gov-
ernments are formed essentially from the elected members of parlia-
ment, organized in rival political parties, with the party or parties
enjoying a majority of seats having the automatic right to form a
government. The government itself is led by a prime minister who
appoints ministers, the large majority of whom are in charge of (or
have a position of responsibility in) specific ministries, departments,
or agencies of state. None of the three states has an executive presi-
dent, although all three have ‘‘symbolic’’ heads of state:1 these are
currently Queen Elizabeth II in the case of the United Kingdom; also
Queen Elizabeth II in the case of Australia, where she is represented
by a governor-general (and by governors in the six constituent states
of the federation);2 and Kinjô Tennô (the Current Emperor) in the
case of Japan.
The political systems of all three differ fundamentally from that of
the United States, where there is a radical separation of power
between the president (executive branch) and the congress (legis-
lative branch). Indeed, the political system of the United States may
be regarded as highly unusual in a comparative text. The systems also
differ institutionally, however, from the French political system, in
which – within the Fifth Republic from 1958 – the president is elected
by means of an electoral process separate from that used to elect
parliament, and the president chooses a prime minister, who may
belong to the opposite political persuasion from the president in cases
where the president, on the one hand, and the majority in parliament,
on the other, are differently composed in a situation of cohabitation.
It may be useful to draw comparisons between the salient character-
istics of party politics in each of the three political systems under
discussion.
The United Kingdom

The following characteristics may be noted:
1. There are normally two major political parties competing for
power, and, in most circumstances, one of them wins an outright
majority of seats in the House of Commons, thus enabling it to
form a government in its own right. It has also been normal for
there to be one nation-wide party that is much disadvantaged by
the electoral system but which can expect to win a small number of
seats. In the twentieth century there has been one instance – in the
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J.A.A. Stockwin
1920s – where a minor party replaced one of the two major parties
as a party seriously contending for national office.3 In addition,
there are a number of minor regional parties which have sufficient
local following in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to win a
handful of seats but are not contenders for governmental office so
long as the United Kingdom remains one state.4 This pattern is
heavily influenced by the system of election to the House of
Commons, which is on the basis of single-member constituencies
with no vote transferability. To be elected, a candidate must
obtain a plurality of votes at the first and only ballot – so large
parties are advantaged, swings in votes produce exaggerated
swings in seats, and medium-sized parties having geographically
dispersed support are hugely disadvantaged. Historically, in the
United Kingdom, the system has kept the number of parties small
and has produced clear and decisive results from general elections,
but at the expense of severely distorting the reflection of public
opinion in parliament.
2. The Conservative and Labour parties, the two major parties in
recent times, have each represented a distinct subset of electors,
though there is a good deal of overlap between them. Most con-
spicuously, the subsets have been defined along social class lines,
with voters in inner-city areas predominately voting Labour and
moneyed voters in outer suburban and rural electorates predomi-
nately voting Conservative. During the 1980s, however, there was
an overlapping regional divide, with the north of the country,
particularly Scotland, oriented to Labour and the more populous
southern counties leaning principally towards the Conservatives.
This in turn overlapped with an old industry (Labour)–new
industry (Conservative) divide, but this seems to be breaking
down in the 1990s as Labour has moved to the right.
3. Parties have generally presented fairly coherent and recognizable
sets of policies (though both policies and salient issues have
changed over time), so that one can easily recognize a party by its
policies. At the same time, however, there has been a historical
dialectic of convergence and divergence between the policies of
the parties. For instance, between the 1950s and the 1970s there
was a broad consensus between the Conservatives and Labour in
support of Keynesian economics and the maintenance of the wel-
fare state; but, as a result of economic crisis in the mid-1970s, the
Conservatives came to espouse a radical form of market liberalism,
rolling back the public sector and strictly controlling government
104
spending. Thus the 1980s were essentially a period of policy diver-

gence between the two major parties. In the 1990s, however,
Labour under new leadership moved to accept some, though not
all, aspects of the Conservative programmes of the 1980s. It should,
of course, be noted that a unidimensional ‘‘left–right’’ spectrum of
policies is wholly inadequate to convey the differences between
party policies.5
4. Parties have historically had a relatively committed local mem-
bership, with a degree of local autonomy in the selection of can-
didates. Unlike the situation in the United States, local party
organizations in Britain have generally been viable on a continual
basis, not merely springing into life from time to time to fight
elections. The Labour Party has historically accorded an important
role to the trade union movement in votes on policy at annual
party conferences, though under the present leadership this role
has been reduced.
5. From time to time, each party has experienced a degree of internal
factionalism, which tends to be issue based,6 although strong indi-
viduals at times develop a following around their own personality
as well as around a set of policies. By comparison with a number of
other political systems, including most obviously Japan but also
the United States, the incidence at national level of factionalism
based on mutual personal obligation and ‘‘pork barrel’’ politics –
the use of government funds as a source of political benefit – has
been relatively slight, though it has arguably been increasing since
the 1980s.
6. Party leaders usually (not always) are able to exercise a great deal
of personal power over the party. This is enhanced when the party
concerned is in office, because of the bureaucratic support which
then becomes available. But where a party is desperate to get into
office, a leader is able to exercise a great deal of determining
power, simply because none of his subordinates are prepared
to bear the opprobrium of ‘‘rocking the boat.’’ This has been
remarked of the position of the leader of the Labour Party in the
mid-1990s.
7. In the United Kingdom, to an extent which is comparatively ex-
treme, the system works on a ‘winner-take-all’ principle. Generally,
one party has commanded on its own a parliamentary majority,
and the power of party whips to ensure favourable votes (and thus
the maintenance of the government’s majority) is notoriously
great. The House of Lords – the Upper House of Parliament – has
105
J.A.A. Stockwin
not, since early in the twentieth century, had the power to block
legislation that the government is determined to pass.
8. Parliamentary behaviour – at least in the House of Commons – is
characterized by an adversarial style, particularly where sessions
are televised, as is the case with Prime Minister’s question time.
Such an adversarial approach is not, incidentally, popular with the
electorate. Despite the adversarial style, however, there is a high
level of commitment to the norms of the system as a whole, and
the concept of a ‘‘loyal opposition’’ is not entirely dead.
9. Politics has, historically, been based on the existence of a reason-
able expectation that government may change at the next election.
Even though there have been relatively long periods of dominance
by one party (historically, the Conservative Party), including the
period from 1979 to 1997, this is not seen as immutable. The result
is that elections are generally regarded as a genuine anticipatory
check on governments. In the British case it may even be argued
that this is practically the only check on government, given the
principle of ‘‘winner-take-all,’’ and the constitutional inability of
the House of Lords to overturn important legislation. Moreover,
the deliberate weakening of local authorities which took place
from the 1980s, the abolition of big-city authorities such as the
Greater London Council, the establishment of large numbers of
‘‘quangos’’,7 and the civil service tradition of loyally serving the
government of the day, have all served to accentuate the power of
the government in office and thus to enhance the role of the gen-
eral election as the one effective democratic check.8 In addition,
the absence of a written constitution and, in particular, the
absence of a bill of rights which might enshrine the rights of citi-
zens, may suggest that, in the British case, restraints on arbitrary
governmental power have become worryingly fragile.
Australia
Australian politics is similar to that of the United Kingdom in many
ways, but there are some important differences. The salient charac-
teristics are listed here, following the same order of topic as devised
for the United Kingdom.
1. As in the United Kingdom, there are two principal contending
party camps, but with the difference that the conservative side of
politics is permanently divided between what, since the Second
World War, has been called the Liberal Party (which has a pre-
106
dominantly urban base) and the National Party (formerly the

Country Party), which is heavily supported in the countryside and
in small country towns. The dominant party on the other side of
politics is the Australian Labor9 Party (ALP), which has tradi-
tionally, like the British Labour Party, enjoyed strong backing
from trade unions. Between the late 1950s and early 1970s, how-
ever, an anti-Communist and Roman Catholic-influenced party
called the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) existed, having broken
from the ALP. Although it never won a single seat in the House of
Representatives,10 it is credited with having kept the ALP out of
power for some 15 years.
The electoral system of the Australian House of Representa-
tives is like the British system in favouring a ‘‘two-camp’’ system
of party contestation but different in permitting divisions (ami-
cable or hostile) within each camp. This may seem paradoxical.
The voter at election time is required to place a sequence of
numbers indicating degrees of preference against the name of each
candidate listed on the voting paper. Those constituencies in which
no candidate obtains an absolute majority of first-preference votes
have to count and reallocate the second and later preferences of
candidates (starting from the weakest) until one candidate obtains
an absolute (50þ per cent) majority. This system has made possi-
ble the ‘‘amicable division’’ of the conservative camp into the
Liberal and National parties (because these two parties in effect
‘‘exchange preferences’’)11 as well as the ‘‘hostile division’’ that
used to exist between the ALP and the now defunct DLP (because
the DLP directed its preferences against the ALP).12
2. As in the United Kingdom, the two main camps have represented
distinct subsets of electors, traditionally based on social class,
though there has always been overlap. Similarly, there has been a
tendency for these neat divisions to break down in the 1980s and
1990s in Australia, as in Britain, with rapidly changing economic
conditions and policies. Australia’s federal system, involving rela-
tively strong local identification with the six constituent states
(and several territories) of the federation, and the great distances
between them, lend a good deal of local variety to patterns of
political allegiance, but the patterns also change rather quickly as
local political conditions evolve.
3. As in the United Kingdom, in Australia it has normally been easy
enough to recognize a party by its policies, even though, with the
election of the Hawke Labor Government in 1983, a convergence
107
J.A.A. Stockwin
in favour of deregulation policies became a conspicuous feature of

all the major parties.
4. Parties, as in Britain, have active local memberships, but with
possibly rather less local autonomy in the selection of candidates
in Australia. Unions have been influential in the politics of the
ALP.
5. Internal factionalism, on broadly conceived ideological lines, is
endemic in the ALP and, to a lesser extent, in the conservative
parties. In the ALP, membership of factions, which are generally
identified with labels indicating degrees of ‘‘leftness’’ or ‘‘right-
ness,’’ is open and public. Needless to say, strong personalities also
tend to attract factional followings.
6. There have been strong leaders as well as weak leaders in all the
parties. Robert (later Sir Robert) Menzies came to dominate the
Liberal Party, which he himself founded in the middle 1940s, but
his three immediate successors – Holt, Gorton, and McMahon –
had a far less sure grip over the party. Similarly, Hayden’s control
of the ALP in the late 1970s and early 1980s was less firm than that
of Hawke in the early years of his prime ministership when the
ALP won office in 1983, and of Keating who later ousted him.
7. The principle of ‘‘winner-take-all’’ is rather less strong than in the
United Kingdom, because the powers of the Senate are greater
than those of the House of Lords. In specific circumstances defined
by the Constitution, the Senate is able to deny ‘‘supply’’ (that is,
budgetary allocations of funding) to a government. Since, in recent
times, the Senate has been elected by proportional representation,
and the Senate majority not infrequently differs from that in the
House of Representatives, the possibility of this happening is real.
The constitutional crisis which brought down the Whitlam Labor
Government on 11 November 1975 – the most serious political
crisis in Australia’s recent history – was essentially caused by
the fact that the government did not command a majority in the
Senate, and the Senate over a period refused supply.13
8. Even to a greater extent than in the United Kingdom, in Australia
parliamentary debate is adversarial. Paul Keating, whose govern-
ment was defeated in the general elections of March 1996, was
particularly famous for the richness of his vocabulary and for
tough and direct debating style, though ultimately this may have
contributed to the defeat of his government.
9. As in Britain, there is widespread acceptance of the system and of
the principle that it is normal for government and opposition to
108
exchange places following a general election. The principle

became seriously atrophied in the 23 years of conservative domi-
nance of government between 1949 and 1972 but, since the elec-
tion of the Whitlam Government in December 1972, there have
been four changes of party or parties in power at federal level in
Australia (1972, 1975, 1983, 1996) as against three in Britain (1974,
1979, 1997). Apart from this there are, in effect, more checks and
balances in the Australian political system than in that of the
United Kingdom, including those inherent in the federal system
and that provided by the powers and composition of the Senate.
Taking state as well as federal elections into account, and remem-
bering that voting in Australia is compulsory and that the federal
electoral cycle provides for a maximum of three years between
elections, it is very arguable that the voter, for good or ill, has more
opportunity to influence politics in Australia than in Britain.14 In
some ways, Australia is a very politically oriented state.
Japan
It goes without saying that the cultural and historical background of
Japan contrasts greatly with that of the United Kingdom or Australia.
For two and a half centuries up until the middle of the nineteenth
century, Japan was essentially a closed country whose political insti-
tutions were somewhat akin to those of medieval European feudal-
ism. With the forced opening of the country, and a revolutionary
change of regime which occurred from 1868, Japan embarked upon a
programme of modernization which involved a radical restructuring
of political institutions and practices. To simplify a most complex
story, a written constitution was introduced in 1889, providing a very
limited measure of popular representation to a parliament, only one
house of which was elected, on a restricted franchise, and which
enjoyed only limited powers. Sovereignty was described as deriving
from the Emperor who, however, was for the most part not a per-
sonal ruler. Power came to shift from time to time between various
élites, among whom the armed forces became predominant, especially
from the early 1930s until 1945. The thrust of government policy was
modernizing rather than democratizing, nation building rather than
concerned with the rights of the citizen, and militarizing rather than
seeking international consensus. Japan between 1889 and 1945 was
not a democracy but – however imperfectly – experienced govern-
ment under a written constitution.
109
J.A.A. Stockwin
In 1946 Japan acquired, under the strong influence of an American

army of occupation, an entirely new constitution, embodying demo-
cratic principles as understood in Western countries. It is hardly sur-
prising that the practice of this constitution (which remains unre-
vised) later came to be influenced by previous Japanese experience
and cultural norms. This does not mean, however, that Japan simply
reverted to the status quo ante, since the war, the defeat, the atomic
bombing of two major cities, and more than six years of military
occupation effected profound changes on attitudes and political cul-
ture. Nevertheless, as we shall see, political continuities with the past
exist.
Perhaps surprisingly (in view of the fact that it was the Americans
who were the principal occupying power between 1945 and 1952), the
form of government embodied in the new constitution was, in essence,
the ‘‘Westminster model.’’ Our comparison between Japan, on the
one hand, and the United Kingdom and Australia, on the other, may
thus be seen to be based on the significant structural similarity of all
three having political institutions deriving – with obvious variations –
from a similar set of structural arrangements.
Following the previous format, the salient characteristics of the
Japanese system of party politics are as follows.
1. Japan, since the 1950s, has had a ‘‘dominant party’’ system. The
Liberal Democratic Party, created from rival conservative groups
in the 1950s, formed every government single-handedly (with one
hardly significant exception)15 until August 1993 when, following
a split in its ranks and consequent defeat in a general election, it
was replaced by a non-LDP coalition of no less than eight parties.
In June 1994, however, the LDP returned to power as the largest
party in a three-party coalition under a Socialist prime minister
and, in January 1996, the prime ministership was once again taken
by the leader of the LDP.
The only significant party of opposition in the late 1950s was the
Japan Socialist Party, a party in which far left tendencies were
strong in that period. From 1960 onward, however, that party
stagnated and much of its vote, particularly in cities, was taken
over by a number of smaller parties, most of which (the exception
being the Japan Communist Party) were essentially of centrist
persuasion.
Once again, the electoral system for the Lower House (the House
of Representatives or Shûgiin) has been an important determining
factor in the pattern of party representation and interaction. All
110
general elections between 1947 and 1993 were held under a system
in which each elector cast a single, non-transferable vote, but each
constituency elected several (typically three, four, or five) candi-
dates.16 Moreover, adequate provisions were lacking for the
redrawing of constituency boundaries to reflect the massive shift
of population from the countryside to the towns in the period of
Japan’s rapid economic growth from the 1950s. This latter aspect
greatly favoured the LDP interest, and it may plausibly be argued
that at least the elections of 1976, 1979, and 1983 were won by the
LDP only because of this factor.
The multi-member constituencies also had the effect of helping
the dominant party, since it was the only party in a position to run
several candidates in most constituencies throughout the country.
Given Japanese sociopolitical conditions, this meant that each
LDP candidate competed fiercely on the basis of a personal local
machine, for a personal vote, almost independently of the party.
The intra-party competition was often so fierce that it had the ef-
fect of enhancing considerably the overall vote-winning capacity of
the party. This system also tended to encourage cohesive leader–
follower factionalism within the dominant party and, to a con-
siderable extent, separated off the policy-making function from the
power-maximizing and money-distributing functions. The system
of election was not a system of proportional representation but,
none the less, created some proportionality in its effects, and was
relatively permissive to representation from medium-sized parties.
2. It is much more difficult in the case of Japan to argue that the par-
ties represent clearly defined subsets of electors than in the British
or Australian cases. In the 1950s and into the 1960s, the Japan
Socialist Party vote was fairly distinct (union based, with intellec-
tual support), yet distinctions in the support base of the parties
generally have been eroded over the years to the point where easy
generalizations are difficult to make. Indeed, the most conspicuous
difference in voting behaviour is that between the metropolitan
conurbations, which tend to split their vote between a number of
parties, and the rest of the country, where the LDP is heavily
dominant. To some extent, this pattern may be breaking down
with the political party alignments that have been taking place
since 1992–1993.
3. One of the complaints often raised about Japanese party politics
is that, in policy terms, the parties are virtually indistinguishable
from each other. It was not always so: up until the 1970s, the party
111
J.A.A. Stockwin
system was often castigated for being inordinately confrontational

across a range of policy areas. In practice today there are impor-
tant policy differences in the areas of deregulation, decentraliza-
tion, constitutional reform, welfare policies, foreign policy, and so
on, but these differences are to be found as much within parties as
between them.
4. Party membership is problematic in Japan. With the exceptions of
one or two minor parties,17 members tend to be either ‘‘ghosts’’18
or party officials. Party politicians are not generally held in
high regard, and there is a widespread aversion to belonging to a
political party. Moreover, for the individual election, personal
machines of individual parliamentary candidates are often more
‘‘real’’ than the parties with which those candidates happen to be
affiliated.
5. Political factionalism has been pervasive, particularly in large par-
ties and especially in the LDP, where factional manoeuvring has
often determined the distribution both of cabinet and party posts
and the distribution of political funding. Factions, in some respects,
may be conceptualized as ‘‘parties within a party,’’ except that
they do not contest elections under their own labels. Here, how-
ever, we find a clear contrast with party politics in the United
Kingdom and Australia, where factions most typically are based
on policy differences. It should be noted that the transformation of
the electoral system effected in 1994 appears to have had the effect
of weakening intra-LDP factions, suggesting, once again, that the
electoral system is an important independent variable in many of
the issues we have been discussing.
6. A perennial criticism of Japanese politics is that the system inhibits
strong leadership. An examination of this issue would take us
beyond the brief of this chapter, because it relates to the role of
the government bureaucracy and principal interest groups in
the system as a whole. A key factor that serves to distinguish the
Japanese political system from most others (including those of the
UK and Australia) is that a high proportion of LDP members of
parliament (approximately one-quarter) were previously govern-
ment employees. To a considerable extent, the argument about
whether the LDP or the bureaucracy is the more powerful is the
wrong question to ask: both work so closely together that it is
more realistic to talk of cross-cutting coalitions of interests. How-
ever this may be, the scope for exercise of independent prime-
ministerial power is reduced by the many checks and balances
112
built into the system. This area is, in many ways, the most con-
troversial in discussions of Japanese politics at the present time.
7. In Japan there is a tension between a ‘‘winner-take-all’’ principle
and a ‘‘checks and balances’’ or ‘‘consensus’’ principle. The sense
that governments ought to take into account the views of those
outside government is inbuilt, even though exercises in power and
coercion may also plainly be observed in the working-out of many
political issues. The Japanese political system is, emphatically, not
based on equality of power but neither is it based on monopoly of
power. The checks and balances that exist, lead (as is often
remarked) to immobilism in policy innovation, but policy dyna-
mism is also far from unknown.19 The upper house of parliament,
the House of Councillors, has substantial powers to block legis-
lation coming to it from the lower house, and this was a severe
problem for LDP governments between 1989 and 1993, when the
LDP lacked a majority in the upper house.
8. Much parliamentary business takes place in committees, and ple-
nary sessions tend to be insubstantial. As in the United Kingdom
and Australia, parliamentary debate (particularly when televised)
can be adversarial, but there is also an air of formality about it,
suggesting that the real infighting has already been done behind
closed doors. Today, there is a general commitment to the main-
tenance of the system (except on the part of fringe groups, partic-
ularly on the far right), although in the 1950s and 1960s there was
much activity directed against the system from various quarters.
One worrying aspect is that political corruption has been on such a
massive scale at times that it greatly discredits politics among the
electorate as a whole.
9. Until 1992–1993, it could not reasonably be said that politics was
based on an expectation that government might change at the next
election. The LDP was in power, and most people expected that
state of affairs to continue ad infinitum. In the 1990s, the system –
and particularly this expectation – has been in a state of flux,
although it is much too early to say that a pattern of alternating (or
even occasionally alternating) politics has been established. It is
even arguable – but also disputable – that whichever party is in
power hardly matters, because real power lies in the hands of the
bureaucracy. The first general elections held under the new lower
house electoral system, in October 1996, failed to establish a viable
opposition, and the fragmentation of the party system was gather-
ing momentum at the beginning of 1998.
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J.A.A. Stockwin
Conclusion
The focus of this chapter is on party politics and party representation.
In any political system this is a part – though an important part – of
the whole. Of the three states examined here, Japan is obviously
outstanding in the success of its economic policies since the Second
World War and has become the second largest economy in the world.
The economic successes of Japan and other states of the East and
South-East Asia have given rise to the notion of an ‘‘Asian Model of
Democracy,’’ with the implication that, somehow, the western side
of the Pacific has invented a new form of democracy which is an
improvement on the old.20
The thrust of this chapter is, by implication, to cast doubt on this
hypothesis. The doubt stems, not so much from the financial diffi-
culties that became so visible in Japan and elsewhere in the region
in 1997, but rather from a belief that democracy is a universal, not a
regional, concept. While it is clear that the Japanese system differs
more substantially from the British and Australian than they do from
each other, it is also obvious that there are many commonalities and
that, in the working out of their political destinies, all three are
grappling with vexatious issues that confront East and West alike.
Notes
1. In the case of Japan, the 1946 Constitution specifically avoids the term ‘‘head of state’’ in
respect of the Tennô (‘‘Emperor’’), who is given the appellation ‘‘symbol of the State and of
the unity of the people.’’ The fact that the Tennô may not be treated as ‘‘head’’ of state
remains a matter of some controversy.
2. The proposal to make Australia a republic is being actively discussed in the 1990s, and, if
this eventuates, Australia will presumably have a president as head of state. It seems most
unlikely, however, despite evident preference manifested in public opinion polls for an
elected president, that the president will have executive powers.
3. The Labour Party in the 1920s replaced the Liberal Party as the main contestant of the
Conservatives. An attempt to reverse this in the 1980s failed.
4. Following the election of the Blair Labour Government in May 1997, majorities were
secured in referendums in Scotland and Wales for the establishment of regional assemblies
in Edinburgh and Cardiff. The Scottish, but not the Welsh, assembly is to have limited
powers of taxation.
5. After its election the Blair government showed its determination to adhere to the govern-
ment spending constraints laid down by its Conservative predecessor. Its ‘‘welfare to work’’
policies, involving some loss of welfare benefit to vulnerable sections of the community,
occasioned protest from sections of the Labour Party itself.
6. For instance ‘‘socialism’’ in the Labour Party in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Europe in
the Conservative Party in the 1990s.
7. Quasi non-governmental organizations.
114
8. The maximum term which a government can serve without calling a general election is
5 years.
9. The adoption of the American spelling ‘‘Labor’’ was deliberate and anti-English.
10. The DLP regularly won a small number of seats in the Senate, which is elected by a form of
proportional representation.
11. In the House of Representatives elections, party workers wait outside polling stations with
advisory ‘‘how to vote’’ cards, giving the order of preferences favoured by a particular
party. Thus, a Liberal voter following the advice of the Liberal Party ‘‘how to vote’’ card
will in most cases give second preference to the candidate of the National Party, and vice
versa. The fact that this advice is followed by the bulk of Liberal and National Party voters
is evidence of the strength of the ‘‘two-camp’’ nature of Australian electoral politics.
12. In elections during that period, many ALP candidates obtained a plurality on first prefer-
ences, but were defeated when later preferences were distributed because the preferences
of DLP first-preference voters were directed heavily against them. It seems most likely that
several elections during the period of the existence of the DLP would have been won by the
ALP had the DLP not existed or had it not been so successful in directing its preferences
against the ALP. In effect, the DLP was a veto group, whose purpose was to keep the ALP
out of power, and in this it was supremely successful.
13. On 11 November 1975 the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, activated hitherto unused
powers of the Constitution and dismissed Whitlam as Prime Minister. For an account of the
crisis, see Paul Kelly, November 1975: The Inside Story of Australia’s Greatest Political Cri-
sis (St. Leonards, NSW, Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1995). There is usually some repre-
sentation of third parties in the Senate, and the oldest of these, the Australian Democrats,
founded in the 1970s, has generally held the principled stand of agreeing not to withhold
supply from any government enjoying a majority in the House of Representatives.
14. See Dean Jaensch, An Introduction to Australian Politics (Sydney: Longman Cheshire,
1988), pp. 56–83.
15. Between 1983 and 1986 the LDP was in coalition with the tiny New Liberal Club, which had
itself split from the LDP in 1976 and re-entered the LDP in 1986.
16. This system has now been replaced by a new system under which there are 300 single-
member constituencies elected first-past-the-post, and a further 200 constituencies elected
by proportional representation in 11 regional constituencies. Anti-corruption laws have also
been substantially toughened.
17. Notably the former Kômeitô (based on the Buddhist sect Sôka Gakkai), and the Japan
Communist Party.
18. The LDP has long had a practice of seeking to boost its membership by enrolling names
(with a member of parliament paying the required dues) of people who may have no
intention of being party members.
19. See J.A.A. Stockwin, Alan Rix, Aurelia George, James Horne, Daiichi Itô, and Martin
Collick, Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan (London: Macmillan, 1988).
20. See J.A.A. Stockwin, ‘‘Is There Such a Thing as the Asian Model of Democracy?,’’ paper
delivered at the International Conference on Korea in Transition: Issues and Alternatives,
Graduate School of Labour, Korea University, Seoul, 6 July 1996.
115
Democracy and global forces
8
The democratization process
and the market
Mihály Simai
A country could create a political democracy in six months and a market

economy in six years, but . . . 60 years would be necessary for a true civil
society to emerge in Eastern Europe.
– Sir Ralf Dahrendorf in 19901
Democracy: The current debate

The current dialogue on democracy is far wider and more complex
than that of the past: it has many more roots and dimensions. A
number of trends and issues have stimulated the new discourse: the
political and institutional consequences of the collapse of the dicta-
torial regimes in a number of developing countries; the systemic
changes in Central and Eastern Europe; the re-evaluation of the role
of the state and the market in the industrial world and in develop-
ing countries; the attachment of political conditionalities to develop-
ment assistance programmes; the universalization of human rights;
the implications of the globalization process; and the dialogue gen-
erated by the UN Agenda for Development and the anticipated
document on the Agenda for Democracy, are some such issues.
In the context of the changes in Central and Eastern Europe, but
also in a broader perspective, an important dimension of the dialogue
on democracy is related to the failures of communism to fulfil its
promise to create a world ‘‘free from need and war’’ and, as a corol-
lary, the future of capitalism and its liberal democratic regimes. Many
political thinkers view this process as the global victory of constitu-
tional democracy and particularly of its liberal version.
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Mihály Simai
Capitalism is not, of course, a closed or homogeneous ideological

system. Different ideologies exist upon its socio-economic foundations
and from a broad spectrum, including libertarians, liberals, and right-
wing populists. The system has also accommodated some fanatical
ideologies such as violent nationalism and fascism, which lamentably
are gaining ground again in various parts of the world. Fuelled by
growing socio-economic problems and political impasses, these creeds
preach such divisive doctrines as racism, ethnic hatred, and religious
bigotry. Such ideologies cannot be expected to encourage global solu-
tions to the problems of poverty, environmental degradation, and
crime.
Although certain values of liberal internationalism – such as the
honouring of human rights and democracy – are enjoying increasing
acceptance in many parts of the world, contemporary forms of liberal
internationalism may not necessarily be effective in addressing the
needs and concerns of the developing world. Pope John Paul II has
squarely identified the problem:
The Marxist solution has failed, but the realities of marginalization and
exploitation remain in the world, especially in the Third World, as does the
reality of human alienation, especially in the more advanced countries . . .
Indeed, there is a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread which
refuses even to consider these problems, in the a priori belief that any
attempt to solve them is doomed to failure, and which blindly entrusts their
solution to the free development of market forces.2
Democracy is not a political ideology like liberalism, communism,

socialism, or Nazism. It is not a set of political ideas about the values,
instruments, goals, and outcomes of social actions. It describes a
particular system of government and the distribution of power within
a system. In fact, most of the different political ideologies employ the
concept of democracy, with certain qualifications, based on their
views and preferences. Liberal democracies constitutionally limit
governmental power, safeguard civil liberties, and ensure represen-
tation, in political offices through competitive elections.
Democracy, by definition, is rule by the people. Any theory of
democracy must specify how the people should rule – whether by
direct participation, elected representatives, referendum, or other
means. But, prior to this question, one can ask: ‘‘who are the people?’’
The usual answer is, all affected by government and public admin-
istration. This implies that the rule by the people should be extended
to all those who are influenced by the decisions of power, on different
120
The democratization process and the market
levels. Both as an ideal and as an actual system, democracy has

changed over the two millennia since its ‘‘invention.’’ Through the
long history of human efforts for achieving democracy, it has been
interpreted as a interminable process of change toward an ideal
political system. Many political thinkers considered democracy to be
a goal shaped by subsequent generations. It has also been interpreted
as a set of political institutions and processes that are attainable at
least with certain limitations. At the end of the twentieth century,
democratization is increasingly considered to be an international or
global process, closely related to global sociopolitical changes and,
particularly, the international and universal character of human
rights.
The historical experiences of the Western world and developing
countries may offer a few important principles and lessons germane
to post-communist countries in transition.
1. Relations between the market system, economic development, and
democracy are complex and multidimensional. The pre-Second
World War patterns of Central and Eastern Europe demonstrated
that market economies coexisted with various forms of political
systems – dictatorial or democratic. Historical evidence also sug-
gests that market economies preceded the democratic changes of
governance. The progress of democracy was, in most cases, a long
historical process. Democratic rights were progressively expanded,
often following bitter social and political conflicts. There are, how-
ever, no historical examples, where liberal, democratic systems
could be established before the emergence of a market economy
with clearly defined and transparent property rights, a fairly wide
dispersion of economic power, a free entry and exit, and a non-
discriminatory system of economic competition.
2. Democracy is not necessarily a prerequisite of the market system,
nor is it indispensable for promoting economic development.
Empirical evidence supports the fact that authoritarian govern-
ments were often less vulnerable against powerful interest groups
and popular pressures in implementing important socio-economic
policies.3 They have been more decisive in carrying out painful
structural reforms, whilst democratic methods proved to be fragile
in troubled times. Non-democratic regimes were often able to
create higher savings, through enforced public savings and other
measures; the concept of the ‘‘developmental dictatorship’’ has
been applied to East Asian countries. A thorough cost–benefit
analysis of the non-democratic regimes would, however, be dif-
121
Mihály Simai
ficult, and political and social costs of the non-democratic regimes

were, in many cases, extremely high despite their favourable
influence on some economic indicators.
3. A number of important conditions must be fulfilled for the demo-
cratic process to succeed itself, without creating situations that
result in non-democratic methods of governance. The first condi-
tion concerns the necessity of having high-quality people elected to
serve in the parliaments and, particularly, national governments.4
Second, the scope of governance must be relatively limited, which
should be a consequence of the mechanisms of democracy. Third,
there must be a well-trained, professional, and technically com-
petent bureaucracy which has continuity. The civil service should
be committed to pursue professional excellence yet should be
subject to democratic control aimed at ensuring administrative
responsiveness to popular needs and desires. Fourthly, an open
and consultative system of governance facilitates a greater articu-
lation of interests and allows compromises and consensus building.
In this context there must be a climate of tolerance, for the
expression of different opinions. Fifth, in order to sustain democ-
racy, there must be a degree of justice, participation, and a fair
distribution of welfare. Sixth, democracy must not be treated as
a process, or an effort, isolated from other social or economic
processes.
4. A fundamentally important issue for the development and sus-
tainability of democracy is the progress of the civil society. There
are a great number of definitions of this phenomenon, but for these
purposes it is ‘‘the independent self-organization of the society, the
constituent parts of which voluntarily engage in public activity to
pursue individual, group or national interests, within the context
of a legally defined state–society relationship.’’5 The development
of civil society cannot be isolated from political, social, and eco-
nomic changes. The power of the state, for example, has always
been a major influence on the manner in which civil society artic-
ulates and protects its interests. Civil society implies, by definition,
participation. Participation, however, particularly in the literature
on development, is considered simultaneously in different contexts
– in public life, in the workplace, at home. An important dimen-
sion of the development of civil society and participation is related
to globalization. An ideologist of globalization, for example John
Naisbitt,6 would suggest that globalization increases the possibili-
ties of small groups, or firms, because they have greater flexibility
122
than large units. According to him, the essence of the global par-
adox is that, the more global or universal humankind is becoming,
the more ‘‘tribal’’ people are acting. This reduces and changes
the traditional role and functions of the state: ‘‘Now, with the
electronics revolution, both representative democracy and eco-
nomies of scale are obsolete. Now everyone can have efficient
direct democracy.’’7 The fragmentation process is, however, a
consequence not just of ‘‘new tribalism’’ but also of the fact that it
is constantly resulting in marginalization and exclusion due to the
highly unequal character of the globalization process. All these
indicate that the development of civil society should not be sim-
plified: it must be related to the processes of democratization; the
development of institutions and legal codes; and the manner in
which social actors seek to find their interests, values, and identity.
The process of transition to the market system in the former
socialist countries also added some experiences to the global demo-
cratic process. The postulates for implanting democracy from above
must not be confined to the formal institutions. It is relatively easy
to change the institutional framework of governance by centrally
initiated reforms; it is, however, extremely difficult to implant a new
behavioural infrastructure from above. The establishment of a legiti-
mate, democratic system is a long and painful process. The intro-
duction of a multi-party system does not itself mean that a country
can manage its internal conflicts and social problems more easily,
particularly when the governments are restrained by external forces
beyond their control, and people do not see a direct relationship
between their welfare and the democratic process.
During the Cold War, political sciences and scientists divided the
world into democracies and dictatorial regimes, with almost nothing
in between the two. As the result of the transition in the former
socialist countries, attitudinal changes in developing countries, and
varying levels of economic development and national consolidation,
the process of democratization has resulted in a greater diversity of
democracy. Any effort to measure democracy on the basis of text-
book models of Western democracy, which expanded gradually as
the result of political struggles and long political experiences, is in
error.
The international ‘‘demonstration effect’’ plays a significant, but
only a limited, role in creating sustainable democratic systems. Such
questions as ‘‘does democracy travel?’’8 may be rooted more in
wishful thinking than in global realities. Democracy must be based on
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Mihály Simai
a civil society, developed from the grass roots. Simultaneously, the

sustainability of democracy also requires strong external support and
guarantees.
Liberalization democracy and the market

Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe and the successor
states of the Soviet Union has been considered as an integral part of
their transition to the market system. The liberalization of the former
command economies and the opening and the pluralization of the
‘‘closed’’ societies were probably the most important postulates in the
changes.
The three types of liberalization – shock therapy, the gradual ap-
proach, and partial liberalization – have been ‘‘competing’’ in national
policies and in the recommendations of the external experts in the
former socialist countries. The definition of the market economy was
the classical textbook case: private ownership of the means of pro-
duction; free competition among economic agents; the right freely to
enter and exit any line of production, employment, and trade for all
the actors; and the determination of prices and the allocation of
resources through the free play of market forces. In fact, few econo-
mies conform to this concept in reality.
The ongoing debate on the role of the state and the market has had
a major influence in the countries which have been statist regimes.9
The need to dismantle costly and inefficient bureaucracies; to create
democracy, accountability, and transparency; and to end corruption
were some of the main slogans. Similarly, integral to the introduction
of a liberal market system has been the dismantling of the institutions
of central planning. Internationally, liberalization and the introduc-
tion of free-market policies have been the most important under-
pinnings of the new contractual relationships with Bretton Woods
institutions. These have included deregulation of the price system,
the abolition of subsidies, sweeping reforms in public expenditures,
privatization, the encouragement of foreign direct investments, and
the liberalization of the foreign trade regimes.
Many of the Western economic advisers of the new regimes have
suggested that fast liberalization is the key remedy for curing all the
economic ills of transition and developing their export potentials.
However, many experts have failed to understand the complex nature
of the process, owing to limited information on the given countries,
the mechanical copying of the patterns of the developed industrial
124
countries, ideologically motivated approaches, economic expectations

based on textbooks, political pressures, and wishful thinking.
A further important source for liberalization has been the need for
foreign direct investment and the liberalization of entrepreneurship,
capital movements, prices, and exchange rates. There were great ex-
pectations attached to the direct and indirect role of the transnational
corporations. New governments in the former socialist countries
expected a rapid increase of foreign direct investments in the impor-
tant branches of the economies and, with it, the introduction of new
technologies, new products and processes, expertise, skills, and the
promotion of exports. Some of the governments, especially those of
indebted countries, looked to transnational corporations primarily as
sources of new capital. These expectations related to the active and
accelerating role of transnational corporations in the systemic tran-
sition process. In this context, there have been two important areas
receiving particular emphasis – institution building and privatization.
The building of new market institutions, the development of the legal
system, and the establishment of the necessary business infrastructure,
have been indispensable conditions for the appropriate functioning
of private enterprises. Efforts to attract foreign investors resulted in
positive steps toward accelerating market institution building and were,
in fact, more significant for the acceleration of the institutional changes
than the domestic political and economic pressures.
In order to attract foreign direct investment, governments have had
to introduce legislation on national and foreign entrepreneurship10 –
such as tax concessions or, in certain cases, direct subsidies – to create
a conducive business environment. Close to 60 specific bilateral
investment treaties have been concluded between the former socialist
countries of Europe to give assurances on this matter.11 However, in
the relationships with the transnational corporations, such elemen-
tary issues as the unequal bargaining position and shift from state
monopolies have implications for economically weak countries, with
fragile new institutions.
A further source of liberalization was basically domestic – the
shift in thinking against public ownership, controls, regulations, state
monopolies, subsidies. These were the legacy of the communist re-
gimes, and those who tried to resist the measures were considered as
relics of the past. The state-owned enterprises – the majority of which
had, in the past, strong vested interests in protectionism – lost their
bargaining power. Their leaders were, by and large, discredited and,
in order to save their positions, they remained silent. The combined
125
Mihály Simai
force of the pressures for liberalization was historically unprece-

dented in the speed in which it opened up the countries. The greater
the difference between the past and the present, the greater the impact
of the measures. In political terms, the introduction of the Western
model of liberal democracy was favoured by most domestic forces
and foreign actors – governments, international agencies, NGOs, and
experts – who helped in promoting the institutional changes.
However, the external and internal constraints on the transitional
economies often do not facilitate the building up of a new, more
competitive, institutional system. Indeed, transition can undermine
their capabilities and reduce their adaptive efficiency. In the transi-
tion debates, the former socialist countries are often considered as
a homogeneous group, with the same legacy of Cold War totalitari-
anism. They are considered as a region, basically without democratic
traditions, where the democratization process has had to start from
zero. Commentators have drawn attention to the ‘‘backwardness’’ of
Eastern European political culture, especially compared with the old
liberal democracies of the West. Indeed, the middle class, which is
arguably the most important social group upon which a political cul-
ture is nurtured, still represents only a small group in Central and
Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, the region has never been a politically
or economically homogeneous part of the world. The differences
were quite substantial, both in the progress of the market system and
in terms of democratic experience.
First, certain countries had quite important democratic traditions
before the German occupation or the introduction of the Soviet-type
totalitarian regimes. Some others had no democratic tradition at all.
But, even in these countries, the minimal political and legal condi-
tions of a market system existed – transparent property rights, an
effective legal system for the enforcement of contracts and legal
undertakings, and the legal equality of the economic agents. More-
over, over time, there were also changes across the socialist regimes:
some became more liberal and less oppressive – Kadarism in Hungary,
the reforms of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, the liberalization in
Poland – whilst others such as the Ceaucescu regime in Romania
sustained, or even strengthened, the dictatorial rule.
The achievements and the problems

The achievement of introducing almost unrestricted freedom, as the
first step of the democratization process, has been impressive in its
126
speed. It has taken place much faster than in the history of the
Western countries but with the result of adverse side-effects and
instability, in some instances.
All the European post-communist countries, excluding the states
that emerged from the disintegration of Yugoslavia, have been plunged
into political freedom. The restrictions imposed by the totalitarian
regimes have vanished, with the disintegration of the political insti-
tutions of the communist regimes. There are practically no restric-
tions upon civil society and freedom of association along various
lines, including political parties and trade unions. In Hungary, for
example, there were about 42,000 organizations or voluntary associ-
ations in 1996. In none of the post-communist countries, except the
former Yugoslavia, is there widespread political persecution or im-
prisonment for political reasons. There is also considerable freedom
of demonstration and political agitation, including that of an anti-
government nature, and complete freedom of movement. In some
cases the political freedom of some transitional countries is more lib-
eral than that of many long-established parliamentary democracies.
Democracy is, however, more than just freedom: it is a set of pro-
cedures for choosing rulers and exercising control over them; for
providing guarantees for minorities; a defined balance between the
executive and the legislative power, the rule of law, and the inde-
pendence of the judiciary. Furthermore, a culture of democracy
embraces participation and public discourse. Not all these elements
of democracy exist in all the post-communist countries. There are
indisputable achievements. Governments in these countries possess
democratic credentials and have been democratically elected. New
constitutions have been enacted – except in Russia, where it was
decreed – or old ones fundamentally amended, such as in Hungary
and Poland. Institutions have been established for the protection of
democracy, including constitutional courts and ombudsman systems.
Throughout the region, independence of the judiciary has been pro-
claimed and enshrined in legislation. In some countries, local authori-
ties are now elected by democratic process. However, these changes
are far from being equally strong everywhere, and such procedural/
institutional achievements do not ensure the substance of democracy.
Today, the social structures of Central and Eastern European
countries differ greatly from those of pre- and early Cold War days:
they are no longer ‘‘traditional’’ peasant societies where author-
itarian rule can easily be enforced; they have large professional
groups, a broad industrial working class, and a small (but growing)
127
Mihály Simai
entrepreneurial middle class. Any open or disguised political effort to

introduce new dictatorial regimes would be strongly opposed by
them. One can, at the same time, notice that most of the countries
in Central and Eastern Europe are highly divided internally, along
different lines. The first years of transition changed the optimistic
expectations which were, in fact, often illusions encouraged from the
West and the political forces that comprised the new political élite. In
reality, the new regimes often did not understand fully the complex
interplay between the domestic and external factors and forces
involved; in some countries, they looked more to the pre-Second
World War era for policy models and missed the early opportunities
for building up large coalitions based on popular consensus. They
also failed to establish conditions facilitating a more equitable distri-
bution of costs and benefits.
Many people are disappointed, and some have become attracted
to political extremism. Political apathy and disillusionment are also
widespread. Why has the path towards liberal democracy experi-
enced problems and been fragile?
The main pillar of the Western concept of democracy is a plural-
istic society that displays and articulates the heterogeneity of inter-
ests. The political process is based on institutionalized political com-
petition and electoral legitimacy. Power does not stem from ‘‘divine
will,’’ physical force, or hereditary right; it is a mandate from the
population, expressed by free elections. Conflicts of interests appear
in the form of differing or contrasting political ideas, goals, and poli-
cies represented by parties or other organized groups. Shifts in power
are based on free elections, and the possibility of change is inherent
in the system. The great majority of the members of society must
support this mechanism and the principles of freedom of beliefs,
opinion, association, and mobility. There must be a broad consensus
on the shifts in power through free elections, on the willingness of the
ruling party to step down after political defeat, and on the tolerance
of organized opposition by those who are in power. In many transi-
tional societies, these democratic foundations are not fully developed.
There is, to begin with, a weakness in the political party structure,
which sprang up across the region with the fall of single-party domi-
nation. Parties can be broadly divided into three groups – the new
parties which emerged from the anti-communist opposition, the
‘‘historical’’ parties which existed before the communist take-over
and revived after the changes, and the parties which are a product of
changes in the power structure in the communist era and derive
128
chiefly from reformist currents in the old communist parties or

their allies. In addition, parties of a ‘‘non-political’’ character have
appeared – the greens, the feminists, and eccentric groups attracting
every imaginable interest and activity.
Certain patterns can be discerned. No united anti-communist
opposition front has proved to be sustainable. When such united
political movements existed and held power, they quickly split into
numerous factions and found their influence diminishing. The most
striking example of this is former East Germany, where the old
Democratic Forum has vanished from the political scene, which is
now entirely dominated by the parties of the old Federal Republic.
But even in Poland, where Solidarity was such a powerful movement,
the majority of the parties which spun off from it were unable, in the
1993 elections, to gain the required 5 per cent of the popular vote and
ended up with no seats in parliament at all. Most political parties are
weak, not only in numbers but in size of constituency. There are few
well-organized grass-roots parties: most of them are parliamentary
groups, organized for the participation in the elections. After the
first well-supported democratic elections, the turnout tends to be
approaching the low Western European patterns – in the region of
50 per cent – and a large proportion of parties collect only a frac-
tional percentage of the vote.12
Democratic states must be based on the rule of law in order to
protect basic human security and human rights and to safeguard per-
sonal freedom from arbitrary interventions. Yet general standards of
legal culture in most of the transition countries have been relatively
low. This applies to both the bureaucracy and society at large, where
repercussions of transitional instability are reflected in various social
ills. Law and order even appear to be under threat, in some instances,
and the social diseases associated with the transition process,
together with a decline of human solidarity, do not augur well.
Adaptations in the legal system comprise a very difficult task for
transitional countries, and there are great differences between them
in the degree of progress. In some countries – notably Poland,
Hungary, and the Czech Republic – reasonably swift progress has
been made in the process of modernizing the legal framework. From
the point of view of the functioning of democracy, the rules related to
the electoral system are particularly important; in most of the transi-
tional countries, the electoral systems became a highly complicated
mixture of the proportional and majority systems. The combination
of the two was shaped by the political struggles and by the efforts to
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Mihály Simai
avoid fragmentation and ‘‘Weimarization’’ of the new democra-

tic systems. The Ukrainian system, for example, has resulted in a
situation which makes the allocation of the seats in parliament
impossible until several months after the election. Even in Poland,
the electoral system – which was formulated by a democratically
elected parliament – has resulted in parties that together collected
almost 30 per cent of the popular vote in September 1993 having no
parliamentary representation. The new electoral system became an
important target of criticism, particularly by the smaller parties which
could not get into parliament. The debate on the reform of the elec-
toral system will remain an important legal and political issue.
A further weakness of the legal system, influencing political life
and the conduct of government in practically all the former socialist
countries, concerns the distribution of power between the supreme
authorities of the state and the central government and the local
authorities. The legal framework became an important subject of
political struggle, and the hastily adopted or amended constitutions
reflect more the compromises in those struggles than legal or political
rationality. The dispute over the character of governance reflected
deep political roots and was not just a case of copying Western pat-
terns, like the American or the French presidential system; it
reflected the outcome of domestic political struggles between the
autocratic tendencies and the forces of liberal democracy. The advo-
cates of presidential government in the post-communist countries
wanted, in most cases, far greater power – especially complete free-
dom for the selection of government ministers, the right to issue
decrees with the force of law (that is, to bypass the legislature), and
relatively wide powers of dissolving inconvenient parliaments. Such
advocates spring from the traditions of the region, whether recent
and communist – particularly in the successor states of the Soviet
Union – or more distant and pre-communist (Walesa’s idol was Mar-
shal Józef Piludski, who staged a military coup d’état in Poland in
1926 and subsequently exercised a moderate dictatorship). An im-
portant factor behind the authoritarian tendencies is, undoubtedly,
the difficulties in the transformation process. In a number of Western
countries with long democratic traditions, both presidential and cabi-
net government can function without endangering the democratic
system. In the former socialist countries, however, where democratic
traditions are limited and political culture and parties are relatively
weak, a presidential system can very easily turn in an authoritarian
direction, especially if combined with a limitation of the role of par-
130
liament. In Poland and in Hungary, presidential government is fav-

oured by populist groups, while democratic parties prefer a cabinet
system or a balanced mixture of the two.
The socio-economic difficulties inherent in the transformation pro-
cess are particularly important sources of problems, given the fra-
gility of the process. Markets are not institutions of welfare or equity:
shock therapy and multilateral financial institutions basically ignore
the democratic agenda. If the first experiments with democracy result
in inflation, unemployment, increasing inequalities, and a declining
standard of living for the ‘‘silent majority’’ of the population, the
result will be fear, alienation, and distrust. For 40 years, under the
‘‘promise of communism,’’ the state sought to convince people of
the necessity of sacrificing their present welfare state for some future
promise. Many people have seen parallels between this and the vague
promises of the new regimes advocating market reforms and democ-
racy. In certain cases, the majority of the population looked at the
evolving regimes as ‘‘redistributive coalitions’’ in the interests of a
small new minority. The transition process proved that, while the
majority of the population support democracy, marketization was not
able to bring sufficient or attractive enough goals for the masses,
especially if they experienced the adverse consequences of the pro-
cess and saw the conspicuous gains of the small minority. In those
countries, where the ‘‘post-socialist’’ coalitions were voted out of
power, people were voting against the increasing poverty, unem-
ployment, the declining standard of living, and other economic and
social difficulties. To a certain extent, it was also a protest vote
against those political forces that wanted to restore the political and
ideological values of the pre-Second World War regimes. People
were voting not for the restoration of the communist past but for
equal opportunities and greater security. This draws attention to
the changing relationships between the state, capital, and labour. The
issue of the bargaining power of the workers and their relations to the
reforms and the increasing inequalities will, inevitably, occupy a more
important role in the future political struggles of the countries. In the
future, particularly in the absence of faster economic growth and
more equitable income distribution, the pressures toward extremist
solutions, based on the interests of certain groups and not on social
consensus, may come from the side of labour and also of capital, in
different political dressings. This may undermine the functioning of
liberal democracies and may result in pressures for some forms of
command systems or autocratic regimes.
131
Mihály Simai
Ethnic problems in the former socialist countries comprise another

source of tension in the democratization process. Recent empirical
experiences indicate that no states are completely neutral ethnically;
they reflect the ethnic power structure of the given society, which
means that – more often than not – they reflect the interests, values,
and policies of the ruling ethnic majority. The other side of the coin
concerns the extent to which ethnic groups accept the institutions,
and whether they are imposed on them by the majority or are a result
of a political consensus.
The political and ethnic frontiers established in this region after the
First and Second World Wars created sources of latent tension that
the dictatorial regimes of the Cold War years were unable and ill-
prepared to defuse. While the communist regimes vainly tried to
ignore the underlying antagonisms, by emphasizing loyalty to social
classes over loyalty to nations, their actions contributed only to the
divisions among their nations. The regimes limited the movement of
their peoples, provided few guarantees for honouring the rights of
national minorities, and in some cases – such as Romania – under-
took the forcible assimilation of minorities. By promoting the estab-
lishment of autocratic economic regimes that were connected bilat-
erally with the Soviet economy and had very little interest in real
multilateral cooperation, these regimes strengthened the new eco-
nomic foundations of nationalism.
With the demise of regional Soviet hegemony, not only did old
ethnic problems rise to the surface but also a new element – separa-
tism – appeared on the political canvas of multinational states. The
dismembering of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were the obvious
manifestations of this. The revival of nationalism is not confined to
Central and East European countries: according to one expert, there
are more than 5,000 ethnic groups in the world that desire national
independence.14 Nationalistic and ethnic violence blights areas as
diverse as Western Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, and China.
Nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, however, is particularly
strident and presents great dangers to both regional and international
security. Historically, the region has been a buffer zone between the
great powers, and its conflicts – often exploited by the great powers –
have played catalytic roles in precipitating both world wars.
During the Cold War, the struggle for national identity and self-
determination was considered by the West to be a legitimate goal in
the fight against Soviet domination. Today, Western encouragement
of such goals as separatism and ethnic autonomy is no longer to be
132
heard, but nationalism remains, unconstrained by either dictatorial

regimes or an established tradition of democratic tolerance. An
important aspect of the management of ethnic issues is related to
electoral systems: a number of different systems have implications
for ethnic interests and facilitate accommodation. Federalism and
regional autonomy is another formula. Early membership in the
European Union may ease the problems of ethnicity in the case of
the Central and Eastern European countries but, in the absence of
appropriate democratic solutions, it may remain an important source
of tension in the successor states of the Soviet Union. The ethnic
issue, therefore, will remain a dangerous and difficult problem which
continues to threaten to undermine the democratization process.
Conclusions
The course of democratization has resulted in a diverse system of
governance and opened up new possibilities for hundreds of millions
of people to govern their own lives, yet it has opened up political
tensions along ethnic, tribal, and socio-economic lines. The key
question is whether the democratic regimes better serving the social
goals of the development process include the honouring of human
rights and, particularly, of economic and social rights.
The former socialist countries in Europe are involved in the global
liberalization and democratization process with a number of specific
characteristics. The social composition of today’s Central and East
European countries differs greatly from that of the early Cold War
period: no longer traditional peasant societies, where authoritarian
rule can easily be enforced, these societies have large professional
groups, a broad industrial working class, and a small but growing
entrepreneurial middle class. Democracy, participation, and the rule
of law are aspirations which are becoming deeply rooted. Any open
or disguised political effort to introduce new dictatorial regimes
would thus encounter strong internal opposition, not to mention
adverse international reaction, which would prove highly damaging
to countries so heavily dependent on external economic relations.
The success of democratic changes in Central and Eastern Europe
requires wise and honest leadership, good governance, popular sup-
port, and also external political encouragement and material support.
Favourable social and economic conditions within the countries and
in the external environment will assist these factors. Several decades
must elapse before we can know whether this region will become a
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Mihály Simai
Europeanized, democratic network of friendly states which will pro-

vide an acceptable standard of living for the great majority, or
whether the twin paths to democracy and the market will yet be
undermined in the midst of poverty, turmoil, and new forms of
autocracy. At the end of the 1990s, some of the countries had made
important steps toward the establishment of sustainable democratic
market economies, whereas, in others, the processes of democratic
development and marketization were still weak and uncertain.
Notes
1. Ralf Dahrendorf, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (New York: Times Books, 1990).
2. John Paul II, ‘‘On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum: Centesimus Annus,’’
Encyclical Letter, 1 May 1991 (Publication 436-8) (Washington, D.C.: Office for Publishing
and Promotion Services, United States Catholic Conference) p. 82.
3. An important Western political scientist, Richard Lowenthal, suggested in an early stage of
the debate that ‘‘every measure of freedom is paid for with slowing down economic develop-
ment,’’ in Staatsfunktionen und Staatsreform in den Entwicklungsländern, repr. in F. Nuscheler
(ed.) Politikwissenschaftliche Entwicklungsländerforschung (Dortmund, 1986), pp. 241–245.
4. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1947), pp. 289–296.
5. Marcia A. Weigle and Jim Butterfield, ‘‘Civil Society in the Reforming Communist
Regimes: The Logic of Emergence,’’ Comparative Politics 1992; 23(4): 1–23.
6. John Naisbitt, Global Paradox (New York: Avon Books, 1995), p. 25.
7. Ibid. p. 47.
8. An American scholar, James Turner Johnson, formulated the question in the following way:
‘‘Is liberal democratic self-government, in the form it has taken in the West, capable of
being developed also in societies whose traditions and cultures are different from those of
the Western democracies?’’ His answer is: ‘‘. . . even though this achievement is historically
and culturally tied to certain particular societies and their intellectual and social histories,
such democracy may also ‘travel’ across historical and cultural lines to become the basis of
political life in other societies.’’ See ‘‘Does Democracy Travel? Some Thoughts on
Democracy and its Cultural Context,’’ Ethics in International Affairs, 1992; 6: 41–55.
9. During the past decades, the debates on national institutional change have been influenced
by two extreme utopias. One extreme has been the utopia of the Soviet model, which sug-
gested a development process managed by the state, completely subordinated by the col-
lective will, and allegedly expressed by the ‘‘visible hand,’’ central government. Here it is
interesting to note that Marx never denied the historical role of the market in the develop-
ment process. In his analysis, the market was the solvent that would break down traditional
rigidities of society and allow development. The other extreme has been the liberal utopia,
where the master is the ‘‘invisible hand’’ of the market. In these ideas the developmental
role of the state was at best limited to ensuring property rights and eliminating obstacles to
the emergence of efficient markets. The advocates of this ideology suggested that allocative
inefficiency in the developing countries is caused by market failures, a consequence of
strong state intervention. Both extremes have been highly ideological, and counterpro-
ductive. (There is a third direction, suggesting full decentralization, based on cooperatives,
voluntary associations, non-profit structures, and NGOs. This can be called the populist
utopia and it has an increasing influence in the debates in many countries.) The historical
analysis of the costs and benefits of the visible and invisible hands may be an interesting
exercise for future scholars.
134
10. The new legal and regulatory framework had to ease or liberalize the entry procedures, the
rights of establishment, the repatriation of profits, and capital investments. It had to deal
with the taxation of foreign investments with the ownership of land, currency conversion,
protection of intellectual property rights, and other measures. Another set of regulatory
measures was related to accounting practices. In some countries, for example Russia,
piecemeal approaches characterized the development of the necessary framework; in
others, such as Hungary, there were more comprehensive legislative measures.
11. There are, of course, a number of multilateral agreements related to FDIs to which the
former socialist countries joined or expressed their wish to participate in, such as the World
Trade Organization’s TRIM and arbitration system and its provision related to the pro-
tection of intellectual property rights, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agreement
(MIGA).
12. The developments prompted Zbigniew Brezezinski to observe: ‘‘Current political life in
Poland suffers from a large number of negative features, above all the fact that it is domi-
nated by parochial political parties lacking a vision of modern society. Instead of such a
vision they represent either narrow and sometimes anachronistic class interests or ideas
derived chiefly from the early experiences of nineteenth century industrialization. Life in
Poland cannot continue to be dominated by political parties which are either coffeehouse
formations or of a doctrinaire persuasion or simply socially anachronistic. Poland needs
modern integrating parties guided by a vision of post-industrial society, ones which combine
knowledge of the modern world (which is the starting-point for any kind of agenda at all)
with lasting moral values (the starting-point for choice of bearings).’’ ‘‘Polska scena obro-
towa,’’ Polityka, 1994; (44). The same could be even more characteristic of several other
countries, such as Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria.
13. Richard Kozul-Wright and Paul Rayment, ‘‘Walking on Two Legs: Strengthening Democ-
racy and Productive Entrepreneurship in the Transition Economies,’’ UNCTAD Discussion
Papers No. 101, August 1995, p. 15.
14. See Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Problems and Prospects of Multi-Ethnic States (Tokyo: The
United Nations University Press, 1986).
135
9
Political representation and
economic competitiveness:
Is a new democratic synthesis
conceivable?
Ian Marsh
Much of the literature on Western liberal democracy laments the

seemingly intractable disjunction between the pluralization of politi-
cal representation, on one hand, and the requirements for running a
competitive economy, on the other.1 One influential line of thought –
public choice theory – even challenges the legitimacy of the patterns
of interest representation that have emerged.2 Moreover, past strat-
egies for accommodating interest groups – corporatism, for example –
have been discredited.3
The favoured paradigm for a competitive economy, at least amongst
policy makers in the Anglo-American world, emphasizes market-
based approaches. There has been a determined effort to reduce the
role of government and to replace politically mediated by market-
mediated relationships. The capacity of the state to influence the
quality of its citizens’ economic experience is held to have been cur-
tailed by such factors as economic globalization, footloose finance,
and the uncertainties of technological development.4
Are there alternatives? One comprehensive approach that pri-
oritizes economic competitiveness and argues for the legitimacy of
interest representation – ‘‘stakeholder capitalism’’ – has been pro-
posed by Will Hutton.5 In Hutton’s analysis, economic efficiency has
not one, but two, necessary and sufficient conditions: well-functioning
markets and trust and commitment. The energy and dynamism that
creates efficiency originates in, and is stimulated by, some combina-
136
Political representation and economic competitiveness
tion of competitive encounters and trusting and committed engage-

ments. These are complementary and reciprocal elements, not conflict-
ing and mutually excluding. Trust and commitment is the soil, com-
petitive markets the vine, and economic efficiency the fruit. The institu-
tional and organizational design challenge is to fuse these elements in a
manner appropriate to the circumstances and purposes at hand.
From this perspective, the economic challenge of competitiveness
is also a democratic challenge, because in the post-1960s Western
polity, commitment is grounded in consent. This invites an appraisal
of present institutions from the perspective of their capacity to
mobilize consent. If they are found to be deficient, it also invites
attention to how they might be reconfigured. Could a virtuous circle
be established between political representation and economic com-
petitiveness? What are the implications for democratic practice? The
following is the sketch of an argument developed at greater length
elsewhere.6
The argument of this paper can be summarized as follows: new
requirements for competitiveness can be drawn from the experience
of the East Asian developmental states, and new requirements
for consent can be deduced from the contemporary pluralization of
organized political actors. Linkage between these developments
requires a different structure for policy-making – one that is capable
of building a strategic consensus about longer-term issues – and a
different approach to interest mobilization that institutionalizes ad
hoc coalition building as the central policy-making strategy. Such
changes would contribute a base of commitment to the pursuit of
economic competitiveness: they would facilitate the mobilization of
consent. This argument is explored empirically in the context of
a two-party parliamentary democracy and the conclusions, to the
extent that they are generalizable, have immediate relevance to
countries that broadly embrace Westminster patterns of government.
In the sections that follow, contemporary patterns of representa-
tion and approaches to competitiveness are first reviewed. The role
of the political system or regime in the mobilization of consent is
then introduced, and particular features of the two-party, adversarial
system are identified. Third, the policy-making requirements which
might arise from new approaches to competitiveness and new patterns
of representation are discussed. The paper concludes by illustrating
how these requirements might be met in a liberal democracy with
an institutional structure and parliamentary culture broadly in the
Westminster pattern.
137
Ian Marsh
Interest groups and competitiveness

Discussion of contemporary challenges to liberal democracies usually
focuses on the pluralization of political actors or the needs of eco-
nomic competitiveness. The following paragraphs summarize some
central elements of this discussion and consider some implications of
policy making.
Interest group pluralization

The post-war period has witnessed a proliferation of political forma-
tions at the level between the major political parties and the com-
munity. The number of organized actors on any issue is legion. This
is easily tested empirically by composing a stakeholder map on any
issue, large or small. These groups vary enormously in size, budgets,
political skills, organizational sophistication, and campaigning capaci-
ties. But the major ones are as effectively organized as any of the
major political parties.
There is an extensive theoretical and empirical literature on this
trend, embracing as it does both interest groups and issue move-
ments. At a theoretical level, one influential strand finds the genesis
of interest organization with the opportunity in any particular policy
system for the organized few to gain special advantage at the expense
of the unorganized many.7 This approach has at least three impli-
cations: interest formations are cast as chronically hostile to public
interests; their democratic legitimacy is called into question; and
public policy should aim to diminish their role and impact. This
approach has guided practice, at least in the Anglo-American world.
An alternative account traces the motive for interest organization
to the egalitarian aspirations of the welfare state-managed economy,
introduced in some form or other in most Western states after the
Second World War.8 Accordingly, the extension of the role of the
state to embrace an array of welfare and economic outcomes – such
as employment levels – ‘‘politicized’’ the role of existing interest
groups or encouraged new groups to form, as a kind of second- or
third-order consequence.
The extension of state activity had at least three consequences for
interest formation: it brought existing organized interests – such as
business groups and trade unions – into a new relationship with the
state;9 it encouraged the formation of groups of beneficiaries, such
as pensioners, single mothers, and students; and it encouraged the
138
formation of groups of providers and professional administrators, for

example doctors, teachers, and economists. The state, because of its
need for information and mediation, often encouraged group for-
mation. Imitation also encouraged this process: those who could
make a case for their special needs in the broader logic of the welfare
state-managed economy could lobby for its benefits. Bidding between
the parties for electoral support encouraged this trend. The net result
was the development of interest organization on an unprecedented
scale.10
These trends were further exacerbated by the emergence of issue
movements after the 1960s. Their genesis was exogenous in the sense
that they did not grow out of the project to secure material equality,
embodied in the welfare state-managed economy.11 Rather, their
emergence signified the renewal of political romanticism, an impor-
tant normative current in the liberal-democratic tradition. The gen-
esis of the issue movements lay in a concern for a cause, rather than
the defence of an interest. Contemporary issue movements recall
political formations last seen in the nineteenth century – suffragette,
temperance, anti-slavery, and the anti-Corn Law movements, for
example. The nineteenth century formations either achieved their
purposes and disbanded, or were absorbed into the major parties
with the rise of collectivism. Their re-emergence at the end of the
twentieth century is another mark of the recession of the collectivist
project.
Major movements have emerged, at least in the Western liberal
democracies, around nine issue areas: these are women, the environ-
ment, peace and the third world, gay rights, ethnic rights, Black rights,
consumers, animal liberation, and the ‘‘new right’’ or neo-liberal
movement. The precise formations can vary from country to country;
this is the Australian list. In each case, the evidence of their organ-
izational capacity and political capability is overwhelming. To state
only the most obvious point, each major extension of the domestic
political agenda over the past 20 years has been driven by one of
these movements. The major parties may have ultimately mediated
the development of legislation, but the original energy in identifying
an issue, championing it for a sustained period, building public sup-
port, and mobilizing political pressure belongs with the movements.
Organized political formations are important because they are
durable. They both represent and sustain an interest or a cause. The
women’s movement, the neo-liberal movement, the environment
movement, the trade unions, business, and so on, all articulate the
139
Ian Marsh
views of some section of the community, but they also seek to shape
the views of others. The space between the major parties and the
community is now filled by political organizations with political
capacity and media skills. These organizations have a demonstrated
capacity to shape opinion on particular issues. The capacity to move
opinion, or at least salient chunks of opinion, is a principal currency
in political influence.
Public-choice discourse generally envisages the destruction, or at
least substantial modification, of interest group/issue movement
power. Yet organized interests perform a legitimate representational
role. Groups of freely associating individuals are a liberal artefact.
They are to be seen not as pariah formations but rather as a kind of
unintended consequence of the post-war order. The public-choice
approach might also be challenged on prudential grounds. The ex-
perience in the United Kingdom in relation to trade unions is
salutary.12 In the alternative perspective outlined above, the mass
parties continue to champion general interests but a kaleidoscope
of particular interests surrounds any particular strategic or tactical
issue.
The alternative analysis suggests a different perspective on the
requirements for interest-group accommodation. It is not true, as
public-choice discourse suggests, that on any issue there are a few
organized ‘‘losers,’’ who thwart action on behalf of public interests,
and a disorganized majority. On the contrary, interest organization
is now so pervasive that on any issue there are organizations of
‘‘winners’’ to match or overwhelm the ‘‘losers,’’ but the transaction
costs in alerting these winners to their stakes (and in mobilizing
them) are not now carried by any agent in the policy-making system.
Stated more formally, the mobilization of interest-group consent
has four requirements: first, proposed action must be justified by the
available evidence; second, it needs to be seen to be fair in some
normative sense; third, the process by which the action is determined
itself needs to be judged to be fair; fourth, compliance by relevant
parties needs to be ensured.13
In sum, this alternative perspective, the pluralization of interest
representation, poses a considerable institutional challenge. A wider
range of groups need to be made aware of their stakes in particular
outcomes. Through the process of mobilization, an ad hoc majority
coalition should be sought – a coalition united by common purposes
and committed to their pursuit. The aim is to approximate better
de Tocqueville’s concept of ‘‘self-interest well understood’’ amongst
140
the ubiquitous groups and to realize Mill’s conception of the tutelary

role of politics.
Development capitalism
The second dimension of the challenge to contemporary Western
liberal-democratic states involves interpretations of the challenge of
economic competitiveness. The currently favoured role of the state,
adopted with varying levels of commitment by major parties in all
Westminster states, eschews any role for government in mobilizing
commitment for economic outcomes. On the contrary, the neo-liberal
approach to government favours contraction of the role of the state
and the replacement of political by market relations. The monetarist
conception of economic policy, the promotion of the norm of alloca-
tive efficiency throughout the economy, and the avoidance of any
selective approach to industrial policy all imply contraction of the
political sphere.
There is, however, an alternative approach in the current academic
literature. Ironically, one persuasive popular exposition is to be
found in a book by a former Minister for Industry in the United
Kingdom, Michael Heseltine. This approach draws not on deductive
theory but on the practice of Japan and the East Asian states, which
had, until recent setbacks, achieved economic development at a pace
unprecedented in Western experience. The financial crisis of 1997
requires a re-evaluation of their experience, particularly from the
middle 1990s. Business–government relations, the role of the finan-
cial sector, financial transparency more generally, and the pace of
technology development all need consideration.14 The Korean case
raises special issues.15 The experience of Singapore and Taiwan
needs, perhaps, to be differentiated from that of the latter; similarly,
the experience of all these states needs, perhaps, to be differentiated
from that of Japan.
Prior to the financial crisis, an extensive academic literature
explored the contribution to business performance of government
and business collaboration. This literature focuses particularly on the
institutional and procedural arrangements that were established.
Collaboration is held to have contributed to superior performance
in three ways: first, in relation to time horizon – both parties were
encouraged to take a longer-term view of economic opportunities and
constraints than either, acting alone, would have done; second, in
relation to goals – collaboration allowed both parties to establish
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Ian Marsh
more ambitious goals than either party, acting alone, would have
judged feasible; and third, in relation to business production and
export performance – collaboration required accountability, at least
in relation to these outcomes.16
What are the formations of this collaboration? The literature on
developmental states is quite clear. Commitment from relevant
stakeholders has been sought in three phases, reflecting the different
major stages in policy development: the first phase involves develop-
ment of a longer-term vision; the second involves the development of
sectoral and functional strategies; and the third involves scrutiny and
oversight. These are considered in turn.
First, a longer-term vision of a desired economic future needs to be
formulated.17 This might cover a desired industry structure and/or
foreseeable technologies in whose commercialization the nation’s
industries will, desirably, play a role. The East Asian states have put
industry structure, not economic magnitudes, at the centre of their
conversations about longer-term outcomes.18 They have linked dis-
cussion of a desired future to current industrial, technical, and com-
mercial competencies and capacities, as well as to skill development
and employment. It could equally be linked to other desired social
outcomes such as, for example, environmental quality. This vision
might be set in an 8- to 12-year framework. Obviously, it would be
cast at a fairly high level of generality. Examples are available from
Japan and the other developmental states. The key point is to begin a
conversation among relevant interests about the rationale for, and
feasibility of, desired longer-term outcomes and to explore the extent
to which purposes are shared and interdependent.
By such means, the process of building understanding of the real-
ism of desired goals, of their implications for other social interests,
and of the possible gains from cooperation might begin, at least
among stakeholder élites. This exercise would be no less fruitful
for political parties than for social interests, such as business, trade
unions, welfare, research, educational, and environmental organiza-
tions. Agreement might be sought, although there would, clearly,
often be a number of issues on which important interests might differ.
As Charles Lindblom has noted, agreement may be far from the only,
or most important, ground for cooperation and consent.19 Other
approaches, such as issue transformation, compensation, deferred
opposition, or procedural acceptance, may provide grounds for
acceptance of an outcome. Even if a sufficiently encompassing vision
cannot be formulated, the process will have revealed the extent of
142
conflict, thus alerting relevant actors to future potential political

challenges.
Assuming that a sufficiently encompassing vision can be identified,
it then needs to be translated into specific sectoral programmes
affecting such areas as industry policy, research and development,
education, and skill development. The literature on developmental
states illustrates the dense institutional networks through which col-
laboration, particularly between business and government, is sus-
tained and fertilized.20 The fact that this occurs in the different
political settings of Japan and the East Asian states complicates the
task in a liberal-democratic society, although it does not alter the
need for a framework of information collection, dissemination, and
exchange and for collaboration between interests.
At a third level, parties need to be held to account for their com-
mitments. This is partly to avoid the ‘‘capture’’ of programmes by
beneficiaries. The public-choice literature holds this to be an unsolv-
able hazard in liberal states. The origin of much of this literature –
the United States – where the institutional structure is largely frozen
by the constitution, is relevant. In practice, the evidence is much
more mixed than the public-choice proponents would have us
believe.21 Nevertheless, there needs to be confidence that public
purposes have not been subverted, and there needs to be the capacity
to change or refine programmes if circumstances have changed.
For example, government purchasing of information technology or
of telecommunications might have been ‘‘bundled’’ in return for a
commitment by one or several suppliers to build desired research
capabilities. Specific incentives might have been introduced for a
particular sector – such as pharmaceuticals – in return for a commit-
ment to an export or research target. In another domain, the trade-off
between employment levels and competitiveness might have per-
suaded the organized trade union movement and workers generally
to agree to a wage norm. In all such cases, institutional arrangements
need to be designed to permit scrutiny and review to ensure that
beneficiaries meet commitments, free riders are identified, or – in the
event of changed circumstances – programmes are modified in a way
that is perceived to be fair to all parties, without subverting public
interests.
These three dimensions of collaboration – the development of
longer-term vision, the design of sectoral programmes, and adequate
capacity for scrutiny and review – add up to a major institutional
challenge in a liberal-democratic setting. Before considering the pre-
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Ian Marsh
cise requirements to which it gives rise, there needs to be further

discussion of the link between the structure of politics (the regime),
the capacity to achieve particular policy outcomes, and the mobi-
lization of interest-group consent.
Regime structure and consent

A description of the structure of politics and policy-making, if it is to
be focused and useful for comparative and evaluative purposes,
requires a template. Because this chapter is concerned with the edu-
cational – or tutelary or consent-mobilizing – possibilities of the state
apparatus, particularly in the strategic dimensions of policy-making,
the idea of political learning provides the appropriate framework.22
At a practical level, in a two-party adversarial regime, political
learning occurs through such day-to-day occurrences as the com-
ments on major political issues made by the individuals who domi-
nate the media. The media naturally turn to senior ministers and the
opposition leader or a senior opposition spokesperson. It can also be
seen in the cast which has the institutional capacity to command
media attention – typically, the leadership élite of the major parties.
It can be seen in who has the capacity to introduce a new issue to the
public agenda. It can be seen in the cast who initiate, or play leading
roles in, the daily rituals of parliament and gain public attention
through them. A moment’s reflection will suggest the extent to which
the leadership élite of the major parties dominates public awareness.
It is hardly any wonder, then, that the media relish and foment lead-
ership gossip. This accords with the reality of a most potent political
power – commanding public awareness.
The characteristics of political learning can be seen in other areas,
such as the horizon of political debate, for example. Generally, the
electoral cycle defines the boundaries. In addition, such learning is
involved in the information directed to citizens about specific issues
that affect them in their roles as pensioners or trade unionists, per-
haps directly through the media of the organizations to which they
belong. In fact, in a two-party adversarial system, interest groups
generally participate in policy-making only through ‘‘private’’ pro-
cesses of consultation and advice established by ministers and offi-
cials, or through party committees. If they disagree with a govern-
ment proposal, their only redress, apart from private lobbying, is
public confrontation.
The characteristics of political learning can also be seen in the lack
144
of any capacity for bipartisanship. On the contrary, the opposition

typically declares black what the government asserts is white. These
features are not the result of the nature of things or the malevolence
of power-hungry politicians, although both these latter factors may
also be present. They are, rather, the consequence of the particular
pattern of incentives and opportunities created by the structure of the
two-party adversarial regime. Political learning is thus a function of
regime structure.
Stated more abstractly and dynamically, the idea of political
learning suggests that the attitudes, expectations, and, ultimately, the
behaviour of citizens is contingent on – and, in important aspects,
influenced by – what they hear, see, and read. This occurs both
directly, in their role as citizens, through the major political parties,
and the formal structure of politics and policy-making; and indirectly,
in and through the omnipresent interest groups and issue movements.
These meso-level political formations represent particular aspirations
and interests and mediate between particular and general interests.
Political learning is one mode of the ‘‘empire of opinion.’’23 The
scope, pattern, and dynamics of this process of communication and
learning depends in important aspects on the structure of politics. A
focus on political learning thus invites attention to the ways in which
the formal structure of politics and policy-making builds awareness,
mobilizes actors, constrains or fertilizes information flows, and thus
shapes the attitudes, expectations, and behaviour of citizens and
policy makers.
Political learning occurs partly through electoral contests, partly
through parliamentary activity, and partly through the interaction
between citizens and their representative groups that occurs in the
development and implementation of public policy on particular
matters. Various institutions – cabinet subcommittees, select com-
mittees, royal commissions, public inquiries, bureaucratic task forces
– might mediate particular phases of this process. By such means,
politics and policy-making occur with greater or lesser levels of
transparency and access which, in turn, produce different effects on
the dissemination of information and the mobilization and alignment
of interests.
Various processes, such as those involved in the passage of the
annual budget or of legislation, also mediate this activity. The media
– whether national, local, or constituency – provide an important
conduit, but other actors – such as governments, oppositions, interest
groups, issue movements, political parties, and public institutions –
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Ian Marsh
are mostly the initiators or constitute the primary settings. Political

learning is a two-way process. Different approaches to policy-making
can affect the ‘‘learning’’ of ministers and of the public service about
policy options, interest-group attitudes, and the requirements for
interest-group management as well as the understanding of public-
policy needs, constraints, options, and trade-offs in wider society and
its component interests. These linkages and effects are fundamentally
a function of the regime structure.
Another way of considering the special characteristics and condi-
tions of political learning is to contrast it with other deliberative and
analytic processes. The mass scale of political learning is one singular
characteristic; its inherently provisional character is another. The fact
that outcomes, if they are reached, bind everyone, including those
opposed or who stand to lose, is a third factor; a fourth is its unique
fusion of power and justice. At one end, political learning draws on
representation, of which one aspect is the brute power of interests
through their capacity to mobilize and organize citizens; at the other,
the metric of political learning is the public interest, which obliges
interests to be accountable in terms of the common good. In other
words, the weighting and balancing of concerns and the distribution
of rights of access, decision, and redress is a collective intellectual and
deliberative process that is suffused with power. For these reasons,
political learning, in Stephen Breyer’s insight, is inherently an expres-
sive and dramatic activity, with an occasional descent to farce.24
In sum, two conclusions are pertinent to the argument of this
chapter: first, in the perspective of political learning, the regime is the
decisive unit of analysis – the experience of learning is grounded in a
drama of power and the structure of power constitutes the mise en
scène for this theatre; and second, the two-party adversarial regime
has structural features which handicap its capacity to build a political
consensus about longer-term issues or to mobilize interest-group
consent. Before exploring institutional arrangements that might
remedy these deficiencies, policy-making requirements arising from
the earlier discussion of interest pluralization and competitiveness
need to be specified more precisely.
Policy-making requirements
Specific policy-making requirements can be derived from earlier dis-
cussions of interest proliferation and competitiveness. First, in rela-
tion to the mobilization of interest-group consent, the pervasiveness
146
of interest organization and the general requirements for establishing

trust and commitment are both pertinent. Second, in relation to eco-
nomic competitiveness, the requirements are shaped by the phases
in the formulation and implementation of economic purposes, in
which collaboration and commitment need to be sought. These con-
siderations suggest at least five requirements for policy-making: first,
a capacity to focus public attention on both longer-term (18–12 years)
and current/medium-term (up to 5 years) issues; second, some capacity
to explore the scope for bi(multi)partisanship; third, the separation
of the strategic policy-making cycle from that concerned with current
and medium-term issues; fourth, a strategic policy-making structure
with equivalent formal ‘‘standing’’ to that concerned with current and
medium-term issues (that is, the process led by ministers and cabinet);
and fifth, a policy-making structure with a capacity for interest mobi-
lization and coalition building. These five requirements are explored
in turn.
Public focus on longer-term issues

The first requirement arises from the need to focus public attention
on longer-term issues. This can occur only through parliament. This is
because the drama of power in which the major parties engage –
directly in elections and indirectly on the floor of parliament – is at
the same time a theatre of political learning. As Bernard Crick has
observed, parliament is the setting for a continuous election campaign.
In the current system, much of the business of government occurs
‘‘privately’’ through ‘‘technical’’ arenas, such as departments and
agencies and their various advisory panels and consultative councils.
This works to separate the politics of policy-making from the struggle
for office between the major parties. If attention to longer-term issues
is to be generated, key elements of the process would need to be sited
in the political arena – that is, in parliament. This is because of the
special role of this institution in public education and its potential to
achieve stakeholder mobilization.
Capacity for bi(multi)partisanship

The second requirement arises from the need to explore the degree
of shared or overlapping purposes between the major parties around
longer-term goals and outcomes. This is partly because of the over-
arching representational role of the major parties and partly because
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Ian Marsh
of the requirements for interest mobilization. Various pressures in

contemporary society conspire to create considerable common ground
between the major parties about desired longer-term economic out-
comes. One is economic globalization: this constrains the room for
manoeuvre available to national governments, as it encourages
national governments to make competitiveness an explicit responsi-
bility. Another pressure arises from electoral change: the older class-
based foundations of party support are eroding. To an increasing
degree, the major parties pursue common constituencies in their
quest for electoral majorities.25 The degree of tacit bipartisanship is
clear in current circumlocutions.
The present adversarial system, in which electoral incentives
encourage one party to declare to be black whatever the other
declares white, distorts public opinion and reinforces disaffected
interests. Shared purposes between the major parties on longer-term
goals need to be made explicit to exploit their impact on public
opinion. Tacit common ground between the major parties needs to be
made explicit to enhance the pressure on interests to rethink their
purposes or to restate their dissent, perhaps in more encompassing
terms. Through such means, group learning about longer-term out-
comes, their interrelationship, and implications might be advanced in
the absence of a degree of agreement between the major parties.
Explicit bi(multi)partisanship, to the degree that it can be mobilized,
would provide focus, momentum, and ‘‘weight’’ to the task of mobi-
lizing public and interest-group consent.
Separate strategic policy-making cycle

The third requirement reflects the need to ‘‘locate’’ responsibility for
strategic issues in a separate policy-making cycle – largely indepen-
dent of the management of current and medium-term issues on which
the struggle for office between the principal protagonists might con-
tinue to turn. This means that an explicit political focus on strategic
questions might be explored. At the moment, longer-term and cur-
rent or medium-term issues are conflated: both are the responsibility
of ministers. As a consequence, strategic issues are rarely raised; if
they are brought forward, this will be typically in an adversarial con-
text. The electoral cycle provides the political context in which major
parties raise and respond to such issues. Their approach is unlikely to
be consistent with the requirements for building understanding of the
issues and the trade-offs between possible outcomes or for exploring
148
the extent to which objectives are shared or overlap with their rivals.
Again, electoral incentives invite one side to declare to be black
whatever the other calls white; any other approach would likely be
dysfunctional from a vote-building perspective. To avoid these out-
comes, a separate policy-making capacity is required in the political
arena which could ‘‘manage’’ the development of a strategic vision.
Framing that process within an 8–12-year horizon, with reviews every
fourth year, should separate such deliberation from electoral contests
and, perhaps, enhance the quality of debate in those contests.
Equivalent formal standing to ministers/cabinet

Earlier discussion pointed to the array of actors who would need to
be mobilized in defining, and building commitment to, longer-term
economic and other outcomes – political parties, officials, interest
groups, and individual experts. Significant conflict between any of
these actors needs to be brought to public attention and the reasons
ventilated in a forum to which all stakeholders have access and the
right of representation. A focus for national and constituency media
attention is also required. This points to a process with equivalent
formal standing to that led by ministers and the cabinet. Its authority
needs to draw on an equivalent democratic legitimacy. This is essen-
tial to its ability to elicit evidence and to achieve public, interest-
group, and media impact. This is also essential to provide the means
to highlight, and perhaps resolve, contentious issues. Finally, as pol-
icy-making unfolds into the administration of programmes, a capacity
for scrutiny and review is required that can hold ministers, depart-
ments, agencies, and interests to account.
Capacity for interest-group mobilization and accountability

The fifth requirement for policy-making arises from the need to
mobilize interests and to hold them to account for their commitments.
A capacity to mobilize interest-group consent is central to the idea of
stakeholding; a capacity to hold particular interests to account for
commitments is essential for effective public policy. Neither of these
capacities currently exists in any developed form. Interest groups
have no legitimate independent standing in the policy-making system.
They have no access to a political structure to ventilate their con-
cerns. No political structure can routinely monitor their commit-
ments. The scale of interest organization points to the realism of
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Ian Marsh
stakeholding as a policy-making norm. But interest mobilization,

integration, and accountability requires an institutional structure of
formal standing equal to that of ministers and departments: it needs
to be able to shadow the policy-making process in departments and
agencies, to provide access to stakeholders, and to call all parties to
account. Such a structure should also be capable of producing the
necessary ‘‘political learning’’ amongst interests – that is, of inducing
reflection about the link between sectional concerns and larger
national outcomes: for example, for trade unionists and employees
generally, the links are between wage claims, business investment,
inflation, and employment levels.26 ‘‘Political learning’’ also needs to
occur amongst all stakeholders to any particular issue, encompassing
potential ‘‘winners’’ as well as ‘‘losers.’’ Through processes of delib-
eration and the other arts and devices of politics, a process of ad hoc
coalition building might become a routine element of policy-making.
By such means, the mobilization of interest-group consent might be
accomplished.
Competitiveness and consent: A role for parliamentary

committees?
How might these five requirements be satisfied? The only possible

candidate would seem to be a ‘‘strong’’ parliamentary committee
system, which could be superimposed on existing patterns of execu-
tive government.27 This would transfigure the existing two-party,
adversarial, political structure. Parliamentary committees are the ap-
propriate institutional mechanism because of their distinctive capaci-
ties and potential. For example, they have the capacity to explore the
scope for agreement between the partisans; indeed, their capacities
are already well demonstrated, at least in the UK House of Com-
mons. Select committees can make policy-making more transparent,
bringing the politics of policy-making into the open. As agents of
parliament they draw on the democratic legitimacy, prestige and
public standing of this institution. Select committees have a formal
standing equivalent to that of ministers. In the event of a dispute with
the current government, protagonists would have recourse to the
voting power of the House. Finally, such a role for select committees
is not without precedent in Westminster parliamentary history.28
What are the requirements for a ‘‘strong’’ system? There are at
least four: first, it should be structured to cover the major depart-
ments of state and the major dimensions of public policy; second, it
150
should have an independent capacity for technical analysis; third, it

should have the capacity to mobilize media and interest-group atten-
tion; fourth, it should be composed of members of whom at least
some share a ‘‘committee culture’’ – that is, they value the inde-
pendent role of members of parliament (MPs) – qualified, but not
quenched, by party allegiance – and value the independent role of
parliament. Ideally, such committees will have demonstrated a capacity
for bi(multi)partisanship, interest mobilization, and public impact.
Many of these requirements have been met by the current select
committees in the British House of Commons. First, the structure is
appropriate: the committees cover the major departments of state
and they have demonstrated a capacity to cover the major phases
of policy-making. It remains to be considered whether a special
committee – perhaps a committee of committees – might need to be
constituted to handle a periodic review of the longer-term vision. If
that proved to be so, the Chairman’s group is a possible candidate.
Otherwise, the Treasury committee has a demonstrated capacity to
undertake longer-term reviews, particularly of economic issues.
One or other of the present committees has demonstrated a
capacity in relation to all the other criteria over the past 15 years.
They have demonstrated a capacity to mobilize interest groups and to
achieve impact on their views and attitudes. They have displayed
considerable bipartisanship on non-contentious or longer-term issues.
The government’s failure to appoint them speedily after the 1987
election, and its endeavour to stack membership and to appoint tame
chairs after the 1992 election, testifies to their potential. The late
Stuart Walkland described the present committees as ‘‘a new House
of Commons in waiting.’’29 The idea of stakeholding and the policy
frameworks associated with a developmental state offers the norma-
tive and substantive base for converting this possibility into actuality.
Are there other requirements? Clearly, the present committees in
the House of Commons have been neutered by the overriding
requirements of adversarial politics. The transfiguration envisaged
here is inconceivable outside a ‘‘hung’’ parliament. Even in that con-
text, it would require a new policy culture concerning the role of the
state in economic competitiveness – a transformation in the climate of
opinion similar to that accomplished by the neo-liberal movement in
the 1970s. In addition, perhaps minor party coalition partners (pre-
sumably the Liberal Democrats) could be convinced of the special
advantages for them in more transparent policy-making. This case
has been argued elsewhere.30
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Ian Marsh
But a hung House of Commons would seem to be the precondition

for this mutation in the policy-making system, and this outcome is not
beyond the bounds of possibility. A hung parliament would become
routine with voting reform. In other Westminster states – Australia
and New Zealand, for example – parallel developments are condi-
tional on specific local factors. In New Zealand’s case, as a con-
sequence of electoral reform, a multi-party future is assured.31 The
precise changes that this might stimulate in the structure of policy-
making will emerge after the pending general election, the first under
the new system. In Australia’s case, the constitution gives the upper
house, the Senate, powers analogous to the similarly named chamber
in the United States. This fact, coupled with the relatively small size
of the Australian parliament, makes the upper chamber the logical
site for a ‘‘strong’’ committee system. A minor party, of broadly
similar persuasion to the British Liberal Democrats, a Green MP, and
an independent currently hold the balance of power. This group has
yet to convert its pivotal role into major structural changes in the
policy-making system. There is a cameo precedent for the role of the
Australian Senate envisaged here in the first decade of the twentieth
century.32
Conclusions
This chapter has explored a possible mutation in the two-party
regime. Liberal-democratic politics is perhaps the highest – perhaps
the most benevolent – legacy of English-speaking culture. The trans-
figuration envisaged here would lift democratic practice to a new
level and be tantamount to an experiment in citizenship. Can a liberal
society, with a tradition of a ‘‘strong’’ state, tolerate wider partici-
pation in policy-making and still realize effective governance?33
The ultimate grounds for such development arise from the moral
basis of the liberal-democratic project. At the deepest level, a more
collaborative (or more participatory) political system would enrich
the norm of citizenship and, through a public drama of power, realize
more comprehensively the tutelary or educational role of politics –
variously celebrated by Locke, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and Mill. In
this world, the horizon of policy-making would be extended, con-
tention would be focused to a greater extent on specific issues, the
policy-making process would be more transparent and accessible, and
ad hoc coalition building would be the key policy-making strategy.
Some see states inexorably driven to a common economic pattern
152
under the influence of international economic forces. This seems at

best a half-truth. In practice, in any particular society, culture, insti-
tutions, and markets coexist in a mutually conditioning, contingent
pattern. The meanings realized in and through both institutions and
markets are based in the surrounding culture. Anything more than
partial convergence is thus unlikely. Perhaps more accurately, con-
vergence on some dimensions will bring into sharper focus differ-
ences on others. If states seek to imitate what they perceive to be
others’ key success factors, they will mostly be able to do so only
through functionally equivalent means.34 This will foster variety, not
convergence. The reality seems likely to be interdependence and the
management of variety – not interdependence and progressive
homogeneity.
At a practical level, the foregoing discussion of the possibilities of
mutation in at least the Westminster versions of democratic politics is
not wholly speculative, although it is remote from present conven-
tional wisdom. The structure of politics is about to be reconfigured in
New Zealand. A similar outcome would occur in the United Kingdom
if the present campaign for voting reform achieves success. Similarly,
in Australia’s case, the erosion of the major parties in the electorate
and the existence of a strong and chronically hung Senate provide a
base for development in the character of the regime.
However, the precise form such developments might take depends
on new conceptions of the economic role of the state and a new
understanding of the significance of democratic pluralism. The con-
ceptions outlined here suggest one path that synthesizes these appa-
rently incompatible developments in and through a new democratic
pattern. This way involves the reconciliation of representation and
competitiveness through a transparent and participatory, potentially
more collaborative, structure of politics. By such means, the liberal-
democratic project might unfold at a new level. Whether a possible
democratic configuration has been realistically envisaged – and
whether present political forces and possibilities have been realisti-
cally portrayed – others, and time, can judge.
Notes
1. C. Maier, ‘‘Democracy and its Discontents,’’ Foreign Affairs 1994; 77 (4): 48–64.
2. For example, Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1983); Samuel Brittan, ‘‘The Economic Contradictions of Democracy,’’ British Journal
of Political Science 1975; (5) 129–159.
153
Ian Marsh
3. See, for example, Martin J. Bull, ‘‘The Corporatist Ideal Type and Political Exchange,’’
Political Studies 1992; 40: 255–272.
4. See, for example, Susan Strange, ‘‘The Limits of Politics,’’ Government and Opposition
1995; 30(3): 291–311.
5. Will Hutton, The State We’re In (London: Vintage Books, 1995).
6. Ian Marsh, Beyond the Two Party System: Political Representation, Economic Competitive-
ness and Australian Politics (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
7. See, for example, Peter Self, Government by the Market? The Politics of Public Choice
(London: Macmillan, 1993).
8. Samuel H. Beer, Britain Against Itself (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982); also Marsh, op.
cit., especially chapter 2, ‘‘A Pluralised Polity: The Rise of Interest Groups and Issue
Movements.’’
9. Kalecki recognized these implications of Keynesianism in 1943 when he wrote that new
levels of interdependence between trade unions, business, and governments would prove
politically feasible only if matched by new procedural arrangements that recognized the
new political role of the former: ‘‘Political Aspects of Full Employment’’, Political Quarterly
1943; (14): 322–331.
10. See, for example, Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (New York: Harper Business,
1990).
11. For a broader perspective on electoral change, see, for example, Ronald Inglebeart, The
Silent Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
12. The Thatcher governments sponsored a range of measures designed to curb trade union
power and reduce, if not eliminate, their influence in wage bargaining. One result was the
abandonment of full employment as a goal of politics. Another was the abandonment of
incomes policy. After 16 years it is possible to make some assessment of their success. John
MacInnes ends a scrupulous appraisal of Thatcher’s impact on the established wage-fixing
system with the judgement: ‘‘There is every reason to believe that decentralisation (of wage
fixing) when combined with workplace-based union organisation is the system most likely to
maximise earnings differentials, maximise earnings for the best organised, and maximise
unemployment and insecurity for the rest.’’ Thatcherism at Work (Milton Keynes: Open
University Press, 1987), p. 124. Writing in 1992, Andrew Oswald concluded: ‘‘There is only
a little evidence that union power fell over (the past) decade. Trade union effects on wages
appear to have remained unchanged.’’ Pay Setting, Self-Employment and the Unions:
Themes of the 1980s, Discussion Paper No. 64 (London: Centre for Economic Performance,
London School of Economics, 1992). In 1993 David Metcalf wrote: ‘‘The market solution to
industrial relations difficulties has singularly failed to improve macroeconomic performance
. . . macroeconomic policy remains a shambles . . . The market has failed to solve our wage
fixing problem . . . surely it is possible to devise a better system of industrial relations and
collective bargaining than one which requires 3 million unemployed to get wage inflation
under control.’’ Industrial Relations and Economic Performance, Discussion Paper No. 129
(London: Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, 1993), pp. 34–
35. Also in 1993, David Blanchflower and Richard Freeman conclude ‘‘the (Thatcher)
reforms were premised on an incorrect understanding of the labour market. In particular,
the reform package failed to recognise the power of insider pressures for rent sharing and
related policies that segment decentralised labour markets in periods of less than full
employment.’’ Did the Thatcher Reforms Change British Labour Market Performance?
Discussion Paper No. 168 (London: Centre for Economic Performance, London School of
Economics, August 1993).
13. Samuel H. Beer, op. cit. pp. 211–212.
14. Lester Thurow, ‘‘Asia: The Collapse and the Cure,’’ New York Review of Books 5 February
1998; 22–26.
15. Mark Tilton, Troubled Tiger, revised edition (Singapore: Butterworth–Heinemann Asia,
1997).
154
16. See, for example, Linda Weiss and John Hobson, The State and Economic Development: A
Comparative, Historical Assessment (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995); Robert Wade,
‘‘Managing Trade: Taiwan and South Korea as Challenges to Economics and Political Sci-
ence,’’ Comparative Politics January 1993; 25(2): 147–167, and Governing the Market: Eco-
nomic Theory and The Role of Government in East Asian Industrialisation (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1990); Chalmers Johnson, ‘‘Political Institutions and Economic
Performance: The Government–Business Relationship in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan,’’
in Frederick C. Deyo (ed.) The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialisation
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); Michael Best, The New Competition (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1990); Alice Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late
Industrialisation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
17. Ronald Dore has written thus of the difference in ‘‘political learning’’ between the British
and Japanese political systems: ‘‘To a Japanese person surveying the British scene, it would
seem incredible that there should not be a . . . certain range of ideas and assumptions about
the long-term future with which people – or, to be more specific, the readers of quality
newspapers – are wholly familiar, the subject of sufficiently commonplace references in
everyday political speech making, that they can be referred to in shorthand words. For
example, the ‘mid 90s problem’, the ‘manufacturing/trade balance problem’, as the Japanese
talk of ‘the population/aging problem’, ‘the structural creditor nation problem’, as taken-
for-granted starting points for policy discussion. This kind of consensus . . . provides legiti-
mation for measures with long-term pay-offs, especially those likely to be bitterly opposed
by people in declining industries, for example, who are likely to suffer dislocation in the
short run.’’ Taking Japan Seriously (London: Athlone Press, 1987), p. 187.
18. See, for example, Michael Best, The New Competition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press; 1990); Bruce Scott, ‘‘Economic Strategy and Economic Performance,’’ Discussion
Paper N9-792-086, 6 September 1992 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School).
19. Charles Lindblom, The Intelligence of Democracy (New York: 1965 Free Press, especially
chapter 14; also Marsh, op. cit. 1995, especially chapter 8.
20. Daniel I. Okimoto, Between MITI and the Market: Japanese Industrial Policy for High
Technology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989).
21. Steven Kelman, Making Public Policy: A Hopeful View of American Government (New
York: Basic Books, 1987).
22. This idea has a considerable genealogy. It can be found in Locke, was extended by Rous-
seau, and developed by Tocqueville and Mill. See, for example, Samuel Beer, ‘‘Two Models
of Public Opinion,’’ Political Theory 1974; 2(2): 162–180; Ronald Beiner, Political Judge-
ment (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1983); Philip Selznik, The Moral Common-
wealth (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1992). Other relevant literature includes
that on the role of institutions in policy-making; see, for example, Peter Hall, ‘‘Policy
Paradigms, Social Learning and the State,’’ Comparative Politics 1993; 25(3): 275–296;
J. Rogers Hollingsworth, Philippe Schmitter, and Wolfgang Streeck (eds) Governing Capi-
talist Economies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and that on the role of ideas in
public polity – see, for example, D. Yankelovitch, Coming to Public Judgments (New York:
Syracuse University Press, 1992); Robert Reich, The Power of Public Ideas (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1988); Peter Hall (ed.) The Political Power of Economic Ideas:
Keynesianism Across Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
23. J.J. Rousseau, Politics and the Arts, translated by A. Bloom (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1977), p. 22.
24. Stephen Breyer, ‘‘Analysing Regulatory Failure: Mismatches, Restrictive Alternatives and
Reform,’’ Harvard Law Review 1979; 92(3): 544–609.
25. See, for example, Richard Rose and Ian McAllister, The Loyalties of Voters (London: Sage,
1990).
26. The possibility of building support for a wage norm is explored in Marsh, op. cit. 1995,
chapter 11.
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Ian Marsh
27. Marsh, op. cit. 1995, chapter 8; also Policy Making in a Three-Party System (London:
Methuen, 1986).
28. Oliver MacDonagh describes policy-making in the early nineteenth century: ‘‘After 1820,
and more particularly 1830, both (select committees and Royal Commissions) were used
with a regulatory and a purpose quite without precedent. It is difficult to overestimate the
importance of this development. Through session after session and through hundreds of
inquiries and the examination of many thousands of witnesses a vast mass of information
and statistics was being assembled. Even where (as was uncommonly the case) the official
inquiry was in the hands of unscrupulous partisans, a sort of informal adversary system
usually led to the enlargement of true knowledge in the end. A session or two later the
counter-partisans would secure a counter-exposition of their own. All this enabled the
administration to act with confidence, a perspective and a breadth of vision which had never
hitherto existed. It had also a profound secular effect upon public opinion generally and
upon parliamentary public opinion in particular. For the exposure of the actual state of
things in particular fields was in the long run probably the most fruitful source of reform in
nineteenth-century England.’’ Early Victorian Government (New York: Holmes and Meir,
1977), p. 6.
29. In Gavin Drewry (ed.), The New Select Committees, 2nd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
p. ix).
30. Ian Marsh, ‘‘The Lib–Lab Pact and Policy Influence,’’ Parliamentary Affairs July 1990;
43(3): 292–322.
31. Jonathan Boston, Stephen Levine, Elizabeth McLeay, and Nigel Roberts, New Zealand
Under MMP: A New Politics (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996).
32. Marsh, op. cit., 1990, chapter 10.
33. Schumpeter’s classic exposition of ‘‘workable’’ liberal democracy emphasizes the necessity
for limited participation: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper Colo-
phon Edition, 1976), esp. chapters 22 and 23.
34. J. Rogers Hollingsworth, Philippe Schmitter, and Wolfgang Streeck (eds) Governing Capi-
talist Economies, op. cit.; also Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalism in Question
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).
156
10
A structure for peace: A
democratic, interdependent,
and institutionalized order
Bruce Russett
Three principles for a peaceful international order

As the Second World War drew to a close, leaders of the great powers
drew up a set of landmark documents, including the Charter of the
United Nations and the foundations for the Bretton Woods financial
institutions. The inspiration for these documents stemmed primarily
from democratic countries, notably the United Kingdom and the
United States. In part, of course, the victors depended upon military
strength. But their new structure for international relations encom-
passed much more: it used trade, economic assistance, foreign invest-
ment, and cultural instruments like the US Information Agency and
the BBC. A key feature was that it was based not on unilateralism
but multilateralism. Its multilateral instruments ranged far beyond
NATO and the rest of the alliance system, depending heavily upon
regional trade arrangements like the OECD, the World Bank, the
IMF, GATT, and many UN specialized agencies. Central UN insti-
tutions, such as the Security Council, were also vital for blessing
peace-enforcement action and managing dangerous confrontations.1
Initially, the hope was that the Soviet Union would be fully inside
this structure. But the rise of the Cold War undermined the effec-
tiveness of the institutions, and many operated without the active
participation of the Soviet Union. Thus, it was only in part a fully
global structure and, in important ways, principally a structure for
managing and strengthening relations among the Western allies. For
that purpose, on the whole it worked well. Now, with the end of the
Cold War, we have seen an opportunity to broaden the earlier struc-
ture to encompass a much larger proportion of the world.
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Bruce Russett
Contemporary policy formulation needs a similar central organiz-

ing principle. To promote its acceptance, that principle would be best
rooted in the earlier experience. It should build on the principles
which underlie the rhetoric and much of the practice, principles
rooted in beliefs about the success of free political and economic
systems. The first of these principles is democracy; the second – now
buttressed by increasing evidence that economic interdependence
promotes peace as well as prosperity – is free markets; the third is
international law and organization. These ideas remain as strong as
ever.
Consider a puzzle about the end of the Cold War. The question is
not simply why did the Cold War end but, rather, why did it end
before the drastic change in the bipolar distribution of power, and
why did it end peacefully? In November 1988, Margaret Thatcher
proclaimed, as did other Europeans, that ‘‘the Cold War is over’’; by
spring 1989, the US State Department stopped making official refer-
ence to the Soviet Union as ‘‘the enemy.’’ The fundamental patterns
of East–West behaviour had changed, on both sides, beginning even
before the circumvention of the Berlin Wall and then its destruction
in October 1989. All of this preceded the unification of Germany
(October 1990) and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (July 1991).
Even after these latter events, the military power of the Soviet Union
itself remained intact until the dissolution of the USSR at the end of
December 1991. None of these events was resisted militarily.
Understanding of the change in the Soviet Union’s international
behaviour before its political fragmentation, and in time recipro-
cated by the West, demands attention to the operation of the three
principles.
1. Substantial political liberalization and a movement toward democ-
racy in the Soviet Union. Consequently, there were improvements
in free expression and the treatment of dissidents at home, in the
East European satellites, and in behaviour toward Western
Europe and the United States.
2. The desire for economic interdependence with the West, impelled by
the impending collapse of the Soviet economy and the perceived
need for access to Western markets, goods, technology, and capital,
which in turn required a change in Soviet military and diplomatic
policy.
3. The influence of international law and organizations, as manifested
in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)
and human rights based on the Helsinki accords, which legitimized
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A structure for peace
and supported dissent in the communist states. Whereas the United

Nations itself was not important in the process of penetrating
domestic politics, the CSCE most certainly was, as were the various
international non-governmental organizations devoted to human
rights.
A vision of peace among democratically governed states has long
been invoked as part of a larger structure of institutions and practices
to promote peace among nation-states. In 1795, Immanuel Kant
spoke of perpetual peace based partially upon states sharing
‘‘republican constitutions.’’ His meaning was compatible with basic
contemporary understandings of democracy. As the elements of such
a constitution, he identified freedom, with legal equality of subjects,
representative government, and separation of powers. The other key
elements of his perpetual peace were ‘‘cosmopolitan law,’’ embody-
ing ties of international commerce and free trade, and a ‘‘pacific
union’’ established by treaty in international law among republics.
Woodrow Wilson expressed the same vision for the twentieth
century. It appeared that Kant was guiding his writing hand when he
formed his Fourteen Points: they included Kant’s cosmopolitan law
and pacific union. Point three demanded
Removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment
of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the
peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
The fourteenth point stated that

A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants
for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence
and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
He did not explicitly invoke the need for universal democracy, since
not all of America’s war allies were democratic. But his meaning is
clear if one considers the domestic political conditions necessary for
his first point:
Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be
no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall
proceed always frankly and in the public view.
This vision once sounded utopian, but later in the twentieth cen-
tury it was picked up again. Konrad Adenauer, Jean Monnet, and
other founders of the European Coal and Steel Community (now the
European Union) sought some way to ensure that the great powers,
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Bruce Russett
who had repeatedly fought dreadful wars over the previous century,
would finally live in peace with each other. To do so, they supported
the restoration of democratic institutions in their countries, built a
network of economic interdependence to make war unthinkable on
cost/benefit grounds, and embedded their relationships in new struc-
tures of European organization.
Democracies rarely fight one another

The following discussion necessarily is merely an overview with ref-
erences to detailed research. I discuss evidence supporting all three
elements of this vision here, although for the purposes of this volume
I focus more on democratization than on the other two elements.
That is also appropriate because the most solid, extensive, and elabo-
rated evidence is for the proposition that democracies do not engage
in war with each other. Much of it is addressed in my book on this
topic, although far more has accumulated since then.2 In the con-
temporary era, ‘‘democracy’’ denotes a country in which nearly
everyone can vote, elections are freely contested, the chief executive
is chosen by popular vote or by an elected parliament, and civil rights
and civil liberties are substantially guaranteed. Democracies may not
be especially peaceful in general: we all know the history of demo-
cracies in colonialism, covert intervention, and other excesses of
power. Democracies may be as violent in their relations with some
authoritarian states as some authoritarian states are toward each
other. But the relations between stable democracies are qualitatively
different.
Democracies are unlikely to engage in militarized disputes with
each other or to let any such disputes escalate into war; in fact, they
rarely even skirmish. Since 1946, pairs of democratic states have been
only one-eighth as likely as other kinds of states to threaten to use
force against each other, and only one-tenth as likely actually to do
so. Established democracies fought no wars against one another dur-
ing the entire twentieth century. (Although Finland, for example,
took the Axis side against the Soviet Union in the Second World
War, it engaged in no combat with the democracies.)3
The more democratic a state is, the more peaceful its relations are
likely to be. Democracies are more likely to employ ‘‘democratic’’
means of peaceful conflict resolution. They are readier to reciprocate
each other’s behaviour, to accept third-party mediation or good offices
in settling disputes, and to accept binding third-party settlement.4
160
Democracies’ relatively peaceful relations toward each other are not

spuriously caused by some other influence, such as sharing high levels
of wealth, or rapid growth, or ties of allowance. This has been estab-
lished by statistical analysis of the behaviour of pairs of states in the
international system since the Second World War.5 Pairs of states
that are democratic are more peaceful than others, even aside from
these influences. The peace between democracies is not limited just
to the rich industrialized states of the global North. It was not main-
tained simply by pressure from a common adversary in the Cold War,
and it has outlasted that threat.
The phenomenon of democratic peace can be explained by the
pervasiveness of normative restraints on conflict between democ-
racies. That explanation extends to the international arena the cul-
tural norms of live-and-let-live and peaceful conflict resolution that
operate within democracies. The phenomenon of democratic peace
can also be explained by the role of institutional restraints on
democracies’ decision to go to war. Those restraints ensure that any
state in a conflict of interest with another democracy can expect
ample time for conflict-resolution processes to be effective and that
the risk of incurring surprise attack is virtually nil.
Non-industrial societies, studied by anthropologists, also show
restraints on warfare among democratically organized polities that
typically lack the institutional constraints of a modern state. Despite
that absence, democratically organized units fight each other signifi-
cantly less often than do non-democratic units. And political stability
also proves an important restraint on the resort to violence by these
democratically organized units. Finding the relationship between
democracy and peace in pre-industrial societies shows that the phe-
nomenon of democratic peace is not limited to contemporary Western
democracies.6
The end of the Cold War ideological hostility is highly significant
because it represents a surrender to the values of economic and,
especially, political freedom. To the degree that the countries once
ruled by autocratic systems become democratic, the absence of war
among democracies comes to bear on any discussion of the future of
international relations. By this reasoning, the more democracies
there are in the world, the fewer potential adversaries democracies
will have and the wider the zone of peace.
The possibility of a widespread zone of democratic peace in
the contemporary world exists. To bring that possibility to fruition,
several fundamental problems must be addressed – the problem
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Bruce Russett
of consolidating democratic stability, the interaction of democracy

with nationalism, the role of economic development and inter-
dependence, and the prospects for changing basic patterns of inter-
national behaviour.
Strengthening democracy and its norms

The literature on the ‘‘prerequisites’’ of democracy is vast and has
often been deeply flawed – ethnocentric and too enamoured with
economic preconditions. Other contributors to this volume know that
literature far better than I, and have contributed to making it much
more subtle and far less ethnocentric. Most (but by no means all)
of the influences on the successful consolidation of democratic tran-
sitions are largely domestic. For the sake of a general point, I refer
only briefly to some of the international influences which, along
with the domestic ones, are identified in Samuel Huntington’s now-
familiar work.7
Among changes that played significant parts in producing the latest
wave of recent transitions to democracy, Huntington includes changes
in some religious institutions (including transnational ones) that made
them less defenders of the status quo than opponents of govern-
mental authoritarianism; changes in the policies of other states and
international organizations, to promote human rights and democracy;
and ‘‘snowballing’’ or demonstration effects, enhanced by inter-
national communication, as transitions to democracy in some states
served as models for their neighbours. Among his list of conditions
that favour the consolidation of new democracies is a favourable
international environment, with outside assistance. While internal
influences are certainly prominent, the international conditions are
impressive also. Favourable international conditions may not be
essential in every case but they can make a difference, and sometimes
a crucial one when the internal influences are mixed.
With economic conditions still so grim in much of the developing
world, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union, and the con-
sequent dangers to the legitimacy of new democratic governments,
external assistance – technical and financial – is especially important.
New democracies will not survive without some material improve-
ment in their citizens’ lives. As a stick, aid can surely be denied
to governments that regularly violate human rights and perpetrate
blatantly anti-democratic acts, such as a military coup or an aborted
election. As to the carrot of extending aid on a conditional basis,
162
broader goals of developing democratic institutions require the crea-

tion of a civil society and are less easily made conditional. Recipients
may see multilateral aid, with conditions of democratic reform
attached, as a less blatant invasion of their sovereignty than aid from
a single country.
A special complication, hardly unique to the current era but felt
acutely now, is ethnic conflict. With its lines of inclusion and exclu-
sion, nationalism readily conflicts with the quasi-universalistic ethos
that ‘‘democracies do not fight each other.’’ Hatreds, long suppressed,
emerge to bedevil any effort to build stable, legitimate government.
An irony is that the initial creation of democratic institutions can
contribute to the explosion of ethnic conflicts, by providing the means
of free expression, including expression of hatred and feelings of
oppression:8 people who have long hated each other can now say
how much they hate each other.
Even if stable and established democracies are generally at peace
with one another, the process of democratization is not always a
peaceful one. A brand-new democracy may be unstable and may face
fierce problems of restructuring its economy and satisfying diverse
interests and ethnic groups. Under these, perhaps temporary, cir-
cumstances, nationalism and domestic problems may sometimes lead
to conflicts with neighbouring states. Nearby autocracies may attack
them because they see their shift to democracy as endangering the
legitimacy of authoritarianism, or their period of transition as a
moment of potential weakness to be exploited. But, importantly, only
those democracies who have autocratic states as neighbours are more
likely to get into military conflicts. One piece of good news is that
democratizing states from the former Warsaw Pact countries have
been substantially peaceful with democratic or democratizing neigh-
bours. Furthermore, transitions from autocracy to democracy are no
more dangerous to international peace than are failed democracies
that revert to autocratic rule. The problem is one of instability and
transition in both directions, not just of new democracies.9
The solution does not lie in less democracy; rather, it requires
measures including external assistance and protection to assist and
speed the transition. It also requires attention to devising institutions,
and nurturing norms and practices, with respect for minority rights. If
democratization is temporarily a problem, the establishment of stable
democracy is key to the solution. The creation of institutions, norms,
and practices to protect minorities has never been easy, but it pres-
ents the fundamental challenge of world political development in this
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Bruce Russett
era. It is worth remembering that the most terrible acts of genocide in

this century – from Turkey’s slaughter of the Armenians through
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others – have been carried out by authori-
tarian or totalitarian governments, not democratic ones.10
Economic interdependence and international organizations

Ties of economic interdependence – international trade and invest-
ment – form an important supplement to shared democracy in pro-
moting peace. Here is the second element of the Kantian/Wilsonian/
EU vision, representing the role of free trade and a high level of
commercial exchange. Economic interdependence gives countries a
stake in each others’ well-being. War would mean destruction, in the
other country, of one’s own markets, industrial plants, and sources of
imports. If my investments are in your country, bombing your indus-
try means, in effect, bombing my own factories. Just the threat of war
inhibits international trade and investment. Economic interdepen-
dence also serves as a channel of information about each other’s
perspectives, interests, and desires on a broad range of matters
not the subject of the economic exchange. These communications
form an important channel for conflict management. Interdepen-
dence, however, is the key word: mutual dependence, not one-sided
dominance.
Interdependence over the last 50 years has contributed to wealth,
to alliances, and to reducing conflict among states so linked. When
countries trade with each other (and this constitutes a substantial
portion of their national incomes), violent conflict and war between
them are rare. The combination of democracy and interdependence is
especially powerful. Democracies trade more with each other than do
non-democracies. States that are both democratic and economically
interdependent are extremely unlikely to initiate serious military
disputes with each other.11
New democracies and free markets should be supported finan-
cially, politically, and morally. Successful transitions in some coun-
tries can supply a model for others. A stable and less menacing
international system can permit the emergence and consolidation of
democratic governments, and peaceful economic growth and inter-
change. International threats – real or only perceived – strengthen
the forces of secrecy, authoritarianism, and autarky in the domestic
politics of states involved in protracted conflict. Relaxation of inter-
164
national threats to peace and security reduces the need, and the excuse,
for repressing dissent and centralizing control of the economy.
The reliance on international law and institutions, and the need for
strengthening them, constitutes the third element of the Kantian/
Wilsonian vision. As expressed in former Secretary-General Boutros-
Ghali’s An Agenda for Peace,12 the United Nations has a new mission
of ‘‘peace-building,’’ attending to democratization, development, and
the protection of human rights. The United Nations is newly strength-
ened and, paradoxically, also newly and enormously burdened.
International organizations, like other institutions, may serve a
variety of functions. Their occasional role in coercing norm-breakers
– for example, by the Security Council – is only one. In addition, they
may mediate among conflicting parties, reduce uncertainty in nego-
tiations by conveying information, expand material self-interest to be
more inclusive and longer term, shape norms, and help generate
narratives of mutual identification among peoples and states. Some
organizations are more successful than others, and in different func-
tions; but, overall, they do make a difference.
An extension of the quantitative empirical analyses referred to
above makes the point. The same kind of analysis that first estab-
lished an independent and significant influence of democracy in
reducing conflict between countries, and then added evidence for an
additional meliorative influence of economic interdependence, has
been carried out on the effect of international organizations. We have
collected information on the number of intergovernmental organiza-
tions (IGOs) in which both of any pair of countries are a member.
This ‘‘density’’ of IGO membership varies from zero for some coun-
tries to over 100 for some pairs of European states. Adding this
information to the previous analysis, we find that it, too, contributes
an additional, independent, statistically significant effect in reducing
the probability of international conflict: the thicker the network, the
fewer the militarized disputes. We still need to know more about how
this effect works, and under what conditions. Together, when two
countries share democracy, interdependence, and numerous IGO
memberships, they reduce by nearly 75 per cent the likelihood that
they will experience any militarized disputes. Furthermore, a rein-
forcing feedback condition operates whereby countries at peace with
each other typically participate in the same IGOs. But these results
represent good evidence for the third and final leg of the Kantian/
Wilsonian/EU structure underlying peaceful international relations.13
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Bruce Russett
Democratization and the role of international organizations
Understanding that democracies rarely fight each other – and why

this is so – has great consequence for policy in the contemporary
world. It should affect the kinds of military preparations believed to
be necessary and the costs one would be willing to pay to make them.
It should encourage peaceful efforts to assist the emergence and
consolidation of democracy. But a misunderstanding of it could
encourage war-making against authoritarian regimes and efforts to
overturn them, with all the costly implications of preventive or
hegemonic military activity such a policy might imply.
The successful defeat of adversaries can be misleading if one
forgets how expensive it can be and especially if one misinterprets
the political conditions of military defeat. The allies utterly defeated
the Axis coalition during the Second World War. Then, to solidify
democratic government, they conducted vast (if incomplete) efforts
to remove the former élites from positions of authority. The model of
‘‘fight them, beat them, and then make them democratic’’ is no model
for contemporary action. It probably would not work, anyway, and
no one is prepared to make the kind of effort that would be required.
Not all authoritarian states are inherently aggressive; indeed, at any
particular time, the majority are not. A militarized crusade for
democracy is not in order.
External military intervention, even against the most odious dicta-
tors, is a dangerous way to try to produce a democratic world order.
Sometimes, with a cautious cost–benefit analysis and with the cer-
tainty of substantial and legitimate internal support, it might be worth
while – that is, under conditions when rapid military success is likely
and the will of the people at issue is clear. Even so, any time that an
outside power supplants any existing government, the problem of
legitimacy is paramount. The very democratic norms to be instilled
may be compromised. At the least, intervention cannot be unilateral:
it must be approved by an international body like the United Nations
or a regional security organization. When an election has been held
under UN auspices and certified as fair – as happened in Haiti – the
United Nations has a special responsibility, even a duty, to see that
the democratic government it helped to create is not destroyed.
Under most circumstances, international bodies are better used as
vehicles to promote democratic processes at times when the relevant
domestic parties are ready. Peace-keeping operations to help provide
the conditions for free elections, monitor those elections, and advise
166
on the building of democratic institutions are usually far more prom-

ising and less costly for all concerned than military intervention.
With the end of the Cold War, the United Nations experienced
highly publicized troubles in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia, as it
tried to cope with a range of challenges not previously part of its
mandate. None the less, its successes, though receiving less attention,
outnumber the failures: it emerged as a major facilitator of peaceful
transitions and democratic elections in such places as El Salvador,
Eritrea, and Namibia; its Electoral Assistance Unit has provided
election monitoring, technical assistance, or other aid to electoral
processes in more than 70 states.
Economic interdependence is also supported by international orga-
nizations. Increasingly, economic development is seen to be depen-
dent upon open markets for goods and capital. Without the network
of regional and global institutions to promote free and expanding
trade, much of the world could readily slip back into protectionism
and trade wars. The IMF and the World Bank have recently become
instruments not just to create and strengthen free markets but also to
ease the transition to democracy and to rebuild societies shattered by
civil war.
The emerging order

Democracy and international peace can feed upon each other. An
evolutionary process may even be at work. Because of the visible
nature and public costs of breaking commitments, democratic leaders
are better able to persuade leaders of other states that they will keep
the agreements they do enter into. Democratic states are able to signal
their intentions in bargaining with greater credibility than autocratic
states. Democracies more often win their wars than do authoritarian
states: in fact, they do so 80 per cent of the time. They are more
prudent about what wars they get into, choosing wars that they
are more likely to win and which will incur lower costs. With free
speech and debate, they are more accurate and efficient information
processors. In wars, democracies exhibit superior organizational skills
and leadership. Authoritarian governments who lose wars are often
subsequently overthrown and may be replaced by democratic regimes.
States with competitive elections generally have lower military expen-
ditures, which, in relations with other democracies, promotes co-
operation. As the politically relevant international environment
becomes composed of more democratic and internally stable states,
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Bruce Russett
democracies tend to reduce their military allocations and conflict

involvement.14
The modern international system is commonly traced to the Treaty
of Westphalia and the principles of sovereignty and non-interference
in internal affairs affirmed by it. In doing so it affirmed the anarchy of
the system, without a superior authority to ensure order. It also was a
treaty among princes who ruled as autocrats. Our understanding
of the modern anarchic state system risks conflating the effects of
anarchy with those stemming from the political organization of its
component units. When most states are ruled autocratically – as in
1648 and throughout virtually all of history since – then playing by
the rules of autocracy may be the only way for any state, democracy
or not, to survive.
But the emergence of new democracies with the end of the Cold
War presents an opening for change in the international system more
fundamental even than at the end of other major wars – the First and
Second World Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. For the first time ever,
in 1992, a virtual majority of states (91 of 183) approximated the
standards for democracy that I employed earlier; another 35 were in
some form of transition to democracy.15 Democracy will not be con-
solidated in all these states. A subsequent report notes some back-
sliding in the number of people living in democracies, though still an
increase in the number of democratic governments.16 Yet states
probably can become democratic faster than they can become rich.
Some autocratically governed states will surely remain in the system.
In their relations with states where democracy is unstable, or where
democratization is not begun at all, democracies must continue to be
vigilant and maintain military deterrence. But if enough states become
stable democracies in the coming decade, then among them we will
have a chance to reconstruct the norms and rules of the international
order. We have already come a long way from 1648.
In time, the current quasi hegemony of the United States and its
allies will fade, giving way to a more diffused distribution of global
power. That diffusion will occur across some very different national
cultures and experiences, in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East,
and (perhaps) Africa. It could give rise to a highly fragmented, com-
petitive, and dangerous international system, or to one in which con-
flicts of interest can be managed without an excessive frequency and
severity of violence. For the latter, there must be agreements to dis-
agree peacefully, and protection for minority needs and cultural dis-
tinctiveness – centrally associated with concepts of democracy – built
168
into the structures of nation-states and, as well, into relations

between states. Those relations will need to be further buttressed by
linkages of economic interdependence and mediated by international
(and, perhaps, supranational) institutions. Wide implementation of
the Kantian/Wilsonian/EU vision offers the opportunity to manage
global power changes in a constructive fashion. Indeed, it may well be
the only alternative to catastrophic destruction.
Notes
1. G. John Ikenberry, ‘‘The Myth of Post-Cold War Chaos,’’ Foreign Affairs 1996; 75: 79–91.
2. In part this chapter summarizes research reported in detail in Bruce Russett, Grasping
the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1993). See also Spencer Weart, Never at War: Why Democracies Will
Never Fight Each Other (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). The larger project
that I lay out here, including the effects of interdependence and international organizations,
is discussed in Russett, ‘‘A Neo-Kantian Perspective: Democracy, Interdependence, and
International Organizations in Building Security Communities,’’ in Emanuel Adler and
Michael Barnett (eds) Security Communities in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
3. My assertions have not gone uncontested, but the predominant evidence remains strongly
in their favour. For a reply to some critiques see Bruce Russett, ‘‘Counterfactuals about
War and Its Absence,’’ in Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin (eds) Counterfactual Thought
Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
4. Russell Leng, ‘‘Reciprocating Influence Strategies and Success in Interstate Bargaining,’’
Journal of Conflict Resolution March 1993; 37(1): 3–41; William Dixon, ‘‘Democracy and
the Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes,’’ American Political Science Review
March 1994; 88(1): 14–32; Gregory Raymond, ‘‘Democracies, Disputes, and Third-Party
Intermediaries,’’ Journal of Conflict Resolution March 1994; 38(1): 24–42.
5. Russett, 1993, op. cit., ch. 4 reports much of this evidence, based on an analysis of nearly
100 pairs of states’ international behaviour in each of the years from 1950 to 1985. Similar
results over a longer period are reported independently by Stuart Bremer, ‘‘Dangerous
Dyads: Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate War, 1815–1965,’’ Journal of
Conflict Resolution June 1993; 36(2): 309–341. One of the most persuasive recent studies is
David Rousseau, Christopher Gelpi, Dan Reiter, and Paul Huth, ‘‘Assessing the Dyadic
Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918–1988’’, American Political Science Review September
1996; 90(3): 512–533.
6. In addition to Russett, 1993, op. cit., ch. 5, see Neta Crawford, ‘‘A Security Regime Among
Democracies: Cooperation Among Iroquois Nations,’’ International Organization Summer
1994; 48(3): 345–386.
7. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
8. Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1993).
9. Edward Mansfied and Jack Snyder, ‘‘Democratization and War,’’ International Security
Summer 1995; 20(1): 5–38 have suggested the dangers of democratization, but their sys-
tematic evidence does not indicate that democratizing states are more likely to fight either
mature democracies or other democratizing states. For the important qualifications about
neighbours and autocratization, see John Oneal and Bruce Russett, ‘‘The Classical Liberals
169
Bruce Russett
Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflic: 1950–1985,’’ International Studies

Quarterly June 1997; 41(2): 267–294, and William R. Thompson and Richard Tucker, ‘‘A
Tale of Two Democratic Peace Critiques,’’ Journal of Conflict Resolution June 1997; 41(3):
428–454.
10. R. J. Rummel, Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder in the Twentieth Century
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1994).
11. Harry Bliss and Bruce Russett, ‘‘Democratic Trading Partners: 1950–1986,’’ Journal
of Peace Research February 1996; 33(1): Ties of Interest and Community,’’ in Gustaaf
Geeraerts and Patrick Stouthuysen (eds) Democratic Peace for Europe: Myth or Reality
(Brussels: Free University of Brussels Press, 1998); Oneal and Russett, 1997, op, cit.
12. New York: United Nations, 1993, paragraph 81.
13. Bruce Russett, John Oneal, and David Davis, ‘‘The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for
Peace: International Organizations and Militarized Disputes, 1950–1985,’’ International
Organization Summer 1998; 52(3): forthcoming.
14. James Fearon, ‘‘Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Dis-
putes,’’ American Political Science Review, September 1994; 88(3): 577–592; David Lake,
‘‘Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War,’’ American Political Science Review March
1992; 86(1): 37; Kenneth Schultz and Barry Weingast, The Democratic Advantage: The
Institutional Sources of State Power in International Competition (Stanford, CA: Hoover
Institution, 1996); Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Randolph Siverson, and Garry Woller, ‘‘War
and the Fate of Regimes: A Comparative Survey,’’ American Political Science Review June
1992; 86(3): 639–646; Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson, ‘‘War and the Survival of Political
Leaders: A Comparative Study of Regime Types and Political Accountability,’’ American
Political Science Review December 1995; 89(4): 840–855; Michelle Garfinkel, ‘‘Domestic
Politics and International Conflict,’’ American Economic Review December 1984; 84(5):
1294–1309; Zeev Maoz, Domestic Sources of Global Change (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1997; Dan Reiter and Allan Stam III, ‘‘Democracy and Battlefield Effec-
tiveness,’’ Journal of Conflict Resolution June 1998; 42(3): forthcoming.
15. R. Bruce McColm and James Finn, Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil
Liberties 1991–1992 (New York: Freedom House, 1992), p. 47. These ratings are somewhat
controversial, but a careful analysis found the Freedom House scores to have the least
systematic bias on any major assessment. See Kenneth Bollen, ‘‘Liberal Democracy:
Validity and Method Factors in Cross-National Measures,’’ American Journal of Political
Science November 1993; 37(4): 1207–1230.
16. R. Bruce McColm and James Finn, Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil
Liberties 1994–1995 (New York: Freedom House, 1995).
170
Regional characteristics of
democracy
11
Asian-style democracy?
Takashi Inoguchi
The past quarter-century has seen a quadrupling globally of the

number of countries that can be considered to be democracies, from
25 to around 100. As a consequence of this democratic proliferation,
the world has acquired new ways of assessing and analysing democ-
racy. In this context, a significant new perception is to approach
democracy as a regional or cultural phenomenon, reflecting historical
evolutionary tracks that differ from those of the Westminster model
of parliamentary democracy and its American variant of federalism.
This chapter discusses the components that make up a hypothetical
Asian ‘‘variant’’ of democracy, sometimes called ‘‘Asian-style’’
democracy.
Behind the new tendency to particularize or localize varying
‘‘cultures’’ or systems of democracy is an important theoretical shift
from substantive to a procedural definition of democracy.1 The clas-
sical definition of democracy by Seymour Martin Lipset is based on
the assumption that a single value system is inherent to all democ-
racies. Lipset asserts that democracy has to meet two basic conditions
– legitimacy and good governance. Democratic governments, accord-
ing to Lipset, must be based on popular representation coupled with
effective management of the economy and administration. But the
Lipset definition corresponds closely only to Western democracies:
American democracy is its point of departure; other democracies are
measured by their proximity to or distance from the American norm.
The contemporary view of democracy departs radically from Lipset:
rather than focusing on values, it views democracy as a set of proce-
dures through which a regime achieves legitimacy. Under this defini-
173
Takashi Inoguchi
tion, the minimum test for a democracy is that it incorporates free

elections and a multi-party system, and guarantees the confidentiality
of the electoral process. Even such a minimalist definition of democ-
racy does not leave out the notion of democracy as a normative value
structure. Increasingly, however, democracy and market liberaliza-
tion are lumped together as general values to be sustained by the
international system.
Yet, when we try to analyse the substantive or value components
of an individual democracy, the tendency is to be overwhelmed by a
bewildering array of cultural, social, and economic variants. Some
analysts argue that the contemporary era of democratic proliferation
is also the ‘‘end’’ of democracy, as form races beyond any effort to
establish prescriptions or norms.2
Democracy in Pacific Asia

Here, I define ‘‘Pacific Asia’’ as the countries that ring the western
shores of the Pacific, from Japan to Indonesia, including China, the
Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, and mainland
South-East Asia. Before discussing the nature and features of Asian
democracy, a brief discussion of the history of democracy in Pacific
Asia is in order.3
The region’s first two democracies, after the Second World War,
were the Philippines and Japan, both through the agency of the
United States. The United States granted independence to the Phil-
ippines in 1946, after a ‘‘trial’’ period of democracy had been inter-
rupted by the Japanese Occupation. Democracy was introduced for-
cibly to Japan during the American Occupation, from 1945 to 1952,
and sustained in the context of the San Francisco Treaty of 1952 and
the US–Japan Mutual Security Treaty.
None the less, Pacific Asia was a bastion of authoritarianism during
most of the post-war period, through the 1980s. After 1955, Japan
effectively adopted a one-party system under the Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP), in which the economic bureaucracy made many of the
important decisions of the Japanese state. In 1972, Philippine Presi-
dent Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, bringing an end to
Philippine democracy until it was restored by the ‘‘People Power’’
movement in 1986.
The image of Asian authoritarianism was reinforced by the de-
velopmental strategies of a number of Asian states from the 1950s
to the 1980s. These states – Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore,
174
Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand – participated in the emerging

global free-market system but justified authoritarian practices on the
grounds that the state needed to be able to act flexibly and forcibly in
order to spur economic growth.
Most of these nations emerged from the Second World War in dire
poverty and disorder, and only a few – notably Japan, Korea, and
Taiwan – had begun the industrialization process prior to the wars of
national liberation that swept the region immediately after the end
of the war. These ‘‘developmental authoritarian states’’ occupied an
economic middle ground between capitalism and Soviet- or Chinese-
style command economies, but were tolerated by the West because
they allied themselves politically with the anti-communist camp.4
In the mid-1970s, a new tide of democratization began in the
Mediterranean, spreading swiftly to Latin America. Starting in the
late 1970s and early 1980s, the wave of democratization permeated
Pacific Asia as well.5
With the end of the Cold War, Pacific Asia was a showcase
of democracy. Of the post-war ‘‘developmental authoritarian’’ states,
all except Malaysia and Indonesia had experienced major political
restructuring. South Korea and Taiwan deliberately introduced their
first free presidential elections in the early to mid-1990s. Singapore’s
authoritarian-minded Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew voluntarily
stepped down. In the Philippines, the People Power movement
toppled the Marcos dictatorship in 1986 and was succeeded by two
democratically elected presidents. In Japan, the monolithic rule of
the LDP came to an end in 1993, followed by a period of political
restructuring and public debate over the nature of the Japanese
democracy.
In 1996, almost all of Pacific Asia is under some form of democ-
racy. Only the remaining Communist states – China, North Korea,
and Viet Nam – and the military dictatorship in Myanmar and
Brunei’s monarchy fail to meet the description of democracy.
The subsequent discussion of ‘‘Asian-style’’ democracy is restricted
to the following political systems: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the
Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand. Obviously,
the diversity of these democracies is immense. The discussion has as
its framework three aspects of ‘‘Asian-style’’ democracy – its empha-
sis on economic performance, its legitimizing values, and its institu-
tional framework. In each case, I seek to generalize the common
themes of ‘‘Asian-style’’ democracy, without insisting that any one of
these themes is represented in each of the eight political systems.
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Takashi Inoguchi
The East Asian Miracle
Good economic performance is an important component of Asian-

style democracy. Even in the Lipset definition of democracy, eco-
nomic performance is an indispensable pillar of democracy. Good
economic performance helps to sustain the legitimacy of democratic
rule. In Pacific Asia, however, there is an additional twist, associated
with higher levels of social discipline and a greater propensity to
sacrifice individual consumption to collective welfare goals. In dis-
cussing this aspect of Asian-style democracy, the World Bank’s 1993
East Asian Miracle report offers a useful starting point for discussion.6
According to the World Bank study, the ‘‘high-performing Asian
economies’’ followed ‘‘a combination of fundamental and inter-
ventionist policies.’’ It argues that the basis of East Asian success was
‘‘getting the fundamentals right,’’ by following sound macroeconomic
practices, investing in human capital, minimizing price distortions,
and remaining open to foreign technology (if not always to foreign
investment). At the same time, the report argues that governments
played a vital role in early stages of development by acting as a market
intermediary, providing information, and setting targets for private
business in ways that were, in Stanford economist Masahiko Aoki’s
phrase, ‘‘market-enhancing.’’7
According to the report, East Asian leaders established their
legitimacy by adhering to a principle of ‘‘shared growth,’’ and East
Asian economies are unique in the developing world for relatively
small income gaps between rich and poor. Finally, the World Bank
report recommends that policy makers in developing countries learn
from export-promotion strategies in East Asia: these gave local
manufacturers initial help in the form of subsidies, domestic market
protection, and other market-distorting incentives, but threatened to
withdraw them from unsuccessful exporters. This ‘‘export contest’’
helped to keep companies on their toes and put the government in
the role of referee, rather than judge.
The East Asian Miracle is by no means propaganda for the Asian
developmental state. If anything, the volume seeks to marginalize
certain key economic strategies of the developmental states by in-
corporating such notions as industrial policy, government–private-
sector cooperation, and directed credit policies into the Bank’s intel-
lectual mainstream. It is not a book that directly challenges the
orthodox neoclassical views of the World Bank.
None the less, Japanese officials, notably Masaki Shiratori, a vice-
176
president of the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund, and Isao

Kubota of the Ministry of Finance, instigated the research effort that
produced The East Asian Miracle. Shiratori, who was Japan’s Execu-
tive Director at the World Bank from 1989 to 1992, challenged the
Bank to examine the experience of East Asia, a process that he
believed would validate both the East Asian record of industrial
policy and Japanese foreign-aid practice. Shiratori hoped that the
Bank would modify its orthodox views and prescriptions in a way that
would be more in line with the realities of East Asian development.
This, as we have observed, did not happen, but The East Asian
Miracle is a well-written and synthetic work. Even though it reflects
the Bank’s neoclassical orthodoxy, it presents the chief elements of
East Asia’s successful economic growth strategies in a clear fashion.
Moreover, these elements correspond closely to those proposed by
a prominent Japanese government official and economist, Eisuke
Sakakibara, as the basis of Japanese capitalism.
Sakakibara, currently Vice-Minister of Finance in charge of Inter-
national Finance, asserted in a 1990 book, Beyond Capitalism, that
Japan has created a new form of capitalism, distinct from American
and European forms of capitalism.8 According to Sakakibara – and
echoed by the World Bank’s East Asian Miracle report – the chief
elements of Japanese capitalism include a strong emphasis on human
resource development, high propensity to save, social trust, and a
small and agile government. All these have contributed to high levels
of economic performance in East Asia, as well as Japan, according to
Sakakibara. Let me deal briefly with each of these characteristics of
Japanese or East Asian capitalism in relation to ‘‘Asian-style’’
democracy.
Human resource development concerns the quality and quantity
of manpower resources made available to economic activities. High
literacy rates are a testimony to this: Japan, Viet Nam, Korea, and
Taiwan have among the highest literacy rates in the world, with 95–
98 per cent literacy rates in the adult population. East Asian culture
is distinctly oriented to high achievement, and both families and the
education systems reinforce the tendency.
A high savings rate is a sine qua non for economic development.
Without high levels of savings, capital accumulation cannot occur,
and capital accumulation is one of the key ingredients for economic
development. Japan was known for its high savings rate for a good
part of the mid- and late twentieth century.
In East Asian societies, social trust provides a foundation for
177
Takashi Inoguchi
profit-making activities. The nature of social trust differs from one

culture to another. But social networks and kinship ties have not
broken down, despite industrialization in much of East Asia – a fact
which has given additional impetus to development.9
Throughout East Asia, there is a marked preference for small and
agile government. This might also be called a preference for a strong
state.10 But I have deliberately avoided the use of the adjective,
strong, because of the ambiguity of its connotations: strong may mean
large and powerful; strong may mean authoritarian and imposing.
East Asian governments tend to be small in terms of staffs and
budgets, agile in terms of their orientation to the market. Economic
decisions are pragmatic and guided by the market. The Japanese
central government’s staff size is about one-half that of the United
States and one-quarter that of France, for instance.
The ‘‘market-conforming’’ characteristic means that governments
formulate economic policy with few ideological or moral considera-
tions. This is in sharp contrast to the policies of some West European
governments and the United States. In East Asia, pragmatic and
market criteria tend to override imperatives based on ideology or
moral values. Such East Asian pragmatism also has consequences for
the institutional framework of Asian-style democracy.
All of these characteristics emerged in the context of authoritarian
regimes and have somehow survived the transition to democracy.
This, of course, is partly a matter of culture. Respect for education,
social preference for relations based on trust rather than contract or
law, and proactive governments, with a strong sense of social re-
sponsibility, stretch way back, particularly in Confucian Asia.
Somehow, these elements have become part of the popular notion
of what constitutes good governance in Pacific Asia. There will be
those who object to the proposition that economic strategy is central
to the legitimacy of Pacific Asian governments. But it is appropriate
to emphasize that spectacular economic performance has given East
Asian leaders confidence in their approach, which involves higher
levels of government intervention – and a more intimate relationship
between government and business – than in the West.
Rather than fade away with the introduction of democracy, the
interventionist strategies associated with developmental states have
gained new life as Pacific Asian governments begin to turn their
attention away from development to the provision of less-quantifiable
public goods, such as improving the environment for technological
creativity and recreation.
178
Asian values
The explosion of democratic growth in the last quarter-century has

been accompanied by a quest for values, particularly values reflecting
indigenous history and sensibilities. Not all of these value systems are
significant beyond the communities which generate them: a Tokyo
neighbourhood may exercise a particularly vigorous form of local
participation and representation, reflecting either the older tradi-
tions of Shitamachi or the brand-new community practices of Tama
City; but such values and ideals say little to villagers in rural
Thailand, or to teenagers in Singapore, or to the South Korean com-
pany worker.
Asian values are, if anything, a broad spectrum of moral prefer-
ences arising from the ancient religions that unite the region, as well
as from characteristic patterns of family and social structure. Not
everyone agrees that these values exist, or are shared in common.
Those who argue that they do exist describe Asian values as a set of
widely shared principles and practices with regard to community,
order, hierarchy, individualism, mutual help, thrift, social deference,
self-sacrifice, and so on. They claim that the particular mix of values
that exists in Pacific Asia is highly distinctive and differs from value
systems associated with other world civilizations, such as the Anglo-
American value system or the complex of values associated with
Islam.
The most vocal and articulate proponents of Asian values are from
Malaysia and Singapore.11 But Japan has its share of critics who
espouse Asian values, such as the diplomat Kazuo Ohura and Susumu
Nishibe, a magazine editor.12 There are advocates of Asian values in
Korea and China as well.
Almost all formulations of Asian values assume a dichotomy be-
tween Asian and Western, particularly American, values. Indeed, the
debate often assumes aspects of a ‘‘declaration of independence’’
from American cultural values. Thus, Asian values are identified as
values neglected (or even despised) by Americans – communitarian
ties with neighbourhood, workplace, and the state; respect for the
elderly; an emphasis on education; collective over individual welfare;
and so on.
Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has spoken
about the difference between Asian and Western values. If Pacific
Asia attempts to practise American-style individualism, Lee says, it
will collapse into chaos.13 Hence, the Singaporean government offered
179
Takashi Inoguchi
no apologies for the caning of an American teenager, Michael Fay, in

the early 1990s for violating Singapore’s laws against the defacement
of private property. Fay had gone on a spree, painting graffiti on
cars.14 At about the same time as this incident, the South Korean
government denied a visa to one of America’s most famous rock
musicians, Michael Jackson, fearing that he might corrupt the morals
of Korean youth.
An even more dramatic example of Asian values is Singapore’s
introduction of legislation that makes it a crime for children to fail to
support their parents, except in instances of egregious child abuse.15
This is communitarianism in action, Singapore style. The legislation
has two major purposes: one is to uphold the sanctity of family ties
and respect for age – both important components of the Asian value
structure; the second is to place the onus on the public to support
the elderly, removing the burden from the government to the extent
possible.
It is important to note that the Asian values debate is a subset of a
larger argument about the existence and relevance of major systems
of culture, embodied in civilizations. The Harvard political scientist
Samuel Huntington has been the major proponent in the United
States of the notion that value systems play an important role in
international relations.16
A non-Westminster institutional model

The Lipset framework makes it possible to discuss Asian democracy
without ever looking at political institutions. But the political institu-
tions common to democracies in Pacific Asia do have characteristics
that differ from – and are even at odds with – Western democracy.
Let us look at some of them.
Asian democracies are not based on the Westminster model. To
generalize the features of political institutions in Asian democracies,
most combine a small and agile government with a system of one-
party rule or coalition rule. Pacific Asia’s small, lean bureaucracies
tend to be endowed with considerable authority, which enables
them to adopt highly efficient strategies both to conform to markets
and to anticipate them.17 Asian political parties tend to reinforce
bureaucratic rule because they bring many social groups under their
umbrella.18 The fact that political parties represent a consensus view
makes it easier for bureaucracies to act: they can be confident that
180
they reflect the majority view, as expressed by the dominant party or

coalition. On the other hand, the political party structure typical of
Pacific Asia works against any attempt to focus on single issues, or to
take decisive action, because such an attempt would break the hard-
won consensus. The political parties cede single issues and decision-
making to the non-elected bureaucrats.
Political institutions in Pacific Asia have the following features. In
the first place, the typical political party in Pacific Asia is a catch-all
organization. Its policy tenets are vague, but it constructs and operates
through extremely strong personal networks. The main function of
political parties is to recruit support for the government at the grass-
roots level.
There are few instances of two-party systems with regular alter-
nation of the governing party in Pacific Asia.19 There is also a
noticeable absence of parties based on ideological or religious tenets.
Ideology normally hampers a party’s ability to achieve power, in the
Pacific Asian context.
A second feature of Pacific Asia political institutions is the
relatively high prestige and morale of the bureaucracy. The bureau-
cracies of Pacific Asia tend to believe in themselves as protectors of
the people. However patronizing and self-serving such a conception
may be, the bureaucracies of Pacific Asia tend to be less constrained
by vested interests – unlike the politicians – and to associate them-
selves and their role with the pursuit of national interest.20 As long as
the political parties are doing their job, placating grass-roots interests
and personalities, the bureaucracies are able to conduct their busi-
ness free from ‘‘distraction.’’
So far, there has been little attention paid to the complex of polit-
ical institutions associated with Asian democracy. Perhaps this aspect
will be played up only if a debate begins over whether Western
democracies should act to restrain the two-party system. Interest-
ingly, the trajectory of political reform in Japan since 1993 has been
to return to a system of one-party dominance, or rule by coalition,
after a period of party reorganization.21
One must be cautious in rendering the characteristics of democracy
in the Pacific Asian region. All too often, ‘‘Asian-style’’ democracy
has been associated with developmental dictatorship, cultural Orien-
talism, and political authoritarianism.22 This chapter has attempted
to analyse the major components of Pacific Asian democracy and
place these in a broader context.23
181
Takashi Inoguchi
Notes
1. Do Chul Shin, ‘‘On the Third Wave of Democratization: An Evaluation and Synthesis of
Recent Theory and Research,’’ World Politics October 1994; 47(1): 135–170.
2. Jean-Marie Guehenno, La fin de la democratie (Paris: Flammarion, 1993).
3. Robert H. Taylor (ed.) The Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia: Delusion or Necessity?
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Anek Laothamatas (ed.) Democratization
in Southeast and East Asia (Singapore: Institute for South-East Asian Studies, 1996).
4. A number of scholars have contributed to the idea of the developmental state in East Asia.
See Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1981); Alice Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Richard Rosecrance, The Trading State (New York:
Norton, 1985); Robert Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of
Government in Taiwan’s Industrialization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). See
also Takashi Inoguchi, ‘‘Japan: Reassessing the Relationship Between Power and Plenty,’’
in Ngaire Woods (ed.) Explaining International Relations Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1996), pp. 241–258.
5. James Cotton, ‘‘Consolidation versus Containment in East Asian Democracy,’’ paper pre-
sented at the Seminar on Economic Change, Political Pluralism and Democratic Reform in
the Asian Region, Adelaide, Australia, 21–22 April 1996.
6. The East Asian Miracle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
7. Masahiko Aoki, Kevin Murdock, and Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara, Beyond the East Asian
Miracle: Introducing the Market-enhancing View, CEPR Publication No. 442 (Stanford
University: Center for Economic Policy Research, October 1995).
8. Eisuke Sakakibara, Shihonshugi o koeta Nihon (Japan Has Surpassed Capitalism) (Tokyo:
Toyo keizaishimposha, 1990).
9. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free
Press, 1996). The seminal work relating social trust or social capital to the deepening of
democracy is Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
10. C. Johnson, op. cit.
11. Kishore Mabubhani, ‘‘The West and the Rest,’’ The National Interest Summer 1992; (28): 3–
13. Bihari Kausikan, ‘‘Asia’s Different Standard,’’ Foreign Policy Fall 1993, (92): 24–41.
From Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, Noordin Sophie, and Chandra Muzaffar are among
those arguing broadly in similar directions. See also Takashi Inoguchi, ‘‘Human Rights and
Democracy in Pacific Asia: Contention and Collaboration between the U.S. and Japan,’’ in
Peter Gourevitch, Takashi Inoguchi, and Courtney Purrington (eds) United States–Japan
Relations and International Institutions After the Cold War (La Jolla: University of Cal-
ifornia Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, 1995), pp. 115–153.
12. Kazuo Ohura, Tozai bunka masatsu (East–West Cultural Conflict) (Tokyo: Chuokoronsha,
1990). Susumu Nishibe, Editor of Hatsugensha, a monthly magazine, registers the voice of
preserving/resuscitating some Japanese norms, values, and practices presumably conducive
to Japan’s dynamic adaptation to the changing environment firmly anchored with its cul-
tural identity.
13. Takashi Inoguchi, ‘‘The Political Economy of Conservative Resurgence under Recession:
Public Policies and Political Support in Japan, 1977–1983,’’ in T. J. Pempel (ed.) Uncom-
mon Democracies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 189–225. Also see The
Economist, ‘‘Freedom and Prosperity,’’ 29 June 1991, pp. 15–18.
14. The irony is that, according to a public opinion poll in the United States, some 60 per cent
of respondents agreed with the punishment.
15. This observation comes from Shad S. Faraqui, MARA Institute of Technology, Malaysia, at
the Human Rights Seminar, United Nations University, 4–5 July 1996.
16. Samuel Huntington, ‘‘Clash of Civilizations?’’ Foreign Affairs Summer 1993; 72: 22–49.
182
17. Takashi Inoguchi, ‘‘The Political Economy of Conservative Resurgence under Recession,’’
op. cit.
18. Under my editorship, the University of Tokyo Press published six volumes under the East
Asian states and societies series (Japan, Taiwan, China, South and North Korea, and Viet
Nam). Japan: The Governing of a Great Economic Power, my own volume, was published in
1993 and will be published in English by Routledge in 1998.
19. Arend Lijphart, Democracies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); Ian Marsh,
Beyond the Two Party System: Political Representation, Economic Competitiveness and
Australian Politics (Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
20. Takashi Inoguchi, ‘‘The Pragmatic Evolution of Japanese Democratic Politics,’’ in Michelle
Schmiegelow (ed.) Democracy in Asia (Frankfurt: Campus-Verlag, and New York: St
Martin’s Press, 1997, pp. 217–231; ‘‘The Japanese Political System: Its Basic Continuity in
History’s Eye,’’ Asian Journal of Political Science December 1997; 5(2): 65–77.
21. See Takashi Inoguchi, ‘‘The Rise and Fall of Reformist Governments: Hosokawa and Hata,
1993–1994,’’ Asian Journal of Political Science December 1994; 2(2): 73–88.
22. David Williams, Japan: The End of History (London: Routledge, 1993); Japan and the
Enemies of the Open Political Science (London: Routledge, 1995).
23. A recent special issue of World Development examines the East Asian miracle theories, and
the social capital theories of Putnam and others are examined carefully both conceptually
and empirically. Peter Evans, ‘‘Introduction: Developmental Strategies and the Public–
Private Divide,’’ and other articles in World Development 1996; 24(6): 1033–1037.
183
12
Post-communist Europe:
Comparative reflections
The continuing tumultuousness of events in post-communist Europe,

especially in the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia,
demonstrates the proximity between democracy and conflict. This
region reflects conflicts over power, the state, and citizenship. The
question is whether, through these contests, democratic practice can
become ‘‘the only game in town.’’ From this perspective, all the coun-
tries of post-communist Europe can and should be (at least, briefly)
compared. Without doubt, in some of the 27 post-communist coun-
tries – such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, or the Serbian-dominated
rump Yugoslavia – a realistic evaluation must lead to the conclusion
that democracy has barely been established and that few weighty
actors are even trying to put democracy on the agenda.1 However,
in some other countries in post-communist Europe – for example the
Czech Republic, Hungary, and possibly even Lithuania – democratic
practices are near to becoming ‘‘the only game in town.’’ Thus, it is
indeed appropriate to focus upon democracy, but it is necessary to
develop the critical categories, frames of reference, and evidence that
will allow a comparison within post-communist Europe.
As a contribution to the development of such critical categories,
frames of reference, and evidence, three points are developed. First,
is the danger of ‘‘inverting the legitimacy pyramid’’ by activists and
analysts who believe that the market will legitimate democracy. The
history of successful democratization indicates that the reverse nor-
This chapter is reprinted, with changes, by permission of the authors and the Johns Hopkins
University Press from Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and
Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, 1996.
184
Post-communist Europe
mally occurs: democracy legitimates the market, especially capital-

ism. Second, many activists and analysts also argue that not only is
there the well-known simultaneity problem but also that economic
and political results must be achieved simultaneously or poor eco-
nomic results will rapidly derail support for democratization; this is a
questionable argument. We give empirical data and a theoretical
explanation to support our cautiously optimistic hypothesis concern-
ing support for democracy as it relates to East Central Europe and
our much less optimistic hypothesis for democratization in the non-
Baltic countries of the former Soviet Union. Third, much of the pop-
ular press saw the return to power of former Communist political
leaders and parties in such vanguard transitions to democracy as
Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania as a ‘‘return to communism’’ and as
a major reversal of democracy. Such an analysis is faulty, both con-
ceptually and politically.
The danger of an inverted legitimacy pyramid

The Spanish sequence of political reform, socio-economic reform,
and then economic reform was probably optimal for the consolida-
tion of democracy in that country. Generally, it is problematic to
insist on any sequence because, historically, quite different sequences
have, in fact, worked.
Most analysts of post-communist Europe, especially policy advo-
cates, implicitly rejected a Spanish-like sequence as infeasible because
of the perceived need for simultaneous economic and political change.
Indeed, despite frequent obeisance to this simultaneity imperative,
domestic and foreign activists and advisors often privileged economic
change first. Solid research is just beginning on the question of
sequence in post-communist politics, but, on theoretical (and now
historical) grounds, more consideration should have been given in the
post-communist cases to the cost of neglecting political reforms,
especially state reconstruction. Why?
Theoretically, because the issue for modern democracies is not the
creation of a market, but the creation of an economic society. Further,
logic implies that a coherent regulatory environment and the rule of
law is required to transform command economies into economic
societies. If this is so, then a major priority must be to create demo-
cratic regulatory state power.2 In this respect, two empirical extremes
are Spain and the former USSR: attention to electoral sequence and
constitutional change contributed to effective power creation and
185
state reconfiguration in Spain; inattention to electoral sequence – by

Gorbachev – and constitutional change – by Gorbachev and Yeltsin –
contributed to power erosion and a decomposing state in the USSR
and Russia.
Empirically, post hoc studies – as opposed to ex ante doctrinal
advocacy – of privatization and structural economic change are just
beginning to appear for the region. However, the best studies of
the region are confirming a pattern about state power already docu-
mented in Latin America – that effective privatization (often mis-
takenly equated with ‘‘state shrinking’’) is best done by relatively
strong states that are able to implement a coherent policy. The essence
of a rich body of research on privatization and state restructuring
shows that effective privatization entails less state scope but greater
state capacity.3 In the context of a post-communist, post-command
economy, a state with a rapidly eroding capacity simply cannot man-
age a process of effective privatization.4
It is important to note that the key is a strong state and not neces-
sarily a democracy. A strong non-democratic state in Chile privatized
reasonably effectively. However, in a post-communist setting such
as Russia, where the old communist party-state has imploded or is
no longer effective, privatization can proceed in an orderly way only
after the state has been reconstructed. Once the totalitarian or post-
totalitarian state, with its extensive command economy, has collapsed,
given up, imploded, or disintegrated, state structures must be put in
place. But many of the non-democratic ways of restructuring the state
are less available as alternatives than normally thought.
Some people argue – particularly in Russia – that a Pinochet is
needed. But in Russia and many other countries of the former Soviet
Union a coherent state and a unified military organization of the sort
that supported Pinochet no longer exist.5 An authoritarian, or per-
haps a semifascist, party-state in Russia is also sometimes held up as
a powerful alternative ruling model. However, a single party with
ideological legitimacy and the resources to assume and implement
non-democratic power would require the emergence and construc-
tion of a state-wide hegemonic semifascist movement, and this also
seems unlikely. Even an authoritarian or semifascist Russia would
still be an example of what Ken Jowitt describes as a polity with a
weak state and a weak society.6 The quiescence of Franco’s post-Civil
War Spain is a less-likely outcome of a Russian Fascist government
than is a series of Chechnyas and Afghanistans. Some people argue
for a China-type solution, but the Chinese model, which could possibly
186
have been a pre-perestroika alternative, is also no longer available as

an option in Russia. Unlike in Russia, the Chinese non-democratic
regime and state never broke down. Indeed, the Chinese regime never
initiated or even considered a process of democratization and under-
went only a very selective and partial process of liberalization.
For Russia, the cost of a weak democratic state is high but, at the
same time, many of the non-democratic solutions either are not avail-
able or would probably entail a repressive but still weak state. In
Steven Lukes’ useful formulation, such a state might have repressive
power over more people but still lack the power to reconstruct a
prosperous and peaceful Russia.7 Thus, in a context where the party-
state has imploded and a command economy is no longer feasible, the
state must be reconstructed. Far from being an irrelevance, some
degree of democratic legitimacy can be a way of helping in this state
reconstruction.
This leads to the central point about legitimacy and privatization.
In their rush to move away from state-controlled economies, some
free-market enthusiasts have endorsed privatization as the most im-
portant component of the post-1989 process. Privatization, however
it is accomplished, is often seen as creating the key structural pre-
requisite for market democracies and the economic foundations for
new democracies; this is highly questionable. Repeated surveys in
democracies show that at the apex of a hierarchy of democratic
legitimacy are the overall democratic processes – elections, multiple
parties, and free speech. At a lower level in the legitimacy hierarchy
are incumbents, such as parliamentarians. Political institutions related
to democracy are normally more legitimate than such economic insti-
tutions in market economies. Furthermore, economic institutions –
market economies – are always more legitimate than capitalist actors.8
Thus, on theoretical grounds, the endeavour to legitimate the post-
1989 democracies by the efficacy of the new capitalists and thus to
increase – by whatever means – the number of new capitalists, is to
invert the legitimacy pyramid.
Such an inverted legitimacy pyramid is especially problematic in
those countries, such as Russia, where privatization has been virtually
unregulated, highly unequal, and often illegal.9 In such contexts, the
former holders of political power – such as the ‘‘red bourgeoisie’’ in
the state enterprises or state financial or trading institutions – have
been in a privileged position to transform their former political power
into new types of economic power by numerous forms of ‘‘sponta-
neous’’ privatizations or thefts. Comparative surveys repeatedly show
187
that in most societies some legitimacy is given to earned or inherited

private property and to entrepreneurship. However, the new Russian
capitalists of the former red bourgeoisie cannot draw upon these
principles of legitimation. Indeed, the origins of their new wealth are
often condemned as an illegitimate appropriation of public property
and may leave a legacy of distrust both of market economies – which
will be seen as mafia economies – and of the democracies that tol-
erated, or even created, these mafia economies. Much more political,
theoretical, and research attention should be given to evaluating the
democratic consequences of attempting to build new democratic
polities and economic societies on this inverted legitimacy pyramid.
The essence of the empirical findings and historical studies of West-
ern democracies has always been that political systems of democracy
legitimate market economies, not the reverse. This is because, as long
as a democratic majority does not question private ownership of
the means of production when it can do so legally, that property is
protected.10
Simultaneity of results versus the comparative politics of

deferred gratification
The assumption that economic reform – the market and privatization
– can legitimate the new democracies is also based on the dubious
assumption that economic success and the creation of greater wealth
can be achieved simultaneously with the installation and legitimation
of democratic institutions. In fact, for imploded command economies,
democratic polities can and must be installed and legitimized by a
variety of appeals before the possible benefits of a market economy
actually materialize fully. Many analysts and political advisers dismiss
the argument for prior state restructuring because of their assump-
tion that, because of people’s demands for material improvements,
economic and political gains must not only be pursued but must
occur, simultaneously. Some even argue that, though simultaneous
economic and political reforms are necessary, such simultaneity is
impossible.11 We can call these two perspectives about the relation-
ship between economies and democratization the tightly coupled
hypothesis and the loosely coupled hypothesis, respectively.
Loosely coupled does not mean that there is no relationship
between economic and political perceptions, but only that the rela-
tionship is not necessarily one to one. For at least a medium-range
time horizon, people can make independent (and even opposite)
188
assessments about political and economic trends. Furthermore, if

assessments about politics are positive, they can provide a valuable
cushion against painful economic restructuring.12 What evidence is
there concerning the relationship between economics and democra-
tization in the first five years of post-communist Europe? In terms of
relatively hard economic data, of the 27 countries in post-communist
Europe, no country except Poland experienced positive growth in
1992. Indeed, all post-communist countries in 1993 were still well
below their 1989 industrial output levels (table 12.1).
If we look at the subjective perception of economic well-being in
the six East Central European Warsaw Pact countries, the mean
positive rating (on a scale of þ100 to 100) among those polled
between November 1993 and March 1994 for the Communist eco-
nomic system was 60.2. But the mean positive rating of the post-
communist economic system was only 37.3, a drop of almost 23
points. The ‘‘tightly coupled’’ hypothesis would predict that the atti-
tudes toward the political system would drop steeply, even if not the
full 23 points. What does the evidence show? In the same survey, the
mean positive ranking of the Communist political system was 45.7. A
one-point drop in political evaluation for every point drop in eco-
nomic evaluation (a perfectly coupled correlation) would yield a
positive evaluation of the political system of only 22.6. However,
positive ranking for the post-communist system did not fall as the
‘‘tightly coupled’’ hypothesis would predict (table 12.2).
How can we explain such incongruence? First of all, human beings
are capable of making separate and correct judgements about a bas-
ket of economic goods (which may be deteriorating) and a basket of
political goods (which may be improving). In fact, in the same survey,
in all six countries of East Central Europe the citizens polled judged
that, in important areas directly affected by the democratic political
system, their life experiences and chances had overwhelmingly im-
proved, even though in the same survey they asserted that their per-
sonal household economic situation had worsened (table 12.3).
Such incongruence cannot last for ever; however, it indicates that,
in a radical transformation such as is occurring in East Central
Europe, the deterioration of the economy does not necessarily trans-
late rapidly into erosion of support for the political system.13
Table 12.3 indicates that the perceived legitimacy of the political
system has given democratic institutions in East Central Europe an
important degree of insulation from the perceived inefficacy of the
new economic system.14 Indeed, most of the people in East Central
189
190
Table 12.1 GDP, industrial output, and peak inflation rates in post-communist countries: 1989–1995
GDP (percentage change) Inflation rate

Industrial (at peak year
1994 1995 output 1993 during 1989–
Country Measure 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 (estimated) (projected) (1989 ¼ 100) 1993)
Albania GDP 9.8 10:0 27:1 9:7 11.0 7.0 5.0 52 237 [92]
Industrial production 5.0 7:6 36:9 44:0 10:0 naa na
Armenia GDP 14.2 7:4 11:0 52:0 15:0 0 na na 10,900 [93]
Azerbaijan GDP na 11:7 0:7 22:6 13:0 15:0 10:0 na 1,174 [92]
Belarus GDP 8.0 3:0 1:2 9:6 11:6 26:0a 10 76 2,775 [93]
Industrial production na na 6:8 10:2 6:0 na na
Bulgaria GDP 0.5 9:1 11:7 5:6 4:2 2 4 na 339 [91]
Industrial production 1:4 16:5 27:3 22:0 10:0 4 na
Croatia GDP 1:6 8:6 14:4 9 3:2 1 6 57 1,150 [92]
Industrial production na 11:3 28:5 15:0 6:0 3:0 6
Czech GDP na 0:4 14:2 7:1 0:3 3 6 57 52 [91]
Republic Industrial production na 3:5 22:3 10:6 6:3 0 na
Estonia GDP 1:1 8:1 11 14:2 3:2 5.0 6.0 54 965 [92]
Macedonia GDP na 9:9 12:1 14:0 14:1 7:2 0 na 1,691 [92]
Industrial production na 10:6 17:2 16:1 17:2 na na
Georgia NMP 4:8 12:4 20:8 43:4 40:0 35:0 na na na
Industrial production 6:9 29:9 24:4 43:4 21:0 na na
Hungary GDP 0.7 3:5 11:9 4:3 2:3 3.0 3.0 69
Industrial gross output 1:0 9:6 18:2 9:8 4:0 9.0 6.0
Kazakhstan GDP 0:4 0:4 13:0 14:0 12:0 25:0 na 68 1,925 [93]
Kyrgyzstan GDP 3.8 3.2 5:0 25:0 16:0 10 1.5 53 1,354 [93]
Industrial production na na 0.0 27:0 25:0 na na
Latvia GDP 6.8 2.9 8:3 33:8 11:7 3 3 38 958 [91]
Gross mfg output na na 0.4 48:7 32:6 na na
Lithuania GDP 1.5 5:0 13:1 37:7 16:2 4 4 na 1,175 [92]
Industrial production na na na 50:9 42:7 na na
Moldova GDP 8.8 1:5 11:9 25:0 14:0 20:0 0 837 [93]
Poland GDP 0.2 11:6 7:6 1.5 3.8 4.5 5.0 69 640 [89]
Industrial production 1:4 26:1 11:9 3.9 5.6 na na
Romania GDP 5:8 5:6 12:9 13:6 1.0 2.0 3.0 47 296 [93]
Industrial output 5:3 23:7 22:8 21:9 1.3 2.0 na
Russia GDP na na 13:0 19:0 12:0 15:0 7:0 60 2,138 [92]
Industrial production na 0:1 8:0 18:8 16:0 21:0 12:0
Slovakia GDP 1.4 0:4 14:5 7:0 4:1 3.5 3.0 55 58 [91]
Industrial production 0:7 3:6 17:8 14:0 10:6 5.5 na
Slovenia GDP 1:8 4:7 8:1 5:4 1.0 5.0 6 46 247 [91]
Industrial production 0:1 10:3 11:3 12:0 2:6 6.6 5.1
Tajikistan NMP 2:9 1:6 12:5 33:7 28 na na 56 7,344 [93]
Industrial production 1.9 1.9 7:4 35:7 na na na
Turkmenistan GDP na 2.0 4:7 5:3 7:6 10:0 5:0 90 1,875 [93]
Ukraine GDP 4.1 3:4 12 17:0 14:0 23:0 5:0 79 10,155 [93]
Industrial production 2.8 0:1 4:8 6:5 8:0 30:0 na
Uzbekistan GDP 3.7 1.6 0:5 11:1 2:4 2:6 2.0 94 927 [93]
Industrial output 3.6 1.8 1.8 12:3 8:3 na na
Yugoslavia Industrial output na na na na na na na 35 3:72 1013 [93]
Source: The yearly 1989–1995 data were supplied by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London, January 1995. The figures
for 1994 are estimates: those for 1995 are projections. A common method was used in the data collection. The 1993 industrial output data in relation to
a baseline of 100 for 1989 are from Jacek Rostowski, Macro-economic Instability in Post-Communist Countries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forth-
coming). No data were available for Bosnia. The data on inflation rates are also from Rostowski. The figure for inflation in Yugoslavia (3.72 times 10
to the 13th power) computes to one of the all-time world hyperinflation rates of over 37 trillion.
a. na, not available.
191
Table 12.2 Percentages expressing positive attitudes toward communist versus

post-communist economic systems and political systems: Responses from six East
Central European countries
Percentage of Percentage of
positive responses positive responses
Question Country for 1989 for 1993–1994
‘‘Here is a scale ranking how Bulgaria 66 15

the economy works: the top, Czech 42 66
plus 100 is the best; the Hungary 75 27
bottom, minus 100 the worst.’’ Poland 52 50
Romania 52 35
Slovakia 74 31
Mean 60 35
‘‘Here is a scale ranking how Bulgaria 51 59
government works: the top, Czech 23 78
plus 100 is the best; the Hungary 58 51
bottom, minus 100 the worst.’’ Poland 38 69
Romania 52 60
Slovakia 50 52
Mean 46 62
Source: Richard Rose and Christian Haerfer, ‘‘New Democracies Barometer III: Learning from
What Is Happening,’’ Studies in Public Policy 1994; 230: questions 22–23, 32–33. Percentages
are rounded off. The polls were administered in these countries between November 1993 and
March 1993.
Europe in 1993 had a fairly long time horizon and expressed opti-
mism that by 1998 both the performance of the new democracy and
the performance of the new economic system would improve signifi-
cantly (fig. 12.1).
In East Central Europe the evidence is thus strongly in favour of
the argument that deferred gratification and confidence in the future
is possible, even when there is an acknowledged lag in economic im-
provements. Simultaneity of rapid political and economic results is,
indeed, normally extremely difficult but, fortunately, as figure 12.1
shows, the citizens of East Central Europe did not perceive such
simultaneity as necessary. The overall implication of the tables and
figures presented thus far seems to be further evidence of the poten-
tial danger of policies based on the inverted-legitimacy pyramid.
Before returning to the former Soviet Union, we should note
briefly two other factors that help to explain the surprisingly high
degree of political support for the new political regime – political
192
Table 12.3 Incongruent perceptions of the economic basket of goods versus the political basket of goods in the communist system
and the current system: Six East Central European countries
Percentage of respondents answering ‘‘better now’’ versus

those answering ‘‘worse now’’
Question Bulgaria Czech Slovakia Hungary Poland Romania
Economic Basket:
‘‘When you compare your overall household economic situation with 16/58 23/49 18/62 6/76 17/62 21/65
five years ago, would you say that in the past it was better, the
same, worse?’’
Political Basket:
‘‘Please tell me whether our present political system by comparison
with the Communist is [better, the same or worse] in the following
areas:’’
‘‘People can join any organization they want.’’ 95/5 90/1 88/3 81/2 79/2 94/1
‘‘Everybody is free to say what he or she thinks.’’ 90/11 84/3 82/4 73/8 83/4 94/2
‘‘People can travel and live wherever they want.’’ 95/5 96/1 87/2 75/4 75/7 90/2
‘‘People can live without fear of unlawful arrest.’’ 88/11 73/4 62/5 59/4 71/5 81/1
‘‘Each person can decide whether or not to take an interest in 97/3 84/0 81/1 n/a 69/5 92/1
politics.’’
‘‘Everybody is free to decide whether or not to practise a religion.’’ 98/2 94/0 96/1 83/1 70/6 95/1
Source: Same as for figure 12.1, questions 26, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42. Where the percentages do not add up to 100 the respondents answered ‘‘equal.’’
193
Fig. 12.1 Percentage of people giving a positive rating to the economic system and
to the political regime in the communist system, the current system, and in five years:
Six East Central European countries (source: Richard Rose and Christian Haerpfer,
‘‘New Russia Barometer III,’’ Studies in Public Policy 1994; 228: questions 24 and 34
regime, not necessarily political incumbents – despite economic hard-

ship. None of the former Warsaw pact countries of East Central
Europe, unlike the former USSR, experienced widespread bloodshed
over stateness problems. Also, unlike Russia, there is no ambivalent
194
legacy about the loss of an empire or the disintegration of the

USSR.
How do the non-Baltic countries of the former Soviet Union com-
pare with the countries of East Central Europe on the same set of
dimensions concerning satisfaction with the pre- and post-communist
economies and political systems? Unfortunately, there are data only
for Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus; but the differences are striking,
especially in the substantially lower ranking accorded to current sup-
port for the post-communist political system (fig. 12.2).
A panel of outside observers also notes a set of very different
patterns within countries of East Central Europe, in contrast to the
former Soviet Union, with respect to their political development. An
annual publication of Freedom House developed a common method
to evaluate political rights and civil liberties for almost all of the
countries of the world. Freedom House uses a seven-point scale to
rank countries concerning political rights and a seven-point scale to
rank political liberties. A score of 1 indicates the highest rights and
liberties and 7 the lowest. For the purposes of this argument, if a
country is ranked no lower than 2 on political rights and no lower
than 3 on civil liberties, it is labelled as above the democratic thresh-
old for that year; if a country is given a score of 4 or lower on political
rights and/or 5 or lower on civil liberties, it is considered as below the
democratic threshold for that year; countries between the two cate-
gories are labelled as on the border of the democratic threshold. In
short, the lower the number the better the results for democracy.
How does post-communist Europe rank on this scale? See table 12.4.
To make table 12.4 more useful for a comparative analysis of post-
communist Europe, let us separate these 26 countries into three
broad categories – East Central Europe, the former Soviet Union,
and the former Yugoslavia. Within the former Soviet Union, we will
make a further subdivision between those countries that had been a
part of the former Soviet Union since the early 1920s and that are
now, with Russia, a part of the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS), and those countries that became a part of the Soviet Union
only after 1940 (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and that refused to
join the CIS. The classification results are presented in table 12.5.
The implications of the numerous tables and figures presented will
have to be elaborated and analysed more fully by the new generation
of comparativists conducting research into European post-communist
politics. However, we can at least note some patterns.
Respondents in the six former Warsaw Pact countries of East Cen-
195
Political System – Russia Economic System – Russia

Political System – Ukraine Economic System – Ukraine
Fig. 12.2 Percentage of people giving a positive rating to the economic system and
to the political system in the communist regime, the current regime, and in five years:
Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (source: for Russia see Richard Rose and Christian
Haerpfer, ‘‘New Russia Barometer III,’’ Studies in Public Policy 1994; 228: ques-
tions 15–17 and 27–29; for Ukraine see Rose and Haerpfer, ‘‘New Democracies
Barometer III,’’ questions 22–24, 32–34; the data for Belarus are roughly similar to
those for Ukraine; positive evaluations of the economic system under communism, in
the present, and in five years are 78, 11, and 47, respectively, and positive evaluations
for the political systems in these three periods are 64, 28, and 56, respectively;
sources same as cited for Ukraine)
196
Table 12.4 Rating of 26 countries of post-communist Europe on the Freedom

House scale of political rights and civil liberties for the year 1993
Political Civil Democratic threshold rating:

Country rights liberties ‘‘above,’’ ‘‘below,’’ or ‘‘border’’
Armenia 3 4 Border
Azerbaijan 6 6 Below
Belarus 5 4 Below
Bosnia–Herzegovina 6 6 Below
Bulgaria 2 2 Above
Croatia 4 4 Below
Czech Republic 1 2 Above
Estonia 3 2 Border
Georgia 5 5 Below
Hungary 1 2 Above
Kazakhstan 6 4 Below
Kyrgyzstan 5 3 Below
Latvia 3 3 Border
Lithuania 1 3 Above
Macedonia 3 3 Border
Moldova 5 5 Below
Poland 2 2 Above
Romania 4 4 Below
Russia 3 4 Border
Slovakia 3 4 Border
Slovenia 1 2 Above
Tajikistan 7 7 Below
Turkmenistan 7 7 Below
Ukraine 4 4 Border
Uzbekistan 7 7 Below
Yugoslavia (Serbia and 6 6 Below
Montenegro)
Summary 6 of 26 Above
7 of 26 Border
13 of 26 Below
Source: Raymond D. Gastil (ed.) Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties,
1993–1994 (New York: Freedom House, 1994), pp. 677–678.
tral Europe gave a mean positive rating of 62 to the post-communist

political system – an increase of 16 points over the positive rating they
gave to the Communist political system. In sharp contrast, in the
three former Soviet Union countries – Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus –
a mean of only 29 gave the post-communist political system a positive
rating – a decrease of 26 points from those who gave the Communist
system a positive rating.15
197
Table 12.5 Comparative democratic threshold rating of post-communist Europe:

The countries of East Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the former
Yugoslavia (1993)
Democratic
threshold rating
(‘‘above,’’
Political Civil ‘‘border,’’ or
Classification Country rights liberties ‘‘below’’)
East Central Europe Czech Republic 1 2 Above

Hungary 1 2 Above
Poland 2 2 Above
Bulgaria 2 2 Above
Slovakia 3 4 Border
Romania 4 4 Below
Summary 4/6 Above
1/6 Border
1/6 Below
The former Soviet Lithuania 1 3 Above
Union (since the Estonia 3 2 Border
1940s, not CIS Latvia 3 3 Border
members)
Summary 1/3 Above
2/3 Border
0/3 Below
The former Soviet Russia 3 4 Border
Union (since the Armenia 3 4 Border
1920s, now CIS Ukraine 4 4 Border
members) Kyrgyzstan 5 3 Below
Belarus 5 4 Below
Moldova 5 5 Below
Kazakhstan 6 4 Below
Azerbaijan 6 6 Below
Georgia 6 6 Below
Tajikistan 7 7 Below
Turkmenistan 7 7 Below
Uzbekistan 7 7 Below
Summary 0/12 Above
3/12 Border
9/12 Below
The former Yugoslavia Slovenia 1 2 Above
Macedonia 3 3 Border
Croatia 4 4 Below
Bosnia–Herzegovina 6 6 Below
Yugoslavia (Serbia 6 6 Below
and Montenegro)
198
Table 12.5 (cont.)
Democratic
threshold rating
(‘‘above,’’
Political Civil ‘‘border,’’ or
Classification Country rights liberties ‘‘below’’)
Summary 1/5 Above

1/5 Border
3/5 Below
Source: Same as table 12.4 The only country of post-communist Europe not included is Albania,
which did not start its transition until quite late. It also does not fit easily into any of the three
geographical–historical categories utilized in the table. In our judgement, Albania as of mid-
1995 would score ‘‘below’’ the democratic threshold.
Another finding is that none of the twelve CIS countries that had
been part of the Soviet Union were above the minimal threshold of
democratic practices, according to the 1993 annual Freedom House
poll. In fact, three of the twelve countries – Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
and Tajikistan – received the lowest possible scores of 7 on political
rights and 7 on civil liberties.16 In contrast, four of the six East Cen-
tral European countries were above the threshold. Romania received
the lowest scores of the six former Warsaw Pact countries of East
Central Europe, with 4 on political rights and 4 on civil liberties.
Thus, it seems accurate to say that, in 1993, both the ‘‘ceiling’’ and
the ‘‘floor’’ of democratic practices in East Central Europe were
substantially higher than those in the CIS countries.
We must also note that, in contrast to the six East Central Euro-
pean countries, economic and political judgements are more tightly
coupled in the CIS countries. There is thus a much lower propensity
for deferred gratification in the non-Baltic parts of the former Soviet
Union than in East Central Europe.
What explains such sharp contrasts between East Central Europe
and the non-Baltic countries of the former Soviet Union? Let us
begin with the question of deferred gratification. No doubt the pat-
tern of difference is partly due to the extreme severity of the drop
in positive economic assessments. In East Central Europe the mean
positive evaluation dropped only from 60 to 37, whereas the post-
Soviet mean of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus dropped from 71 to 10.
Timing and perception of the future were also probably important.
According to table 12.1, the worst year in East Central Europe in
199
terms of economic decline was 1991. The worst year in Russia,

Ukraine, and Belarus was 1994, after the poll. The year 1995 was
probably economically somewhat better than 1994, but in late 1993
people might not have seen any light at the end of the tunnel.
It is almost certain that the severity of the stateness problem in the
USSR and the subsequent state disintegration and widespread armed
conflict played an independent role in objectively deepening eco-
nomic disarray. The continuation of such conflicts in 1995 in some
CIS countries inevitably also decreased the subjective confidence as
to whether deferred gratification was merited. After all, a politics of
deferred gratification is rational only if some signs of potential grati-
fication can be discerned. In a context of very weak and contested
states, the confidence of the future that was an important ingredient
reinforcing the ‘‘politics of deferred gratification’’ in East Central
Europe was understandably weaker in the former Soviet Union and
in much of the former Yugoslavia. To be sure, Czechoslovakia had a
stateness problem, but, because of the orderly and reasonably well-
planned velvet divorce, no armed violence was involved and no sig-
nificant economic downturn occurred in either the Czech Republic or
Slovakia.17
Stateness problems, and not just economic problems, critically
affect democratic outcomes. This becomes clear when we note that, of
the 22 independent countries that emerged out of the disintegra-
tion of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia, only 2 –
Lithuania and Slovenia – are above the democratic threshold rating
(see table 12.5). Both of these countries are exceptions that prove the
rule concerning the importance of stateness problems for democra-
tization. Lithuania’s economy is not as robust as that of Estonia, but
Lithuania was the only Baltic country to grant inclusive citizenship to
all residents, whether they were ethnic Balts or not. This policy has
enabled Lithuania to manage its potential stateness problem in a
more democratic fashion than Latvia or Estonia and, thus, Lithuania
has, correctly, received a higher score for ‘‘political rights’’ than has
Latvia or Estonia.
Of the five countries in the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia is the only
country not to have a significant stateness problem. Slovenia does
not have a significant ethnic minority population, so it has not been
embroiled in actual or potential conflicts over a Serbian (or Albanian)
irredenta of the sort that have occurred in Croatia, Bosnia–Herzego-
vina, and rump Yugoslavia, where armed conflicts have contributed
to widespread curtailment of political rights and civil liberties. Mace-
200
donia, more than Slovenia, has potentially severe stateness problems –

with Albania and Serbia, and even Bulgaria and Greece – and this has
contributed to its less-than-inclusive citizenship and language policies.
Another factor that has, no doubt, contributed to greater support
for the post-communist regimes in East Central Europe, in contrast
to Russia and (to some extent) Belarus, is that Russian citizens may
be happy to be independent but feel, none the less, a sense of geo-
political loss and anger about the way in which the USSR dis-
integrated. Among other things, the disintegration of the USSR has
left 25 million Russians as often beleaguered, and sometimes state-
less, minorities in other countries. Also, unlike the citizens of the
Czech Republic, who believe that the velvet divorce improved Czech
standards of living, the Russians are convinced that the dissolution
of the USSR contributed to the decline of their standard of living
(table 12.6).
We can infer that, in contrast to Russian citizens’ sense of geo-
political loss over 1991, the citizens of the ‘‘outer empire’’ in coun-
tries such as Poland no doubt feel a sense of geopolitical gain due to
the events of 1989. This is one of the reasons why citizens in Poland
have a much stronger preference for the present political system than
do those in Russia, and thus have more willingly accepted the politics
of deferred gratification (table 12.7).
We do not want to overstress the preference for the old system in
Russia, however. Many people in Spain believe that they lived better
under Franco but would not like to return to that political system.
The key question in politics is the desired future alternative. Russians,
in fact, see the political basket of goods reviewed in table 12.2 as
better under the new political system, but they feel this by a smaller
margin than do respondents in East Central Europe.18 Thus, despite
their sense of ambivalence and loss concerning the dissolution of the
USSR, only a small percentage say that they would like to return to
communism and an even smaller percentage prefer military rule as a
desired future alternative (table 12.8).
Other important explanatory factors for democratization differ-
ences in post-communist Europe for future researchers to explore
are, of course, those related to time, prior regime types, and the
presence or absence of a usable democratic legacy. The USSR lasted
for about 75 years, during much of which totalitarian practices pre-
dominated. East Central Europe was a part of the Soviet subsystem
for only 40 years. In Poland for much of this period, authoritarian,
not totalitarian, political realities predominated. In Hungary, mature
201
Table 12.6 Russian attitudes in 1994 about the dissolution of the USSR in 1991
Percentage response in age-

group (years)
Question 18–29 30–59 60þ Total
‘‘In December 1991 leaders of Russia, Belorussia

and the Ukraine decided to dissolve the USSR
and found the CIS.
What do you think of that now?’’
It was the right decision. 16 12 8 12
It was the wrong decision. 57 70 75 68
Difficult to answer. 28 18 17 20
‘‘How has the disintegration of the USSR affected
Russian living standards?’’
For better. 5 4 3 4
For worse. 68 76 83 76
No change. 11 8 5 8
Difficult to answer. 16 12 9 12
Source: Rose and Haerfper, ‘‘New Russian Barometer III,’’ questions 57–59. We believe a
similar phenomenon is at work in Belarus as in Russia. The only deputy in the Belarus parlia-
ment to vote against independence, Aleksandr Lukashenko, was elected president in 1994. In
May 1995 he sponsored a referendum in which he argued. ‘‘If people call for it, we will also
have a political union that is even closer than the Soviet Union was. For the moment I am
talking about economic union.’’ See Matthew Kaminski, ‘‘Belarussians Seek the Future in
the Past,’’ Financial Times 17 May 1995, 3. Lukashenko won support for all questions on the
referendum. In the same article the Financial Times correspondent noted that ‘‘over three-
quarters of Belarussian voters in a national referendum chose to bring back Soviet-era national
insignia, make Russian the state language, and support economic integration with Russia.’’
Table 12.7 Preferences for old and new political systems in Russia and Poland in
January–February 1992

group (years) Percentage preferring
present system over
Preference U29 30–59 60þ Total old system
In Russia
Present system better 43 39 21 36 18
Old system better 45 52 71 54
Don’t know 12 9 8 10
In Poland
Present system better 74 þ51
Old system better 23
Don’t know 3
Source: Irina Bolva and Viacheslav Shironin, ‘‘Russians between State and Market,’’ Studies in
Public Policy 1992; 205: 19–22.
202
Table 12.8 Russian attitudes toward restoring the former communist system: April
1994

group (years)
Agreement with statement. ‘‘It would be better
to restore the former communist system.’’ U29 30–59 60þ Total
Completely agree 5 8 18 9
Generally agree 8 14 19 14
Generally disagree 30 29 23 28
Completely disagree 41 36 22 34
Difficult to answer 16 13 19 15
Source: Rose and Haerfpfer, ‘‘New Russia Barometer III,’’ question 31a. In the same poll, only
3 per cent competely agreed and only 7 per cent generally agreed with the statement that ‘‘the
army should rule’’ (Question 31b). The army is thus clearly not a desired alternative.
post-totalitarianism evolved. Finally, pre-communist history must be

analysed comparatively. Czechoslovakia, for example, was demo-
cratic from independence in 1919 until the Nazi interventions of 1938.
There is virtually no such usable pre-communist democratic past in
the non-Baltic countries of the former Soviet Union. This does not
mean that democracy is impossible in these countries; it does mean,
however, that there will be longer and more perilous journeys toward
constitutionalism and state reconstruction before democracy becomes,
if ever, the only game in town.
The astute reader has no doubt noted that religion has not been
built into this explanation of the comparatively weaker progress
toward democratization in the CIS countries and the former Yugo-
slavia. This is so for two reasons. First, it is becoming increasingly
popular among analysts to make certain religions – such as Orthodox
Christianity, Islam, or Confucianism – a major explanation for diffi-
culties in democratization in many parts of the world.19 However, the
factors mentioned in this chapter, in themselves, are sufficient to
explain the sharply different results of democratization in the non-
Baltic countries of the former Soviet Union versus East Central
Europe. Second, religions differ in the range of their autonomously
controlled resources and their relationship to the state. Roman
Catholicism, as a transnational, hierarchical organization, can poten-
tially provide material and doctrinal support to a local Catholic
church to help it resist state oppression. To the extent that a Catholic
church might resist the state, it could be considered a support for
more robust and autonomous civil society.
203
Empirically, in the resistance state of democratization, the Catholic

church played a supportive role in Poland and Lithuania, as well as in
Chile and Brazil, and in the last years of Franco in Spain. Protestan-
tism, with its emphasis on individual conscience and its international
networks, can also play a role in supporting civil society’s opposition
to a repressive state, as in East Germany and Estonia. Concerning
civil society and resistance to the state, Orthodox Christianity is often
– although not always – organizationally and doctrinally in a rela-
tively weak position because of what Max Weber called its ‘‘cae-
saropapist’’ structure, in which the church is a national as opposed to
a transnational organization. In caesaropapist churches, the national
state normally plays a major role in the national church’s finances and
appointments. Such a national church is not an autonomous part of
civil society because there is a high degree, in Weber’s words, of
‘‘subordination of priestly to secular power.’’20 Having acknowledged
this, Orthodox Christianity is not an inherently anti-democratic force.
That is to say, if the leaders of the state are committed to democracy
and follow democratic practices, the caesaropapist structures and
incentives should lead to loyal support of democracy by the Orthodox
Christian church, as in Greece since 1975. However, if the leaders of
the state and political society are anti-democratic, the democratic
opposition in civil society will not normally receive substantial or
effective support from a national Orthodox church. The role of the
world’s religions in democracy and democratization is an important
and interesting dimension.21
Democracy and the return of communism

Some interpreters have seen the ‘‘return of communists’’ to power in
Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania – countries that played a vanguard
role in democratic transitions – as proof that economics and politics
are so tightly linked that economic decline means democratic decline.
For countries where there has been at least one legitimate victory by
democratic electoral forces – and in many countries there has never
been such a victory – we believe that a more nuanced judgement is
appropriate.
The return to power of reformed Communist Party-led coalitions
in Lithuania in 1992, in Poland in 1993, and in Hungary in 1994,
although a set-back for some policies that were deepening democracy
– such as local government reform in Poland – was not in itself an
example of non-democratic regime change. By almost all reliable
204
accounts, the reform Communist coalitions accepted the democratic

rules of the game in how they contested the election and, later, in
how they ruled. Also, very importantly, they were accepted as legiti-
mated victors and rulers by the parties they defeated. In this sense
there was not a regime change away from democracy, as political
scientists normally use the term: strictly speaking, in comparative
terms, the Lithuanian, Polish, and Hungarian elections represented a
peaceful democratic alternation of power.
From a long historical perspective, it may even turn out that these
elections actually strengthened democracy in Lithuania, Poland, and
Hungary in one important respect: they indicated to victors and
losers alike that democracy was becoming the only game in town. In
fact, precisely because democracy was perceived in 1992–1994 as
the only game in town, the reform Communists in Lithuania, Poland,
and Hungary were extremely eager to demonstrate that they would
govern as democratic parties. Their calculation was that, by so gov-
erning, they would be perceived (when they in turn were out of
office) as part of the loyal democratic opposition and thus as a legiti-
mate alternative government.22 To make this point they are holding
themselves in some respects to somewhat higher standards of civil
liberties than did their predecessors in Hungary and Lithuania, who
occasionally violated civil liberties in the name of their nationalist
and anti-communist ‘‘mandates.’’ For example, the reform Commu-
nists in Hungary are in coalition with the liberal Free Democrats and
the coalition’s overall policy toward the media has been less flawed
than that of the first democratically elected government. In Lith-
uania, the leader of nationalist independence, Vytautas Landsbergis,
pursued his anti-communist nationalism to such an extent that Anatol
Lieven, in his excellent book, referred to him as a ‘‘backward-looking,
religious-colored nationalist . . . [who] left the nation more divided
than when he became its leader.’’23 His reform Communist successor,
Algirdas Brazauskas, has paid somewhat more attention to providing
a ‘‘political roof’’ of individual rights to all citizens and pursuing a
politics of inclusion.
Conceptually and politically, what does the phrase ‘‘the return of
communists’’ mean in Central Europe in the mid-1990s? In the full
sense of the meaning, a Communist regime in Central Europe before
1989, even in mature post-totalitarian Hungary or authoritarian
Poland, meant a powerful, dependent alliance with a non-democratic
hegemonic world power. In the mid-1990s there is no such alliance
and Russia is not a hegemonic world power. In this new geopolitical
205
context, the reform Communists’ best chance for power is to present

themselves as – and to be – ‘‘social democrats.’’24 Even if some of
the reform Communists might not actually have undergone profound
changes in their mentality (and many, of course, have not), the
external reality to which the reform Communists must respond has
changed profoundly. As long as democracy is the only game in town,
the incentive structure of those who seek governmental power is
derived from the democratic context.
Finally, since voters play a crucial role in weighting the incentive
system, what did they actually want? Did they actually want a return
to communism?25 The Polish voters, two months after the elections
that had supposedly ‘‘returned’’ the former Communists to power,
believed, correctly, that they had not actually returned the old Com-
munists to power. Polish respondents recognized the fundamental
discontinuity in global and national power relations between 1988
and 1993. To the question, ‘‘Does the formation of the SLD–PSL [the
reform Communist Party and their old Peasant Party ally] govern-
ment coalition signify the return to power of persons who ruled prior
to 1989?’’, 63 per cent answered ‘‘no,’’ 13 per cent said ‘‘difficult to
say,’’ and only 24 per cent of the population answered ‘‘yes.’’26 This
answer is geopolitically, politically, and historically correct. An
observation from the Spanish case may clarify this reasoning. If
sometime in the 1990s – as seems probable – the Partido Popular (a
party that is perceived by a segment of the electorate as representing
a continuity with the right wing that governed with Franco) wins
control of the government after an election, their victory in the
changed Spanish environment would not signify a ‘‘return to franco-
ism’’ as much as an alternation in power, in which a modern demo-
cratic conservative party has won the election with a mandate to rule
democratically.27
It is possible to end on a somewhat optimistic note concerning the
future of democracy in East Central Europe, although this is not
to embrace a geopolitical or philosophical perspective of democratic
immanence. It is probable that, in some of the countries, democracy
will never be consolidated. In other countries, democracy might
become consolidated but will eventually break down. Some countries
will consolidate democracy but will never deepen democracy in the
spheres of gender equality, access to critical social services, inclusive
citizenship, respect for human rights, and freedom of information;
they might, indeed, occasionally violate human rights.
All serious democratic thinkers and activists are now also aware
206
that the much-vaunted democratic Third Wave has already produced

some dangerous undertows, not only in post-communist Europe but
also in Western Europe.28 In the United States, influential ideologues
of liberty are at times too simplistic and mean spirited for a healthy
democratic polity. In this context, democratic triumphalism is not
only uncalled for but dangerous. Democratic institutions have to be
not only created but crafted, nurtured, and developed. It is abun-
dantly clear that to create an economic society supportive of democ-
racy requires more than just markets and private property. It is time
to problematize and transcend ‘‘illiberal liberalism’’ and also to the-
orize and construct socially integrative identity politics, as opposed to
endlessly fragmenting identity politics. Further, to argue that democ-
racy is better than any form of government once alternatives have
been in crisis is not sufficient. Democracy has to be defended on its
own merits. Clearly, more research should also be devoted to learn-
ing about the great variety of democratic regimes that actually exist
in the world. Most important, new political projects, as well as
research endeavours, must be devoted to improving the quality of
consolidated democracies.
Notes
1. However, while it is true that rump Yugoslavia (Serbia, Montenegro, and the former prov-
ince of Kosovo), as presently constituted is non-democratic, it is useful to recognize that
there are more pressures for democracy there than Western policy makers and public
opinion normally recognize. According to Tibor Varady, the Minister of Justice in the
Milan Panic government in the rump Yugoslavia, when Prime Minister Panic challenged
Milosevic in the December 1992 presidential election, the West sent fewer than 30 election
observers, and most arrived just days before the election. In contrast, in the plebiscite in
Chile in 1988 that led to the defeat of Pinochet, the West sent thousands of observers, many
of whom were involved months before the election. Why this difference? Commentary in
the West in essence assumed that Serbia was univocally for Serbian expansionism and that
‘‘primordial nationalism’’ was so strong that Slobodan Milosevic was unbeatable. But, even
with the abstention of the Muslims of Kosovo (about 10 per cent of the potential elec-
torate), election day technical fraud by Slobodan Milosevic of possibly 5–10 per cent of the
vote, and the lack of election observers and financial and technical support from the West,
Panic still won 43 per cent of the vote. In December 1992 Milosevic was not politically
unbeatable. Some analysts, when confronted with the Chilean–Serbian comparison, shrug
their shoulders and say, ‘‘So what? Milosevic never would have respected the elections.’’
This again misses the point. Power is always relational. If Milosevic had actually lost and
then annulled the election, he would have been domestically and internationally weakened
in relation to democratic opponents and the myth of univocal support for aggressive
nationalism would have been unmasked.
2. In addition, it is debatable that the privatization of all or most of publicly owned property is
necessary for the creation of a functioning market economy. Post-Second World War Austria
and Italy immediately come to mind as countries that retained a large public sector but
were more or less efficient democratic market economies.
207
3. Four important studies of this phenomenon are Albert Fishlow, ‘‘The Latin American
State,’’ Journal of Economic Perspectives 1990; 4(3): 61–74; Hector Schamis, ‘‘Re-forming
the State: The Role of Privatization in Chile and Britain’’ (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University,
Department of Political Science, 1994); Peter Evans, ‘‘The State as a Problem and Solu-
tion: Predation, Embedded Autonomy, and Structural Change,’’ in Stephan Haggard and
Robert R. Kaufman (eds) The Politics of Economic Adjustment: International Constraints,
Distributive Conflicts, and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 139–
181; and Joan M. Nelson (ed) Intricate Links: Democratization and Market Reforms in Latin
America and Eastern Europe (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994), especially the
article by Jacek Kochanowicz, ‘‘Reforming Weak States and Deficient Bureaucracies’’.
China in the first half of the 1990s allowed the emergence of a robust private sector in
some areas while maintaining a strong command economy in other sectors and overall
near-totalitarian practices concerning politics, the media, and even family reproductive
decisions.
4. We need more comparative studies of variation in state capacity vis-à-vis privatization and
economic restructuring. Such variation could range from significant state reconstruction
that increases state capacity and efficacy vis-à-vis privatization, to states that have had
modest but unsatisfactory state reconstruction that has led to the creation of new post-
reform problems and the threat of a low-level equilibrium trap, to the extreme case of state
near-disintegration and virtually no state capacity for structuring change. East Central
Europe and the former Soviet Union provide examples of all these possible variations. The
most popularly supported privatization in Central and Eastern Europe has been the Czech
Republic, which was also the case, despite some corruption, of the greatest transparency
and where the freely elected government worked longest at such socio-economic reforms as
job retraining and state restructuring. In contrast, in a country like Romania, where the
state has not been reconstructed, some non-transparent privatization has occurred but there
is a danger of a low-level equilibrium trap. In the Ukraine and parts of Russia, a new state
had not been constructed, but the old state manifested strong disintegrative tendencies and
low capacities in the 1992–1993 period. See, for example, the empirically grounded com-
parative analysis of the Czech Republic and Romania by Olivier Blanchard, Simon
Commander, and Fabrizio Coricelli, ‘‘Unemployment and Restructuring’’ (World Bank,
1993), mimeo. Also see the chapter on Czechoslovakia in Roman Frydman, Andrzej
Rapaczynski, and John Earle (eds) The Privatization Process in Central Europe (Budapest:
Central European University Press, 1993), pp. 40–94, and Roman Frydman, Andrzej
Rapaczynski, and John Earle (eds) The Privatization Process in Russia, Ukraine and the
Baltic States (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1993). The case studies of
Ukraine and Russia underscore the difficulties of orderly, effective, and non-mafia privati-
zation if the state is in disarray. See also Roman Frydman and Andrzej Rapaczynski, Pri-
vatization in Eastern Europe: Is the State Withering Away? (Budapest: Central European
5. In frequent visits to Russia in 1991–1995, the subject of a Pinochet or a Chinese alternative
frequently came up as possible alternatives for Russia in conversations with Russian ana-
lysts and policy makers. But, in fact, even before the disorderly behaviour of the Russian
military in Chechnya, only 3 per cent of Russian respondents in an April 1994 poll ‘‘com-
pletely agreed’’ and only 7 per cent ‘‘generally agreed’’ with the statement that ‘‘the army
should rule’’ as an alternative political formula for Russia. See Richard Rose and Christian
Haerpfer, ‘‘New Russian Barometer III: The Results,’’ Studies in Public Policy 1994; 228;
question 31b.
6. Ken Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992), especially pp. 249–331.
7. For this important approach to power, see Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (London:
Macmillan, 1974).
8. For a detailed analysis and ample documentation of this phenomenon, see Juan J. Linz,
208
‘‘Legitimacy of Democracy and the Socioeconomic System,’’ in Mattei Dogan (ed.), Com-
paring Pluralist Democracies: Strains on Democracy (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press,
1988), pp. 65–113.
9. See, for example, Stephen Handelman, ‘‘The Russian Mafiya,’’ Foreign Affairs March–
April 1994; 73(2): 83–96.
10. See Linz, ‘‘Legitimacy of Democracy,’’ op. cit.
11. The title of a widely disseminated article by Jon Elster captures this perspective, ‘‘The
Necessity and Impossibility of Simultaneous Economic and Political Reform,’’ in Douglas
Greenberg, Stanley N. Katz, Melanie Beth Oliviero, and Steven C. Wheatley (eds) Con-
stitutionalism and Democracy: Transitions in the Contemporary World (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993). The reasons for the impossibility of simultaneity are not necessarily
those advanced by Elster but may be the fact that the time necessary for successful eco-
nomic change is inherently longer than the time needed to hold free elections and even
draft a democratic constitution. An important survey-based critique of the Elster hypothesis
and an argument for the empirical reality of respondents’ multiple time horizons and their
‘‘political economy of patience’’ are given by the Hungarian political scientist László Bruszt
in ‘‘Why on Earth Would East Europeans Support Capitalism?’’ (paper presented at the
XVth World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Berlin, 21–24
August 1994).
12. The voters might, because of the negative economic performance, vote incumbents out
of office, but the overall economic policies of their successors might well continue to be
roughly the same. Poland in 1993–1995 and Hungary in 1994–1995 (especially after the
reform acceleration of 1995) come to mind. Democratic alternations of governing coalitions
in fact give more time to the policies of economic change while at the same time giving
some valuable room for accommodation to the political sentiments and fears of those most
hurt by the fundamental changes being undertaken by the new democratic regime.
13. In fact, in a regression model of their data, William Mishler and Richard Rose conclude that
‘‘our regression model shows that it takes a four point fall in either current or future eco-
nomic evaluation to produce a one point fall in evaluations of the [political] regime.’’ Their
major explanation of this result is that East Europeans have a fairly long time horizon. See
their ‘‘Trajectories of Fear and Hope: The Dynamics of Support for Democracy in Eastern
Europe,’’ Studies in Public Policy 1993; 214: 27.
14. Juan Linz, in a study of the breakdown of democracies – particularly in Europe in the
interwar years – posed a more direct relationship between efficacy and legitimacy without
data to prove that relationship. In fact, some of the data assembled later showed that the
relationship was true for only a few countries, particularly for Germany and Austria, but
not for Norway and the Netherlands. Why the apparent difference today? We could call
attention to the presence in the interwar years of alternative ‘‘legitimate’’ models for the
polity: the Soviet-Communist utopia, the new Fascist Italian and later German model,
the corporatist–authoritarian–catholic ‘‘organic’’ democracy, the pre-war bureaucratic–
monarchical authoritarianism, and even (in Spain) the anarchist utopia. They all appealed
as alternative answers for inefficacious democracy. There are no such appealing alternatives
to ‘‘difficult democracies’’ today. See Juan J. Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes:
Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).
15. Even here we should note a partial confirmation of loosely coupled hypothesis in that the
positive evaluation of the current post-communist political system was 18.7 points higher
than the evaluation of the current post-communist economic system.
16. Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are significantly less pluralistic in regard to
democratic opposition electoral activity than in rump Yugoslavia. In contrast to the latter,
where the opposition presidential candidate received 43 per cent of the vote in December
1992, open democratic contestation in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan was de
facto insignificant in 1994. According to the Economist’s useful political synopsis of the 12
members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Turkmenistan is described as a
209
‘‘one-party state. All members of the parliament, elected in December 1994, were unop-
posed. In February 1994, 99.99% voted to extend [President] Saparmurat Niyazoc’s term of
office until 1999. Only 212 Turkmen voted No, officially.’’ The Economist summarizes poli-
tics in Uzbekistan thus: ‘‘Main opposition parties banned; media under state control. Ruling
party won over 80% of seats in parliamentary elections in December 1994; 99.96% of the
electorate voted on March 26 [1995] to extend [President] Islam Karimov’s term of office
until 2000.’’ The Economist notes of Tajikistan: ‘‘Imamali Rakhmonov confirmed as presi-
dent last November [1994] in an election at which most opposition parties were banned.
Widespread vote-rigging alleged.’’ See ‘‘Less Poor, Less Democratic,’’ The Economist 22–
28 April 1995; 48. Clearly, no serious theorist could consider that these three countries are
involved in any form of democratic transition.
17. In fact, positive GNP growth in the Czech Republic was projected to be 3 per cent and 6 per
cent for 1994 and 1995 and to be 3.5 per cent and 3 per cent for Slovakia. In contrast, for
the same years the Russian figures were 15 per cent and 7 per cent and the Ukrainian
figures were 23 per cent and 3 per cent.
18. For example, the better/worse ratio concerning freedom to travel was 95/5 in the Czech
Republic, 75/7 in Poland, and only 41/28 in Russia. The better/worse ratio for freedom from
unlawful arrest was 73/4 in the Czech Republic, 71/5 in Poland, and only 23/15 in Russia.
These results, among other things, accurately reflect the stresses for individuals due to the
continuing stateness crisis in Russia. Data are from table 12.2 and Rose and Haerpfer, 1994,
op. cit., questions 30c and 30e.
19. For an argument concerning the tension or even hostility between Orthodoxy, Confucian-
ism, Islam, and democracy, see Samuel P. Huntington, ‘‘The Clash of Civilizations,’’ Foreign
Affairs 1993; 72(3). Also see his The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth
Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), pp. 298–311.
20. For Max Weber’s discussion of caesaropapism, see Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (eds),
Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
21. Islam (unlike Confucianism) is an important value system in parts of post-communist
Europe. A complete argument concerning Islam would be much more complex than that
argument concerning Orthodox Christianity. However, we note that Weber’s fear of fun-
damentalism has frequently contributed to its shoring up of (and even legitimating) anti-
democratic governments or movements that are seen as bulwarks against the spread of
fundamentalism. This is so even when the Islamic parties were elected democratically and
had not violated democratic practices. Nowhere was this clearer than in the West’s implicit
(and even explicit) endorsement of the military coup in Algeria after Islamic forces had
won the first electoral round in 1991. Thus, for geopolitical reasons, authoritarian govern-
ments in the former Soviet Union that share borders with Iran and/or Afghanistan (e.g.
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan) are to some extent treated by Western policy
makers and commentators with a democratic ‘‘double standard.’’
22. This was stressed in a conversation between the author and Jerzy Wiatr, who chairs an im-
portant congressional committee for the former Communists in the Polish parliament.
Wiatr stressed that ‘‘the most important thing we should accomplish in our government
is that we prove we are a legitimate democratic alternative.’’ Conversation in Warsaw,
5 November 1993.
23. Anatol Lieven, The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to
Independence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 274.
24. In 1989–1990 the social-democratic political space in post-communist Europe was not
effectively occupied in elections. The historic social democrats were too tarnished and too
weak and the neo-liberal discourse was too hegemonic. In 1992–1994, some reformed
Communist parties who were out of power partially restructured themselves to fill this
space as the reaction to neo-liberalism set in. Also, with the collapse of communism, the
210
Socialist International sought new allies in post-communist Europe. The reform Communist
parties could gain Socialist International certification and support only if in fact they ruled
as democrats. In December 1994, the Council of the Socialist International, meeting in
Budapest, recommended that the reform Communist party in Hungary, the Hungarian
Socialist Party, be admitted as a full member of the Socialist International. For an astute
analysis of the political and structural reasons for the social democratic turn, while out of
office, of the Hungarian and Polish post-communist parties, see Michael Waller, ‘‘The
Adaptation of the Former Communist Parties of East-Central Europe: A Case of Social
Democratization?’’ (paper prepared for a conference on Political Representation: Parties
and Parliamentary Democracy, Central European University, Budapest, 16–17 June 1995).
At the same Central European University conference, the president of the Lithuanian
Political Science Association, Algis Krupavicius, wrote that, for the Lithuanian post-
communist party that came to power in 1992 (the Democratic Labour Party), ‘‘the period in
opposition was an extremely favorable opportunity to renew their membership [which
dropped from 200,000 in 1989 to 8,000 in 1995], organizational structures, and ideological
identity.’’ The quotation is from his conference paper, ‘‘Post-Communist Transformation
and Political Parties,’’ 12–13.
25. In both Poland and Hungary, the electoral laws resulted in the reform Communist parties
or coalition receiving many more seats than votes. Seats therefore were not a solid indicator
of voters’ intentions. In Poland in 1993, 35.8 per cent of the votes for the reformed Com-
munists and their coalition peasant allies yielded 65.8 per cent of the seats. In Hungary in
1994, the reform communist party, the Hungarian Socialist Party, received 33 per cent of
the vote in the first round but an absolute majority of seats after the second round.
26. Poll published by the Polish Public Opinion Service, Centrum Badania Opinii Spolecznej, in
November 1993, p. 1. Moreover, in late 1993 and early 1994, when a random sample of the
population in Poland and Hungary was asked to comment on the statement, ‘‘We should
return to Communist rule,’’ 47 per cent of those polled in Poland ‘‘strongly disagreed’’ and
35 per cent ‘‘somewhat disagreed’’ with this statement. The sum total of respondents in
Hungary who disagreed was an identical 82 per cent. See Rose and Haerpfer, 1994, op. cit.,
question 43. The highest percentage of respondents in East Central Europe who ‘‘strongly
agreed’’ with the statement was in Bulgaria, with 9 per cent. The next highest was Romania,
with 4 per cent.
27. For many readers the November 1995 victory in Poland of a former Communist Party
leader, Aleksander Kwasniewski, in the second round of the presidential elections might
seem a clearer victory for communism. From the viewpoint of democratic consolidation, the
two most important questions for Poland’s future are: (1) will the post-communists (who as
a result of the 1993 and 1995 elections had a two-thirds majority in the parliament and
controlled the presidency) rule democratically and (2) will the anti-communist forces accept
the legitimacy of the free re-election results? While not happy with the November 1995
elections, Timothy Garton Ash was more worried about the second question than the first:
‘‘Morally, as well as aesthetically, the triumph of the post-communists in Poland is deeply
distasteful, but is it dangerous? Not, I believe, so far as their aims and policies are con-
cerned . . . Kwasniewski and his friends want desperately to be seen not as eastern post-
communists but as regular western social democrats.’’ Concerning the second question,
Garton Ash cites a number of post-election declarations by the Polish episcopate and Lech
Walesa and concludes that the greatest danger in Poland is ‘‘a large right-wing extra par-
liamentary movement around Lech Walesa, supported by the Church and Solidarity, and
simply not accepting President Kwasniewski as the legitimate head of Poland’s Third
Republic.’’ See Timothy Garton Ash, ‘‘Neo-Pagan Poland,’’ New York Review of Books
11 January 1996; 10–14, quotes from pp. 12 and 14.
28. Three excellent articles in a special issue of Daedalus called ‘‘After Communism: What?’’
211
(Summer 1994) are devoted to the unexpected crisis that Western and European democrats
began to experience after they had lost their legitimating enemy or ‘‘other’’ after the col-
lapse of communism. Many problems that had long been deferred or denied came on the
agenda. For this new and challenging ‘‘paradigm lost’’ situation, see Tony Judt, ‘‘Nineteen
Eighty-Nine: The End of Which European Era?,’’ 1–20; Elemér Hankiss, ‘‘European
Paradigms: East and West, 1945–1994,’’ 115–126; and István Rév, ‘‘The Postmortem Victory
of Communism,’’ 157–170. Claus Offe, Der Tunnel am Ende des Lichts: Erkundungen de
politischen Transformation im Neuen Osten (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1994) throughout
the book, and particularly in chapter 10, raises similar questions.
212
13
Religion and democracy:
The case of Islam, civil society,
and democracy
Saad Eddin Ibrahim
Religion is a system of beliefs, rituals, and practices which deal with

the ‘‘sacred,’’ the ‘‘metaphysical,’’ the ‘‘eternal,’’ the ‘‘other-worldly,’’
and the ‘‘absolute.’’ Even when a religion deals with the ‘‘worldly,’’
it is for the ultimate service of the ‘‘other-worldly.’’ Religions, of
course, vary in many ways and in many aspects, but they nearly all
share these features. Being ‘‘sacred’’ and ‘‘absolute’’ has made it dif-
ficult for religions to tolerate, or coexist with, others in the same
community or polity. One’s sacred and absolute truths set a real or
symbolic boundary with the other’s sacred and absolute truth. If
taken too seriously and passionately, such boundaries can become
bloody. History is full of religious wars and sectarian conflicts, espe-
cially in Europe, the latest of which are still alive in Ireland and
Bosnia–Herzegovina.
By the same token, being sacred and absolute makes it difficult for
people who take religion too seriously and passionately to tolerate
another system of ideas or beliefs that claims similar qualities to
itself; that is, other man-made dogmatic ideologies such as Marxism.
Again, modern history is replete with tragic tales of conflict among
religious and non-religious – but equally dogmatic – ideologies. It is
the exclusive nature of such belief systems which implies the negation
of the different ‘‘other.’’
Democracy, in contrast, is based upon the completely opposite
premise – the inclusion of all human beings within the community or
the polity as equals, regardless of their religion, race, or creed.
Whatever definition of democracy one opts for, it ultimately revolves
around the peaceful management of ‘‘differences.’’ Accepting the
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different other – whether on the basis of religion, class, interest, gen-

der, or ethnicity – is central to political and legal equality. Moreover,
such equality before the law is a necessary condition for democracy.
In other words, democracy may be conceived of as a system for man-
aging differences among legal–political equals, to attain their opti-
mum well-being. Such differences are managed in the context of a set
of rules agreed upon by those different equals. Though not as sacred
as religious commandments, the rules of the democratic game are
to be respected by all players. Unlike religious commandments, the
rules of the democratic game – the constitution and laws – can be
changed or amended. Thus, the fundamentals of democracy are
both ‘‘worldly’’ – formulated by humans for humans on earth – and
‘‘relativistic’’ – temporally, culturally, and politically bound.
The inclusive worldly and relativistic nature of democracy puts
it into potential conflict with any dogma which claims a monopoly
on absolute truth, including religious dogma. This actual or potential
conflict is what led to the separation between the ‘‘state’’ and the
‘‘church’’ in the early democracies of the West. Later democratic
societies have followed suit. Such separation is neither a total divorce
nor a hostile coexistence; rather, it has been a mutual respect for
the autonomy of each other’s sphere in regulating human affairs.
Depending on a given society’s pre-democratic history, the relation-
ship between religion and politics is classifiable into modalities –
ranging from working harmoniously together to being totally obliv-
ious to each other. In either case, the religious dogma has been toned
down or the passions often accompanying it seem to have subsided.
One way to achieve this accommodation is through the reinterpreta-
tion, selectivity, or reformulation of sacred texts. The famous saying
attributed to Jesus Christ, ‘‘Pay Caesar what is due to Caesar, and
pay God what is due to God,’’ is a case in point. It is the epitome of
such a selective reinterpretation which backs up the principle of the
separation of state and religion.
The problematic of such separation is more complicated and dram-
atized during periods of sociopolitical transition. In this respect, non-
Western societies are going through transitions similar to – or more
severe than – those that their Western counterparts went through a
few centuries earlier. It is typical, during the transition, to encounter
spokespeople in the name of a particular religion, giving their own
idealized and simplistic (but often attractive) interpretation of sacred
texts to suit the needs, deprivations, and aspirations of the marginal-
ized and powerless – the ethos and idioms of restoring the ‘‘paradise
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Religion and democracy
lost.’’ I demonstrate here that all religions, but especially Islam, lend
themselves to diverse interpretations when it comes to politics and
governance; and the prevailing socio-economic conditions make some
of these interpretations more acceptable than others.
Let us start with a leaf of Western history. On 25 February 1534,
in the German town of Münster, Anabaptist zealots staged an armed
uprising and installed a radical dictatorship. All who refused to
undergo re-baptism into the new faith were driven from the city
without food or belongings during a snowstorm. The new regime
impounded all food, money, and valuables and cancelled all debts.
Mobs burned the financial records of all local merchants. The housing
of the fleeing well-to-do was reassigned to the poor. Former beggars
capered in the streets, decked in plundered finery. The religious
positions of the new regime were equally radical. Under the new
moral order that it had imposed, all books other than the Bible were
burned. All ‘‘sins,’’ including swearing, backbiting, complaining, and
disobedience, were to be punished by instant execution. Soon, the
regime instituted polygamy: unmarried women were ordered to marry
the first man who asked them – and 49 women were executed and
their bodies hacked into quarters for failing to comply. Before long,
however, the outside world reacted: Münster was soon besieged by its
bishop, who had escaped and recruited an army of mercenaries. Sur-
rounded and cut off, the city was beset by growing confusion.
Then, out of the rebel ranks in Münster, there arose a new and
absolute leader – John Bockelson, who assumed the name of John
of Leyden and claimed to have been appointed by God to be king
during the final days. A ‘‘this-worldly’’ rebellion now became firmly
‘‘other-worldly.’’ The rebels did not need to win victory over their
temporal rulers, for all was now in the hands of God in these days
before the Last Judgement, announced by John of Leyden to be
coming before Easter 1535. Anyone in Münster who opposed or
expressed doubt on this prophecy was executed. On 24 June 1535, the
bishop’s troops made a surprise assault in the night and took the city.
John of Leyden was arrested. Over the next few months, he was led
by a chain from town to town and, in January 1536, back to Münster,
where he was tortured to death with a red-hot iron in front of large
crowds. His body was put in an iron cage and suspended from the
church tower. The cage still hangs there today.1
There was nothing very unusual about the rebellion in Münster, or
that it took the form of a religious movement. Similar events were
commonplace in Europe at the time, especially in the growing com-
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mercial towns. The few decades preceding and following the Münster
episode were replete with intense ‘‘worldly’’ discontent, shrouded in
religious discourse and conflict. A quick glance at the annals of the
first half of the sixteenth century would substantiate this proposition.
Eighteen years before the Münster uprising, Sir Thomas More wrote
his Utopia (1516). A year later, in protest against the sale of ‘‘indul-
gences,’’ Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of Palast
Church in Wittenberg, beginning the infamous Reformation. In fact,
by the time of the Münster rebellion, Martin Luther had completed
the first translation of the Bible into German, and two years later he
had his ‘‘Table Talks’’ in 1536. Two years after the execution of John
of Leyden, Calvin was expelled from Geneva to settle in Strasbourg
(1538). In 1542, Pope Paul III established the Inquisition in Rome,
and, a year later, the first Protestants were burned at the stake
in Spain. In 1544, Pope Paul III called a general council at Trent.
The council met a year later to discuss reformation and counter-
reformation.
This was a period of great transformations, ushered in by dramatic
geographic explorations, scientific discoveries, and sprouting capital-
ism. By the time of the Münster uprising, the Americas had been dis-
covered; some 25 universities had been founded throughout Europe;
the printing presses had already turned out some 10 million copies
of published books in various European languages. Before the mid-
sixteenth century, religious reformation and counter-reformation
would sweep Germany, France, Switzerland, England, Scotland,
Poland, Spain, and Sweden.
Viewing sixteenth century Europe in retrospect is very instructive
in understanding what is happening in the Arab Muslim world in the
late twentieth century. The so-called Islamic revival is as much an
expression of ‘‘worldly’’ concerns as it is a religious quest for ‘‘other-
worldly’’ salvation.
The seizure of the Grand Mosque of Mecca at the end of 1979 by
a group of Muslim zealots led by a young man, Juhiman al-Outiabi,
resembles in many ways the Münster rebellion. The leader and his
followers were all in their twenties and early thirties. They were of
Bedouin tribal origin, newcomers to the rapid urbanizing centres of
Saudi Arabia. In their youthful lifetime they had already witnessed
the profound but confusing socio-economic transformation of their
country, resulting from the oil boom. In the 10 years preceding their
rebellion, Saudi Arabia had doubled its total population, tripled
its urban population, and increased its money wealth tenfold. There
216
were as many expatriates as native Saudis in the country. The expa-

triates poured into the country in unprecedented numbers, especially
after 1973. They came from as many (and as far) lands as Korea,
Australia, Scandinavia, and America. While Saudis may have been
used to Arabs and Muslims coming in for the pilgrimage, the oil-
boom’s waves of expatriates had nothing (or very little) in common
with the Saudi natives. Different in languages, religions, and lifestyles,
the expatriates were running much of the economic life of Saudi
Arabia. Meanwhile, the sudden wealth from sky-rocketing oil prices
was not being equitably distributed, nor was political power equitably
shared. The estrangement or alienation of Saudis in their own coun-
try was growing as rapidly as the oil wealth in those years. Like youth
everywhere, young Saudis, and especially those with some education,
felt the brunt of such estrangement more than others. With restricted
participation in socio-economic life because of the limited skills and
training for modern institutions being built, and with no political par-
ticipation under the autocratic Saudi regime, long allied with the
religious monopoly of the Wahabbi establishment, young Juhiman al-
Outiabi and his fellow zealots must have felt the same way as John
of Leyden did four and a half centuries earlier. The end result was
nearly the same: the Grand Mosque of Mecca was soon besieged by
Saudi government troops; the necessary pronouncements of condem-
nation were quickly issued by Sheikh Ben-Baz, the head of the Wahabbi
religious establishment. However, unable to dissuade the rebels to
surrender, and with the Saudi troops unable to storm the Grand
Mosque, the Saudi regime called on French mercenaries to do the job.
Several of the zealots were killed in the process; the others were
arrested, quickly tried, and beheaded. Ultimately, the uprising was
crushed and whole incident had ended in three weeks.
Although somewhat different in detail, similar episodes have taken
place in Egypt in 1974 and 1977, in Tunisia just few months prior to
the Grand Mosque seizure in 1979, and in Tehran at nearly the
same time. The zealots in all of these cases were not the poorest of
the poor, nor were they the scum misfits of the earth. They were all
young and among the relatively better educated in their societies.
They were all newcomers to the big city who had come from tribal
and rural origins. Like their counterparts in Münster, their tocsin was
against ‘‘king and pope’’; in the Arab-Muslim world, that reads
‘‘against repressive political regimes and allied religious establish-
ment’’. The counter-weapon of the discontented zealots is equally a
combination of the political and the religious.
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Saad Eddin Ibrahim
More than Christianity and other religions, Islam lends itself to

be a mobilizing political weapon. In its precepts and dicta, Islam is
as much a ‘‘worldly’’ as an ‘‘other-worldly’’ religion. In the latter, it
promises a glorious life on earth to the believers who adhere to its
teachings in letter and spirit – hence, the battle-cry of today’s acti-
vists, ‘‘Islam is the Solution.’’ The idealized history that Muslims
learn in school and hear about in the mosque has a simple unidi-
mensional message: Islam in the days of the Prophet Mohammed and
the Guided Caliphs (610–661) enabled Muslims to be virtuous, just,
prosperous, and strong; the true believers conquered the world and
built the greatest civilization humanity had ever known.
Young Muslims are told in schools that the normative dimensions
of Islamic teachings are second to none. Right from the start, Islam
educated its adherents to accept differences among human beings.
The Holy Qur’an addressed the believer unequivocally.
O Mankind! We [God] created you from a single pair of a male and a
female; and made you into peoples and tribes, that ye may know each other
(not that ye may despise each other). Verily the most honored in the sight of
God is [he who is] the most religious among you . . . . (Hujurat or the Inner
Apartments: 13)
If the Lord has so willed, He could have made mankind One Nation: but
they will still differ. (Hud or the Prophet Hud: 118)
Among his [God’s] Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and
the variations in your languages (tongues) and your colors . . . . (Rum, or the
Roman Empire: 22)
These verses spoke about and embraced multiculturalism more elo-

quently and unequivocally than any twentieth century UN or Euro-
pean document of a similar nature. In more than 100 places in the
Holy Qur’an we encounter clear and detailed verses teaching and
preaching the norms, values, and virtues that are now considered
essential for civil society.
On freedom of religious belief, the Holy Qur’an is no less equivocal.
The following verses suffice:
Ye may believe in it (the Qur’an) or not . . . . (Bani Israel: 107)
Say, ‘The Truth is From your Lord’: Let him who will, Believe, and let him
Who will reject (it). (Kahf: 29)
Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out Clear from Error.
(Baqara or the Heifer: 256)
218
If it had been thy Lord’s Will, They would all have believed, All who are on
Earth! Wilt thou then compel mankind, Against their will to believe!
(Yunus, or Jonah: 99)
Therefore do thou give Admonition, for thou art One to admonish. Thou art
not one to manage (men’s) affairs. But if any turn away And reject God,
God will punish him With a mighty Punishment.
For to Us will be Their Return; Then it will be for Us to call them to
account. (Gashiya, or the Overwhelming Event: 21–26)
This last verse laid down the Islamic principle of religious coexistence
and tolerance. God spared the Prophet and all Muslims the trap of
fruitless debate on who has the monopoly over religious truth. The
Faithful’s duty is to advocate, but not to admonish or coerce. It is only
God who can hold people accountable in the thereafter in matters
of beliefs. This fundamental point is repeated over and over again.
Addressing the Prophet, God commands:
If they do wrangle with thee, Say: ‘‘God knows best What it is ye are doing.’’
God will judge between you on the Day of Judgment Concerning the matters
in which Ye differ. (Hajj or The Pilgrimage: 68–69)
Equally, the Qur’an adjoins the Prophet and the Faithful to be always
gentle in addressing, dialoguing, or arguing with others in general,
and Peoples of the Book (Jews and Christians) in particular:
Speak fair to people. (Baqara, or the Heifer: 83)
Invite (all) to the Way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching;
and argue with them, In ways that are best And most gracious: For thy Lord
knoweth best, Who have strayed from His Path, And who received guid-
ance. (Nahl, or the Bee: 125)
One could continue to give numerous illustrations of Islam’s

respect of differences and its advocacy of peaceful and civilized
management of diversity. But this may, in fact, be said of nearly all
great religions. The question remains: how seriously have Muslims
taken their Glorious Commandments? For that we turn to some
leaves of Muslim sociopolitical history.
The first Muslim state of Medina set up by the Prophet Mohammed
and his four Guided Caliphs (successors) lasted for only 40 years
(622–661 A.D.). For the following 14 centuries, the imagination of
successive generations of Muslims has been galvanized by the puri-
fied glorious tales of those four decades. The history of Islam since
661 A.D. is replete with religious–social movements in quest for
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Saad Eddin Ibrahim
the ‘‘paradise lost.’’ Not all such movements succeeded in seizing

power, and none has managed to restore the ‘‘paradise lost.’’ The
political successes, rise of dynasties, religious failures, and the fall of
those dynasties, had always sown the seeds of new religious–social
movements.
Ibn Khaldoun, the great Arab social thinker, noted the cyclicality
and the success prerequisites of such movements in seizing political
power and establishing dynasties of their own. According to him, it is
always a combination of asabiya – esprit de corps – and a ‘‘religious
mission.’’ The asabiya, a primordial form of solidarity, is often
embodied in a strong tribe or a tribal coalition, providing the muscles
of political–military success. The religious mission provides the spiri-
tual raison d’être and legitimacy for success. To put it in other terms,
every new movement has to provide an alternative ‘‘king and pope’’
to the decaying ‘‘king and pope.’’ The last literal manifestations of
the Khaldounian paradigm were the nineteenth century Saudi–
Wahabbi movement in the Arabian Peninsula, the Sanusi movement
in North Africa, and the Mahadist movement in the Sudan.
In the Khaldounian times of the fourteenth century, the would-be
‘‘tribe-religious movement’’ was often initiated in the hinterland, at
an unreachable distance from the seat of political power. That hinter-
land was dubbed in the times of Ibn Khaldoun as bilad al-Siba or the
unruly country – in contrast to bilad al-Maghzin or the ruly and tax-
paying country. As the central power weakened, the Siba country
expanded and inched closer to the capital until the right moment
came for the coup de grâce against the decaying ruling élite. A new
‘‘tribe-dynasty,’’ legitimated and empowered by a religious vision,
then takes over to restore the ‘‘Islamic paradise lost.’’ The rest of the
cycle unfolds over three to four generations (about 100 years), until
another Siba hinterland tribe and another religious vision coalesce
into a new movement.
This elegant Khaldounian paradigm accounted for much, if not
all, of medieval Arab-Muslim history. However, with sociocultural
changes and the growing integration of the region into the world
system since the late eighteenth century, the paradigm no longer
accounts for the march of modern Arab-Muslim history. But some
of its internal logic may still be operative. The mobilizing power of
an Islamic vision in quest of the ‘‘paradise lost’’ still appeals to the
marginalized, the relatively deprived, and the powerless.
In this century, the ‘‘tribe’’ alone may no longer be a viable organ-
izational base for a religious–social movement. In the Yemeni elec-
220
tions of 1993 and the civil war of the following year we note an alli-
ance between the Mashid Tribe and the Islamic Islah (Reform) Party.
A year later, the same alliance would march with modern North
Yemeni army units to expel the South Yemeni ruling élite and con-
solidate their hold throughout Yemen. More often, however, it is now
the ‘‘underclass’’ that substitutes for tribe in fuelling religious–social
movements in the Arab-Muslim world. Algeria and Egypt are strik-
ing cases in point: in both, one-party populist regimes ruled for 30–40
years before they were forcefully challenged by sprouting Islamic
movements.
Initially, the single-party populist regimes had attractive visions
of their own. Their visions promised tremendous worldly rewards –
consolidation of newly gained independence, rapid development,
economic prosperity, social justice, and cultural authenticity. Though
not quite paradise on earth, the populist vision promised something
very close to it. There were implicit conditions, however, for deliver-
ing on the populist promises: the ‘‘masses’’ were to work hard with-
out demanding liberal political participation. With no firm tradition
of participatory governance, anyhow, this populist trade-off seemed
acceptable to the vast majority. For the first decade or two, the pop-
ulist social contract seemed to be working. Remarkable expansion in
education, industrialization, health, and other service provisions were
effected. With these real gains, a new middle class and a modern
working class grew steadily under state tutelage.
However, there were unintended and adverse consequences of
populist policies – rapid growth of population, urbanization, and
bureaucratization. In the first 20 years of Algeria’s populist regime
(1962–1982), its population had doubled, its urbanization tripled, and
its bureaucracy quadrupled. In Egypt, it took slightly longer – about
27–30 years – for the same process to occur. By the third decade of
populist rule, the regimes in both countries were no longer able to
manage their society or their state effectively. A new socio-economic
formation rapidly grew. For lack of a better term than Marxist, this
is the ‘‘urban lumpenproletariat.’’ With high expectations but little or
no employable skills, capital, or civic norms, the swarming millions of
rural newcomers to the cities formed this proletariat. They crowded
the older city quarters or, more often, created their own new slum
areas. Called bidonevilles in Algeria and ashwaiyat in Egypt, these
densely overpopulated slum areas would become the late twentieth
century equivalent of the Khaldounian Siba. Their human content is
proving to be the most flammable material in Arab-Muslim society
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Saad Eddin Ibrahim
today. In Egypt and Algeria they constitute between 25 and 35 per

cent of the total population. The youth of these communities are easy
prey for manipulation by demagogues, organized criminals, agents
provocateurs, and Islamic activists.
Other compounding factors have made the situation even worse for
populist regimes. The lower rungs of the new middle class have been
steadily alienated as a result of dwindling opportunities for employ-
ment or upward sociopolitical mobility. They began a mass desertion,
in the 1970s in Egypt, and in the 1980s in Algeria. From their ranks,
Islamic activists and other dissidents would sprout. They would
manipulate the urban lumpenproletariat of the new Siba in staging
their challenge against the now ageing and decaying populist ruling
élite. To use the Khaldounian analogy, a typical armed confronta-
tion between an Islamic-led new Siba and the Egyptian state – new
maghazin – took place in December 1992. By official count, some 700
shanty areas (ashwaiyat) have sprung up, in or around Egypt’s major
urban centres, over the previous two decades (1970–1990). At present,
their total population is estimated to be between 10 and 12 million.
Western Munira is one of them: located on the north-western edge of
Imbaba in Greater Cairo, it is less than three kilometres across the
Nile from the aristocratic upper-class district of Zamalek, the resi-
dential area of most of the maghazin élite. At two square kilometres,
less than one-fifth of the territorial size of Zamalek, Western Munira
has nearly one million dwellers, 10 times the population of Zamalek.
With nearly 50 times the density of Zamalek, at the time of the 1992
confrontation, dwellers of Western Munira had no schools, hospitals,
sewage system, public transportation, or a police station within walk-
ing distance. For many years, this area represented a ‘‘Hobbesian
world,’’ run by thugs, criminals, and drug dealers and infested with
every known vice. With no state presence, Western Munira was also
used as a hide-out for many Islamic militants on the run. In the late
1980s, one of them, Sheikh Gaber, felt safe enough to operate in the
open. He preached to, and recruited, several followers and, in a very
short time, he emerged as a ‘‘community leader.’’ He began to weed
out the vice lords, impose order, veil women, arrange marriages, and
collect ‘‘taxes.’’ The Egyptian state did not take note of him, until
a Reuters reporter filed a story with the provocative title ‘‘Sheikh
Gaber, the President of the Republic of Imbaba.’’ Angered and em-
barrassed, the Egyptian authorities ordered the Reuters reporter out
of the country and staged an armed expedition to arrest Sheikh
222
Gaber. By official count, some 12,000 armed security forces laid siege
to Western Munira, then stormed the place. The operation took three
weeks before Sheikh Gaber and 600 of his followers were killed,
wounded, or arrested.
Similar confrontations have been frequent in both Egypt and
Algeria since 1991. The casualty toll has escalated in Egypt from 96
in 1991, to 322 in 1992, and to 1,106 in 1993 – more than a tenfold
increase in three years. In 1994 and 1995, however, the number of
casualties decreased to about 700. In Algeria, the toll has rapidly
been escalating, from less than 1,000 in 1992, to about 10,000 in 1993,
and about 20,000 in 1994. In April 1995, the Algerian Minister of
the Interior, Mr. A. Mezian Sherif, announced that the total number
of casualties has topped 30,000 persons and material losses over 2.2
billion US dollars in three years between January 1992 and January
1995.2 This amount of money, according to him, was more than
enough to build 400,000 housing units for more than 2.4 million people.
A war of attrition has been the order of the day in both countries. It
is a war between an Islamic-led new Siba and a semi-authoritarian
state, timidly trying to democratize.
The profile comparisons between typical militants and the chal-
lenged populist rulers are stark. Of average or superior formal edu-
cation, an Islamic militant is usually less than 40 years of age. Nearly
90 per cent of those militants arrested or killed in armed confronta-
tions with the Algerian state in the four years between 1992 and 1996
were born after independence in 1962 – that is, after the present
populist regime came to power. Some of the Egyptian militants who
were recently arrested, tried, and sentenced to death were under 18
years old – born after President Mubarak came to power as Vice-
President in 1975, and after the beginning of the uninterrupted tenure
of at least four of his present cabinet members.
Not only did the populist authoritarian regimes fail to renew their
ranks by infusing new blood and new ideas but, worse, for a long time
they repressed or circumvented other social forces from sharing the
public space. The middle and upper rungs of the middle class, both
men and women, have not been allowed a sufficient margin of free-
dom to create, and get involved in, autonomous civil-society organi-
zations. Had such a civil society been in place during the period of
populist state retreat in the 1970s and 1980s, both Egypt and Algeria
could have weathered the militant Islamic-led Siba storm. Egypt has
nearly stood still with its timid democratization since the early 1980s;
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Saad Eddin Ibrahim
Algeria rushed clumsily into it in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, the

situation in both countries could be markedly improved, as we shall
shortly see.
Surprisingly, what Michael Hudson calls the ‘‘modernizing monar-
chies’’ of the Arab-Muslim world have been more able to weather the
Islamic-led Siba storms. Different in many ways from their populist
neighbours, modernizing monarchies in Morocco and Jordan faced
similar structural socio-economic problems during the 1980s – grow-
ing population, urbanization, bureaucratization, huge external debts,
and a shrinking state resource base. They had their share of urban
lumpenproletariat, the new Siba, and food rioting in the 1980s. But
instead of repression, resisting change, or attempting to precipitate
dramatic change, the two monarchs have carefully engineered a
gradual and orderly democratization: they initiated public debates on
governance and constitutional issues in which all political forces par-
ticipated; a ‘‘national pact’’ or a ‘‘new social contract’’ was implicitly
or explicitly formulated; municipal and parliamentary elections were
held, with a marked degree of fairness; the secular opposition in
Morocco and the Islamic forces in Jordan won an impressive number
of seats; women were elected to national parliaments for the first time
in both countries.
Morocco and Jordan are not constitutional monarchies and may
not be for some time to come. Nor are there any illusions about
their participatory experiments of governance soon becoming a
Westminster-style democracy. But their sociopolitical march in the
last decade has been far more orderly than that of Algeria and Egypt:
there has been no politically motivated violence, killing, or rioting in
either country; Islamic militancy hardly exists in Morocco and is fairly
tamed, or under complete control, in Jordan.
In Kuwait (1992), Lebanon (1992), and Yemen (1993), Islamists
participated in parliamentary elections. They came second in Kuwait
and Yemen, and had an impressive showing in winning several of the
seats assigned to both Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Lebanon. Even in
Egypt, though not officially recognized as a legal party, the Muslim
Brotherhood ran for parliamentary elections under the banner of
other parties in 1984 (with the Wafd) and 1987 (with the Labor
Socialist Party). In both elections, the Muslim Brotherhood won sev-
eral seats and came out in third place among nine contending parties.
Beyond the Arab world, Islamists have regularly run for elections
in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Turkey since the 1980s. In Indonesia,
Malaysia, and the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union,
224
Islamists have been peacefully engaging in local and municipal poli-

tics and are petitioning for recognition and the expansion of plural-
istic politics on the national level. It is important to note that in three
of the largest Muslim countries – Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Turkey –
women have been elected to the top executive office in the land,
dispelling the stereotype about an inherent anti-democratic or anti-
feminist Islamic impulse. Moreover, in Turkey the most religious
Islamic Rafat Party and the most secular Straight Path Party formed a
coalition government in July 1996. It is also noteworthy that Islamic-
based parties in both Pakistan and Bangladesh have appealed to
no more than 10 per cent of the electorate. In the fair elections in
Turkey, the religious Rafat Party won only about one-fifth of the
popular vote in the 1995 parliamentary elections. The important
point in all these recent examples is that Islamic parties have
accepted the rules of the democratic game and have played them
peacefully and in an orderly manner.
There are a number of lessons to be drawn from the contrasting
cases of Algeria and Egypt, on the one hand, and the rest of the
Arab-Muslim world, on the other. These lessons also serve to eluci-
date the intricate relationship between religion and politics in general
and that of Islam in particular.
First, political Islam has grown and spread in the last two decades
as an idiom of protest against repression, social injustice, the hard-
ening of political arteries, and the threat to collective identity. Its
radicalism is commensurate with the degree to which these ills are felt
or perceived by the young, educated lower-middle-class Muslims.
Political Islam has not been the only appealing vision to these young
Muslims: they have responded strongly to secular visions in this cen-
tury, such as Arab nationalism, Turkish nationalism, inter-war lib-
eralism, and socialism.
Second, despite their initial radical messages and/or actions,
Islamic militants are tameable, through accommodative politics of
inclusion. Running for office, or once in it, they recognize the com-
plexities of the real world and the need for gradualism and toleration.
The ‘‘worldly’’ concerns increasingly impinge on the ‘‘other-worldly’’
in their consciousness, language, and actions. The Islamists of Iran
are a case in point: starting as ‘‘pro-natalist,’’ Iran’s Islamic Revolu-
tion is now feverishly pursuing an ‘‘anti-natalist’’ population policy.
In this respect, Islamic activists are no different from their Chinese
Communist counterparts: recognizing that their ideological rhetoric
led to a rapid population increase that undermined their other socio-
225
Saad Eddin Ibrahim
economic policies, they were willing to perform a complete policy

reversal.
Third, people in Muslim societies, like people everywhere, may
give new visions and promised solutions a chance when the old ones
fail. But, ultimately, they will judge these new ones by their results.
The Islamists in Jordan lost one-third of the number of seats between
the 1989 and 1993 elections. Despite the majority of seats won in
the last aborted parliamentary elections, Algeria’s Islamic Salvation
Front (FIS) lost one million net votes between 1990 and 1991. In both
Jordan and Algeria, the initial flare of the ‘‘Islamic Alternative’’ lost
some of its attraction once Islamists were tried in office. On the con-
trary, in Turkey the Islamic Rafat Party has been gaining steadily in
national parliamentary elections, doubling its popular vote from less
than 10 per cent to more than 20 per cent between the mid-1980s and
the mid-1990s. This surge of popularity is due to its impressive per-
formance in running large urban municipalities (e.g. Istanbul and
Izmir). The slum areas around major Turkish cities could have led to
bloody confrontations similar to those of Algeria and Egypt.
Fourth, peoples of the Muslim world have increasingly been inte-
grated in the international system. The radical Islamists among them
cannot ignore this fact. Even their anti-Western rhetoric is an idiom
of protest against other worldly grievances. Once fairly or equitably
addressed, cooperation becomes not only possible but also desirable.
In this respect, Islamic radicals are no different from their nationalist
counterparts of an earlier generation. The problem of the Muslim
peoples in relation to the West parallels their problems with their
own repressive and corrupt regimes. Not only does the legacy of
Western colonialism lurk in Muslims’ collective memory, but it is
easily invoked with every contemporary Western act or policy that
smacks of double standards. Recently, the reaction of the West to the
massacres of Muslims by non-Muslims in market-places of Bosnia,
mosques in Palestine, or civilian refugee camps in Lebanon (Qana,
April 1996) seemed muted at best. The Western pressure on Arab
and Muslim countries to sign an unlimited nuclear non-proliferation
treaty without asking their arch-enemy Israel to do the same is, to
them, a blatant double standard. Equally, Algeria’s short-lived
experiment with pluralistic politics was a test of whether Islamists
could be reconciled to democracy, but it was as much a test of whether
the West could be reconciled to Muslim democracy. The West has
long been on the best of terms with Muslim despots, such as Saudi
Arabia and many Gulf states, Iran’s Shah, and Pakistan’s Zia’ul-Haq.
226
Once these inconsistencies are seriously and credibly addressed, not

only militant Islamists but most of the Arab-Muslim people would
have no legitimate misgivings vis-à-vis the West.
Fifth, as a thoughtful Western observer recently noted, Islamic
societies now find themselves in the opening rounds of what the West
went through in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in redefining
the relationship between God and man, among human beings, and
between themselves and the state.3 We believe that Muslim societies
will emerge from this process as more rational and more democratic.
The process, however, could be much shorter and less costly if
external actors lend an honest hand on the side of democratic forces.
The West has recently been interfering militarily in the affairs of
Muslim societies, from Libya to Somalia and from the Gulf to Kur-
distan. It has also been interfering economically, directly or through
the IMF–World Bank-prescribed structural adjustment policies. The
West is yet to do the same politically in support of democracy. Even
if it brings into office some radical Islamists, they would soon lose
either their ‘‘radicalism’’ or ‘‘Islamism.’’ Muslims everywhere have
taken note that the Islamic Afghani mujahidin are fighting each other
for worldly gains – power – as their counterparts had previously done
in post-Shah Iran. Muslims recognize that the Islamists are not saints;
but they may be less devilish than their present old repressive rulers.4
I conclude with a plea to continue to engage in a serious analysis
and deconstruction of the complex processes now unfolding in vari-
ous regions of the world, which embrace religion and politics. It is a
renewed plea for the rehabilitation of the concepts of cultural diver-
sity and the practice of ‘‘cultural relativism’’ as a requisite for the
‘‘bridging,’’ not the ‘‘clashing,’’ of civilizations. Boundaries will always
exist as long as human groups continue to exist, but they need not be
hostile boundaries. We do not need another Great Wall of China nor
another Berlin Wall: neither stood the test of time; their remnants in
China and Germany are now just tourist attractions. Let us hope that
Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations will transpire not to be a
self-fulfilling prophecy but merely a intellectual tourist attraction.
Notes
1. Abridged from a full account in Rodney Stark and Williams Bainbridge, The Future of Reli-
gion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1985).
2. Quoted in Al-Ahram (Cairo Arabic daily,) 8 April 1995.
227
Saad Eddin Ibrahim
3. Robin Wright, ‘‘Islam, Democracy, and the West,’’ Foreign Affairs, Summer 1992; 71: 133.
4. See the results of a recent multi-country survey in the Muslim world: David Pollock and
Elaine El-Assai (eds) In the Eye of the Beholder: Muslim and Non-Muslim Views of Islam,
Islamic Politics, and Each Other (Washington, D.C.: Office of Research and Media Reaction,
U.S. Information Agency, August 1995).
Further reading
Mohammed Selim, Al-Awwa. 1989. On the Political System of Islamic State, 6th
edition (in Arabic). Cairo: first Dar El-Shrouk edition, 1989.
Salah, El-Sawey. 1993. Political Pluralism in the Islamic State, 2nd edition (in Arabic).
Cairo: Dar El Eilam El-Dawli.
Saad Eddin, Al-Hussainy. 1993. Why Islamic? Features of the Coming State (in
Arabic). Dar All-Bayyena.
Polk, David, and Elaine El-Assali (eds). 1995. In the Eye of the Beholder: Muslim
and Non-Muslim Views of Islam, Islamic Politics, and Each Other. Washington,
D.C.: Office of Research and Media Reaction, U.S. Information Agency.
228
Invigorating democratic ideas
and institutions
14
The Philadelphia model
John Keane
On 19 April 1775, red-coated British troops nervously opened fire,

without orders, on a group of American militiamen who had gathered
near the meeting house on Lexington Green in Massachusetts,
watched by a large crowd frightened into silence by whiffs of gun-
powder and the redcoats’ cries of ‘‘Disperse ye villains, ye rebels! Lay
down your arms!’’ Eight militiamen were killed and ten wounded.
News of the massacre ballooned through the colonies, kept aloft by
couriers and newspapers and the savage indignation of those who
concluded that from here on the world would have to be changed.
After conflicts like Lexington, many colonists saw life in a funda-
mentally different way. The British parliamentary monarchy now
seemed miserly, aggressive. America felt larger, more confident, and
capable of governing itself, even lighting the path to liberty with new
principles that the world could follow.
Two centuries after their invention, and especially during parades
and picnics on 4 July, the popular memory of these founding princi-
ples is vivid. Most Americans summarize them in one simple word –
‘‘freedom’’ – yet they are not easy to detail, because the shared sense
of unorthodoxy and mistrust of power of these principles has spawned
endless controversies about the nature of liberty itself. The principles
of American freedom are, nevertheless, discernible in what might be
called the Philadelphia model of democracy. It began to crystallize
after battles like Lexington and first appeared in such documents as
the Declaration of Independence, read out to cheering crowds in
Philadelphia after Congress approved its revised wording on 4 July
1776 and, two months later, in the new Pennsylvania constitution,
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John Keane
which abolished property qualifications for voting and office-holding

and, for its time, was easily the most democratic in the world.
Many Americans remain proud of the Philadelphia model, and
with good reason. It was entirely novel: for the first time in human
history, a two-tiered federated system of republican government
elected by, and responsible to, its citizens was created. This ‘‘com-
pound republic,’’ as James Madison called it, stressed the need for a
written constitution, based ultimately on the consent of citizens. This
specified the powers accorded to government and the powers accorded
to citizens in the form of such entitlements as the liberty of the press,
the right to vote, and (twisting Hobbes’ maxim that covenants unpro-
tected by the sword are worthless) the right to bear arms. The new
American system was designed to destroy the pomp and power of
monarchy, exemplified by the corrupt Crown-in-Parliament system of
the British. Moreover, resistance to tyranny, it was argued, required a
rejection of the old fiction that the people resemble a body crying out
for an all-powerful sovereign head which enjoyed the right to muzzle
and blindfold its subjects and to speak and act on their behalf. Sover-
eignty in this sense, the Philadelphia revolutionaries insisted, treated
‘‘the people’’ as mere dross. It also overvalued unified power.
In perhaps their boldest move, the Philadelphians unpicked the
classical republican assumption that ‘‘the people,’’ like an earthly
God, are the unified source of all political authority. From the time of
the Articles of Confederation in 1778, in particular, the revolution-
aries – stretching from Hamilton to Paine on the political spectrum –
cut a path into the unknown by insisting that Americans could only
become citizens of a subdivided polity. The Philadelphians refused
to see the relationship between the state and federal tiers of power
in zero-sum terms; they were, instead, adamant that the new elected
federation, by dividing and clearly limiting the jurisdiction of the two
tiers of government, would help tame the arrogance of elected rep-
resentatives, ensuring that those who govern do not stand above the
law, violate the rights of citizens, or suffocate the public spirit of the
commonwealth.
Public virtue was central to the Philadelphian model. It insisted
that freedom is not freewheeling individualism; rather, it is the un-
hindered ability of (male) citizens to act in concert with others and so
to govern themselves within a written constitutional framework. This
idea of freedom as self-government implied the need to restrain self-
ishness and the shabby morals of politicians and men of wealth, who
should not be allowed to manipulate the laws to grind down the poor
232
– or to own slaves. Republican principles should be stretched into

the sphere of economic life; property and its corresponding ‘‘liberal’’
values of private property, competition, and moneymaking must be
subject to the principles of civic virtue. Few republicans thought that
public spirit could, or should, eliminate disparities of wealth. And the
question of slavery remained a permanent embarrassment. But most
were agreed that the availability of citizenship rights to all adult White
male citizens – not just property owners – would ensure ongoing public
discussion about how to divide the divisible, and thus guarantee that
the existing patterns of wealth and inequality would not be seen as
natural, as reflecting the will of God, or as a brutal fact of ‘‘market
forces.’’
A remarkable feature of the revolutionaries’ affection for public
spirit is the continuing power to attract strong support in con-
temporary America as well as in those countries – stretching from
France and Turkey to China and Australia – touched in some way
by the spirit of the Revolution. Operating as a 220-year-old utopia,
it still moves people to tears and stirs up heated disputes about
democracy. This spirit is certainly among the principal themes heat-
ing contemporary American political debate, sometimes to boiling
point, especially within the ranks of the so-called communitarians.
This ragged coalition of New Deal Democrats, community organizers,
academics, city officials, along with those from the right, such as Pat
Buchanan, speak for new forms of public regulation of the economy
and dislike ‘‘liberalism’’ and its image of the unencumbered self.
According to communitarian thinkers like Michael Sandel, Reagan-
ite/Thatcherite ‘‘liberalism’’ is, on balance, foul political thinking.1 Its
appeal to the image of the free and independent self is seductive: who
could be opposed to the principle that we should respect persons as
persons, and that we should strive accordingly to secure their equal
right to live the lives they choose within a framework of government
and laws that are neutral with respect to competing moral values?
However, it ignores the elementary fact that people are regularly
attached to others through bonds of love and affection, workplace
and neighbourhood solidarity, and familial and religious duty. Such
‘‘civic obligations,’’ the latter-day Philadelphians insist, are normally
not freely chosen on a contractual basis. ‘‘Liberalism’’ is therefore
self-contradictory: it cannot grasp that the kind of civic engagement
that liberty requires is actually not thinkable within the ‘‘liberal’’
language of individual rights. The flip side of this point is that ‘‘lib-
eralism’’ is slowly destroying the Philadelphian conception of the
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John Keane
good life: ‘‘liberalism’’ is responsible for the ‘‘moral void’’ within the
American polity. Now, more than ever, the republic needs repub-
licanism – the old Philadelphian spirit of active citizenship, public
spirit, and solidarity in the face of adversity.
In practical terms, the communitarians come out in support of
the politics of ‘‘soulcraft’’ – a favourite term of Michael Sandel; they
are for a range of centre-left, Mario Cuomo-style policies designed to
forge a common sense of citizenship among the American popula-
tion. Community development corporations; citizens’ opposition to
supermarket-driven sprawl; federal spending on job training and
education; and an emphasis on the character-forming role of families,
neighbourhoods, and churches; these, say the communitarians, must
be among the ingredients of the uphill struggle to defend and extend
the Philadelphia model of liberty against its ‘‘liberal’’ enemies. The
confident energy of their case is reminiscent of the spirit of 1776. It
serves as a reminder that the American revolutionaries were the first
successful modern radicals to universalize the principles of their rev-
olution, which they portrayed as the harbinger of world citizenship,
good government, and peace on earth. But how viable is this Phila-
delphian image of democratic freedom? Is it anything more than post-
revolutionary nostalgia; is it merely a cool fin-de-siècle perspective
that keeps the conference circuit talking; or does it have real intel-
lectual and political potential?
Time and politics will tell. So, too, will its intellectual strengths and
its weaknesses, both of which need careful examination. Its intellec-
tual strengths are obvious. The Philadelphian model appeals to sig-
nificant parts of America precisely because it scores telling points
against the blind spots, contradictions, and misdoings of intellectuals,
politicians, and policies favouring a ‘‘Reaganite’’ vision of America.
It correctly protests against such facts of American life as crass com-
mercialism, the degradation of urban areas, and the disempowerment
of citizens. It rightly cries out against the maltreatment of Blacks,
government corruption, and the run-down of the public infrastruc-
ture. It traces these ailments in the body politic to the abusive exer-
cises of power by selfish oligarchs. This keeps alive the old republican
presumption that power, understood as the domination by some men
over the lives of others, is a permanent temptation in human affairs
and that, consequently, the wielders of power must be subject to
effective checks to ensure its responsible exercise. This call for vigi-
lance in the presence of power remains as pertinent today as it was
during the eighteenth century. Yet – the caveat is important – the
234
intellectual confidence with which latter-day Philadelphians object to

American decadence should not blind them to the dangers of repub-
lican fundamentalism – the unthinking, dogmatic presumption that
the basics of the Philadelphia model remain intact over two centuries
after its birth in battles like Lexington.
The contribution of republicanism to modern democratic principles
and institutions is considerable. From a democratic point of view, it
is a tradition well worth supporting, but only after the meaning in
theory and practice of republican liberty is first thoroughly scruti-
nized with an open mind. Among the paradoxes presently surround-
ing the Philadelphia model, its rising popularity is overshadowed by
gathering clouds of intellectual doubt regarding some aspects of the
republican project as a whole. Most obvious is the point that eight-
eenth century republicanism actively ignored women’s right not to
be ignored. It certainly criticized old-fashioned patriarchalism and
championed the resistance of adult men to what Jefferson and others
dubbed the ‘‘fatherly’’ government of monarchy. But republicanism,
despite its sensitivity to citizens’ freedom, stopped short of question-
ing the power of ‘‘fathers’’ by preserving the conventional imagery
of women as (potentially) seductive, fickle prostitutes. Women were
seen as creatures marked by their unvirtuous disregard for reason
and hence fit only for the ‘‘private’’ realm of family life. This pre-
sumption is still alive and well and serves to constrain, and frustrate,
and physically exhaust many women whose complicated daily lives
of juggling partners, children, friends and relatives, employment, and
civic involvements are hopelessly at odds with the symbolic associa-
tion of ‘‘women’’ with ‘‘home.’’
Furthermore, in an era of growing awareness of multicultural and
other differences, orthodox republicanism’s call for strait-jacketing
everyone within ‘‘the common good’’ seems moralizing, at best, and
potentially authoritarian, at worst. Just as early modern republican-
ism actively resisted the ‘‘seditious’’ or fracturing effects upon politi-
cal communities by the emergent party systems – ‘‘If I could not go
to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all,’’ quipped
Jefferson – so contemporary republicanism seems morose in the face
of political and social divisions. Certainly, orthodox republicanism is
today out of step with a basic feature and precondition of the demo-
cratic project – namely, its commitment to building and preserving
institutional systems guided by a ‘‘higher amorality’’ that discourages
moralizing politics and refuses to judge opponents as ‘‘enemies.’’2
This revised understanding of democracy is, admittedly, at odds with
235
John Keane
the fact that, for the past two centuries, virtually every democratic
thinker in Europe and elsewhere has attempted, with varying degrees
of confidence, to justify democracy by referring back to a substantive
grounding principle. Many examples come to mind: the argument of
Georg Forster, Thomas Paine, and others that democracy is grounded
in the natural rights of men and citizens; the belief of Mazzini that the
growth of democracy is a law of history; the Benthamite assumption
that democracy is an implied condition of the principle of utility; the
(Marxian) claim that the triumph of authentic democracy is depen-
dent upon the world-historical struggle of the proletariat; and the
conviction of Theodor Parker and others that democracy is a form of
government.
Belief in these obviously contradictory first principles has today
crumbled. Within the old and new democracies, the salient ‘‘philo-
sophical’’ themes contained within most controversies about power
are the insistence on the horizoned and biased character of human
life, the emphasis on the cognitive intransparency of the world, and
awareness of the impossibility of substituting knowledge of the
‘‘independent’’ structures of the ‘‘real world’’ for uncertain and ten-
tative theoretical interpretations and revisable public judgements.
Democratic theory cannot ignore this trend, and that is why, in my
view, democracy is no longer understandable as a self-evidently
desirable norm. Democracy is now suffering a deep (if less than visi-
ble) crisis of authority that cannot be cured by concocting imaginary
foundations such as national argumentation, principles of autonomy,
or knowledge of a ‘‘good which we can know in common’’ (Sandel).
The key question is whether democratic theory can live without
foundationalist assumptions such as ‘‘the common good.’’ Following a
clue provided in Hans Kelsen’s Vom Wesem und Wert der Demokratie
(1929), one can suggest that the sense of common purpose of pre-
modern societies cannot non-violently and democratically be re-
created under modern conditions. The philosophy of democracy
cannot become a universal language game, capable of knowing
everything, refuting all its opponents, and pointing to the practical
synthesis of all differences of opinion and identity. Furthermore,
democracy is best understood as an implied precondition and a prac-
tical effect of philosophical and political pluralism, which is not itself
a philosophical first principle but instead understandable through
the logic of occasion, as practised among the pre-Socratics. I have
reached the tentative conclusion that the separation of civil society
from state institutions, as well as the public monitoring of power in
236
each domain, are both among the necessary conditions for enabling a
genuinely rich plurality of individuals and groups openly expressing
their solidarity with, or opposition to, others’ ideals and forms of life.
This revised understanding of democracy addresses the objection
that the very term ‘‘democracy’’ is polluted by its diverse and contra-
dictory meanings. Paradoxically, it insists, against Sartori and others,3
that what is viewed as ‘‘democratic’’ at any given time and place can
be maintained and/or contested as such only through these demo-
cratic procedures. These normatively inclined procedures are the
condition sine qua non of post-foundationalism; whoever rejects them
falls back either into the trap of foundationalism and its pompous
belief in truth and ethics or into a cynical and self-defeating relativ-
ism that insists that there are no certain or preferable guidelines in
life, thereupon displaying the same logical incoherence as the Cretan
Epimenides, who truthfully declared that all Cretans were liars. It is,
indeed, possible to escape the twin traps of relativism and founda-
tionalism by viewing the democratic project as equivalent to the
struggle against trans-historical ideals, definite truths, and other
allegedly safe high roads of human existence.
The most alert contemporary defenders of the Philadelphia model
try to deal intellectually with the objection that the principle of the
common good is undemocratic by emphasizing, correctly in my view,
the political importance of cultivating civil society. This is, in effect,
trying to ‘‘modernize’’ the Philadelphia ideals, just as de Tocqueville’s
Democracy in America attempted to do by praising local associations
of citizens as the best way of resisting tyrannies of both public opin-
ion and government. However, this spells trouble for the old repub-
lican belief in an ultimately unified polity in which citizens can hap-
pily disagree because they agree on the political basics. That this
foundational belief in ‘‘the common good’’ is today no longer fully
accepted – or even understood – in parts of multicultural America is
illustrated by the bitter struggles over the merits of multiculturalism
in such areas as the teaching of history and matters of religious
orthodoxy. It is hard to know just whether we are living in times in
which the belief in commonality is disappearing, slowly and surely.
Perhaps only one trend is certain: like the modern statues of the gods
and goddesses (as Hegel put it), unser Knie beugen wir doch nicht
mehr before the republican god of the common good. Thus, all
democracies, old and new, are left with only one democratic alter-
native: to embrace the difficult art of judgement in the philosophical
sense.
237
John Keane
Judgement, the publicly learned capacity to choose courses of

action in public contexts riddled with complexity, is the democratic
art par excellence. It relies neither on the rules of deduction and
induction nor on the conjectural thinking of abduction. Judgement
avoids flights of fancy as much as it shuns practical reason, which
‘‘reasons’’ by telling actors what to do and what not to do by laying
down the law in the language of imperatives such as ‘‘always observe
the principle of the common good.’’ Judgement avoids categorical
imperatives that instruct those who act, always to act in such a way
that the criteria of their acts can become a general law. Judgement
tacks between the unique and the general. It is neither ‘‘reflective’’
nor ‘‘determinant’’ (to use the highly questionable distinction drawn
by Kant to describe decisions that derive general rules from the
particular or derive the particular from the general, respectively).
Judgement, instead, relies on the recognition that the practical choice
of how to act in any context must be guided by the recognition of the
particularity of that situation. This means giving recognition to its
uniqueness or difference from what we are used to.
The need for democrats and democracies to recognize that they
know that they do not know what is to be done, that decisions require
judgements, and that judgements lie within the field of force between
the particular and the general, are quintessential features of the
democratic art of public judgement. This will rescue political judge-
ment from accusations of arbitrariness – and from the lure of will-
o’-the-wisp universals like ‘‘the common good’’ – that in practice tend
always to produce either political peacockery or bovine arrogance,
both of which sap democratic politics. Yet the problem of the
‘‘common good’’ principle is only one of the contemporary problems
facing democratic politics. Other, less obvious, intellectual traps await
Philadelphian republicanism. They must be emphasized, for they bring
us to the cutting edge of contemporary thinking about democratic
liberty. Two related examples of this spring to mind and point to the
need to save the Philadelphia model of democracy by amending it.
One concerns the old republican defence of the right of men to
bear arms. The original Philadelphian model had a geopolitical vision.
Powerfully challenging the prevailing Westphalian system of interna-
tional relations, it was driven by the desire to avoid the emergence of
another Europe, which was seen to be racked by hierarchy, balance-
of-power politics, and constant wars between and within states. The
Philadelphia model not only called for balancing and dividing power
within the two-tiered system of state institutions, including its polic-
238
ing and war-making powers (symbolized by the subdivision of powers

of foreign affairs and military command, between the president and a
divided Congress); the new republic also sought to avoid the mistakes
of old Europe by maintaining a citizens’ militia to ensure that the
central government was prevented from waging unpopular foreign
wars or perpetrating violence against its own citizens. Hence, the
Second Amendment: ‘‘A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to
the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear
Arms, shall not be infringed.’’
In practice, this strange republican premise has proved to be dev-
ilish. It cavorts with the enemies of civility. Contemporary repub-
licans correctly warn that civic solidarity is today at breaking point.
Yet most do not see that their own traditional formula for dealing
with state violence – arming citizens – contradicts the latter-day call
for their non-violent empowerment. As I have argued in Reflections
on Violence, the problem of violence should be at the heart of con-
temporary political thinking, if only because all known forms of civil
society are plagued by endogenous sources of incivility.4 Civil soci-
eties, ideal-typically conceived, are complex and dynamic webs of
social institutions in which the opacity of the social ensemble – citi-
zens’ inability to conceive, let alone grasp, the totality of social life –
combined with the chronic uncertainty of key aspects of life – em-
ployment and investment patterns, who will govern after the next
elections, the contingent identity of one’s self and one’s household –
make their members prone to stress, anxiety, and revenge. All modern
civil societies are more or less caught in the grip of what Heinrich von
Kleist called the ‘‘fragile constitution of the world’’ (die gebrechliche
Einrichtung der Welt), and such fragility – combined with social dis-
crimination and the increasing availability and cheapness of weap-
onry – increases the probability that the customary moral sanctions
and restraints upon the resort to violence can be rejected or avoided
by some of their members. Republicanism is intellectually unhelpful
in coming to terms with this trend. It is also ill-equipped to deal with
a not unrelated problem facing many old and new democracies – the
problem of incivility caused by indifference. Indifference abounds
within actually existing civil societies. A growing number of citizens’
everyday contacts are contacts with strangers – that is, with people
whom we expect never to deal with again. Neighbourliness is threat-
ened by this trend, which may well be irreversible, which is another
reason why the temptation of incivility – using insulting words and
even knives and guns to resolve tensions with strangers – is rising,
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John Keane
oiled by republican talk of citizens bearing arms. The implication is

clear: the republican defence of liberty necessitates objections to
the republican Second Amendment, which in turn requires active gun
control, including greater efforts to police the dramatic spread of
private police forces in the name of the right to bear arms.
It is true that the Philadelphia model of democracy bravely tried
to ameliorate incivility by emphasizing citizens’ duties towards the
public. That meant not only being civil towards others but also being
committed to a non-violent public sphere of reasoned debate and
information, circulated among citizens by the printing press. The
principle was summarized in the famous words of Thomas Jefferson
in 1787: ‘‘Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a
Government without Newspapers, or Newspapers without a Govern-
ment, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.’’
How viable is this republican ideal of the public sphere, whose
purpose is to monitor the power of government and so prevent it
falling into the arms of corruption? The public sphere principle cer-
tainly stands behind most latter-day republicans’ mistrust of com-
mercialized media, television ‘‘infotainment’’ in particular, and draws
upon the contemporary debate about the use of technology to allow
citizens to filter out unacceptable TV programmes, the argument
about Hollywood violence, and the debate about regulating the
Internet. It also underpins the ‘‘public journalism’’ movement, as
expounded by James Fallows, which seeks to draw a vulgarized
media back towards more serious public issues and transform net-
works of communications into proper organs of ‘‘the public sphere.’’5
The main problem with this vision is not its questionable pre-
sumption that public life is dying but, rather, its failure to see that we
are living in times in which public life and its corresponding spatial
frameworks of communication are in a state of upheaval. The old
hegemony of state-structured territorially bound public life mediated
by radio, television, newspapers, and books is rapidly eroding. In its
place we see the development of a multiplicity of networked spaces of
communication that are not tied immediately to territory and which
irreversibly fragment anything resembling a single, spatially inte-
grated public sphere. The vision of a republic of citizens striving to
live up to some ‘‘public good’’ is thus obsolete. Public life today is
subject to structural transformations, not as Habermas defined them
in Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit but in the quite different sense of
a developing and complex mosaic of differently sized, overlapping,
and networked public spheres.
240
Although these public spheres emerge within different milieux in

the nooks and crannies of civil societies and states, each is an interest-
ridden stage of action that displays the essential characteristics of a
public sphere. A public sphere is a particular type of spatial relation-
ship between two or more people, usually connected by a certain
means of communication – television, radio, satellite, fax, telephone,
e-mail – in which non-violent controversies erupt, for a brief or more
extended period of time, concerning the power relations operating
within their given milieu of interaction and/or the wider milieu of
social and political structures within which the disputants are situ-
ated. Public spheres are the sites of the quintessential democratic
attitude – diffidenza (Eco), the constant attitude of healthy suspicion
of power. Within public spheres, citizens name the unnameable, point
at frauds, take sides, start arguments, try to redefine the world, and
stop it going to sleep. As citizens, they learn about the world; engage
in controversies over who should get what, when, and how; and
thereby help to ensure, within both the state and civil society, that
nobody privately ‘‘owns’’ power. Public spheres in this sense never
appear in pure form and rarely in isolation. Although they typically
have a networked, interconnected character, contemporary public
spheres have a fractured quality which is not being overcome by
some broader trend towards an integrated public sphere. The exam-
ples below illustrate their heterogeneity and variable size, and that
is why I choose, at the risk of being misunderstood, to distinguish
among three ideal-types of public sphere.
Micro-public spheres, evident within social-movement networks
and the advanced communication systems of local governments, are
spaces in which there are dozens, hundreds, or thousands of dis-
putants interacting usually at the sub-nation-state level. Meso-public
spheres, mediated by large-circulation newspapers such as the New
York Times and Le Monde, and electronic media such as the BBC,
RAI, and the four American networks, normally comprise millions
of people interacting at the level of the nation-state. Macro-public
spheres crystallize around global media events (such as the Tianan-
men Square crisis and the recent Russian elections) and the Internet,
and normally encompass hundreds of millions – and even billions – of
people enmeshed in disputes at the supra-national and global levels
of power.
It might be objected that the attempt to categorize contemporary
public life into spaces of varying scope or ‘‘reach’’ is mistaken on
both empirical and normative grounds. Empirically speaking, it could
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John Keane
be said that contemporary publics are not discrete spaces, as the cat-
egories of micro-, meso-, and macro-public sphere imply; rather, they
resemble a modular system of overlapping networks characterized
by the lack of differentiation among spheres. Certainly, the concept
of modularization is helpful in understanding the complexity of con-
temporary public life, but this does not mean that the boundaries
among variously sized public spheres are obliterated completely. On
the contrary, modular systems thrive on internal differentiation, whose
workings can thus be understood only by means of ideal-typical cate-
gories that highlight those systems’ inner boundaries.
The triadic distinction among differently sized public spheres can
also be contested on normative grounds. During the early years of the
twentieth century, at the beginning of the broadcasting era, John
Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems famously expressed the com-
plaint that modern societies are marked by the fragmentation of
public life:6 ‘‘There are too many publics and too much of public
concern for our existing resources to cope with,’’ wrote Dewey. ‘‘The
essential need,’’ he added, ‘‘is the improvement of a unified system of
methods and conditions of debate, discussion, and persuasion, that is
the problem of the public.’’ This neo-republican appeal – repeated
more recently by Robert Bellah, Michael Sandel, and others – fails to
see that the structural differentiation of public spaces is unlikely to
be undone in the coming decades.7 The continued use of ‘‘the’’ public
sphere ideal is therefore bound to empty it of empirical content and
to turn the ideal into a nostalgic, unrealizable utopia. The Phila-
delphia ideal of a unified public sphere and its corresponding vision
of a republic of citizens striving to produce ‘‘public opinion’’ and to
live up to some ‘‘public good’’ are badly in need of rethinking. Unless
it is revised, the continued talk of ‘‘the public sphere’’ could even
have potentially undemocratic consequences. Why? Because the old
republican supposition that all power disputes can ultimately be sited
at the level of the territorially bound nation-state is obsolete: it is a
remnant from the era of revolutions against empires and nation-state-
building and the corresponding struggles of states’ inhabitants to
widen the franchise – and, hence, to direct public controversies pri-
marily towards the operations of the sovereign state itself.
Our times are obviously different, and not only because of the
‘‘scattering’’ of political power, commerce, and communication below
and beyond the reach of many states. Precisely because of this trend,
the act of opinion-making and voting in periodic general elections is
gradually losing its power to determine things. Unlike the Philadel-
242
phians, we live in the era of the universal franchise; the issue of who
is entitled to vote has largely been settled. From here on, a central
issue for the freedom-loving politics of citizenship is thus no longer
who votes but where people vote. The question, in short, is whether
republicans can successfully argue for citizens taking themselves into
the uncharted waters of post-republicanism by developing forms of
public life and self-government in transnational domains such as
the United Nations, in the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), and in subnational or local arenas such as households, the
school board, offices, and neighbourhoods. Their success in extending
the frontiers of democracy will, in turn, determine the success of the
Philadelphians’ own founding objectives – life, liberty, and the pur-
suit of public happiness.
Notes
1. See Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982); Michael Sandel (ed.) Liberalism and its Critics (New York: New York Uni-
versity Press, 1984).
2. See Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (California: Stanford University Press, 1995); Essays on
Self-Reliance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Observations on Modernity
(California: Stanford University Press, 1998).
3. See Giovani Sartori, Democratic Theory (New York: Greenwood Press, 1973); The Theory of
Democracy Revisited (London: Chatham House, 1987).
4. John Keane, Reflections on Violence (London: Verso Books, 1996).
5. James Fallows, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine Democracy (London: Vintage
Books, 1997).
6. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1954).
7. Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992); R. N. Bellah, The Good Society (London: Vintage Books,
1992); R. N. Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life
(Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1985).
243
15
Democracy at the United
Nations
Daniele Archibugi
A ‘‘third wave’’ of democratization has begun. In the early 1990s,

many countries embraced democratic systems for the first time. Other
countries have returned to democracy after years out in the cold.
Entire populations have been lining up to take part in the most defini-
tive ritual of all democratic systems – free elections. In Chile, South
Africa, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Russia, Cambodia, and other parts
of the world, citizens have been waiting, sometimes for hours or days
on end, to exercise their right to elect their own leaders.
These epoch-making events have led many observers to believe
that democracy exists solely within nations and not between nations.
Hence, the speculation regarding the ‘‘end of history’’ and of the
irrelevance of transforming international relations. The most opti-
mistic observers – or perhaps those least aware of the cyclical nature
of history – have argued that all international problems would be
solved if every country adopted a democratic system. Some have even
forecasted that, by a certain year, the process of democratization will
be completed, with all countries of the world having turned to elec-
tive political systems of government. However, while an extension in
the number of countries ruled according to democratic principles is
not only desirable but, from the perspective of the latter years of the
twentieth century, highly probable, it is difficult to judge the validity
of these statements.
In fact, the events of the 1990s have shown that merely enlarging
the community of democratic nations does not, by itself, lead to a
peaceful and just international system: the Gulf War and the geno-
cide in Somalia and Rwanda occurred after the collapse of the Berlin
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Democracy at the United Nations
Wall; the achievement of democracy in the Soviet Union and Yugo-

slavia also led to an outbreak of violence and civil wars. Therefore,
the question arises whether, while democracy leaps forward at the
national level, it can blossom at the international level in such a way as
to help ameliorate the trends in conflict of the post-Cold War world.
The United Nations is the most complex and ambitious interna-
tional organization that has ever existed with an ethos of democracy
among nations. However, the organization itself is not democratic,
by any standard. Since its inception in 1945, it has been governed,
instead, by four great hypocrisies.
The first is the hypocrisy which lies behind the Western democ-
racies. The United States, Great Britain, and France, the inspiring
forces behind the United Nations, founded the organization in order
to extend the democratic values of their own domestic political sys-
tems to the international sphere. Yet, these same democratic nations
had no scruples about appropriating the power to block any security-
related decision and endowing themselves with the imperial privilege
of being permanent members of the Security Council with broad
powers of veto.
The second hypocrisy originated in the countries of Eastern
Europe, led by the Soviet Union. They demanded that the very term
‘‘democracy’’ should have no mention in the UN Charter. The term,
it seemed, held unwelcome connotations of threatening ideological
values. For years, the word ‘‘democracy’’ was absent from all official
UN documents.
The third hypocrisy has come from third world governments. While
having continually accused the United Nations of not representing
the needs and aspirations of the weaker states, the majority of these
same governments have failed to apply the principles of democracy to
their own citizens. In fact, third world governments have been among
those guilty of denying the most basic human rights and needs to
their own subjects.
The fourth hypocrisy brings us again to the democratic countries of
the West. These nations have been the most visible and vociferous
champions of democracy throughout the world while, periodically,
indulging in illegal international activity. On many occasions, for
example, they have overturned legitimate governments in the third
world, replacing them with puppet regimes. Far from applying the
values of democracy beyond their own national boundaries, these
countries have placed their international policies and actions exclu-
sively in the defence of their own national interests.
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Daniele Archibugi
These four hypocrisies derive from a genuine dilemma: it is difficult

to establish what democracy among states should consist of and to
pinpoint a nexus between a country’s domestic political regime and
its foreign policy.
Countries with extremely democratic domestic systems, such as the
United States and Israel, have illegally attacked much less democratic
states, such as Viet Nam, Grenada, Panama, Syria, and Lebanon.
These actions were no different from the foreign policy of totalitarian
states, such as the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary, Czechoslova-
kia, and Afghanistan. On other occasions, the Soviet Union appeared
to be on the side of democracy: it supported the decolonization pro-
cess and opposed apartheid in South Africa much more consistently
than did many Western democratic states. Thus, the history of the
first 50 years of the United Nations demonstrates that democracies
do not necessarily behave democratically away from home and a
totalitarian regime does not necessarily behave in a totalitarian way
beyond its own frontiers.
In spite of these contradictions, democracy is emerging as a power-
ful international ethos. In order to ensure that this is not merely
rhetorical, reform of the United Nations must be underpinned by
democratic values. Former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-
Ghali conceptualized the meaning of international democracy in a
number of articles and with the anticipated Agenda for Democratiza-
tion. After An Agenda for Peace and An Agenda for Development,
this is a further milestone in UN efforts for international legality and
justice.
It should, however, be remembered that the question of democracy
at the United Nations was raised by civil-society groups long before it
became fashionable among diplomats and policy makers. The Cam-
paign for a More Democratic United Nations, convened by Jeffrey
Segall and Harry Lerner, raised these issues several years ago, to-
gether with a large number of peace and federalist movements in the
United States and elsewhere. However, it is not self-evident what a
‘‘democratic’’ United Nations should be and how it should operate.
The terms ‘‘cosmopolitan democracy’’ or ‘‘transnational democ-
racy’’ have been used by a group of scholars, including Richard Falk,
David Held, Mary Kaldor, and myself, to help define the character-
istics of a model of democracy that transcends state frontiers. Realist
scholars and politicians would, of course, regard endeavours of this
nature to be idle and useless: according to them, interests and the
balance of power are the driving forces of international politics. As
246
scholars, we are aware of this but believe intellectual design must

play a significant role at a time when the structure of the Cold War
has been abandoned yet there is still uncertainty about the complex-
ion and structure of the international system. The Peace of West-
phalia (1648), the Treaty of Utrecht (1712), the Congress of Wien
(1814), the Conference of Paris (1919), and the San Francisco Con-
ference (1945) were all influenced to some extent by thinkers who
carefully elaborated ideas of a better international society, structure,
and system.
The term ‘‘cosmopolitan democracy’’ defines democracy from
three related viewpoints – democracy within states, democracy among
states, and the democratic management of global problems. The
United Nations could, and should, play a role in each of these per-
spectives, provided that it is appropriately reformed.
Democracy within member states

Despite the new wave of democratization in the 1990s, a large number
of UN member states still do not have elected governments. When
democratization is demanded, it should not be overlooked that the
United Nations embraces both democratic and autocratic member
states. Despite this, the United Nations still has an extremely useful
role to play in fostering the transition from autocratic systems to
democratic ones and in facilitating democratization in post-conflict
societies. Multifunctional peace-keeping missions in Cambodia, Sal-
vador, Mozambique, and other regions have been instrumental in
establishing the modalities and institutions of democracy in those
cases. Over the last five years, the United Nations has been called in
to invigilate elections in more than 50 countries. These operations did
not violate sovereignty in so far as they were based upon the consent
of the host states.
Is it possible, however, for the United Nations to promote democ-
racy within states without the explicit consent of the parties in con-
tention? In reality, the organization has had to exercise caution
in dealing with the domestic systems of countries. The principle of
non-interference, the bedrock of international law and the United
Nations, has effectively prevented any form of pronouncement on
issues within the domestic jurisdiction of states. Yet the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights is one form of ‘‘interference’’ that
indicates that some issues are not within the absolute jurisdiction of
sovereign states. All UN member countries have pledged to respect
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Daniele Archibugi
these rights and, by ratifying numerous conventions, have authorized

the international community to see that they are upheld.
Here we find the major contradiction of the United Nations’ legal
basis: although it requires its members to accept noble principles –
such as those in the Universal Declaration – it does not, and cannot,
do much to enforce them. Apart from sporadic examples – such as
the sanctions against apartheid in South Africa – UN action against
the violations committed by governments against their own subjects
has been ineffective and, perhaps, lenient.
There are, of course, good reasons to accept the principle of non-
interference. Interference by a country in the internal affairs of other
countries has been dictated more by self-interest than by concern for
oppressed populations. Of course, a multilateral institution such as
the United Nations is less likely to interfere in the internal affairs of
states to the benefit of other ones. However, given the current insti-
tutional structure of the United Nations, some states have more
power and can legally avoid censure or the consequences of interfer-
ing in the internal affairs of other less powerful states. For the time
being, as an arbiter the United Nations is neither omnipresent nor
impartial. To strengthen its functions, it needs to act both at the inter-
state and at the global levels.
An essential aspect of democracy within a country is the manner in
which decisions are made vis-à-vis the inhabitants of other countries –
in short, foreign policy. Of all types of public policy, foreign policy
tends most to escape the net of democratic control. Even in the
countries with the oldest democratic traditions, the work of foreign
and defence ministries is continually veiled in secrecy, keeping citi-
zens unaware of their own country’s real objectives and the means
used to achieve them. All governments believe that it would be det-
rimental to the ‘‘vital interests’’ of the nation to make foreign-policy
decisions public or to have a public input into the process. This is why
foreign policy everywhere is the preserve of narrow diplomatic cir-
cles; yet a state cannot be wholly democratic unless its foreign policy
decisions are also put under the control of citizens.
Thus far, there has been little potential in the UN system to take
into account how foreign-policy decision-making is formulated and
elaborated by its members. If an autocratic government decides to
invade a neighbouring country, the international community considers
all the inhabitants of the country responsible for it, even when they
have been the victims, rather than the authors, of the action. In prin-
248
ciple, this should induce the peoples of each nation to take responsi-
bility over the foreign policy of their governments. This is, for
example, the reason why Immanuel Kant, in his celebrated perpetual
peace project, argued in favour of a union of countries with a con-
stitutional basis:
If, as is inevitably the case under this constitution the consent of the citizens is
required to decide whether or not war is to be declared, it is very natural that
they will have great hesitation in embarking on so dangerous an enterprise.
Contrary to the Kantian ethos, the United Nations has not used any
discrimination in relation to the internal regimes in accepting new
member states. This implies that the foreign policy of its members is
beyond the control of public opinion and therefore does not benefit
from domestic input.
Democracy among states

As far as relations among states are concerned, the United Nations
has endorsed the principle of equality. This is a formal principle,
since all countries possess different degrees of political, economic,
and military power. Furthermore, even in the constitutional system of
the United Nations, some countries are ‘‘more equal than others.’’
This is obvious when we remind ourselves that only five are perma-
nent members of the Security Council. In fact, the United Nations is
based on a two-tier structure – the General Assembly, with formally
equal nations, and the Security Council, with a handful of oligarchic
governments. To strengthen democracy in inter-state relations, both
parties would be required to reform.
The existence of a permanent membership and veto in the Security
Council contradicts two basic principles of democracy – elective ap-
pointment in executive bodies and the majority rule. Yet, however
undemocratic it is, we must accept it because the permanent members
are those with the greatest military power in the world. Without it,
strategic decisions would be made in other places, such as super-
power summits, which are not transparent and therefore are even less
democratic than the Security Council.
Much of the debate on UN reform has concentrated on the Secur-
ity Council in order to balance the requirements of representative-
ness and efficiency. The proposals of the majority governments have
been highly disappointing: many have tried to acquire privileges for
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Daniele Archibugi
themselves rather than to limit the use of the veto power. The debate
has reflected the desire for the extension of privileges rather than
their limitation. Inevitably, it has been impossible to achieve any
agreement, for the simple reason that a privilege accorded to every-
body is no longer a privilege.
At this stage it is difficult to predict if, when, and how the Security
Council will be reformed. The interests of ‘‘the peoples’’ would be to
limit the use of the veto to issues concerning security and the use of
force, and by including regional organizations, such as the European
Union, the Organization of African States, and the Arab League, in
addition to single governments. This will force governments to nego-
tiate and reach a common position at the regional level first. It is
unlikely, however, that governments would support a reform that
limits their authority and prestige.
The other principal inter-state institution of the United Nations,
the General Assembly, has been a tribune for world governments to
express their opinions. Yet the effective powers of the institution
have been negligible. The principle ‘‘one state, one vote’’ is not nec-
essarily a democratic one: countries such as Malta or Luxembourg
have the same electoral weight as China, India, or the United States.
There is a trade-off between the powers of the General Assembly
and its electoral norms in its decision-making. An enlargement of
the powers of the General Assembly would require it to weigh votes
according to population, income, and the military force of each state.
Developing democracy among states means defending the independ-
ence of the weakest, but also seeing that general decisions are taken
with the consent of the governments who represent the majority of
people living on the planet.
The United Nations, no less than the League of Nations, was
designed to solve bilateral controversies among states peacefully. The
International Court of Justice was to act as an arbiter among the
contending parties. Unfortunately, the fact that only a few states have
fully accepted its jurisdiction has severely hampered the function of
the World Court. Democratic states, including the United States,
have so far failed to accept and obey international judicial authority.
In the long term, the membership of the United Nations must be
linked to the acceptance of its main judicial institution. To save the
concept of international democracy from being an empty gesture, all
states – with the established democracies leading the way – should be
prepared to accept unilaterally the jurisdiction of the Court.
250
The democratic management of global problems
A key feature of the post-Cold War era is the new global agenda of
problems whose solution is not specific to any state or set of states.
Environmental issues, the spread of AIDS, the protection of funda-
mental human rights: these are all problems insoluble by any single
government working alone. The United Nations has raised public
awareness of such issues through a series of thematic conferences, such
as the Earth Summit in Rio (1992), the Cairo conference on demo-
graphic growth (1994), and the Copenhagen conference on human
development (1995). Non-governmental organizations have also made
a significant contribution, demonstrating that global problems cannot
be solved in an exclusively intergovernmental realm.
But the United Nations is essentially still an intergovernmental
organization. Whilst ‘‘the peoples’’ are invoked in the preamble to
the Charter, they are still excluded from the organization’s decision-
making processes. The toughest challenge facing the United Nations
over the next half-century will be to open the doors of its building
to the peoples of the earth. Peace and federalist movements have for
long advocated the creation of a Second UN Assembly that would
represent world citizens rather than their governments. The Euro-
pean and Canadian parliaments have officially supported this pro-
posal. This could be the first step towards a truly global democratic
system, just as national parliaments have been for the achievement of
democracy within states. The full achievement of democracy at the
United Nations will require that individuals be given direct political
input into the global political process, thereby giving dignity and
respect to the citizens of the world. Suffrage is the most direct method
to accomplish this.
A number of transitory steps have been suggested to achieve an
elected Second UN Assembly. For the time being, it is unrealistic to
suggest that such a body could be given much power if it is to be
directly elected. One proposal seeks to establish a Peoples’ Assembly
as a consultative body for the General Assembly and other UN bodies.
As a starting point it has also been proposed that national parliaments
appoint some of their members of parliament as representatives of
the Peoples’ Assembly; this was, for instance, the route taken by the
European Parliament before its members were directly elected.
There are, however, global problems and issues that go well beyond
the mere representation of peoples. Under what circumstances are
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Daniele Archibugi
the institutions of the international community justified in interfering

coercively in the domestic affairs of individual states? And what is the
UN’s role on such occasions?
In the first place, the United Nations must uphold the protection of
human rights. The General Assembly is in the process of deciding
whether to create an international criminal court, whose duties would
be comparable to those of the tribunals set up in response to the
crimes against humanity committed in the former Yugoslavia and
Rwanda. Unlike those ad hoc tribunals, this court would be perma-
nent. In this way, the United Nations would make an important con-
tribution to the protection of individual rights. In so far as it would
have jurisdiction over violations against individual rights committed
by other individuals, the international jurisdiction would be identical
to the criminal jurisdiction existing within a country. Wherever
national jurisdiction proved incapable of performing its duties (for
example, because the alleged perpetrators of crimes are also the
holders of executive power), international jurisdiction might be able
to step in and play a substitute role.
It is, however, highly unlikely, even if this new court were to be
installed in the short term, that it would be able to count on the
coercive power necessary to enforce its sentences. Yet, the sentence
of an independent judicial body would, in itself, be an important de-
legitimation of rulers guilty of crimes against humanity: it would, in
short, be a first and very important step towards democracy within
states.
Yet, are there cases in which the United Nations has the right and
duty to intervene, using force if necessary, in a state’s domestic
affairs? The only situation in which this is legitimate is to prevent and
stop acts of genocide. If people are essentially the constituency which
the United Nations represents, then they must be collectively capable
of preventing the genocide amongst themselves. The United Nations
has to be capable, willing, and authorized to intervene promptly and
effectively to defend civilian populations threatened with extermina-
tion. This obviously demands a total rethinking of the role of peace-
keeping. Until the late 1980s, the UN peace-keeping force was a
diplomatic support structure for containing local conflict and mini-
mizing superpower confrontation. Experiences in the 1990s – in par-
ticular in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Rwanda – show that
the methods and principles underlying peace-keeping need to be re-
viewed substantially if acts of genocide are to be prevented effectively.
As for the physiology of domestic systems, I believe that the
252
United Nations must be very cautious about assuming prerogatives

in which there is an element of arbitrariness. Robespierre warned
against the desire to make peoples happy against their will. Para-
phrasing him, I suggest that, by the same token, governments – the
most powerful, first and foremost – need to be warned against making
nations democratic against their wishes. It is always hard, sometimes
impossible, to distinguish sincere love for the good of others from
policies in defence of national interest.
From a historical point of view, the last 50 years show that democ-
racy within nations has to be developed endogenously. Western
democratic countries did almost nothing to fuel democracy in Eastern
Europe: as the former began to set an example, the peoples of the
East did everything in their power to overthrow their autocratic
regimes.
The three dimensions of democracy I have outlined here are
closely interrelated. Only if legitimate supranational institutions dig
furrows of influence – even interference – into the domestic affairs of
states will it be possible to reinforce the authority of one government
in its dealings with those more powerful.
At the end of the twentieth century, democracy has proved to
be the victorious political system. Unfortunately, its victory is still
largely incomplete, in so far as it has failed to extend to international
relations. The United Nations is the crossroads of democracy outside
national frontiers. Working jointly to achieve democracy within states,
in interaction between states and in global problems, it can make a
tangible contribution to the development of democracy on our planet.
During the celebrations for the United Nations’ 50th anniversary,
democracy was often invoked by governments and diplomats. Ironi-
cally, the very same governments have ignored the proposals and
aspirations of global civil society to achieve anything resembling real
democracy. Now, as we move forward into the twenty-first century, it
is more important than ever to organize and create specific reforms
towards the democratization of the United Nations.
Further Reading
Archibugi, Daniele, and David Held (eds) 1995. Cosmopolitan Democracy: An
Agenda for a New World Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Barnaby, Frank (ed.) 1991. Building a More Democratic United Nations. London:
Frank Cass.
Bonanate, Luigi. 1995. ‘‘Peace or Democracy?’’ In Daniele Archibugi and David
Held (eds), op. cit.
253
Daniele Archibugi
Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. 1995. ‘‘Democracy: A Newly Recognized Imperative.’’

Global Governance 1: 3–11.
Falk, Richard. 1995. ‘‘Appraising the UN at 50: The Looming Challenge.’’ Journal of
International Affairs 48.
Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Huntington, Samuel. 1990. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth
Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Kaldor, Mary. 1990. The Imaginary War. Understanding the East–West Conflict.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Russett, Bruce. 1991. Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Segall, Jeffrey, and Harry Lerner (eds) 1992. Camdun-2: The United Nations and a
New World Order for Peace and Justice. London: Camdun.
254
16
A meditation on democracy
Bernard Crick
Democracy is both a sacred and a promiscuous word: we all love her

but she is hard to pin down; everyone claims her but no one actually
possesses her fully. A moment’s thought will remind us why this is so.
Different usages
Historically, there have been four broad usages. The first is found with
the Greeks, in Plato’s attack on it and in Aristotle’s highly qualified
defence: democracy is simply, in the Greek, demos – the mob, the
many – and cracy, meaning rule. Plato attacked this as being the rule
of the poor and the ignorant over the educated and the knowledge-
able, ideally philosophers. His fundamental distinction was between
knowledge and opinion: democracy is rule, or rather the anarchy,
of mere opinion. Aristotle modified this view rather than rejecting
it completely: good government was a mixture of elements, the few
ruling with the consent of the many. The few should have aristoi, or
the principle of excellence, from which the ideal concept of aristoc-
racy derives. But many more can qualify for citizenship by virtue of
some education and some property – both of which, Aristotle thought,
were necessary conditions – and so must be consulted and can, indeed,
even occasionally be promoted to office. He did not call his ‘‘best
possible’’ scenario democracy at all, rather politea or polity, a politi-
cal community of citizens deciding on common action by public
debate. But democracy could be the next best thing in practice if it
observed ‘‘ruling and being ruled in turn.’’ As a principle unchecked
by aristocratic experience and knowledge, however, democracy was
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Bernard Crick
based upon a fallacy: ‘‘because men are equal in some things, they
are equal in all.’’
The second usage is found in the Romans, in Machiavelli’s great
Discourses, in the seventeenth century English and Dutch repub-
licans, and in the early American republic: good government is mixed
government, just as in Aristotle’s theory, but the democratic popular
element could actually give greater power to a state. Good laws to
protect all are not good enough unless subjects became active citizens
making their own laws collectively. The argument was both moral
and military. The moral argument is the more famous: both Roman
paganism and later Protestantism had in common a view of man as an
active individual, a maker and shaper of things, not just a law-abiding
well-behaved acceptor or subject of a traditional order. (It was this
disjunction that so concerned the late Maruyama Masao in all his
major essays on modernism and traditionalism.)
The third usage is found in the rhetoric and events of the French
Revolution and in the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau: everyone,
regardless of education or property, has a right to make his or her
will felt in matters of state. Indeed, the general will or common good
is better understood by any well-meaning, simple, unselfish, and
ordinary person based upon their own experience and conscience
than by the over-educated living amid the artificiality of high society.
This view can embrace the liberation of a class or a nation, whether
from oppression or ignorance and superstition, but it is not necessa-
rily connected with individual liberty. (In the European eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, most people who cared for liberty did not
call themselves democrats at all: they were constitutionalist or civic
republicans, or, in the Anglo-American discourse, ‘‘Whigs.’’) The
general will could have more to do with popularity than with repre-
sentative institutions. Napoleon was a genuine heir of the French
revolution when he said that ‘‘the politics of the future will be the art
of stirring the masses.’’ His popularity was such, playing on both
revolutionary and nationalistic rhetoric, that he was able for the very
first time to introduce mass conscription, that is, to trust the common
people with arms; the autocratic Hapsburgs and Romanovs had to be
most careful to whom and where they applied selective conscription.
The fourth usage of democracy is found in the American constitu-
tion and in many of the new constitutions in Europe in the nineteenth
century and in the new West German and Japanese constitutions
following the Second World War. It is also reflected in the writings of
John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville: that all can have citizen-
256
ship if they care, but they must mutually respect the equal rights of
fellow citizens within a regulatory legal order that defines, protects,
and limits those rights.
What is most ordinarily meant today by ‘‘democracy’’ in the United
States, Europe, and Japan is, ideally, a fusion (but quite often a con-
fusion) of the idea of power of the people and the idea of legally
guaranteed individual rights. The two should, indeed, be combined,
but they are distinct ideas, and can prove so in practice. There can
be, and have been, intolerant democracies and reasonably tolerant
democracies. Personally, I do not find it helpful to call the system of
government under which I live in the United Kingdom ‘‘democratic’’;
I prefer to discuss how the actual system could be made more demo-
cratic, just as others once feared that the democratic element was
becoming too powerful. Sociologically and socially England is still,
in many ways, a profoundly undemocratic society (Scotland and
Wales somewhat more democratic), certainly when compared with
the United States. But even in the United States there is now little cit-
izenship or positive participation in politics in the republican style of
the early American Republic. Of course, people vote in formal elec-
tions, but, between elections, talk of – and active participation in –
politics rates far, far lower than the most favoured national activity,
shopping.1
Democracy not the main concept

When considering the present nature and problems of democracy,
what we often mean to talk about is something prior to either ideal or
empirically observed definitions of democracy – politics itself. Here
we all must have something to say. Politics is too important to be left
to politicians. Politicians are too busy and preoccupied with – in the
broad perspective of human history – short-term advantages and
actions, with winning the next election, so others must speculate and
try to do their long-term thinking about civilized humanity for them.
Thought and action must go together, not merely if the political tra-
dition is to be preserved but also, since the need is pressing, if it
is to be extended. By political tradition I mean simply the activity
of resolving disputes and determining policy politically – that is, by
public debate among free citizens. Although this activity is one of the
most important inventions of human civilization, it is now taken for
granted or even regarded – because of the actions of particular poli-
ticians – as a debased or even dangerous activity. Its beneficial
257
Bernard Crick
application is neither universal nor universally understood; or, even if

understood, it is not always desired.
The political tradition may be the world’s best hope, and perhaps
its last hope as we see long-term problems begin to accumulate that
could destroy (the phrase does have meaning) civilization as we know
it. If political solutions – or, more likely, political compromises – are
not found, power blocks will struggle harder and more ruthlessly and
competitively, in a world of increasing demands and of diminishing
resources, to maintain the standard of living of at least a voting
majority of their own loyal inhabitants. And it is almost fatuous to
recall that the misapplication of scientific and industrial technology
gives us unique opportunities for mutual destruction. The two world
wars of the twentieth century should have been a perfectly adequate
demonstration of this, but could yet prove an inadequate premonition
of the shape of things to come. During the Cold War, the fear of
global nuclear destruction perhaps took the minds of most political
leaders and thinkers off other, slower, global threats. And politically,
the post-war era has seen some good reasons for political optimism
about the internal affairs of states. The collapse of Soviet power
through sheer inefficiency, the somewhat similar decline of military
regimes in Southern Europe and South America, some relaxation of
despotism in China, and signs of civic stirring even in the bloody
anarchy of sub-equatorial Africa, are some such indicators. The myth
of the superior efficiency and the invincibility of totalitarian and
autocratic states has been exploded.
However, the collective inability of democratic states to act to-
gether by political agreement to deal with real and vital common
problems has been amply demonstrated also. The response to the
bloody break-up of the Yugoslavian Federation, let alone failure so
far to achieve effective cooperation to prevent degradation of the
environment of the whole planet, are illustrative. Take also the case
of nuclear weapons: the threat of deliberate two-bloc world war now
seems happily (if somewhat fortuitously) gone, yet the ability of the
so-called great powers to prevent the spread of nuclear bombs to less
stable regimes is now diminished almost to the point of impotence.
Some of this impotence arises, of course, from the inability or unwill-
ingness of political leaders in democracies (one in particular) to edu-
cate and change public opinion (precisely what Aristotle feared about
democracies).
The invention, and then the tradition, of governing by means of
258
political debate among citizens has its roots in the practices and
thought of the Greek polis and the ancient Roman republic. So its
political rule could be said to be as ‘‘Western’’ or ‘‘European’’ in its
origins, and yet as universal in its application, as natural science. But
the origins of even such powerful and influential traditions of activity
do not endow the descendants of its progenitors with special wisdom
– indeed, sometimes it gives them a false sense of superiority and
dangerous overconfidence. The general ideas of political rule and
of the natural sciences and attendant technologies are not bound to
any one culture: they have spread universally, both as power-driven
exports and as eagerly sought-after modernizing imports. The results,
of course, vary greatly in different cultural settings and by the acci-
dents of contingent events, but there is more in common now be-
tween such societies than in the pre-political, pre-scientific, and pre-
industrial world. The Eastern world may, and almost certainly will,
produce variants of the ‘‘democratic’’ (or, as I prefer to say, ‘‘politi-
cal’’) tradition, from which the West may learn. This has already
happened in technology. But, it is fair to say, the West does not stand
still entirely. That the concept of citizenship was only fairly recently
extended to women is no small matter – full civic equality is still far
ahead, and the consequences of this are as likely to be as great in the
future as they are still unclear in the present. Now this elevated view of
politics may surprise our fellow citizens, who form their idea of ‘‘the
political’’ from what they read in their national newspapers about the
behaviour, in all respects, of actual politicians. Indeed, one must ask
if such politicians are the friends or the foes of good government. Cer-
tainly, they are (to use a favourite word of Hannah Arendt’s) thought-
less about the consequences in terms of public example of how they
practise politics and behave themselves, which is part of politics.
The nature of the political

More than 30 years ago I wrote a book called In Defence of Politics,
which has remained in print ever since and has been translated into
many languages, including Japanese (thanks to the aforementioned
Maruyama Masao). But it received very few reviews by my then
academic colleagues in Britain. That did not dismay me, for I had
aimed the book at the intelligent general reader, and it has been
called, if only by the publishers, ‘‘a modern classic.’’2 What does dis-
may me is that during the last 30 years there has been a continuing
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Bernard Crick
decline in book publishing of serious political thinking aimed at,

and read by, the public, despite all the troubles and unexpected
opportunities of our times.3 Coherent political thinking can be all
but abandoned by party leaders, debased and too often reduced
to sound-bites uttered with a coached sincerity, but with no well-
grounded justifications advanced for the fragments of general princi-
ples somewhat (or almost wholly) opportunistically advanced. Sin-
cerity stands in for reasoning and, when politics is discussed, even by
intelligent ordinary people, it is more often in terms of personalities
than of principles and of appeals to immediate self-interest rather
than to long-term mutual or public benefits. Only a few columnists
and editorial writers in some quality newspapers keep up the once-
prevalent tradition of intelligent and reasonably open-minded public
debate and speculation.
However, the academic discipline of political thought has thrived
as never before, both as the history and contextualization of ideas
and as the analysis of meaning and implications of concepts in current
use – freedom, equality, justice, sovereignty, nation, individualism,
community, and so on. But this advance has been almost wholly
internalized within the academy. Most academic writing on politics
and the problems of democracy can be seen, sometimes rather gen-
erously, as contributions to the advancement of knowledge, as well as
to the individual’s reputation and promotion prospects, but few seem
interested in diffusing this knowledge to the public, or are able to
do so. Faults on both sides can be found: it is all too easy to make a
career by writing about politics – ‘‘researching’’ is now the term more
used – and yet for the product to remain wholly within the ivory
tower, unknown to the public. The irony of doing this for the study
of politics escapes most of the denizens of the castle. We are often
rather like those student leaders of the 1960s, who proclaimed their
solidarity with the working class and ‘‘the people’’ in a Marxist ter-
minology understandable only to those among ‘‘the people’’ who had
a degree in social science at a new university. But, on the other hand,
the media take very few steps to discover and use the academic
product. In Britain, only the talents of experts on electoral statistics
are regularly courted. The idea is strange, that there is a tradition of
political thinking and knowledge as relevant to the problems of the
modern world as economic theory and one historically more impor-
tant. Political considerations are far more often held to interfere with
economic reasoning than the contrary.
260
The thesis of my In Defence of Politics was all too easy, even if

challengingly simple. It spoke of making some ‘‘platitudes’’ pregnant:
that politics is the conciliation of naturally different interests, whether
these interests are seen as material or moral, usually both. I wrote in
the Aristotelian tradition. There is a famous passage in Aristotle’s
Politics where he suggests that the great mistake of his master Plato
was in writing about ideal states as if to find a single unifying principle.
Rather,
. . . there is a point at which a polis, by advancing in unity, will cease to be a
polis; but will none the less come near to losing its essence, and will thus be
a worse polis. It is as if you were to turn harmony into mere unison, or to
reduce a theme to a single beat. The truth is that the polis is an aggregate of
many members.
Not all societies are organized and governed according to political

principles. Most governments in history have suppressed public debate
about policy, far preferring to encourage ‘‘good subjects’’ rather than
good or active citizens. But this has become more and more difficult
in the modern world. Yet it is not just so-called political ideologies
that threaten free politics: nationalism and religion can do so also.
These forces are sometimes reasonably tolerant, at other times
intensely intolerant. Although politics is not necessarily threatened
by strong religious belief, sometimes not even when there is a domi-
nant religion, some beliefs and practices stifle or threaten free politics
and the open expression of contrary views. But some secularists also
can see politics as inherently disruptive of social order. ‘‘The country
could be run better without all this politics.’’ And many must sympa-
thize with Joseph Goebbels’ axiom: ‘‘Politicians perpetuate problems;
we seek to solve them.’’
So political rule, I argued, existed before democratic government.
It is logically prior to ‘‘democracy,’’ unless by that term we mean,
rather fatuously, ‘‘everything we would like,’’ rather than a compo-
nent of good government, a concept of majority opinion and power
that is not always compatible with liberty and individual rights. Some
dictatorships, for instance, have been (and are) genuinely popular,
resting on majority support, and the stronger for it. Both historically
and logically, politics is prior to democracy. We may want to fill the
cart full of good things that everyone wants and feels they need, but
the horse must go out in front. Without order there can be no
democracy, and without politics even democracy is unlikely to be just.
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Bernard Crick
Leaning on Aristotle
So I argued – still leaning on old Aristotle against the over-

sophistication of modern social science, whether in the Marxist or the
modern American variety – that politics rests on two preconditions,
a sociological and a moral. The sociological is that civilized societies
are all complex and inherently pluralistic, even if and when the
injustices of class, ethnic, and gender discriminations will vanish or
diminish. The moral aspect is that it is normally better to conciliate
differing interests than to coerce and oppress them perpetually, or
to seek to remove them without consent or negotiated compensation.
While much political behaviour is prudential, there is always some
moral context: some compromises are wrong to make, and some ways
of coercion or even of defence are too cruel, disproportionate, or
simply too uncertain. A nuclear first strike, for example, even against
a nuclear power, could not reasonably be called political behaviour –
even against Baghdad. Hannah Arendt was wiser than Clausewitz
and Kissinger when she said that violence is the breakdown of politics,
not its ‘‘continuance by other means.’’
So it was easy for me to argue that it is always better to be gov-
erned politically, if there is any choice in the matter. The thesis did
not seem so banal or simple-minded at the time because there was
sustained contrast, explicitly and implicitly, between political rule and
totalitarian rule. The simple could then appear both profound and
important. But with the breakdown of Soviet power and the old pull
towards a binary system, the whole world has become more compli-
cated. Previously existing contradictions in the so-called ‘‘free world’’
have both come to the surface and grown more acute. The concept
of the ‘‘free world’’ begs far too many questions, makes too many
assumptions. It is a highly complex concept, whose components need
unpacking and testing carefully for quality, and is too often self-
righteous and propagandistic in use. But the concept of politics cer-
tainly implies freedom and its widespread practice depends upon it.
Just as totalitarian rule and ideology can break down internally, so,
too, can political rule; and political prudence can prove inadequate. I
gave such situations little serious attention in the In Defence of Poli-
tics. Since then, I have studied such situations in books, documents,
and newspapers and by talking to people on the ground in Northern
Ireland, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine. Each of these is very
different in detail but they share a problem in common. They can be
262
used symbolically as examples of the general problem of the ade-

quacy of ‘‘mere politics’’ when people enjoy some kind of a political
tradition yet refuse any talk of compromise because they feel that
their very identity is at stake if they give any ground.
The justification of politics in terms of the negation of totalitarian-
ism is all too easy. The mundane could be made melodramatic in
terms of contrast. The ‘‘defeat’’ of the USSR and the ‘‘victory’’ of the
West also appeared to imply the rejection, and then the demise, of
ideology. I took ideology to be not any set of specific ideas about
particular things (say beliefs and doctrines) but secular claims to com-
prehensive explanation and policy. Old autocracies, however bigoted,
bloody, and cruel, had limited aspirations – usually just for the ruling
class to stay in power and so sleeping dogs could lie if they paid their
taxes and doffed their hats. But some modern autocracies earned the
new name because they saw the need to mobilize the masses, to make
sleeping dogs bark (and even sing) in unison, to attempt to achieve
the revolutionary objectives of an ideology. But ideology did not
vanish with the demise of Communist power and its universalistic
pretensions. Political prudence and pragmatism did not take over.
Rather, there emerged the rapid – almost wildfire – spread of the belief
that more or less unrestrained market forces cannot be resisted and
will resolve all major problems on a global scale.
Ideologies and politics

Hannah Arendt, in her great book The Human Condition, remarked
that there have only ever been two kinds of comprehensive ideolo-
gies claiming to hold the key to history – the belief that all is deter-
mined by race and the belief that all is determined by economics.
Both racism and economicism are incidentally distinctive modern
beliefs: before the late eighteenth century the world could get by
without such enormous secular claims, and not even religions claimed
to explain everything. Arendt pointed out that economic ideology
took two rival forms – Marxism and laissez-faire – and yet the belief
that there must be a general system had a common origin and linked
them more than their disciples believe. The missionaries and the
advocates of market ideology in the former Soviet bloc now denounce
political interventions in the economy almost as fiercely as did the
old totalitarians, although, fortunately, they are still subject to some
political restraints and a few residual colonial inhibitions. In the party
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Bernard Crick
politics of Britain, many people rightly rail against the excesses of

privatization, the diminishment of public welfare, and the attacks of a
government on the very concept of a res publica or a public interest.
Governments can seek to distance themselves from any responsibility
for guiding Adam Smith’s hidden hand by which the free market
becomes the public interest. But, in a broader perspective, the degree
of political restraint upon the children of Hayek – the Reagans and
the Thatchers – is also remarkable: they have done to us, for good or
evil, much less than they know they ought to have done; and that is
because of ‘‘irrational political factors,’’ thank God!
Prices cannot be sensibly determined except by market mecha-
nisms; the final breakdown of Soviet planning proved that. And cap-
italism is an international system whose imperatives can be ignored
only at a fearful price, as in North Korea and Cuba. But it does not
then follow that price must determine every human relationship, least
of all the civic. Man is citizen as well as consumer. There is (or was)
public and family morality, strong cultural restraints on the exercise
of both economic and political power. New lines of demarcation and
mutual influence between the polity and the economy need examin-
ing closely. If people see themselves purely as consumers they will
lose all real control of government. Governments will then rule by
bread and circuses, even if not by force; and torrents of trivial alter-
natives will make arbitrary and often meaningless choice pass for
effective freedom. For all the absolutist rhetoric, in reality at least a
degree of welcome confusion reigns. Only the two extreme positions
of All-State or All-Market are untenable; there is a lot of space be-
tween. Political and economic factors and principles interact with
each, limit each other; but neither can live for long without the other.
Of course, it was always foolish in the light of history to think that
the end of the Cold War – a quite sudden event that neither prophets
nor social scientists expected – would by itself lead to peace, pros-
perity, and freedom. And what new democracy has emerged looks
much more like Schumpeter’s view of democracy as a competitive
electoral struggle between party élites – in his Capitalism, Socialism
and Democracy of 1942 – than the old republican ideal of active and
participatory citizenship.
In contrast to even the best democratic practices of today, consider
a passage that used to be worrying to autocrats and élites in Europe,
and a source of inspiration to their opponents, especially the Ameri-
can Republic founding fathers. The Periclean oration of the fifth
264
century B.C. in Athens would once have been read by almost every-
one who read books at all:
Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of
a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private
disputes, every one is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting
one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts
is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man
possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is
kept in political obscurity because of poverty. And, just as our political life is
free and open, so is our day-to-day life in our relations with each other. We
do not get into a state with our next-door-neighbour if he enjoys himself in
his own way, nor do we give him the kind of black looks which, though they
do no real harm, still do hurt people’s feelings. We are free and tolerant in
our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law. This is because it
commands our deep respect . . . .
Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the
affairs of the state as well: even those who are mostly occupied with their
own business are extremely well-informed on general politics – this is a
peculiarity of ours: we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics
is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at
all. We Athenians, in our own persons, take our decisions on policy or sub-
mit them to proper discussions: for we do not think that there is an incom-
patibility between words and deeds; the worst thing is to rush into action
before the consequences have been properly debated . . . .4
Historians now assert that Pericles was a demagogue, a kind of

democratic dictator. But the point is what the demagogue said, the
lasting ideal he invoked, not what he did or why he said it.
Notes
1. Seymour Martin Lipset does not put it quite so bluntly in his recent magisterial survey,
American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York and London: W.W. Norton,
1996), but the figures and attitude surveys that he reports lead to this conclusion.
2. In Defence of Politics, 4th edition (London: Penguin, 1992), first published by Weidenfeld
and Nicolson 1962, and in the USA by the University of Chicago Press.
3. In fairness, I think this is less marked in the United States than in Britain, Germany, and
France. The larger American market, of course, makes this possible, but also in the United
States there are more serious journalists with resources and assistants for ‘‘research,’’ able to
gut the best academic literature.
4. From Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (London: Penguin, 1954), pp. 117–118.
265
Contributors
Daniele Archibugi is a researcher at the Italian National Research

Council in Rome and a Senior Research Associate at the University
of Cambridge. He is an adviser to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, to the European Commission and to
various UN agencies. Dr. Archibugi is the Coordinator of the Euro-
pean Network on the Political Theory of Transnational Democracy.
Jean Blondel is currently an external professor at the European

University Institute in Florence and Visiting Professor at the Uni-
versity of Siena. He holds honorary doctorates from the universities
of Salford, Essex, Louvain la Neuve, and Turku. Professor Blondel
started the European Consortium for Political Research in 1969 and
directed it for ten years. He is also a current member of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea.
Bernard Crick is Literary Editor for the Political Quarterly. He is also

Professor Emeritus of Politics at Birkbeck College London and
Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh. He has been
Chairman of the Hansard Society’s commission on Political Educa-
tion in Schools and joint Chairman of the British South Africa Con-
ference during the three years of transition. Professor Crick has
worked extensively in Northern Ireland on conciliation projects, and
has been active in the Scottish devolution movement.
Saad Eddin Ibrahim is Professor of Political Sociology at the Ameri-

can University in Cairo, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Inde-
266
Contributors
pendent Commission for Electoral Review, and President of Cairo’s

Union of Social Professors. He is also chairman of the Ibn Khaldoun
Center for Development Studies and a member of the World Bank’s
Advisory Council for Environmentally Sustainable Development. He
is a recipient of the Jordanian Order of Independence Award and has
written many books on the Middle East.
Takashi Inoguchi is Professor of Political Science at the Institute of

Oriental Culture of the University of Tokyo. Until recently he was
Senior Vice-Rector of the United Nations University. Professor
Inoguchi has occupied research and/or teaching positions at the Uni-
versité de Genève, Harvard University, Australian National Univer-
sity, University of Delhi, and Johns Hopkins University. Amongst his
recent publications are Japanese Politics Today, The Vitality of Japan,
North-East Asian Regional Security, United States–Japan Relations
and International Institutions After the Cold War, and Global Changes:
An Analysis.
Elihu Katz is Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School

for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. He is Emer-
itus Professor of Sociology and Communications at the Hebrew Uni-
versity of Jerusalem, and Scientific Director of the Guttman Institute
of Applied Social Research. Dr. Katz was founding director of Israel
Television and is a winner of the McLuhan–Teleglobe Canada
Award, the Burda Prize in media research, and the Israel Prize.
John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster

and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy. Educated
at the universities of Adelaide, Toronto and Cambridge, he has been
awarded many scholarships and prizes. In 1992 he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has written numerous books,
including The Media of Democracy (which has been translated into
16 languages), and is a frequent contributor to various media.
Juan J. Linz is Sterling Professor of Political and Social Science at

Yale University. He holds degrees in Law, Political Science and
Sociology, and has contributed to books on authoritarianism, fascism,
political parties, nationalism, and religion. In 1987 he was awarded
the Premier Principe de Asturias de Ciencias Sociales and in 1996 the
Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science.
267
Contributors
Ian Marsh is an Associate Professor at the Australian Graduate

School of Management. He was educated at the University of New-
castle (New South Wales, Australia) and Harvard, and has held
visiting positions at Keio University in Tokyo and the European
University in Florence. Professor Marsh’s most recent publication is a
study of Australia’s political and economic future entitled Beyond the
Two Party System: Political Representation, Economic Competitive-
ness and Australian Politics.
Edward Newman is a Lecturer in International Relations at Shumei

University in Japan, and his research interests are in global gover-
nance and foreign policy issues. Dr. Newman’s recent publications
include The UN Secretary-General from the Cold War to the New Era:
a Global Peace and Security Mandate?
Claus Offe is Professor of Political Sociology and Social Policy at the

Humboldt University, Berlin. He has been a visiting professor at the
New School for Social Research in New York, and the Institute for
Advanced Study in Berlin. Between 1976 and 1982 Professor Offe
was a member of the Joint Committee on Western Europe, Social
Science Research Council, and has also held Fellowships at six dif-
ferent universities.
Bruce Russett is Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations,

and Director of United Nations Studies, at Yale University. He is also
Editor of the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and a former president
of the International Studies Association and Peace Society. He has
published a substantial number of articles and books, of which the
most recent is Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-
Cold War.
Philippe C. Schmitter has been on the Stanford University faculty

since 1986. He formerly taught at the University of Chicago and has
held many visiting appointments. Dr. Schmitter has been the recipi-
ent of numerous professional awards and fellowships, including a
Guggenheim in 1978, and has been Vice-President of the American
Political Science Association.
Mihály Simai is currently a research professor at the Institute for

World Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the
268
Contributors
Director of Graduate Studies in International Economics and Busi-

ness Relations in the Budapest University of Economics. He is also
a former Director of UNU/WIDER, and former member and Chair-
man of the UNU Council.
Alfred Stepan is Gladstone Professor of Government and Fellow, All

Souls College, University of Oxford. Until recently he was President
and Rector of the Central European University in Budapest and
Prague. Dr. Stepan is the co-author of Problems of Democratic
Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and
Post-Communist Europe, and the author of Rethinking Military Poli-
tics: Brazil and the Southern Cone; The State and Society: Peru in
Comparative Perspective, and The Breakdown of Democratic
Regimes.
J.A.A. Stockwin has been Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese

Studies and Director of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies at
the University of Oxford since 1982, and Fellow of St. Antony’s Col-
lege, Oxford. Between 1994 and 1995 he was President of the British
Association of Japanese Studies. He is author of a number of books
on Japanese politics and is engaged in a long-term study of political
change and reform in Japan.
269
Index
academic organizations, communications Australia

by 18, 260 head of state 103
Adenauer, Konrad 159 political representation system 106–
Afghanistan, invasion by Soviet Union 109, 152, 153
246 Australian Labor Party (ALP) 107,
Agenda for Democratization 246 108, 115n(12)
Agenda for Development 246 autocracy 168
Agenda for Peace 165, 246 autocratic/authoritarian states
Albania 190, 199 Asian states 174–175
Algeria attitudes towards newly democratic
confrontations with Islamic militants neighbours 163
223 genocide carried out by 164
democratization in 224 policies/reforms achieved by 121,
elections 210n(21), 226 178, 246
growth 221 and wars 167
anarchy 168 autonomy
democracy is not 28 individual vs. collective 79–80
Aoki, Masahiko 176 local political parties 105
apartheid 77, 246, 248 regional 133
Aquino, Corazon 35n(6) Azerbaijan
Arendt, Hannah 259, 262, 263 democratic threshold rating 197
Argentina, political succession 35n(6) economic data 190
aristocracy, meaning of term 255
Aristotle 255, 261, 262 Bangladesh, elections 224, 225
Armenia Belarus
democratic threshold ratings 197, attitudinal surveys 196, 199–200,
198 201, 202
economic data 190 democratic threshold ratings 197,
Asian-style democracy/politics 9, 84, 198
114, 173–181, 259 economic data 190
Asian values 179–180 Berlin Wall 72, 158, 227, 244–246
270
Index
big government, meaning of term 37 cabinet system, compared with presiden-

bipartisanship 147–148 tial politics 130–131
Blair Labour Government [UK] caesaropapism 204
114n(4, 5) Cairo Conference on Demographic
Blanchflower, David, quoted 154n(12) Growth [1994] 251
Bolivia, political succession 35n(6) Cambodia 6, 244, 247
book publishing, decline in serious Campaign for a More Democratic
political books 260 United Nations 246
Boron, A.A. 81 capitalism
Bosnia-Herzegovina 6, 16, 197, 198, ideologies accommodated by 120,
200 264
bounded rationality 26 Japanese 177
bounded uncertainty 24, 29 origins 40
Boutros-Ghali, Boutros 165, 246 Catalonia
Brazauskas, Algirdas 205 cultural identity 67n(22)
Brazil migrants in 61, 67n(22)
church’s role in democratization 204 chauvinism, national 42
political succession 35n(6) chauvinism of American republicanism
state bureaucracy 55 235
Bretton Woods financial institutions Chile
157, 167 church’s role in democratization
see also International Monetary Fund 204
(IMF); World Bank elections 48, 207n(1), 244
Britain political succession 35n(6)
citizenship model 32 privatization 186
political system, compared with state bureaucracy 55
Japanese system 155n(17) China
see also England; Scotland; United political system 175, 187
Kingdom; Wales population policy 225–226
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Chinese-style alternative, in Russia
92, 157 186–187, 208n(5)
Brubaker, Roger 58 Christian politics 43
Brunei, political system 175 alliance with Liberal and Socialist
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, quoted 135n(12) traditions 41–42
Bulgaria Churchill, [Sir] Winston, on democracy
attitudinal surveys 192, 193, 18
211n(26) citizen participation, and mass media
democratic threshold ratings 197, 198 87–98
economic data 190 citizens’ militia 239
political succession 35n(6) citizens’ rights, protection by state 55
bureaucracy citizenship principle 32
as obstacle to democracy 5 necessity in democracy 30, 32
in Pacific Asian countries 178, 180– various models 32–33
181 civil society 31, 51
requirement for democracy 55, 122 absence in Algeria and Egypt 223
business–government collaboration conflict with political society 52
141–144, 176, 178 Islamic teaching on 218
271
Index
civil society (cont.) communitarianism 9, 82, 180, 233

nationalizing [state] policies affecting community, distinguished from
59, 64 democracy 82
in post-communist countries 6–7 competitive assimilation 61, 67n(18)
post-modern social structures 18, competitive economy, market-based
45–46 approaches 136
and republicanism 239–240 conditionality [for multilateral aid] 10,
requirement for democratization 52, 11, 162–163
122–123 Conference on Security and Coopera-
see also society tion in Europe (CSCE) 158, 159
class struggle 39 consensus politics, in UK 104, 105
clientelism 80 consent mobilization 137, 140, 144–146
cohabitation [in French political system] conservative parties
103 Australian 106–107
‘‘Cold War,’’ factors affecting end of British 104, 105, 106
158, 161 consociational democracy 62
collective autonomy, reconciliation with consolidated democracy
individual autonomy 79 breakdown of 50, 66n(5)
collective concept 81–82 comparison of countries 33
collective rights, combined with individ- definitions 50–51
ual rights 62 consolidation of democracy
command economy assumptions underlying 25–26, 48–
collapse/implosion of 186, 188 49
and consolidated democracy 56 challenge for consolidators 24–25
Commission for Global Governance 13 conditions that allow 29–32, 51–58,
‘‘common good’’, and democracy 2, 162
236, 237 meaning of term 23–24, 35n(9), 49–
Commonwealth of Independent States 50
(CIS) obstacles affecting 7, 58–61
democratic threshold ratings 195, property–space involved 30, 31
197, 198 state regime/institutions 28–29, 31
see also Armenia; Azerbaijan; Belarus; transformation of ad hoc relations into
Georgia; Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; stable structures 32–33
Moldova; Russia; Tajikistan; constitutional crisis [Australia – 1975]
Turkmenistan; Ukraine; 108, 115n(13)
Uzbekistan constitutional democracy 72, 76–77
communications revolution 4, 95 constitutionalism 53, 54
communism compared with democracy 71–85
end in Europe 72 human nature in politics 74–77
regimes that followed 73 and nature of society 81–85
failure of 119 process vs. substance 77–81
return in coalitions 204–207 constitutionalist republicans 256
see also post-communist European constitutions 23, 30
countries Australia 108, 115n(13), 152
communitarian view of democracy 11 Japan 109, 110, 114n(1), 256
compared with individualistic view post-communist countries 127
81–85 restrictions in 77
dangers in extreme approach 84 unwritten components 35n(15)
272
Index
unwritten [UK] 106 unlikeliness of armed conflict 10,

USA 74, 232, 256 160–162
West Germany 256 democracy
constructive engagement 11 among states 249–250
Copenhagen Conference on Human at United Nations 244–253
Development [1995] 251 as best alternative 18, 184
corporatism 136 comparisons
cosmopolitan democracy with constitutionalism 71–85
democracy among states 249–250 with religion 213–214
democracy within UN member states definitions 2–6, 35n(13), 48–49, 120,
247–249 160, 173–174, 213, 214, 235–236,
democratic management of global 255–257
problems 251–253 and global forces 10–14, 117–170
meaning of term 246, 247 issues to be examined 17–19
resistance to 9 Philadelphia model of 231–243
cosmopolitan law 159 regional characteristics 6–9, 171–228
crafting of conditions for consolidation and social framework 14–17, 69–115
of democracy 51–53 view of human nature 74–75
crafting skills [of politicians] 35n(8) within UN member states 247–249
Crick, Bernard 147 word absent from UN Charter and
Croatia 190, 197, 198, 200 documents 245
Cuba 264 see also consolidation of democracy
cultural relativism 9, 227 ‘‘democratic bargain’’ 24
Czech Republic democratic consolidation see consolida-
attitudinal surveys 192, 193, tion of democracy
210n(18) democratic institutions, and mass
democratic threshold ratings 197, media 89–95
198 Democratic Labor Party (DLP –
economic performance 190, 200, Australia) 107, 115n(10, 12)
210n(17) democratic peace 10, 161
economic reforms 66n(12), 208n(4) democratization
legal system 129 in Algeria and Egypt 223–224
Czechoslovakia in Asia 175
democracy in 203, 244 dangers of 163, 169n(9)
disintegration of 132, 200, 201 factors affecting 15, 25, 48, 52, 58,
invasion by Soviet Union 246 119–134, 162, 200–204
see also Czech Republic; Slovakia UN’s role in facilitating 165, 247
demonstration effects 123, 162
Dahl, Robert 24, 33, 48 developmental authoritarian states 175
Dahrendorf, [Sir] Ralf, quoted 119 business–government collaboration in
Declaration of Independence [USA] 141–143
231 developmental capitalism 141–144
deferred-gratification politics, in post- developmental dictatorships 121
communist countries 192, 199–200 Dewey, John, quoted 242
democracies Dore, Ronald, quoted 155n(17)
failure to deal with armed conflicts
252, 258 East Asian Miracle [World Bank report]
number in world 3–4, 168, 173 176–177
273
Index
East Asian states ethnic cleansing 60, 63

business–government collaboration in ethnic conflicts 132, 133, 163
141–143 European Union (EU), principles
economic performance in 176–178 underpinning formation 159–160
East–West dichotomy 9, 259 export-promotion strategies 176
see also Asian-style democracy/politics
economic competitiveness, role of state factionalism [in political parties] 105,
141–144, 176 108, 111, 112
economic interdependence, effects Fallows, James 240
164–165 Fay, Michael 180
economic reforms federal systems
loosely coupled with political reforms Australia 107
188–189 USA 74, 232
sequential changes 185 federalism 62, 133
simultaneity with political reforms feudalism 109
185, 192 Finland 160
economic society 55–57, 58, 185 foreign direct investments, regulation in
nationalizing [state] policies affecting post-communist countries 125,
64 134n(10)
in post-communist countries 66n(12) foreign policy decision-making 248–
Ecuador, political succession 35n(6) 249
Egypt foundationalism 236
confrontations with Islamic militants France 42, 58
222–223 as founder of UN 245
democratization in 223 government staff numbers 178
elections 224 political system 103
growth 221 free elections, as requirement for
El Salvador 167, 247 democracy 6, 244
electoral competition 45 free trade, promotion/maintenance of
electoral cycle 159, 167
role of 106, 109, 113, 148 free world, meaning of term 262
separation of strategic policy-making freedom, meaning in USA 231–232
148–149 freedom of association 140
electoral systems 96, 104, 107, 111, in post-communist countries 127
129–130 Freedom House democratic threshold
Elster, Jon 209n(11) rating scale 195
England data for post-communist countries
as democracy 257 197, 198–199
see also Britain freedom of religious belief, Islamic
entrepreneurship, liberalization of 125 teaching on 218–219
Eritrea 167 Freeman, Richard, quoted 154n(12)
Estonia French Revolution 256
democratic threshold ratings 197, Friedrich, C. 72, 77
198
economic data 190 Gaber, Sheikh 222–223
languages spoken 61 Garton Ash, Timothy 211n(27)
stateness problem 200 genocide 164, 252
274
Index
Georgia Holmes, S., quoted 71, 79

democratic threshold ratings 197, House of Commons [UK] 103, 104
198 select committees 150–152, 156n(28)
economic data 190 House of Councillors [Japan] 113
Germany House of Lords [UK] 105–106
constitution 256 House of Representatives
political movements 43, 129 Australia 107, 108
unification of 158 Japan 110–111
as Weberian state 58 Hudson, Michael 224
Gidden, Anthony 27 human nature, democracy based on
global forces, and democracy 10–14, optimistic view of 74–75
117–170 human resource development, in East
‘‘global paradox’’ 122–123 Asian countries 177
global problems, democratic manage- human rights 8, 247–248
ment of 251–253 hung parliament, changes in policy-
globalization making structures 151, 152, 153
effects 46, 122–123, 148 Hungary
and mass media 94 attitudinal surveys 192, 193,
Goebbels, Joseph, quoted 261 211n(26)
Gonzalez, Felipe 34n(6) Communist Party-led coalition 185,
good governance 1, 8 204–205, 211n(24, 25)
in Pacific Asian countries 178 democratic threshold ratings 197,
Gorbachev, Mikhail 186 198
government–business collabo- economic data 190
ration 141–144, 176, 178 economic policies 209n(12)
government staff numbers, Japan com- economic society 66n(12)
pared with other countries 178 elections 185, 204–205, 211n(24, 25),
Great Britain see Britain 244
The Great Transformation [Karl Polanyi] invasion by Soviet Union 246
39–40 legal system 129
Greece 58 political background 126, 201, 203
Grenada 246 political freedom 127
gross domestic product (GDP), data for type of regime 126, 197
post-communist countries 190– Huntington, Samuel 162, 180, 227
191 Hutton, Will 136
Habermas, Jürgen 87, 240 Ibn Khaldoun 220

Haiti 11, 166 identity politics, in transitional societies
Hawke Labor Government [Australia] 15
107, 108 ideologies, and politics 120, 263–265
Hayek, Friedrich August von 8, 39, 71, In Defence of Politics 259, 261, 262
264 India, multinational tensions 63
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 237 indifference, and republicanism 239
Helsinki accords [on human rights] individual autonomy, reconciliation with
158–159 collective autonomy 79
Heseltine, Michael 141 individual rights, combined with collec-
Hitler, Adolf 92, 99n(16) tive rights 62
275
Index
individualistic view of democracy in elections 224–225

compared with communitarian view in government 225
81–85 typical profile 223
Western vs non-Western views 83 Islamic parties 210n(21), 224–225, 226
Indonesia 11, 175 Islamic revival 216–227
industrial output, data for post- Israel
communist countries 190–191 attacks on other countries 246
inflation rate, data for post-communist media case-study 95–97
countries 190–191 and nuclear non-proliferation treaty
institutional guarantees/requirements 226
33, 48 Italy
institutional plurality 33–34 as consolidated democracy 33
institutional routinization 52, 53 Socialists 42
institutionalization 27, 57
see also structuration Jackson, Michael [pop musician] 180
institutionalized societies, and political Japan 53, 58
efficacy 5 constitution 109, 110, 114n(1), 256
institutions, and mass media 89–95 government staff numbers 178
interest group mobilization 149–150 head of state 103
interest group pluralization 138–141 industrialization 175
intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) literacy rate 177
165, 251 political system 109–113, 174, 175,
International Court of Justice 250 181, 257
international criminal court 252 compared with British system 109,
international democracy 155n(17)
resistance to concept 9 savings rate 177
UN’s meaning of term 246, 250 Japan Socialist Party 110
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Jefferson, Thomas 71, 235, 240
157, 167, 227 John of Leyden 215
international organizations Johnson, James Turner, quoted
democracy within 13, 251–253 134n(8)
and democratization 12, 166–167 Jordan
and economic interdependence 164– elections 226
165 modernizing monarchy 224
role of 165 journalists, and politicians/politics 90,
international society of states [West- 260
phalian concept] 8–9, 168, 238 Jowitt, Ken 186
Internet 95, 241 judgement 238
inverted legitimacy pyramid 185–188
Iran, Islamic Revolution 225–226 Kalecki, Michal 154n(9)
Islam Kant, Immanuel 159, 238, 249
history 218, 219–220 Kazakhstan
as mobilizing political religion 16, democratic threshold ratings 197,
218, 225 198
in post-communist countries economic data 190
210n(21) as multinational state 61
Islamic activists/militants Keating, Paul 108
confrontations with state 22–23 Kelsen, Hans 236
276
Index
Kerr, Sir John 115 Japan 110, 111, 112, 113, 115n(15,
Khaldounian paradigm 220 18), 174, 175
Klaus, Vaclav 44 UK 151
Kleist, Heinrich von 239 liberal internationalism 120
Korea Liberal Party [Australia] 106–107
literacy rate 177 Liberal Party [UK] 114n(3)
see also North . . . ; South Korea liberal-democratic politics 152
kosmos 39 liberalism 42, 134n(9)
Kosovo 207n(1) alliance with Christian and Socialist
Krupavicius, Algis 211n(24) traditions 41–42
Kurdistan 227 compared with Philadelphian model
Kuwait, elections 224 233–234
Kwasniewski, Aleksander 211n(27) and emergence of state of law 53
Kyrgyzstan recent changes 42
democratic threshold ratings 197, and UK government 104–105
198 liberalization, in post-communist
economic data 190 countries 124–126, 158
as multinational state 61 libertarianism 42, 43
Libya 227
labour, as commodity 39, 40, 47n(3) Lieven, Anatol 205
Labo(u)r parties Lijphart, Arend 62
Australian 107, 108 Lincoln, Abraham, quoted 44
British 104, 105 Linz, Juan 209n(14)
Landsbergis, Vytautas 205 Lipset, Seymour Martin 6, 39, 173,
languages 265n(1)
nation-state 58–59, 60, 61 literacy rates, East Asian countries 177
number in world 60 Lithuania
Latin America church’s role in democratization 204
state bureaucracies 55 citizenship 200
see also Argentina; Bolivia; Brazil; Communist Party-led coalition 185,
Chile; Ecuador; Peru 204–205
Latvia democratic threshold ratings 197,
democratic threshold ratings 197, 198, 200
198 economic data 191
economic data 190 political succession 35n(6)
languages spoken 60–61 local conditions, democracy influenced
stateness problem 200 by 9
law see rule of law; state of law Lowi, Theodore J. 5
Lazarsfeld, Paul Felix 90, 93 ‘‘loyal opposition’’ concept 7, 106
Lebanon Lukashenko, Aleksandr 202
attack by Israel 246 Lukes, Steven 187
elections 224 Luther, Martin 216
Lee Kuan Yew 175, 179
legal systems, post-communist countries MacDonagh, Oliver, quoted 156n(28)
129, 130 Macedonia
legitimacy hierarchy, inverted 185–188 democratic threshold ratings 197, 198
Lerner, Harry 246 economic data 190
Liberal Democratic Party stateness problems 200–201
277
Index
Machiavellian thinking 35n(8), 256 Mill, John Stuart 256

MacInnes, John, quoted 154n(12) Milosevic, Slobodan 207n(1)
macro-public spheres 241 Mishler, William 209n(13)
mafia economies 188 modernizing monarchies 224
majoritarianism 15 modular system of overlapping public
Moldova, democratic threshold ratings spheres 242
197, 198 Moldova
Mansfield, Edward 169n(9) democratic threshold ratings 197,
Marcos, Ferdinand 174, 175 198
market economic data 191
advantages 44 monarchical constitutional rules 77
disadvantages 44–45 monetarism 141
protective regulation framework 40 Monnet, Jean 159
market economy Montenegro see Yugoslavia
coexistence with various political moral aspects of politics 262
systems 121 More, [Sir] Thomas 216
and consolidated democracy 56, 185 Morocco 224
factors affecting 207n(2) Mozambique 247
meaning of term 124 multiculturalism, Islamic teaching
transition from command economy on 218
123, 264 multilateralism 9, 125, 134n(11),
marketization, as policy intervention 157
37–38, 131 multinational states, consolidation of
Masao, Maruyama 256 democracy in 59, 61–63
mass demonstrations 99n(20) multipartisanship 147–148
mass media multiple identities 63–64
case-study [Israel] 95–97 Münster [Germany]
decline in serious political contribu- Anabaptist dictatorship 215
tions 260 see also Westphalia, Treaty of
democratic institutions affected by 5, Muslim Brotherhood 224
17, 89–95 Myanmar [Burma], political system
functional approach 88 175
hegemonic approach 88
mass-persuasion approach 88 Naisbitt, John 122–123
technological approach 88, 91–95 Namibia, elections 167
see also newspapers; radio; television Napoleon Bonaparte 256
Mecca, Grand Mosque of 216, 217 nation-state policy 58–59
Medina 219 contrasted with democratic policies
Menzies, [Sir] Robert 108 59
meso-public spheres 241 nation-states, difficulties in creating
Metcalf, David, quoted 154n(12) 60–61
micro-public spheres 241 nationalism
middle class and free politics 261
in Algeria and Egypt 222 in post-communist countries 132–
in post-communist countries 126, 128 133
military actions nationalizing [state] policies 58–59,
by West in Muslim countries 227 63–64
in support of democracy 166 neighbourliness 239–240
278
Index
neoclassical orthodoxy [of World Bank] and public focus on longer-term

176, 177 issues 147
neoliberal orthodoxy 37, 38 parliamentary debates, styles of 106,
Netanyahu, Benjamin 96 108, 113
New Zealand, electoral reform 152, parliamentary [select] committees 150–
153 152, 156n(28)
newspapers participation
decline in serious political articles levels and limits 78
260 and mass media 87–98
democratic institutions affected by requirements for democratization
91–92 122
effect on social/political action 90–91 peace, structure for 157–169
functions 89, 240 peace-building role of UN 12, 165
see also journalists peace-keeping operations 166–167,
Nigeria 11 247, 252
Nishibe, Susumu 179, 182n(12) peaceful international order, principles
non-democratic regimes 10, 157–160
economic development by 121 people, meaning of term 120–121, 260
as UN members 247 ‘‘People Power’’ Movement [Philip-
non-governmental organizations pines] 174, 175
(NGOs) 12, 13–14, 251 People’s Assembly [UN] 251
non-interference principle 247–248 Pericles 265
North Korea 175, 264 Perot, Ross 100n(21)
nuclear non-proliferation treaty 226 Peru, political succession 35n(6)
nuclear weapons proliferation 258 Philadelphia model of democracy 231–
243
Ohura, Kazuo 179, 182n(12) Philippines, political system 174, 175
oil price shocks, effects 43 Piaget, Jean, quoted 90
one-nation Tories, fate under Piludski, [Marshal] Józef 130
Thatcher 42 Plato, on democracy 255
one-party dominance pluralistic politics
in Algeria and Egypt 221 in Algeria 226
in Japan 110, 174, 181 as requirement for democracy 128
Orthodox Christianity, role in democra- plurality of institutions [in transition to
tization 204, 210n(21) democracy] 33–34
Oswald, Andrew, quoted 154n(12) Poland
al-Outiabi, Juhiman 216–217 attitudinal surveys 192, 193,
210n(18)
Pacific Asia, democracy in 174–175 changes 126
pacific union 159 church’s role in democratization 204
Paine, Thomas 71, 232 Communist Party-led coalition 185,
Pakistan, elections 224, 225 204–205, 206, 211n(25)
Panama 246 democratic threshold ratings 197,
Panic, Milan 207n(1) 198
Paris Conference [1919] 247 dictatorship 130
parliamentarianism 54, 102 economic data 189, 191
British/Westminster parliament 32, economic policies 209n(12)
103, 150–152 elections 130, 211n(27)
279
Index
Poland (cont.) and ideologies 263–265

legal system 129 moral aspects 262
political movements 129, 131, nature of 259–261
135n(12), 185, 201, 204 sociological aspects 262
Polanyi, Karl 39, 40 violence as breakdown of 262
policy-making requirements Pope John Paul II, quoted 120
bi-/multi-partisanship 147–148 Pope Paul III 216
interest-group mobilization 149–150 population policies 225–226
public focus on longer-term issues populist utopia model 134n(9)
147 Portugal
strategic policy-making cycle/structure as consolidated democracy 33, 58
148–149 political succession 35n(6)
polis 259, 261 post-communist European countries
political causality 26 attitudinal surveys 192, 193, 194, 196
political cynicism 45 democratization process in 119–134,
political identities 63 184–212
political learning 144–146 economic data 190–191
British compared with Japanese economic society in 66n(12)
views 155n(17) heterogeneity 126
characteristics 144–145, 146 social-order problems, reactions 44
and interest groups 150 see also Armenia; Azerbaijan; Belarus;
political market-place 45 Bosnia-Herzegovina; Bulgaria;
political parties Croatia; Czech Republic; Estonia;
factors affecting formation 101–102 Georgia; Hungary; Kazakhstan;
in post-communist countries 128– Kyrgyzstan; Latvia; Lithuania;
129 Macedonia; Moldova; Poland;
political party leaders Romania; Russia; Slovakia; Slov-
in Australia 108 enia; Tajikistan; Turkmenistan;
in Japan 112 Ukraine; Uzbekistan; Yugoslavia
in UK 105 post-republicanism 243
use of mass media by 92, 93, 260 Post, R.C., quoted 79, 80, 82
political party membership Postman, Neil 94
comparison of countries 105, 108, pre-commitment 75, 79
112 presidential democracies 54, 130
as indicator 6 presidential government, advocated in
political party organizations, effect of post-communist countries 130–131
television 93–94 press see journalists; newspapers
political representation 138–141 privatization 37, 57, 186, 187, 207n(2)
and economic competitiveness 136– in post-communist countries 186,
153 187, 208n(4)
in various countries 101–114, 181 procedural minimum 30, 33
see also interest group(s) protection
political society 31, 51–52, 257–259 by constitutionalism 75, 76, 77
conflict with civil society 52 of democracy 76, 79
nationalizing [state] policies affecting Protestantism 204, 256
64 public choice theory 136, 140
politicans, short-term nature of 257 public debate, displacement of issues
politics from 38–39
280
Index
public institutions 31 Roman Catholicism, role in democra-

in democracies 64–65 tization 203–204
public journalism movement 240 Romania
public sphere(s) assimilation of ethnic minorities
Habermas’ view 87, 240 132
republicans’ view 240 attitudinal surveys 192, 193,
structural differentiation of 242 211n(26)
Tarde’s model 89 democratic threshold ratings 197,
types 241 198
Putnam, Robert 94 economic data 191
political succession 35n(6)
quality of life, and democracy 64–65 privatization in 208n(4)
type of regime 126, 197
radio Roosevelt, Franklin D. 92, 99n(15)
effect on social/political action 92–93 Rose, Richard 209n(13)
as locus of nationally shared Rousseau, Jean Jacques 71, 256
experience 92 routinization 27
Reaganite liberalism 233, 234 see also structuration
Rechtsstaat [state subject to law] 53 rule of law 53–54, 129
reconciliation, factors affecting 16 nationalizing, [state] policies affecting
reconstruction of state, in post- 64
communist countries 186, 208n(4) rural–urban balance 8
regimes Russia
democracy as composite of 29–32 attitudinal surveys 196, 199–200,
meaning of term 28, 35n(12) 201, 202, 203, 210n(18)
regional autonomy 133 Chinese-style alternative 186–187,
regional characteristics of democracy 208n(5)
6–9, 171–228 democratic threshold ratings 197,
religion 198
compared with democracy 213–214 economic performance 191,
effect on democratization 15–16, 210n(17)
162, 203–204 economic reforms 66n(12), 208n(4)
and free politics 261 elections 8, 244
meaning of term 213 Pinochet-type alternative 186,
religious coexistence, Islamic teaching 208n(5)
on 16, 219 post-communist polity 186–187
republican governments 114n(1), 232 privatization in 187
republicanism, and civil society 239– Rwanda 244
240
revolutions Sakakibara, Eisuke 177
American 233 Salinas, Carlos 35n(6)
French 256 San Francisco Conference [1945] 247
right to bear arms, in USA 238–239 Sandel, Michael 233, 234, 236
Rio Earth Summit [1992] 251 Sarajevo 63
Robespierre, paraphrased 253 ‘‘satanic mill’’ argument 39
Rogers, Joel 47n(7) Saudi Arabia, Muslim rebellion 216–
Roman Catholic-influenced politics 43, 217
107 savings rate, Japan 177
281
Index
Schumpeter, Joseph A., on democracy post-communist countries 127–128

134n(4), 264 social trust, in East Asian societies
Scotland, as democracy 257 177–178
Second Amendment [to US Con- socialism 42
stitution] 239, 240 alliance with Christian and Liberal
Security Council [UN] 12, 157, 165, traditions 41–42
249–250 recent changes 42–43
permanent members 245, 249 society
possible reforms 249–250 individualism vs. communitarianism
Segall, Jeffrey 246 81–85
self-governing communities [within mul- Thatcher’s comment on 43
tinational states] 62 see also civil society; communitarian-
Senate ism; community
Australia 108, 152 socio-economic aspects of democratiza-
USA 152 tion 131
Serbia see Yugoslavia sociological aspects of politics 262
shared-growth principle 176 Solidarity movement [in Poland] 129
Shiratori, Masaki 176–177 Somalia 167, 227, 244
Siba 220 soulcraft 234
confrontations with state 222–223 South Africa 77, 244, 246, 248
modern equivalent 221 South Korea 141, 175, 180
simultaneity [of mass media] 92–93 Soviet Union
simultaneous economic and political attacks on other countries 246
change 185 changes 61, 126, 158
Singapore factors affecting 158–159, 186
‘‘Asian’’ values 179–180 disintegration into autonomous
business–government relations 141 republics 61, 158, 258
communitarianism 180 effect on Russian people 201
political system 35n(6), 35n(14), 175 former members, democratic thresh-
Slovakia old ratings 197, 198
attitudinal surveys 192, 193 non-participation in multilateral insti-
democratic threshold ratings 197, tutions 157
198 see also Armenia; Azerbaijan;
economic performance 191, 200, Belarus; Estonia; Georgia;
210n(17) Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Latvia;
Slovenia 191, 197, 198, 200 Lithuania; Moldova; Russia; Taji-
slum areas, Algeria and Egypt 221, 222 kistan; Turkmenistan; Ukraine;
Smith, Adam, quoted 56–57 Uzbekistan
‘‘snowball’’ effects 123, 162 Soviet [utopia] model 134n(9),
Snyder, Jack 169n(9) 209n(14)
social democrats 42, 43 Spain
reconstructed communists as 206, church’s role in democratization 204
210n(24) as consolidated democracy 33
social framework, and democracy 14– devolution in 67n(22)
17, 69–115 political/socio-economic/economic
social market economy 41 reforms 185, 206
social order preference survey 201
factors affecting 39, 41, 45, 46 Socialists 42
282
Index
Suarez Factor 34n(6) Thatcher, Margaret 43, 158

Speenhamland system, Polanyi’s analysis Thatcherism 37, 38, 43, 154n(12), 233
40 third world countries
stabilization 27 and democracy 245
see also structuration governments overturned by Western
stakeholder capitalism 136 countries 245
state bureaucracy 55 titular nationalities, conflict with
nationalizing [state] policies affecting migrants/settlers 61
64 Tocqueville, Alexis de 35n(9), 35n(12),
state of law [state subject to law] 53–54 94, 140, 237, 256
state regime 28, 31 trade unions
state socialism and political parties 105, 108
breakdown of system 44 and wage bargaining in UK 154n(12)
see also post-communist European transition to democracy 2
countries factors affecting 16, 25, 48, 52, 58,
state-nations 62–63 119–134, 163, 185
state-owned enterprises 125 length of period 26–27
stateness problems, post-communist transitional societies
countries 200–201 identity politics in 15
strategic issues/policies, policy-making relationship between state and civil
requirements 148–149 society 7–8
Streeck, Wolfgang 47n(7) transnational corporations, role in post-
structuration 27 communist countries 125
Suarez, Adolfo 34n(6) transnational democracy 246
Suarez Factor 34n(6) see also cosmopolitan democracy
Switzerland, as state-nation 62–63 Trent, Council of 216
Syria 246 Turkey
democracy in 16, 225
Taiwan elections 224, 225, 226
business–government relations 141 Turkmenistan
industrialization 175 democratic threshold ratings 197,
political system 175 198, 199
Tajikistan economic data 191
democratic threshold ratings 197, elections 209n(16)
198, 199 two-party adversarial system
economic data 191 examples 103–104, 106–107
elections 209n(16) limitations 146, 148
Tarde, Gabriel de 89 scarcity in Asia 181
public-opinion model 89, 90, 91–92,
97 Ukraine
taxis 39 attitudinal surveys 196, 199–200
teleological analysis, meaning of term democratic threshold ratings 197,
65n(3) 198
television economic performance 191,
effect on social/political action 93–94 210n(17)
as locus of nationally shared experi- economic reforms 66n(12),
ence 93 208n(4)
waning of influence 88, 94 electoral system 130
283
Index
United Kingdom (UK) economic data 191

as founder of UN 245 elections 209n(16)
head of state 103
political system 103–106, 150–152, velvet divorce
257 Czechoslovakia 200, 201
trade unions 140, 154n(12) factors affecting 60–61
see also Britain; England; Scotland; Viet Nam 175, 177, 246
United Kingdom; Wales violence
United Nations (UN) as breakdown of politics 262
Charter 157, 245 and republicanism 239
democracy at 244–253
democratization supported by 12, wage bargaining, effect of Thatcherism
247 in UK 154n(12)
Electoral Assistance Unit 167 Wales, as democracy 257
General Assembly 249, 250 Walkland, Stuart 151
hypocrisies governing 13, 245 wars
International Court of Justice democracies’ success rate 167
250 mutual destruction by 258
and NGOs 13–14, 251 Warsaw Pact countries, former
peace-building/keeping role 157, democratic threshold ratings 197–
165, 166–167, 247, 252 198
Second Assembly proposed 251 economic data 189, 190–191
Security Council 12, 157, 165, 245, peacefulness 163
249–250 Warsaw Pact dissolution 158
United States of America (USA) Weber, Max 204
Asian compared with American Weberian states 58
values 179 welfare state economy, interest groups
attacks on other countries 246 in 138, 139
citizenship 32, 232–233, 257 Westminster model [of parliamentary
constitution 74, 232, 256 democracy] 7, 103, 110
constitutionalism 80 Asian-style democracy compared with
as founder of UN 245 180–181
government staff numbers 178 changes 150–152, 153
as occupying power in Japan 110, role of select committees 150–152,
174 156n(28)
participation in politics 257 Westphalia, Peace/Treaty of [1648] 8,
political system 32, 34, 80, 103, 207, 168, 238, 247
257 Whigs 256
as state-nation 62–63 Whitlam Labor Government [Australia]
Universal Declaration of Human 108, 109, 115n(13)
Rights 247–248 Wiatr, Jerzy 210n(22)
urban lumpenproletariat 221–222 Wien, Congress of [1814] 247
Uruguay, political succession 35n(6) Wilson, Woodrow 159
USSR see Soviet Union winner-take-all principle [UK politics]
Utrecht, Treaty of [1712] 247 103, 105–106
Uzbekistan women
democratic threshold ratings 197, representation in political life 14–15,
198, 199 225
284
Index
rights not dealt with by American Yugoslavia

republicanism 235 disintegration of 63, 127, 132, 167,
World Bank 157, 167, 227 200, 258
study of East Asian economies 176– Federal Republic of 191, 197, 198,
177 200, 207n(1)
see also Bosnia; Croatia; Macedonia;
Yeltsin, Boris 186 Slovenia
Yemen, elections 220–221, 224
285

The Changing Nature of Democracy

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The United Nations University is an organ of the United Nations established by the General

Assembly in 1972 to be an international community of scholars engaged in research, advanced

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors

United Nations University Press

UNU Office in North America

United Nations University Press is the publishing division of the

Cover design by Joyce C. Weston

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The changing nature of democracy / edited by Takashi Inoguchi,

1 Introduction: The changing nature of

Definitions and criteria 21

Democracy and social framework 69

7 Party representation in the United Kingdom,

Democracy and global forces 117

Regional characteristics of democracy 171

Invigorating democratic ideas and

16 A meditation on democracy 255

Democracy is widely advocated and sought, but its meaning is widely

life – economic, political, social, and environmental in addition to

Definitions and criteria

Moreover, the presence of identity groups – such as ethnicity and

100 in 1996. Leaps of technology in electronic communication – some

Elihu Katz’s chapter on mass media and participatory democracy

methodological problems in testing the ‘‘declining democracy’’ thesis,

Regional characteristics of democracy and democratic

The prevailing global movement is clearly towards liberal-democratic

untary manner. This is not to suggest that post-communist societies

opment must be balanced against political freedom and social wel-

macy did not specify any domestic conditions of governance. The

Democracy and global forces

At the international level, the changing conception of democracy has

the imposition of values or institutions. Moreover, the manner in

less preoccupied with the distinction between the domestic and

although NGOs are not formally enfranchised; the United Nations is

Democracy and the social framework

number of cases, women played a major role in liberation struggles –

impartial and independent judiciary, armed forces, and police force

The new agenda: Invigorating democratic ideas and institutions

revitalizing democratic political processes. The challenge for transi-

The notion of a ‘‘consolidated democracy’’ seems oxymoronic – a

Defining the challenge

or undermined by the legacies of autocracy or the compromises

Establishing some assumptions

terminate strategic reactions. Actors believe that they are engaged

Defining the subject

ration, institutionalization, stabilization, and routinization that cap-

Focusing on the state

uncertainty. A polity in which there was no uncertainty about which

Disaggregating the process into partial regimes

ability to different citizen interests (and passions), and reproduce that

been argued that the system of interest intermediation deserves

Putting the pieces back together

The consolidation of democracy, then, consists of transforming the ad

Coping with the plurality of institutions

equate base upon which to build an understanding of the consolida-

Constitutions. Gaps, ’Abeyances’ and Political Temperament in the Maintenance of Govern-

social order. The market is here used as a political weapon targeted,

however, the state is reduced to a contract-enforcing agency sub-

Transformation: ‘‘objective reasons of a stringent nature forced the