The Process of Democracy
The explosive spread of democracy around the world since the mid-20th century has transformed international politics from one in which democracies are the exception to the rule to one in which they are the norm. The increasing popularity of democratic regimes has been driven in large part by the growing acceptance of a set of global political norms that associate democratic governance with a wide variety of positive outcomes, from human rights to economic prosperity. This growing appreciation of the virtues of democracy has made democratisation a major focus of research and policy debate.
Various theories seek to explain the process of democratization, or how a society moves from authoritarianism to minimalist democracy to full-fledged democracy. Some scholars emphasize the importance of generating conditions in societies that support democracy, such as the generation of a broad and educated middle class that can demand greater influence over governance issues. Others stress the necessity of developing a strong and independent civil society that can define the limits of public authorities and protect citizens’ rights and liberties. Still others stress the importance of ensuring the availability of sufficient resources to ensure that a country can function effectively as a democracy.
There is broad agreement that democratization is not easy and that it often fails. Many of the world’s newest democracies have struggled to establish and sustain their new institutions, while others have reverted back to authoritarian rule. Attempts to impose democracy from outside are also risky and usually have little success, as illustrated by the failure of the nascent democracies of Japan and Germany in the immediate post-World War II period. Those that succeed in establishing democracy generally do so only after the country has generated the necessary social and economic conditions, such as substantial levels of economic development.
Different approaches also differ in their emphasis on structural or elite choice as the source of democratization. The favourable-conditions approach allows researchers to produce a long list of factors that are important for democratization, but it tends to make it difficult to develop general models of the underlying mechanisms. The elite-choice approach, on the other hand, produces more concise explanations of democratization but lacks the richness of the structural explanations.
A third area of agreement is that a country’s level of economic development plays an important role in the timing and prospects for democratization. The rapid industrialization that accompanied the first wave of democratization in Western Europe and North America in the 19th century helped bring about the expansion of suffrage and the growth of liberal democracy. In the aftermath of World War II, the growth of the industrialized democracies in East Asia and Latin America gave renewed impetus to modernization theory. More recently, the difficulties faced by a number of third-wave democracies in consolidating their political and economic systems have revived interest in the notion that a country’s level of economic wealth helps determine the timing and outcome of democratization.
The explosive spread of democracy around the world since the mid-20th century has transformed international politics from one in which democracies are the exception to the rule to one in which they are the norm. The increasing popularity of democratic regimes has been driven in large part by the growing acceptance of a set of global political norms that associate democratic governance with a wide variety of positive outcomes, from human rights to economic prosperity. This growing appreciation of the virtues of democracy has made democratisation a major focus of research and policy debate. Various theories seek to explain the process of democratization, or how a society moves from authoritarianism to minimalist democracy to full-fledged democracy. Some scholars emphasize the importance of generating conditions in societies that support democracy, such as the generation of a broad and educated middle class that can demand greater influence over governance issues. Others stress the necessity of developing a strong and independent civil society that can define the limits of public authorities and protect citizens’ rights and liberties. Still others stress the importance of ensuring the availability of sufficient resources to ensure that a country can function effectively as a democracy. There is broad agreement that democratization is not easy and that it often fails. Many of the world’s newest democracies have struggled to establish and sustain their new institutions, while others have reverted back to authoritarian rule. Attempts to impose democracy from outside are also risky and usually have little success, as illustrated by the failure of the nascent democracies of Japan and Germany in the immediate post-World War II period. Those that succeed in establishing democracy generally do so only after the country has generated the necessary social and economic conditions, such as substantial levels of economic development. Different approaches also differ in their emphasis on structural or elite choice as the source of democratization. The favourable-conditions approach allows researchers to produce a long list of factors that are important for democratization, but it tends to make it difficult to develop general models of the underlying mechanisms. The elite-choice approach, on the other hand, produces more concise explanations of democratization but lacks the richness of the structural explanations. A third area of agreement is that a country’s level of economic development plays an important role in the timing and prospects for democratization. The rapid industrialization that accompanied the first wave of democratization in Western Europe and North America in the 19th century helped bring about the expansion of suffrage and the growth of liberal democracy. In the aftermath of World War II, the growth of the industrialized democracies in East Asia and Latin America gave renewed impetus to modernization theory. More recently, the difficulties faced by a number of third-wave democracies in consolidating their political and economic systems have revived interest in the notion that a country’s level of economic wealth helps determine the timing and outcome of democratization.