What is Democracy and How Can a Nation Get There?
The word democracy derives from the Greek words demos (“people”) and kratia (“rule”). It is an ideal of government that has become more widely accepted in the world than at any time before. Today it is embraced by the majority of states in the world. But what does it mean to be a democracy, and how can a nation get there?
Democratisation, the process of changing to a democratic political regime, involves the gradual movement of substantive social changes in the direction of democracy. This is in contrast to authoritarianism, where social change occurs more rapidly but does not necessarily move towards a democratic regime.
The concept of democratisation has been around for centuries, and many theories of the causes and processes of it have emerged. These have influenced the development of modern political science and, in particular, helped to shape the field of study known as Transitions Studies. However, the development of a comprehensive theory of democratisation is still in progress.
Some of the current theories focus on identifying and proposing necessary conditions for democratisation. Others are more dynamic and seek to understand the nature of a democratisation process. Still others are more concerned with the strategic interactions of democratic forces in a society and the implications of these for the rate, sequence and path of democratisation.
While some of these models are very insightful, they do not offer a unifying framework for the analysis of democratisation. The next round of research and theory on the subject must shift away from these descriptive models and toward understanding a set of causal mechanisms that produce and sustain democratic development.
This involves a more systematic approach to the democratisation process, and a recognition that it is not just a process of implementing specific democratic institutions but of establishing a new kind of social order characterized by pluralist public politics, categorical inequality and networks of trust that bind citizens together. The success of a democratisation process depends on its ability to satisfy these demands, as well as on the capacity of state actors to implement these arrangements in a timely and effective manner.
A key to democratisation is the emergence of public policies that address the needs of all groups, especially the poor. For example, education plays an important role in promoting democracy, because it leads to a natural expansion of programs that benefit the poor and stimulates the adoption of legal rules that are focused on this population. It also enables people with different levels of education to contribute in similar ways to civil societies, including voting and other forms of political participation.
Unfortunately, such policies do not always live up to the rhetoric in which they are presented. In some cases, they can even undermine the societal changes that are conducive to democratisation. For example, when Iran’s pro-western Shah began to introduce civil society programs in the 1970s as part of a move towards democratisation, he ran into serious conflict with other entrenched and countervailing forces in the country.
The word democracy derives from the Greek words demos (“people”) and kratia (“rule”). It is an ideal of government that has become more widely accepted in the world than at any time before. Today it is embraced by the majority of states in the world. But what does it mean to be a democracy, and how can a nation get there? Democratisation, the process of changing to a democratic political regime, involves the gradual movement of substantive social changes in the direction of democracy. This is in contrast to authoritarianism, where social change occurs more rapidly but does not necessarily move towards a democratic regime. The concept of democratisation has been around for centuries, and many theories of the causes and processes of it have emerged. These have influenced the development of modern political science and, in particular, helped to shape the field of study known as Transitions Studies. However, the development of a comprehensive theory of democratisation is still in progress. Some of the current theories focus on identifying and proposing necessary conditions for democratisation. Others are more dynamic and seek to understand the nature of a democratisation process. Still others are more concerned with the strategic interactions of democratic forces in a society and the implications of these for the rate, sequence and path of democratisation. While some of these models are very insightful, they do not offer a unifying framework for the analysis of democratisation. The next round of research and theory on the subject must shift away from these descriptive models and toward understanding a set of causal mechanisms that produce and sustain democratic development. This involves a more systematic approach to the democratisation process, and a recognition that it is not just a process of implementing specific democratic institutions but of establishing a new kind of social order characterized by pluralist public politics, categorical inequality and networks of trust that bind citizens together. The success of a democratisation process depends on its ability to satisfy these demands, as well as on the capacity of state actors to implement these arrangements in a timely and effective manner. A key to democratisation is the emergence of public policies that address the needs of all groups, especially the poor. For example, education plays an important role in promoting democracy, because it leads to a natural expansion of programs that benefit the poor and stimulates the adoption of legal rules that are focused on this population. It also enables people with different levels of education to contribute in similar ways to civil societies, including voting and other forms of political participation. Unfortunately, such policies do not always live up to the rhetoric in which they are presented. In some cases, they can even undermine the societal changes that are conducive to democratisation. For example, when Iran’s pro-western Shah began to introduce civil society programs in the 1970s as part of a move towards democratisation, he ran into serious conflict with other entrenched and countervailing forces in the country.