chapter 7 cpo2002 lecture

DemocracyChapter Seven

Pearson Publishing 2011

Democracy

• Fall of the Berlin Wall – November 9, 1989• Part of a larger, worldwide democratic surge where

authoritarian states were replaced by democracies.

• Freedom House: In 2001, 121 out of the world’s 192 governments (63%) qualified as constitutionally democratic systems with competitive, multiparty elections – the most ever in history.


Transitions to Democracy

• Term democracy derived from the Greek word demokratia, from the roots demos (people) and kratos (rule).

• Rule by the people.• Direct democracy: people participate directly in making laws that

govern them. • Unworkable in large, complex societies.

• Modern democracy depends on having our interests and views represented by others.• Representative democracy

• Schumpeter’s realistic standard of democracy: virtually all citizens are eligible to vote on who will represent them in free, fair, and periodic elections.• Still difficult to achieve.


Transitions to Democracy

• Huntington: transition from autocracy to democracy has proceeded in three waves:• First wave had its root in the American and French revolutions of the 18 th

century; began to recede in the 1930s.• Defeat of fascism in WWII inaugurated a second wave of

democratization.• Germany, Austria, and Japan emerged from Allied occupation as

democracies, and many former European colonies adopted democratic constitutions when they achieved independence.

• Began to recede in 1960s. Return to authoritarianism in many African and Asian countries.

• Third wave appeared before the last receded. 1974, Portugal emerged from dictatorship, followed by Greece and Spain. Then the wave moved to Latin America (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil); then Asia (India and the Philippines, Korea, Turkey and Pakistan). Finally in Europe: Berlin Wall fell – Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and finally the Soviet Union itself.


Figure 7.1Pearson Publishing 2011

The Good Society In Depth: Mauritius – A Democratic Enigma

Mauritius: an island nation of over one million located off the southeast coast of Africa.

Ethnically and religiously diverse.

But no authoritarian government.

Stable democracy since gaining independence in 1968.

Why?

• Scholars attribute this democratic success to a “vibrant and healthy civil society that cuts across ethnic cleavages.”• Many civic organizations which as as bridges across

religious and ethnic boundaries.• Checks and balances• No standing army• Judiciary is independent• Civil service is professional• Supermajorities are required to make constitutional

changes• All constitutionally recognized ethnic and religious

groups are guaranteed seats in parliament• Constitution provides for an office of Leader of

Opposition whom the president must consult on some issues.

• Caveats: Mauritius does have ethnic conflicts and suffers from corruption, but its democratic record is the best in Africa.


Transitions to Democracy: Why have some countries succumbed to the appeal of democracy while others have not?

• A range of cultural and sociological explanations – for examples, countries with large Muslim populations are less likely to be democratic, while those with higher levels of education are more likely to be democratic.• Economic explanations – argue that certain kinds of economic

development foster democratic government.• Oil producing countries of Middle East; wealthy but not democratic – Why?• Curse of oil – authoritarian rules use oil revenues to pacify public

• Other scholars argue that economic development causes democratic stability, not democratization. More stable. Poor democracies more likely to collapse into authoritarianism.

• Hard to isolate single factor that answers the question.• Beyond domestic politics, we need to look to the international

environment as playing a role, too.• Diffusion effect – countries surrounded by democracies find it in their

interest to copy their neighbors.


Comparative Political Analysis: Does Diversity Undermine Democracy?Comparative Political Analysis: Does Diversity Undermine Democracy?

Problem• Is it true that diversity poses an obstacle

to democracy?• Authoritarian leaders often claim that if

they did not rule with an iron first over ethnically divided societies, they would collapse in civil conflict.

• Is this argument valid or does it simply provide an excuse for authoritarian leaders of diverse societies to deprive people of their rights?

Methods & Hypotheses• Fish and Brooks use Freedom House

rankings in order to scale countries from democratic to authoritarian (dependent variable).

• Independent variable: fractionalization/degree of diversity within each country.

• Controlled for other variables that are associated with democracy: economic development, British colonial heritage, (increase probability) predominance of Islam and oil production (decrease probability).


Comparative Political Analysis: Does Diversity Undermine Democracy?Comparative Political Analysis: Does Diversity Undermine Democracy?

Results

• Fish and Brooks found that contrary to prevailing wisdom, diversity of fractionalization did not hinder democracy.

• Holding constant other factors that might affect their results, they found that fractionalization or diversity had little impact on the prospects for democracy.

• Question: How is it possible for democracy to survive ethnic conflicts when it gives free rein to their expression? How can democracies contain centrifugal forces that threaten to tear them apart?


Presidential & Parliamentary Democracy

• The different models of democracy can be arrayed along a continuum of presidential and parliamentary forms, with all sorts of hybrids in between.• U.S. is an example of a presidential system. Here the

executive and legislative branches are separated from each other.• Sovereignty is shared between the legislature and the president,

creating checks and balances between them.

• Presidents are directly elected by the people.

• Presidents serve for fixed terms in office.

• Presidents do not owe their jobs to the legislature.



• In parliamentary democracies only the legislature is directly elected by the voters.• The government, which is composed of the prime minister

and his or her Cabinet, is an elected committee of the legislature. They are not separate branches, but are fused together, with the former empowering the latter.

• The leader of the government is the prime minister, who is indirectly elected by the legislature. The prime minister will govern so long as he or she maintains a majority of votes in the legislature. Removed when a majority of the legislature no longer supports them.

• Relationship between executive and legislature is different in a parliamentary system.



• Most new democracies created in the third wave chose to take a presidential, rather than a parliamentary form.

• Was this a right choice?• Presidential systems = gridlock when there is disagreement

between the two branches.• Also criticized for being unrepresentative • Election results are divisible while executive power is not.

• But they may offer more in terms of accountability.• Voters may also more easily target their vote in support of

or opposition to a particular chief executive.


Electoral Rules & Party Systems

Single member districts

• Only one legislator is elected from each district.

• U.S. example

• Losing candidate returns to prior line of work.

• No benefit for second place finishers. Only one winner.

• Only one legislator is elected from each district.

• U.S. example

• Losing candidate returns to prior line of work.

• No benefit for second place finishers. Only one winner.

Multi-member districts• Sweden: number of legislators

from each district depends upon the district size.

• Israel and Netherlands: entire country is one multi-member electoral district.

• Winner is selected from list of candidates that parties submit to voters to get seated. Runner –up wins, too, and so on down the line, depending on the number of seats accorded to the district.

• Sweden: number of legislators from each district depends upon the district size.

• Israel and Netherlands: entire country is one multi-member electoral district.

• Winner is selected from list of candidates that parties submit to voters to get seated. Runner –up wins, too, and so on down the line, depending on the number of seats accorded to the district.


Electoral Rules and Party Systems

• Electoral systems also differ in the way votes are allocated: translation from votes for candidates and parties to seats.• Plurality rules – U.K., U.S., and Canada• Majority rules - France – double-ballot

elections; presidential candidates must receive a majority of votes to prevail. • Run-off between top two vote getters.

• Proportional representation – (PR)• Once parties attain a certain threshold of

votes, they are awarded seats in the legislature based on the percentage of votes they receive.

Example of Proportional Representation:

Netherlands: ten parties competed in the 2006

parliamentary election.

Outcome:

Christian Democratic Appeal won 27 % of the vote and received 27% of the seats.

Labour won 21% of the vote and won 21% of seats.

All the way down to the smallest party, Reformed

Political Party, which received 1 % of the vote and

received 1% of the seats.



• Electoral rules matter greatly because how voters are counted matters as much as how many votes candidates receive.• 2000 U.S. presidential election

• Political actors started thinking strategically about electoral rules as more and more people were given the franchise, including working-class voters.

• Groups and parties wanted rules to work to their advantage.• Proportional representation works to the advantage of ethnic and regional

minorities.• Most powerful supporters of PR were elites because they were more afraid that

working-class mobilization would propel socialist parties to victory. Plurality and majority rules in single member districts could be dominated by larger numbers of the working classes.

• Elites believed that proportional representation would blunt the power of the socialist parties, requiring them to share power in order to govern.

• Electoral rules are not neutral; can give advantage to one party over another.• That is why parties sometimes try to change the rules, but electoral systems

rarely change.



• Electoral rules shape party systems (recurring patterns of party behavior resulting from political competition).• SMD with plurality rules create a bias towards two-party

systems.• Voters do not like to “waste” their vote.

• Countries with multi-member districts selected by proportional rules tend to have multi-party systems.• More accurately reflect diversity of opinion within the country.• But countries can become ungovernable with too much diversity of

opinion – no majority coalition.

• Impact on party discipline• Greater in PR systems; more party loyalty


Democracy, Authoritarianism, & Economic Development: Which is better?

Pro-Authoritarian• Authoritarian regimes can

better invest society’s limited resources where they will do the most good.

• No influence of low-yield projects for votes.

• Can ignore demands for money for short term versus long term.

• Create more consistent, stable, orderly environment for long-term economic growth.

• Authoritarian regimes can better invest society’s limited resources where they will do the most good.

• No influence of low-yield projects for votes.

• Can ignore demands for money for short term versus long term.

• Create more consistent, stable, orderly environment for long-term economic growth.

Pro-Democratic• Democracies enjoy the rule of

law that creates a predictable environment.

• Benefit more from debate, access to information, and more responsiveness.

• Openness and adaptability; can reverse policy mistakes more quickly.

• Give their citizens more freedom to be creative and innovative.

• Democracies enjoy the rule of law that creates a predictable environment.

• Benefit more from debate, access to information, and more responsiveness.

• Openness and adaptability; can reverse policy mistakes more quickly.

• Give their citizens more freedom to be creative and innovative.


Democracy, Authoritarianism, & Economic Development: Which is better?

• Supporters of democracy celebrate the prosperity of the West compared to the collapse of Communist one-party states.

• Supporters of authoritarianism can point to the superior growth of the People’s Republic of China compared to democratic India.

• So neither has a clear effect.• But democratic systems do have

two advantages: greater range of choices for women; better record of steady economic performance and avoiding calamitous outcomes.

The actual record for both democracies and dictatorships is MIXED.


Democracy, Authoritarianism, & the Good Society: How do they compare on capabilities?

Physical Well-being• When infant mortality rates are

compared across states ranked by their score on a democratic versus authoritarian scale, the results were inconclusive.

• They found that democracies tend to have the best average infant mortality rates (12.53 per 1,000 live births), while the most authoritarian states had the second best (27.57), with semi-authoritarian states having the worst (57.48), while semi-democracies came in third (45.52).

Informed-Decision Making

• A similar analysis was conducted using literacy rates and the same ranking.

• The authors found the same results: democracies ranked best (94.25), followed by authoritarian regimes (87.39), with semi-democracies coming in third (76.44), with semi-authoritarian regimes coming in last (66.68).


Democracy, Authoritarianism, & the Good Society: How do they compare on capabilities?

Safety• The most authoritarian states

had the best record when it came to safety as measured by average homicide rates (5.43 murders per 100k citizens).

• Democracies were close behind with an average of 5.91 homicides.

• Semi-democracies had 15.28 homicides per 100K citizens, while semi-authoritarian systems had 12.04.

Overall• Democratic states did better

overall, but semi-democratic states did not perform on average better than semi-authoritarian states.

• Democracy by itself does not appear to improve people’s life chances very much in terms of making them safer, healthier, or more literate.

• That says nothing as to whether democracy should be valued for other reasons.


Conclusion

• More people than ever live under democratic rules.• Rise of democracy attributed to domestic and external

forces.• Democratization has proceeded in waves over time.• It took two predominant forms: presidential and

parliamentary democracy.• But the impact on capabilities has been that only at the

highest levels does democracy actually improve the quality of people’s lives in terms of safety, subsistence, and literacy.


Critical Thinking Questions

• How would you define democracy? Should democracy be judged simply by process without regard to results?

• Why has democracy been so elusive for developing countries? Why have so many developing countries adopted authoritarian political systems?

• What social conditions are conducive to democracy?

• Did many new emerging democracies make the right choice in adopting presidential as opposed to parliamentary democratic forms?


Critical Thinking Questions

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of different electoral rules? Which set of electoral rules are most compatible with democracy?

• If democracy is so beneficial, why didn’t it appear to enhance people’s capabilities when the authors ran their tests? While the most democratic countries did perform better, more democracy did not correlate with higher capabilities outside a select group of countries.


chapter 7 cpo2002 lecture

Education