Measuring Democratic Consolidation

66
Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2001
Measuring Democratic Consolidation*

Andreas Schedler
The concept of democratic consolidation has become a pivotal concept in comparative politics. In its most widespread acceptation, a consolidated democracy is one that is unlikely to break down. For all its apparent thinness and simplicity, this conceptualization poses considerable problems of operationalization and measurement. As the article argues, scholars have been relying on three basic strategies to assess the survival prospects of democratic regimes. They have been studying either behavioral, attitudinal, or structural foundations of democratic consolidation. This article briefly examines those approaches that rely on different kinds of empirical evidence as well as on different causal assumptions. On the basis of a quick revision of recent Latin American experiences, it concludes that in common judgments about democratic consolidation, behavioral evidence seems to trump both attitudinal and structural data.
ver the past decade, the concept of democratic consolidation has become one of the most frequently used concepts in comparative politics (Munck 2001). Observers have come to suspect, however, that much of its successful career was built upon the quicksand of semantic ambiguity. Originally, the idea of democratic consolidation was introduced as a thin concept to address the challenge of regime stabilization. It was thought to provide answers to the vital question: When are democracies reasonably secure from breakdown? Or in Giuseppe Di Palmas felicitous formulation, At what point can democrats relax? (1990: 141). Soon, however, the consolidation of democracy developed into an obese concept that came to cover the whole panoply of political problems third wave democracies have been confronting. The ensuing lack of clarity in the meaning of democratic consolidation has been a source of recurrent criticism.1 Yet the most devastating attacks have not aimed at problems of conceptualization, but rather at problems of operationalization. Most prominently, Guillermo ODonnell has harshly criticized students of democratization who tend to observe and measure degrees of regime consolidation in confusing and inconsistent ways, on the basis of
Andreas Schedler is professor of political science at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Mexico City. He also chairs the Research Committee on Concepts and Methods (C&M) of the International Political Science Association. His current research focuses on democratization and electoral governance in Mexico in comparative perspective. Studies in Comparative International Development, Spring 2001, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 6692.
Schedler
67
unwarranted generalizations, casually drawn and empirically untraceable measurement categories, and unreliable indicators of extreme ambiguity (ODonnell 1996a, 1996b). I have previously argued that the conceptual confusion that surrounds the term may be overcome. If we understand the empirical contexts scholars face as well as the normative goals they pursue, we understand what they are referring to if they talk of democratic consolidation. Thus, consolidating democracy may involve the positive tasks of deepening a fully liberal democracy or completing a semi-democracy. Or it may respond to the negative challenges of impeding the erosion of a liberal democracy or else, avoiding the breakdown of whatever minimal kind of democracy we have in place (see Schedler 1998a). However, once we resolve the question of how to define democratic consolidation, we run into the even more intricate problem of how to observe it. Predictive Inferences Unconcerned about other, competing meanings of democratic consolidation, the present article embraces the classical and most widespread definition that considers a democratic regime to be consolidated when it is likely to endure (ODonnell 1996a: 37), when we may expect it to last well into the future (Valenzuela 1992: 70). This thin conceptualization that equates consolidation of democracy with expectations of regime continuity takes three distinctive steps down the consolidological ladder of generality (see Figure 1). First, it is negative in the sense that its implicit normative goal is to avoid authoritarian regressions rather than to achieve superior levels of democracy. Second, it is forward-looking insofar as it does not refer to historical records of democratic stability, but rather to current expectations of future regime stability. Third, it adopts an external observer perspective that relies on expert judgments about the life expectancy of democratic regimes, rather than adopting an internal participant perspective that relies on the subjective expectations of political elites and citizens.2 For all its narrowness, even this classical conceptualization of democratic consolida tion poses considerable difficulties when it comes to operationalization. The basic problem resides in its reliance on expectations. Classical concept theory discusses the epistemological complexities that arise from concepts whose empirical referents are things out there in the objective world, such as chairs, tables, and trees. Democratic consolidation does not fit this scheme. The survival prospects of political regimes are not material objects sitting out there before or beyond mental and linguistic apprehension (Sartori 1984: 24). They do not represent empirical facts we can see and touch, here and now. Rather, they represent intersubjective judgments on future developments, which we form drawing on certain factual evidence, past as well as present. Regime consolidation, thus, is not a thing, but an argument, not an object, but an inference. Accordingly, establishing empirical degrees of democratic consolidation is not just a matter of observation, but of prospective reasoning. This complicates the traditional issue of observational validity, that is to say, of whether
68
Figure 1 Conceptions of Democratic Consolidation

Democratic Consolidation
Positive conceptions: completing and deepening democracy
Negative conceptions: avoiding breakdown and erosion
Backward-looking: past stability
Forward-looking: expected stability
Internal participant perspective
External observer perspective
our observations (qualitative or quantitative) provide us with the information about the world that is appropriate to our concepts (Collier and Adcock 1999: 1). It complicates the already complex choices we make in connecting ideas with facts (ibid.). Whenever we apply abstract categories to the so-called real world, we need two kinds of rules. We need rules of evidence, that tell us what and how to observe; and we need rules of descriptive inference, that tell us what objective facts tell us about the concept we are using. 3 Yet when trying to assess the survival prospects of democratic regimes, we need an additional set of rules. We need rules of predictive inference that tell us what present data tell us about the future. When linking the present with the future, we have to introduce causal assumptions. In the study of democratic consolidation, the task of operationalization is therefore intrinsically linked with issues of causal assessment. The two are strictly inseparable. Unless we are prepared to make mere black box predictions that simply project past trends into the future without specifying mechanisms of reproduction (Collier and Collier 1991: 2939), our prospective reasoning presupposes causal assumptions. Any judgment on democratic consolidation in a given country must thus rest on both factual evidence and causal arguments. In other words, if we want to measure democratic consolidation, we have to theorize about democratic stability. To illustrate the profound difference between descriptive and predictive inference, let us assume that we want to know whether a given regime is democratic or not. What do we need to do? We need (a) to define democracy, (b)
Schedler
69
operationalize our definition, and (c) go out and check the facts. Let us then assume that we want to know whether the democratic regimes we have identified are consolidated or not. Let us assume further that we define consolidation in the terms laid out earlier, as expected regime stability. How should we proceed then? It is not sufficient that we translate our definition into bits and pieces of observable evidence. Available facts do not speak by themselves. We may ascertain post-electoral disputes, economic recession, or the presence of guerrilla groups. But such factual data do not reveal by themselves to what extent they determine the future of democracy. If we want to assess their implications for democratic continuity in the short to medium run, we need a causal theory that explains how post-electoral disputes, economic recession, or the presence of guerrilla groups affect regime stability in the given context. The present article distinguishes three basic approaches that differ in the objects of observation as well as in the causal assumptions they rely upon to assess degrees of democratic consolidation. As it argues, some students of regime consolidation look at political actors behavior, others at their attitudes, and still others at their structural environment. While we may comprehend behavioral, attitudinal, and structural data as operational indicators that refer to different levels of measurement, they also represent different levels of causation (see Table 1). They form a chain of causation whose links are causally embedded: (a) behavior appears as a proximate cause of regime stability, (b) attitudes work as a prime mover of behavior, and (c) structural contexts represent a proximate source of both actors and attitudes. Put in simple graphical terms:
Structural contexts actors and attitudes behavior democratic stability
The first and most basic assumption in this hierarchy of causal relations is the premise that, in the last instance, it is political actors who sustain political institutions. We may regard this as the founding assumption of consolidation studies: Democracy is neither a divine gift nor a side effect of societal factors;
Table 1 Measuring Democratic Consolidation: Types of Evidence and Inference
Level of Measurement and Causation Behavioral foundations
Object of observation Observable behavior: factual and counter-factual. Participant perspectives: strategies, norms, and perceptions. Structural contexts: economic, social, and institutional.
Causal assumption Institutions depend on actors. Past behavior (under stress) is predictive of future behavior. Attitudes are predictive of behavior. Contexts (incentives and constraints) shape actors and attitudes.
Attitudinal foundations Structural foundations
70
it is the work of political actors. Even if not all scholars are equally interested in uncovering the microfoundations of democratic governance, most of them would agree that democracy comes to town, and settles down as the only game in town, only if (and as long as) actors decide to play by its basic rules. It is as simple as that: no democratic players, no democratic game. 4 Not all students of democratic consolidation focus on proximate behavioral causes and indicators, though. As the article will outline in the following sections, many scholars, instead of studying actors manifest behavior, explore their normative motives, their strategic calculations, and their cognitive expectations, as well as their socioeconomic and institutional environment, in order to predict the survival chances of a democratic regime. The Behavioral Foundations of Democratic Stability The usual way for a doctor to establish a patients physical condition is to look for signs of trouble, for symptoms that would indicate the presence either of some acute disease or of potential threats to the future health of the patient. Scholars who try to determine the life expectancy of new democracies often take a similar route. They search the surface of politics for signs of democratic illness. If they encounter visible threats to democratic life, they will refuse to extend certificates of consolidation. By contrast, if the democratic waters look calm and the skies clear, they will be confident to diagnose a high degree of regime consolidation. What constitutes visible symptoms of democratic trouble? What should democratic physicians look for? At a general level, the answer is straightforward: They should look for instances of antidemocratic behavior. If political actors engage in antidemocratic action, democracy is in trouble. By contrast, democracy appears to be safe if all relevant players conform to the basic rules of the democratic game. This soft rule of exclusion that equates democratic consolidation with the absence of antidemocratic behavior forms the core of what many authors have come to call behavioral consolidation (Diamond 1999: 6572; Linz and Stepan 1996: 56; Gunther et al. 1995: 7). Antidemocratic Behavior The search for symptoms carries strong intuitive appeal. But what does it imply in concrete operational terms? Despite the broad consensus that reigns in political science about the concept of liberal democracy, it is not entirely clear what exactly is implied by the demand that actors adhere to democratic rules of the game (Gunther et al. 1995: 7). What are the basic rules of democracy? And how can we detect instances of rule violation? What are, that is, unequivocal signs that actors have left the democratic consensus and stepped into the forbidden territory of antidemocratic behavior? I propose that a lean catalogue of actions that violate basic rules of the democratic game and thus, put the game as such into question, should include three basic (interrelated) categories. The use of violence. The core symptom of failed institutionalization, Elster et al. write, is violence (1998: 27, emphasis removed). Political competition within a liberal-democratic framework entails the unconditional renunciation
Schedler
71
of violence. Actors who pursue their political goals by force violate one of the most fundamental norms of democratic theory and practice. They play another game than their democratic counterparts, one that dangerously subverts the universal validity of democratic rules. The assassination of political competitors, attacks against the liberty, physical integrity, and property of political adversaries, the intimidation of voters and candidates, violent attempts to overthrow elected officials, ethnic and social cleansing, riots, and the expressive destruction of public propertyall these instances of politically motivated violence indicate that the democratic prohibition of force is far from consolidated among the political actors. The rejection of elections. In a representative democracy, to conform to the written (and unwritten) rules of the game (Diamond 1999: 65) centrally involves accepting the regimes core institution: free and fair competitive elections. If political parties (a) refuse to participate in democratic elections, (b) actively deny others the right to participate,5 (c) try to control electoral outcomes through fraud and intimidation, 6 or (d) do not accept the outcomes of democratic elections but rather mobilize extra-institutional protest, boycott elected assemblies, or take up the arms to overthrow elected authorities by force, then democracy has clearly not become the only game in town [where] no one can imagine acting outside the democratic institutions (Przeworski 1991: 26). In contemporary Latin America, the fraud syndrome of parties alleging electoral fraud whenever they lose, regardless of the real incidence of fraud, has not been entirely overcome.7 But, overall, political parties in the subcontinent display a remarkable degree of democratic maturity in accepting electoral results without resorting to extra-institutional protest. From the 81 protested elections Robert Pastor (1999) counted worldwide between late 1989 and early 1999, only four were held in Latin America and the Caribbean (in the Dominican Republic in 1990 and 1994, in Mexico in 1991, and in Nicaragua in 1996).8 Still, one may ask the inverse question, whether the mere fact of participating in elections renders overtly (or inwardly) antidemocratic forces democratic. Argentines Carapintadas, Pinochets unconditionals in Chile, and Venezuelas coup mongers do not turn into credible democrats only by playing the electoral game. As we have been seeing in Hugo Chavezs Venezuela, the threat of subverting democracy by democratic means is well and alive. The transgression of authority. It is commonplace to affirm that liberal democracy entails the rule of law, rather than the rule of men (or women, for that matter). Clearly, democratic officials must give up the habit of placing themselves above the law (Carothers 1998: 100). Unless they do, the regime they preside over may not qualify as democratic. Or if it does, it qualifies as an illiberal democracy (Zakaria 1997) at best, a plebiscitarian regime hostile to the liberal principle of limited power. But the way elected officials exercise their power is consequential not just for the quality of democracy.9 It also bears strong implications for the stability of democracy. As Larry Diamond states, for a democracy to be consolidated, political actors have to obey the laws, the constitution, and mutually accepted norms of political conduct (1999: 69).10 But which kinds of violations of the law are serious enough to alert us
72
that democracy might be in danger? Certainly, nearly any kind if we are dealing with repeated acts committed in broad daylight and immune to legal persecution. But democratic alarm bells go off when public officials start ignoring the legal boundaries of their office. When they start violating prevalent rules of rule making, rule enforcement, rule interpretation, or conflict settlement, democrats have to be on watch. Isolated transgressions may have little impact on democratic stability. But as violations of rules and meta-rules develop into a recurrent practice in salient cases, the prospects of democracy darken. For instance, heads of government who transgress the constitutional separation of powers by ignoring Congressional decisions or Supreme Court rulings raise intense suspicions about their democratic credentials. They are suspected of wishing to bring democracy down, and also of provoking conflicts that threaten to bring democracy down. Ironically, though, the criterion of executive arbitrariness and encroachment may lose its empirical relevance to the extent that presidents take Alberto Fujimoris route of striving to constitutionalize authoritarian rule by expanding their constitutional powers (rather than violating them), while at the same time surrounding themselves with pliable institutions (rather than antagonizing them). Causal Assessment The preceding catalogue of manifest violations of democratic norms represents a restrictive, minimal symptomatology of democratic threats. It only refers to behavior, without passing judgment either on democratic attitudes (that may be unknown) or on public declarations of democratic loyalty (that may be insincere). Also, it includes only disloyal actions and leaves out the gray area of semi-loyal behavior (see Linz 1978: 2738). Such a restrictive and programmatically positivistic definition of antidemocratic threats should provide relatively clear and universal criteria as to when symptom-oriented democrats may lean back and relax. However, it raises three methodological problems that complicate its application. Causal thresholds. All types of antidemocratic behavior pose the problem of defining thresholds. How much do we need of antidemocratic behavior to start worrying about democratic survival? Even acts of violence, as antidemocratic as they are in and by themselves, raise the question of how deeply they affect the stability of a given democratic regime. Some authors resolve this issue semantically. They demand respect of democratic norms only of politically significant actors whose strategic location turns their disloyal behavior into a serious challenge to the regime (Gunther et al. 1995: 78). Yet, even if one comes to conclude, for instance, that ETA terrorism in Spain does not pose any serious threats to democratic continuity, it would be difficult to argue that it is politically insignificant or irrelevant. It is their systemic context, not their intrinsic significance, that determines whether violent acts and violent actors threaten democratic governance. The epistemology of crises. Even if a democratic regime does not show any visible manifestations of antidemocratic behavior, we may still distrust the appearance of democratic normality. The absence of antidemocratic symptoms,
Schedler
73
we may suspect, might not be a sign of good health but only the side-product of a felicitous conjuncture. Good health, after all, is not just a matter of looking good under favorable conditions. It is also a matter of withstanding adverse conditions. We can apply a similar logic to the observation of democratic stability. If a regime has been surviving under favorable conditions, we might be cautious about calling it consolidated if we suspect it might fall apart at the slightest wind. Rather than trusting the apparent democratic normality under the radiant sun, we might want to know whether the regime is able to weather stormy crisis situations. While the logic of symptoms we sketched earlier wants a democracy to avoid menacing crises, this logic of testing demands to see how the regime performs under stress. Its idealized endpoint of democratic consolidation lies in a totally assured confidence in the ability [of the political regime] to withstand crises and shocks (Burnell and Calvert 1999: 19). The logic of testing assumes that democratic regimes confront two kinds of conditions or states of nature as game theorists would say: bad ones (crises) and good ones (normality). It further rests on an epistemological assumption about the accessibility of truth: normality may be deceptive, crises are revealing. Normal times, it suspects, may fail to show us how strongly democratic the democrats are and how strong the antidemocrats really are. In this perspective, crises may fulfill a vital epistemological or informational function. They may bring to light many things that in normal democratic times remain in the dark. Crises mobilize. They force actors to take sides, and to take risks in the defense of democracy. As they unfold, they may come to reveal actors sincere preferences, their true identities, as well as the actual relations of power between democrats and authoritarians. The well-known one-turnover test, as well as the more demanding twoturnover test of democratic consolidation, follow the same logic. They intend to measure the willingness of political actors to accept democracy not just as a route to power but as a system in which parties lose elections (Przeworski 1991: 10). Notoriously, the applicability of both rules of thumb is less than universal. Both tests are exceedingly specific and context-insensitive. Given that they may err on both sides, they provide neither necessary nor sufficient indicators for assessing the democratic commitment of political competitors. They misclassify dominant party systems, where alternation in power may not occur for decades, as well as presidential systems with non-reelection rules, where alternation in power may occur at each subsequent election (see Gunther et al. 1995: 12; Huntington 1991: 266). Still, both tests, even if not perfectly reliable, are entirely valid. The way political actors handle instances of alternation in government constitutes an excellent indicator of their democratic commitment. 11 Non-linear effects. Regime crises introduce dramatic moments of uncertainty into democratic life. Whenever a fledgling democracy plunges into a serious crisis, we may observe three possible outcomes: (a) democracy breaks down; (b) the democratic regime slips into a debilitating pattern of recurrent crises that create a situation of permanent fragility; or (c) democratic actors manage to weather the crisis successfully and establish a lasting precedent of democratic resilience. In other words, crises may be terminal, debilitating, or stabi-
74
lizing. The latter possibility, even if infrequent, should not be ruled out. Crises may be devastating. But they may also bear positive fruits. By definition, regime crises provoke sharp drops of confidence in the sustainability of democracy. But if democratic actors manage to get out of trouble as clear victors, they may be able to transform the antidemocratic threat into evidence of democratic strength. If they manage to defuse the crisis, they may set valuable precedents. By sending clear signals that antidemocratic action is both costly and condemned to failure they may give way to the generalized conviction that democracy is here to stay. Crises, thus, may have paradoxical or dialectical consequences. Both continual and occasional challenges may end up strengthening democracy, rather than subverting it. Failed coups may help to prevent future coup attempts. Threats of violence may reinforce norms of peaceful conflict resolution. The presence of disloyal actors may deepen the unity of the democratic coalition. The failed 1981 coup attempt in Spain represents the classic instance of a consolidating precedent setting conflict (Valenzuela 1992: 71) that opened up a brief parenthesis of dramatic uncertainty but in the end, as key actors (especially King Juan Carlos) aligned against the military uprising and put a swift end to it, effectively extinguished lingering fears about the future of Spanish democracy. In terms of the development of expectations, the symptomatic approach to consolidation works in a simple linear way. We project past experience into the future. In so far as all relevant actors have played by the democratic rules, we may expect they will continue doing so in the foreseeable future. In so far as they have refrained from toying with authoritarian games, we may conclude that democracy is here to stay as the only game in town. The absence of manifest threats creates latent feelings of security.12 The demand to test actors democratic commitment under adverse conditions follows the same linear logic. It only adds an important qualification: Dont trust your ship unless you have weathered a good storm. Yet, the dialectical unfolding of stabilizing crises rests on a different logic of causation: crises may breed stability. The paradox of crises indicates that antidemocratic behavior may, or may not have linear effects. The methodological problems of weighting causes, assessing causal relations under counterfactual conditions, and estimating non-linear interactive effects may lead observers to reach opposite conclusions from identical behavioral evidence. These problems actually explain the inconsistent treatment antidemocratic behavior and democratic crises have received in studies of democratic consolidation. Scholars make different predictive inferences from identical facts depending on where they set the thresholds of causal significance; whether they trust behavioral evidence of democratic normality even in the absence of crises; and to what extent they expect antidemocratic behavior to show counter-intentional consequences. Since scholars have not been clearly explicating their grounds for reaching causal inferences, they have sometimes ended up employing double standards in relatively arbitrary and confusing ways. For instance, as Guillermo ODonnell has rightly complained, parts of the literature suggest that surviving severe tests indicates substantial or sufficient consolidation in Southern Europe, but only unconsolidation in the rest of the world (1996b: 168).
Schedler
75
The Attitudinal Foundations of Democracy Like any other game, the democratic game requires actors to play by its rules. Actors who play authoritarian games may sustain the facade of a democratic regime. But they inevitably erode its foundations. To assess the survival chances of democratic regimes, observers may not want to content themselves with the simple absence of overt rule violations, nor wait for menacing crises to erupt in order to learn about a democracys capacity to cope with stress. Rather, they may wish to ground their predictions in another kind of datanot in actors overt behavior, but in their preferences and perceptions. Rather than screening the surface of democratic politics for the eruption of deviant behavior, they may wish to dive into the deep waters of political attitudes in order to find out whether actors normative, strategic, or cognitive rationality conform to the stability requirements of democratic governance. 13 Normative Foundations For many authors, democratic legitimacythe genuine, non-instrumental, intrinsic support for democracy by political elites as well as citizensconstitutes the most important, and even defining element of democratic consolidation (see, for example, Diamond 1999, and Linz and Stepan 1996). Indeed, considerable empirical evidence supports the idea that actors regime preferences matter for regime survival. At the higher end, the balance is unequivocal: No democracy embedded in a democratic consensus has ever broken down. At the lower end, things look somewhat more ambiguous: Democracies may survive despite low levels of popular support. Still, there is little doubt that high reserves of mass support provide a valuable cushion that help democracies to prevent the emergence of crises, as well as to overcome critical moments as they arise. 14 Anchoring the measurement of democratic consolidation in popular legitimacy may give way to considerable complexities. In a simple switch of perspective, any kind of causal variable may be turned into a dependent variable. Regime legitimacy, like all other structural variables, strongly invites us to pursue such a backward chain of causal reasoning. After all, if legitimacy represents the key to democratic consolidation (Merkel 1998: 59), its causes represent proximate conditions of democratic consolidation. But public attitudes toward democracy flow from many potential sources. As soon as one begins to ask about the origins of democratic legitimacy, one steps into a dizzyingly vast terrain of inquiry. Once converted into an intervening variable, democratic legitimacy acquires an expansionary logic that opens the door to a potentially boundless series of structural and institutional exigencies. Put simply: If we make the attainment of regime consolidation dependent on the attainment of regime legitimacy, we make it dependent on whatever citizens demand (or we think they demand) to confer legitimacy to the democratic regime. In the extreme, an emphasis on legitimation may come to imply that democracies will consolidate only to the extent that they overcome their socioeconomic constraints, their cultural handicaps, and their democratic deficits.
76
Luckily enough, empirically, neither history nor the economy fully determine popular commitment to democracy. Rather, citizens weigh independentlyand much more heavilythe political performance of the system, in particular, the degree to which it delivers on its promise of freedom and democracy (Diamond 1999: 192). In other words, the more democratic the regime, the more supportive its citizens. The apparent causal primacy of political factors (Diamond 1999: 193) puts an important empirical brake on the open search for sources of legitimacy (and thus, conditions of consolidation). It may imply that the poor and shallow democracies with adjectives (Collier and Levitsky 1997) that emerged in the third wave may be able to survive, but not to consolidate, unless they develop from mere electoral democracies into fully liberal democracies. Yet, it does not imply that these regimes must reach heaven on earth. As long as they get their political fundamentals right, citizens may come to tolerate a good deal of disappointing performance in other areas. Strategic Foundations In the typical actor-centered transition analysis, democratic transitions unfold as a four-player game between hardliners and reformers on the authoritarian side and moderates and radicals on the side of the opposition.15 Consolidation studies adopt a different analytical perspective. Some authors affirm that processes of transition and consolidation require asymmetric emphases on choice versus structure, privileging contingent explanations for regime transitions and structural explanations for regime consolidation (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 47, emphases removed). Yet studies of democratic consolidation usually do not bear out this structuralist expectation. Quite to the contrary, they are overwhelmingly actor-oriented. Still, the literature on democratic consolidation conceptualizes actors and patterns of interaction in a manner that contrasts markedly with the strategic analytical framework of transition studies. Analyses of regime consolidation tend to reduce the standard four-player setting of transitions to a simpler two-player format. Processes of consolidation are played out by democrats against antidemocrats (which implies deemphasizing the internal differences within the two antagonistic groups). As I have discussed elsewhere, in many political realms, students of politics tend to conceive the dynamics of institutional change as a two-player game, as the strategic interplay between conservatives and agents of change (Schedler 1999a). In the context of democratic consolidation, conservatives translates as democrats struggling to preserve the democratic status quo, while agents of change translates as antidemocrats striving to subvert democratic institutions. Yet, in analyses of democratic consolidation, more often than not, remarkably little is left over of the dynamics, the excitement, and the uncertainty of strategic interaction between the two antagonistic groups. In fact, one might claim that the main goal of democratic consolidation lies in the gradual transformation of the conflictual two-player game (where democrats fight antidemocrats) into a consensual one-player game (where only democrats are left over), which is, of course, no game at all. For democracy to be consolidated, many scholars demand a widespread democratic consensus
Schedler
77
to be established, in which all politically significant groups adhere to democratic rules of the game (Gunther et al. 1995: 7), no significant national, social, economic, political, or institutional actors spend significant resources attempting to achieve their objectives by creating a nondemocratic regime (Linz and Stepan 1996: 6), no significant collective actors challenge the legitimacy of democratic institutions (Diamond 1999: 67), and no one can imagine acting outside the democratic institutions (Przeworski 1991: 26). To be sure, not all authors call for a normative consensus. But even rational choice theorists argue that a self-enforcing equilibrium presupposes coinciding interests between the players. The game theoretic democratic equilibrium (like any other institutional equilibrium) is a state of converging interests. From this perspective, democracy can only survive when all major actors acquire a stake in its survival (Przeworski 1991). Converting democracys enemies into its stakeholders usually presupposes two things. On the one hand, actors outside the electoral arena (such as soldiers and entrepreneurs) need to receive institutional guarantees that safeguard their vital interests (such as military prerogatives and property rights). On the other hand, political parties outside the government must see realistic chances to accede to power through elections (or else, if they are permanent minorities, they must see their basic rights protected through veto powers and spheres of autonomy).16 Of course, the call for democratic convergence does make sense, be it on the basis of common norms or converging interests. Strategic interaction between opposing actors always involves some minimal degree of uncertainty,17 and regime consolidation, after all, is supposed to create confidence in the future of democracy by pushing the uncertainty over its continuance down to a minimum level. However, even if the consolidation of democracy as an end state may be conditional on the termination of strategic confrontations between the friends and foes of democracy, the path toward the uncontested reign of democrats, i.e., consolidation as a process, may well depend on the strategic interaction between democrats and antidemocrats. In an early contribution to the literature, Guillermo ODonnell laid out the contours of such a strategic perspective on democratic consolidation. The consolidation of democratic regimes, he argued, requires that strategically sophisticated prodemocratic actors succeed in strengthening their own camp while neutralizing their antidemocratic adversaries and integrating neutral groups (1992: 1824). In the same vein, Laurence Whitehead described the consolidation of democracy as a complex and non-linear interactive sequence of moves (1989: 79), while Samuel Valenzuela emphasized the critical importance of precedent-setting political confrontations (1992: 713). The subsequent literature, however, has largely neglected such a strategic perspective that views the process of democratic consolidation as an interactive game. 18 Cognitive Foundations The first questions a doctor asks when receiving a patient often concern his or her self-perceptions: How have you been? How do you feel? Where does it
78
hurt? Even if the physician claims to possess superior expert knowledge, the patients subjective self-knowledge is a good place to start the medical examination. Still, a doctor will tend to dismiss a patients own estimates of his or her life expectancy. By contrast, in the world of social institutions, we may concede a prominent place to actors subjective expectations. Cognitive variants of the new institutionalism in social science define institutions as interlocking and self-reinforcing patterns of expectations.19 Some conceptualizations of democratic consolidation adopt a similar perspective on democracy when they define democratic consolidation (or institutionalization) on the basis of actor perceptions. This is true, for instance, for Samuel Valenzuela, as he postulates that regime consolidation reaches closure...when major political actors as well as the public at large expect the democratic regime to last well into the foreseeable future (1992: 70). In addition to their intrinsic informational as well as political value, actor perceptions may also have a significant causal impact on regime consolidation. Social expectations often have a self-reinforcing dimension. 20 Put simply: it is reasonable to expect that democracy will last if all major actors expect it to last. The subjective logic of self-perception may therefore provide important data even for the external observer interested in establishing objective probabilities of regime survival. What do we know about actors perceptions of uncertainty in third wave democracies? Sad to say, not too much. Scholars usually reach their judgments on democratic consolidation from an external observer perspective without asking political actors for their assessment, from an internal participant perspective. 21 Most opinion polls include some questions on normative attitudes (regime legitimacy) but do not cover cognitive perceptions (expectations of continuity). In accordance with ingrained conventions of public opinion polling, they ask their respondents whether they like democracy or not; they do not ask them whether they believe democracy is here to stay or not. This is true, for instance, for the Latino Barometer data set initiated in 1995. Some periodic mass surveys, however, do ask direct questions on expectations of regime stability. For instance, the New Democracies Barometer, that provides annual data on political culture in post-communist Central-Eastern Europe since 1991, contains one question that addresses our concern. It asks respondents to estimate the probability that the national legislature will be suspended over the next few years (see Table 2).22 What do the data reported in Table 2 tell us? Even a cursory look at these figures reveals several interesting things. First, countries differ markedly in their average perceptions of democratic stability. By 1996, the general level of confidence in the future of democracy was high in the region. However, with only two-fifths of the population believing it to be unlikely that parliament might be suspended, Poland was a clear outlier, almost 50 percentage points below the most confident country, Romania. Second, it is not only the levels of confidence that vary between countries. The trajectories differ, too. Between 1991 and 1996, most countries experienced clear increases in their optimism about democracys future. But progress was not linear, it was discontinuous. It came about through marked jumps in determinate yearsin 1992 in Slovakia,
Schedler
79
Table 2 Percentage of Respondents Who Consider a Suspension of Parliament Unlikely, Central-Eastern Europe, 199196*
1991 1992 1993/94 1995 1996 **LEG 1995 78 74 67 65 88 66 81
Bulgaria Czech Republic Hungary Poland Romania Slovakia Slovenia
68.4 60.3 70.7 43.4 68.1 50.5 68.0
63.4 63.2 74.6 38.0 73.0 66.2 62.1
61.5 71.4 70.4 46.2 69.0 63.8 63.5
73.9 79.7 74.8 38.4 87.5 65.8 83.2
74.7 80.0 73.7 40.0 89.5 66.7 73.7
Sources: New Democracies Barometer, Paul Lazarsfeld Society, Vienna (data provided by Harald Waldrauch, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Vienna). Democratic legitimacy 1995: Diamond 1999, Table 5.1, 1767 (for Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovenia), and Plasser et al. 1997: Table 9, 123 (for all other countries). * Questionnaire item: Some people think this country would be better governed if parliament were suspended and we did not have lots of political parties. How likely do you think this is to happen (in this country) in the next few years? Response categories: Very likely, maybe, unlikely, definitely not. The table aggregates the last two categories. ** LEG 1995 = Democratic Legitimacy in 1995. Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland: Agree Democracy is always better than dictatorship. Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovenia: Disapprove If parliament was suspended and parties abolished.
in 1993/94 in the Czech Republic, and in 1995 in Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovenia. By contrast, Hungary displayed a stable pattern at a high level, while Poland experienced pronounced fluctuations at a relatively low level of confidence in the future of democracy. Third, the data indicate a close association with levels of legitimacy (reported in the last column of Table 2 for the year 1995). Yet, democratic confidence and democratic support do not match perfectly. In Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Hungary expectations of stability and democratic legitimacy diverge a few percentage points. Again, Poland appears as exceptional, with at least one-fourth of the citizenry expressing public support for democracy, at the same time that they express concerns about its viability. 23 Fourth, the polling data partially diverge from expert judgements on states of democratic consolidation. For instance, Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan found that by 1995 Romania was the farthest from a consolidated democracy of all the East-Central European countries they studied. At the same time, according to Table 2, Romanian citizens themselves were the most confident with respect to the survival chances of democracy in their country. All in all,
80
even a quick review of a few aggregate data confirms the idea that public perceptions of democratic consolidation follow their own logic whose comprehension will require much more research and reflection on the cognitive foundations of democratic institutions. The Structural Foundations of Democracy While curative medicine strives to make the most troublesome signs of illness disappear, preventive medicine wishes to bring the most critical pathogenic factors under control. As we know, many diseases do not present any visible symptoms until it is too late to do anything. Also, given the state of our knowledge about the sources of disease, it would be irresponsible to feign ignorance and wait for health crises to break out in order to reveal the physical condition of our patient. If we translate our medical metaphor into the language of regime consolidation, we come to expect a democratic regime to survive if it rests upon solid structural foundations (sources of health). Under the broad heading of structural approaches we may group those authors who emphasize socioeconomic factors as well as those who stress institutional factors. Both theoretical families do not look directly on democratic actors, behavior, or attitudes, but rather analyze the indirect societal and political conditions that encourage the emergence of democratic actors, behavior, and attitudes.24 Socioeconomic Foundations As is well-known, early post-World War II modernization theory put heavy emphasis on the socioeconomic bases of democracy. Today, after some decades of discredit, the theory has experienced a marked revival. Despite important qualifications, Seymour Martin Lipsets original probabilistic dictum still holds: The more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy (Lipset 1981: 31). For instance, Adam Przeworski and his collaborators state that the level of economic development has a very strong effect on the probability that democracy will survive (1996: 401). According to their calculations, poor democracies below an annual per-capita income of 1,000 USD are extremely fragile while rich democracies whose per-capita income exceeds 61,000 USD are impregnable and can be expected to live forever (1996: 41). In a similar estimation of numerical thresholds, Samuel Huntington establishes a coup-attempt ceiling, beyond which military coups are unlikely to happen, at a GNP of 3,000 USD per capita as well as a coupsuccess ceiling, beyond which military interventions are unlikely to succeed, at 1,000 USD per capita (1996: 7). To synthesize, the current discussion suggests that levels of economic development do translate into important constraints and opportunities for the consolidation of democracy. But they do not determinate the fate of political regimes. Outliers exist at low levels of economic development as well as at high levels of economic well-being.25 Along with levels and cycles of economic development, poverty and social inequality have been persistent concerns of students of democratic consolidation, especially in Latin America, the continent of inequality. Extreme eco-
Schedler
81
nomic destitution and inequality tend to subvert the minimal conditions to effectively exercise those equal rights that are constitutive to democratic citizenship (see Dahl 1989: 16375). In addition to their normative consequences, extreme social inequalities and poverty also tend to menace the very stability of a democratic regime. As [n]umerous analysts have argued...a concern for greater social and economic equality is absolutely necessary to enable formal democracy to become consolidated in any meaningful sense of the word (Nylen 2000: 127). In Latin America (as elsewhere), the relation between degrees of socioeconomic inequality and degrees of democratic consolidation has certainly not been linear. Still, the prevailing levels of socioeconomic disparity have indeed been posing a constant challenge to democratic institutions (Lamounier 1999: 172). Institutional Foundations The global revival of democracy has been a driving force in the revival of institutional analysis in contemporary political science. Studies of democratic consolidation have both contributed to and benefited from neo-institutional insights. The debate about the institutional foundations of sustainable democracy (Przeworski et al. 1995) has mainly revolved around the institutional design of forms of government and electoral systems.26 In general, the literature has conceived formal institutions primarily as incentive structures (that either encourage or discourage antidemocratic behavior), and only secondarily as structural constraints (that either allow or prohibit antidemocratic behavior). It has analyzed institutions as sets of rules that reward some kinds of actors and some types of conduct, while punishing others. Electoral systems, for example, differ widely in the incentives they set for the institutionalization of political parties, party-systemic fragmentation, and internal party discipline.27 By contrast, the debate has given much less attention to the possibility that institutions may not just create certain incentives for democracy-enhancing and democracy-subverting behavior. They may also erect effective constraints against certain kinds of antidemocratic behavior. The debate has not taken seriously the possibility that democrats may succeed in locking in their regime preferences, as much as some authoritarian elites succeeded in weaving institutional safeguards of their vital interests into transition pacts. In many transitional democracies, the key for institutionalizing competitive elections (zbudun 1987) lies in the field of electoral governancean institutional arena that political scientists have tended to neglect until recently (see Mozaffar and Schedler 2002). If democrats manage to put the central election management body beyond the reach of authoritarian manipulation, they have gone a good way towards institutionalizing democratic elections. Of course, governments with authoritarian proclivities may still try to subvert and control the electoral process by other means, such as the restriction of civil and political liberties. Yet, if election management bodies act as effective agencies of restraint (Collier 1999), antidemocratic actors at least lack the capacity to postpone or falsify elections even if they did want to subvert the electoral process (McFaul 1999: 10).
82
The Primacy of Proximity How do the three basic perspectives on democratic consolidation relate to each other? How do they perform if we apply them to concrete cases? In the introduction, we postulated that behavior, attitudes, and structure form a hierarchy of independent variables that determine the stability of political regimes. Now, when estimating the democratic survival chances, it would seem plausible to weight causes in accordance with their causal proximity to the dependent variable, democratic stability. It would seem plausible to translate the hierarchy of causal relations into a hierarchy of predictive inferences. Primary evidence for assessing degrees of democratic consolidation would thus derive from proximate causes. Evidence found at more distant levels of causation would either confirm or qualify conclusions based on more proximate causes. But it would not override them. In short, under the assumption that more proximate causes trump more remote causes, behavioral evidence defeats attitudinal evidence, while attitudinal evidence defeats structural evidence. A cursory look at recent Latin American experiences suggests that authors actually form their judgments on democratic consolidation in ways compatible with such a form of hierarchical reasoning. To what extent did South Americas democracies look consolidated by the late 1990s? Let us begin with the success stories. Today, few scholars would disagree with describing Uruguay as a consolidated and robust democracy (Cason 2000: 86). But also in neighboring Argentina, democratic politics has become normalized and routinized (Levitsky 2000: 57). The democratic regime appears to be consolidated support for existing institutions does not seem to be contingent anymore. Liberal democracy is now the only game in town (Waisman 1999: 122). Furthermore, it is hardly controversial that in contemporary Brazil the risks of a sudden overthrow of democracy seems [sic] very low (Power 2000: endnote 37). Arguably, in Chile, too, there is considerable room for optimism Chileans have set the foundations for a promising future as a democratic nation (Valenzuela 1999: 240). By the end of the 1990s, even Bolivia seemed to have reached the calm harbor of democratic consolidation. By contrast, it seems clear that contemporary Colombia remains far from consolidating a democratic political regime (Hartlyn and Dugas 1999: 249). A similar negative judgement applies to Ecuadors crisis-prone democracy (Biles 1998) as well as to Paraguays post-hegemonic regime that has run through a succession of profound political crises (Valenzuela 1997). In addition, during the 1990s, Venezuela, one of Latin Americas longstanding democracies, slipped into a perilous process of crisis and deconsolidation (McCoy 1999; Levine and Crisp 1999). What does available behavioral evidence tell us about the vicissitudes of democratic consolidation in the subcontinent? Over the past two decades, all of South Americas democracies (except Uruguay) have run through serious crises of some kindguerrilla violence, military unrest, riots, inter-branch conflict, or economic collapse. As a rule, those crises have been clearly debilitating, rather than consolidating. No Latin American democracy has run through a stabilizing crisis comparable to the failed 1981 military coup in Spain. The
Schedler
83
only possible exception is Guatemala, where the failure of president Jorge Serranos self-coup in May 1993 gave rise to rapid and significant progress toward the consolidation of democratic institutions (McCleary 1997: 136). Overall, crises have progressed in a linear rather than dialectical fashion. Rather than setting precedents of democratic vitality, they have provided evidence of democratic fragility. But crises have not worked out the same way everywhere. The overall balance of democratic crisis management is mixed. In Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil, democratic politicians were able to drag their countries out of vicious circles of hyperinflationary economic crisis and social unrest. In addition, Argentine president Carlos Menem was able to extinguish the flame of recurrent military insurrections the country experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s by establishing firm civilian supremacy over the armed forces. By contrast, other democracies have not been able to break the chains of democratic threats posed by organized political violence (in Colombia), military insubordination (in Paraguay), mass protest, interbranch conflicts, and military arbitrage (in Ecuador). In the extreme, in Peru and Venezuela, democratic actors were unable to prevent their country from slipping into some kind of plebiscitarian authoritarianism. Let us briefly turn to some attitudinal and structural evidence of democratic consolidation. Table 3 presents a thin indicator of the normative foundations of democracy: the distribution of popular preferences for democratic rule. In addition, it contains two conventional measures of democracys socioeconomic foundations: the Gross National Product per capita and the Gini Index. The data on democratic legitimacy, economic wealth, and social inequality cover all South American democracies (except Guyana, Suriname, and Peru) by the mid-1990s.28 The table dichotomizes them into those that bear positive consequences and those that carry negative implications for democratic consolidation, the latter being underlined. We set the following thresholds for stabilizing values that
Table 3 Indicators of Democratic Consolidation in South America, Mid-1990s
Arg Democratic legitimacy1 GNP per capita2 Gini Index3 71 8,570 .. Bol 64 950 42.0 Bra 50 4,720 60.1 Chi 54 5,020 56.5 Col 60 2,280 57.2 Ecu 52 1,590 46.6 Par 59 2,010 59.1 Uru 80 6,020 .. Ven 62 3,450 46.8
Note: Values classified as negative for democratic consolidation are underlined. 1. Percentage of respondents who agreed with the statement, Democracy is preferable to any other kind of government. Source: Latino Barometer 1996, cited in Lagos (1997: 133). 2. In U.S. Dollars, 1997. Source: World Bank (1998: Table 1, 190-1). 3. Survey years: Bolivia 1990, Brazil 1995, Chile 1994, Colombia 1995, Ecuador 1994, Paraguay 1995, Peru 1994, Venezuela 1995. Source: World Bank (1998: Table 5, 198-99).
84
are supposed to indicate reasonable degrees of democratic consolidation: for democratic legitimacy, at 66 percent or higher; for economic development, at a GNP of 3,000 USD per capita and higher; and for income distribution, at a Gini index of 50 or lower. 29 Overall, the picture that emerges from these figures is less than rosy. Colombia and Paraguay score negative in all three aspects, while Argentina and Uruguay display consistently positive values (although the table does not contain Gini data for either of the two). The remaining countries show mixed though largely negative values. How do common judgements on democratic consolidation relate to these thin fragments of behavioral, attitudinal, and structural evidence? Apparently, expert judgments show a close fit with behavioral evidence, while they relate more loosely to attitudinal and structural data. On the one hand, it appears that academic observers worry about the future of a democratic regime as soon as it experiences high levels of extrainstitutional conflict, while they start relaxing as soon as political actors settle their disputes within the given institutional framework. In fact, visible troubles tend to change perceptions in an almost instant fashion. For example, social unrest that shook Argentina in late 2000 renewed worries about democracy facing unpredictable risks (Tokatli n 2001: 4) in the case of continued economic and institutional failure. On the other hand, where countries display uniform attitudinal and structural patterns (as indicated in Table 3) those data seem to confirm common judgements on democratic consolidation. The consistently negative values of Colombia and Paraguay reinforce the widespread impression of democratic fragility, while the consistently positive values of Argentina and Uruguay lend additional credence to the widespread impression of democratic resilience. Among the mixed cases of Table 3, Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile fall into the category of presumptively consolidated democracies. The fact that they score badly in two of the three dimensions does not alter that basic judgment. But it does add a strong note of caution: Low legitimacy appears worrisome in all three countries, social inequality especially in Brazil and Chile, and poverty in Bolivia. Inversely, the fact that Ecuador s distribution of income does not look terribly bad from a Latin American perspective does not make its democracy look consolidated. The same applies to Venezuela in the late 1990s, before its conversion into some sort of illiberal democracy by Hugo Ch vez. The country was set on a path of institutional erosion despite its relative wealth and despite the fact that its level of social inequality is moderate by regional standards. In sum, our cursory glance at South America s democracies by the late 1990s seems to lend some tentative support to our hypothetical reasoning on the hierarchical logic of predictive inference. It seems to confirm the idea that students of democratic consolidation take their empirical clues primarily from behavioral, rather than attitudinal or structural, evidence. The latter mainly serves to qualify the former. If attitudinal and structural evidence coincide with behavioral data, judgments on regime consolidation based on behavioral evidence tend to be confident; if they diverge, they tend to be cautious.
Schedler
85
Conclusion Processes of democratic consolidation come to a close when democracy looks secure and democrats can relax. But when does democracy look secure? When can democrats relax? The present article, rather than directly responding to this question, took a step back and asked when academic observers think that democracy looks secure. When do scholars think that democrats can relax? How do they observe and measure the consolidation of democracy? From the outset, the article puts much emphasis on the distinctiveness of the observational task at hand. Observing democratic consolidation, it claims, is not just a matter of defining and operationalizing our object of study. To infer predictions of regime stability from given data we need to introduce causal hypotheses. Empirical assessments of democratic consolidation are dependent on theories of democratic stability. This article distinguishes three basic approaches to the measurement of democratic consolidation that differ in the empirical evidence they look at as well as in the causal relations they assume. As it argues, some scholars focus on the behavioral foundations of regime stability. They think that democrats cannot lean back and relax unless they have proven their capacity to roll back antidemocratic challenges, or else, unless no major political actors violate basic democratic rules anymore. Others privilege the attitudinal foundations of democratic governance. They take democracy to be under risk unless all major political players develop the normative motives, strategic rationality, and cognitive perceptions required to sustain a liberal-democratic regime. Still others draw our attention to the socioeconomic foundations of democracy. They recommend against lowering the guard unless the socioeconomic environment and the institutional setting look propitious for democratic continuity. As the article argues in its final section, it is plausible to assume that in scholarly assessments of democratic consolidation, more proximate causes of regime stability take precedence over more indirect causes. A quick glance at recent South American experiences seemed to support the intuition: The three modes of measurement and explanation are hierarchically ordered. Behavioral evidence overshadows both attitudinal and structural factors. It seems that, whether political observers hold a democratic regime to be sustainable or not, depends primarily on whether actors behave democratically or not. Counterevidence at either the attitudinal or structural level may qualify conclusions drawn from behavioral evidence. But it will rarely override them. Yet, in a concluding though somewhat self-subversive note, we may call attention to an ironic paradox of democratic consolidation. Democrats should be warned against the possibility that their temptation to relax may be selfdefeating. If they relax when democracy looks secure their relaxation may end up eroding democratic security. Perhaps, democrats can relax only if they are willing to not ever relax. As M.S. Gill, president of Indias federal election commission, wisely states, [a]n essential condition of making democracy secure is never to take it for granted (Gill 1998: 167).
86
Notes
I am indebted to the Austrian Academy of Sciences for supporting work on this article through the Austrian Program for Advanced Research and Technology (APART). Also, I am most grateful to Ruth Berins Collier, Peter Burnell, David Collier, Michael Coppedge, Larry Diamond, Graciela Ducatenzeiler, Francis Hagopian, Robert R. Kaufman, James Mahoney, Scott Mainwaring, Sebastin Mazzuca, Gerardo L. Munck, Martin Schrz, Richard Snyder, Kurt Weyland, and the anonymous reviewers of SCID for their valuable comments. Many thanks, too, to Harold Waldrauch for sharing the New Democracies Barometer data. Naturally, though, all responsibility is mine. 1. On the third wave of global democratization, see Huntington (1991). On thin and thick concepts, see Coppedge (1999). For an analytic reconstruction of the manifold meanings of democratic consolidation, depending on the empirical contexts and the normative goals of research, see Schedler (1998a). 2. For an extensive discussion of negative versus positive concepts of democratic consolidation, see Schedler (1998a). On backward-looking versus forward-looking perspectives on regime consolidation as well as on internal participant versus external observer perspectives, see Schedler (1998b). On ladders of generality, see Collier and Mahon (1993). 3. George Lakoff s prototypes or idealized cognitive models exemplify such rules of descriptive inference (see Lakoff 1984). 4. The causal presupposition of democracys actor-dependence goes hand in hand with an important qualification: Democratic structures depend on actorsbut only to a certain degree. They are independent of individual actors. The democratic game is relatively immune to subversive behavior by relatively weak and isolated actors; it does not break down unless a sufficient number of resourceful actors drop out of the democratic camp. The actors relative independence of institutions poses the controversial task of setting thresholds: How many intrinsically democratic citizens does democracy need? When do terrorist activities become a threat to a democratic regime? How much inequality can democracy endure? And so forth. 5. The reader might wish to qualify that statement in order to allow for the legitimate exclusion of antidemocratic actors. Of course, it is problematic to determine who qualifies as antidemocratic, as contending parties may set up a blatantly false depiction of democratically loyal opponents as disloyal (Diamond 1999: 67). The status of the Italian Communist Party until the late 1980s is illustrative of the controversies that may surround the democratic credentials of political actors. Nevertheless, postwar Austria and Germany, for example, have opted to bar advocates of nazi ideology from electoral competition by denying them the freedom of opinion as well as the right of association. 6. On the menu of electoral manipulation ruling parties have at their disposition, see Schedler (2002). 7. For example, on realities and discourses of electoral fraud in the Dominican Republic, see Hartlyn (1998: 24555). 8. On the basis of the regular section Election Watch in the Journal of Democracy, Pastor coded as protested or flawed elections those contested by losing parties either through legal petition, political protest, or boycott. 9. For a systematic development of the distinction between access to power and exercise of power, see Mazzuca (2000). On the concept of democratic quality, see Schedler (1996). 10. The demand to abide by mutually accepted norms seems to set an exceedingly high threshold. Yet, as the case of Chile in 1973 shows, it may not be a manifest violation of fundamental rules by anyone that sets the stage for democratic breakdown. Rather, it may be the iterative transgression of micro-rules by everyone (as well as an accompanying escalation of confrontational rhetoric) that erodes mutual trust between political actors. 11. Mainwaring et al. (2001: 37-65) discuss, with well-founded skepticism, a different problem: whether we should accept alternation in government as a defining criterion not of democratic consolidation but of democracy itself. 12. Note that an emphasis on the origins of expectations avoids the tautological reasoning that characterizes certain variants of consolidation studies: Actors play by democratic rules if actors play
Schedler
87
13.
14.
15. 16.
17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
by democratic rules. What we say here is that (scholars come to expect that) actors come to expect that others will play by democratic rules if they indeed do so in a consistent manner. Implicit in our triptych of attitudinal foundations is the idea that rationality is not a onedimensional concept and, in any case, not reducible to either instrumental or strategic rationality. On the multi-dimensional nature of rationality, see, for example Habermas (1981) and Boudon (1998). The ability of (some) democratic regimes to cope with low levels of legitimacy (at least for a while) seems to confirm Adam Przeworskis famous dictum about the secondary relevance of political legitimacy: What matters for the stability of any regime is not the legitimacy of this particular system of domination but the presence or absence of preferable alternatives (1986: 512). Still democratic and authoritarian regimes are certainly not symmetric in their dependency on popular support. Democracy imposes high constraints and high costs on repression while at the same time it opens up broad avenues for organizing dissent. For an extensive discussion of the theoretical literature as well as the available empirical evidence on legitimacy and democratic consolidation, see Diamond (1999: Chapter 5). For the classical statement of the 2-2-scheme, see ODonnell and Schmitter (1986: 1517 and 63). Of course, not all authoritarian regimes permit the emergence of the full set of players (see Geddes 1999; Snyder 1998). The reliance on self-interested strategic calculations opens the door to the possibility that a democratic regime may accommodate a substantial number of antidemocratic actors, both at mass and elite levels, and still appear as basically consolidated, that is, unlikely to break down. Antidemocratic actors may display less than an active personal interest in democratic governance. They may just realize that they do not have the power to make their authoritarian preferences prevail. Power stands at the very center of transition studies. The most prominent typologies of regime change respond to the simple question: Who controls? Everybody seems to agree that democratic transitions are power games. As students of political democratization move into the analysis of consolidation, however, they tend to leave behind the key variable of political science, power, in favor of an almost exclusive emphasis on preferences. Political actors may decide to play by the democratic rules not because they like them but because they know they are unable to change them. In Russia, for example, the new balance of power that emerged by the mid-1990s among political actors (most of whom do not exhibit unambiguous democratic credentials) appears to have fostered mutual agreement on a peaceful and democratic process for resolving conflicts. No actor or group of actors in Russia today believes that it can take power by nondemocratic means (McFaul 1999: 10). In other words, the democratic equilibrium may be a (dynamic) equilibrium of power, not of values nor of interests. While the latter is a question of preferences, the former is a question of available choices. Rational choice theory, though, tends to downplay the indeterminacy of political conflict through its deterministic assumption that payoffs dictate outcomesunder the crucial condition that one and only one equilibrium solution is available. One notable exception is Wendy Hunter (1997). She reconstructs the gradual erosion of military prerogatives in democratic Brazil as the cumulative result of an iterated confrontation between democratic politicians and military actors. For a discussion of the paradigmatic shift from normative to cognitive perspectives that characterizes sociological neo-institutionalism, see DiMaggio and Powell (1991). On self-fulfilling (as well as otherwise consequential) expectations, see Schelling (1978: 115 8). For a more extensive treatment of the methodological complexities of internal perspectives on democratic consolidation, see Schedler (1998b: 1014). The item also asks respondents to assess the probability that the country will stop having lots of political parties. The ambiguity of this additional dimension somewhat confounds the meaning of the question. I say at least one fourth because the data are not, of course, individual data. It is therefore hypothetically possible (even if not quite plausible) that nearly all of the democratic respondents expect democracy to break down, while most non-democratic respondents think that the regime is here to stay. In this case, both democrats and antidemocrats would appear as overwhelmingly pessimistic.
88
cracy is preferable to ited in Lagos (1997:
1995, Ecuador 1994, (1998: Table 5, 198
24. As Ruth Berins Collier (1999:12) observed with respect to the democratization literature of the 1960s and 1970s, in both historical sociological and economic accounts of democratization an agential argument was often at least implicit. Those theories hypothesized that democracy would emerge as certain pro-democratic social groups would emerge in the course of economic modernization. Of course, one cannot go seamlessly from structure to agency without a careful analysis of actual actors, preferences, and strategies. Past as well as contemporary structural theories of democratization thus face the challenge of closing the explanatory gap between generic structures and generic outcomes by laying open their microfoundations. 25. For a balanced review of the literature until the early 1990s, see Diamond (1992). More recently, Scott Mainwaring reviewed the impact of economic development on democratic rule in Latin America, from 1940 to 1997. He finds that the relationship between income category and democracy is far from linear (29) and democracy can endure under adverse economic and social conditions if the main actors are committed to democratic rules of the game (2000: 60). The surprising resilience of Latin American democracies since 1978 leads him to stress the importance of combining structural and actor-oriented approaches (ibid.: 60). 26. For the debate on systems of government, see, for example, Linz and Valenzuela (1994) and Mainwaring and Shugart (1997). For the debate on electoral rules, see, for example, Diamond (1999: 99111) and Taagepera (1998). 27. For instance, on the debilitating consequences of Brazils electoral rules, see Mainwaring (1999: 24362) and Power (2000: 2530). 28. At that time, only Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and Uruguay were classified as free countries by the Freedom House Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (Karatnycky et al. 1996). All others fell into the category of partly free countries, with Paraguay (7), Colombia (8), and Peru (9) showing the worst combined ratings of political rights and civil liberties. We excluded Peru from the table since after Alberto Fujimoris self-coup in 1992, it has arguably remained in the category of an authoritarian rather than semi-democratic regime (see, for example, McClintock 1999). 29. Of course, drawing neat distinctions between stabilizing and destabilizing values is a somewhat artificial enterprise. Still, the implications of different cut-off points are quite transparent. The more stringent the criteria we define for regime consolidation, the lesser number of democracies will fulfill them. For instance, Larry Diamond convincingly argues that both logic and empirical evidence suggest that two-thirds is a minimum threshold (Diamond 1999: 68) of required popular support. Lowering the threshold to 60 percent would permit including Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela in the basket of regimes that dispose of a sufficient degree of legitimacy. Similarly, if we chose Samuel Huntingtons coup-success ceiling of 1,000 USD per capita, rather than his coup-attempt ceiling of 3,000 USD per capita (1996: 7), all South American democracies except Bolivia would appear to rest on solid economic foundations. By contrast, Gini indices show a certain bipolar distribution and are therefore less sensitive to alternative definitions of thresholds. They are either substantially lower or substantially higher than our cut-off point of 50. Still, when compared to advanced democracies our threshold might seem exceedingly tolerant of income inequality. It is noteworthy, however, that Costa Rica, the regions long-standing democratic model in terms of democratic quality and socioeconomic equity, does not fare much better. In 1995, it had a Gini index of 47 (World Bank 1998: Table 5, 198).
References
Biles, Robert E. 1998. Democracy for the Few: Ecuadors Crisis-Prone Democracy. Pp. 22042 in Assessing Democracy in Latin America, ed. Philip Kelly. Colorado: Westview. Boudon, Raymond. 1998. Social Mechanisms Without Black Boxes. Pp. 172203 in Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory, eds. Peter Hedstrm and Richard Swedberg. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bratton, Michael and Nicolas van de Walle. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Burnell, Peter and Peter Calvert. 1999. The Resilience of Democracy: An Introduction. Democratization 6,1 (Spring): 132.
Schedler
89
Carothers, Thomas. 1998. The Rule of Law Revival. Foreign Affairs 77, 2 (MarchApril): 95 106. Cason, Jeffrey. 2000. Electoral Reform and Stability in Uruguay. Journal of Democracy 11, 2 (April): 8598. Collier, David and Robert Adcock. Nailing Down Issues of Validity. Paper prepared for presentation at the conference Regimes and Political Change in Latin America. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 67 August 1999. Collier, David and Steven Levitsky. 1997. Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research. World Politics 49 (April): 43051. Collier, David and James E. Mahon. 1993. Conceptual Stretching Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Research. American Political Science Review 87, 4 (December): 84555. Collier, Paul. 1999. Learning from Failure: The International Financial Institutions as Agencies of Restraint in Africa. Pp. 31330 in The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies, eds. Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond, and Marc F. Plattner. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Collier, Ruth Berins. 1999. Democratic Transition. Berkeley: University of California, unpublished manuscript. Collier, Ruth Berins and David Collier. 1991. Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Coppedge, Michael. 1999. How the Large N Could Complement the Small in Democratization Research. Paper prepared for presentation at the conference Regimes and Political Change in Latin America. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 67 August 1999. Dahl, Robert A. 1989. Democracy and its Critics. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Diamond, Larry. 1992. Economic Development and Democracy Reconsidered. Pp. 93139 in Reexamining Democracy: Essays in Honor of Seymour Martin Lipset, eds. Gary Marks and Larry Diamond. Newbury Park: Sage. _____________. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. DiMaggio, Paul J. and Walter W. Powell. 1991. Introduction. Pp. 138 in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, eds. Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Di Palma, Guiseppe. 1990. To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Elster, Jon, Claus Offe, and Ulrich K. Preuss, with Frank Boenker, Ulrike Goetting, and Friedbert W. Rueb. 1998. Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Geddes, Barbara. 1999. What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty Years? Annual Review of Political Science 2: 11544. Gill, M.S. 1998. India: Running the Worlds Biggest Elections. Journal of Democracy 9, 1 (January): 1648. Gunther, Richard, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, and Hans-Jrgen Puhle. 1995. Introduction. Pp. 132 in The Politics of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective, eds. Richard Gunther, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, and Hans-Jrgen Puhle. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Habermas, Jrgen. 1981. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hartlyn, Jonathan. 1998. The Struggle for Democratic Politics in the Dominican Republic. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press. Hartlyn, Jonathan and John Dugas. 1999. Colombia: The Politics of Violence and Democratic Transformation. Pp. 249307 in Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, eds. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2nd edition. Hunter, Wendy. 1997. Eroding Military Influence in Brazil: Politicians Against Soldiers. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press. Huntington, Samuel P. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press.
90
_____________. 1996. Democracy for the Long Haul. Journal of Democracy 7, 2 (April): 313. Karatnycky, Adrian, ed. 1996. Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties 19951996. New York: Freedom House. Lagos, Marta. 1997. Latin Americas Smiling Mask. Journal of Democracy 8, 3 (July): 12538. Lakoff, George. 1984. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Lamounier, Bolvar. 1999. Brazil: Inequality against Democracy. Pp. 13189 in Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, eds. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2nd edition. Levine, Daniel H. and Brian F. Crisp. 1999. Venezuela: The Character, Crisis, and Possible Future of Democracy. Pp. 367428 in Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, eds. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2nd edition. Levitsky, Steven. 2000. The Normalization of Argentine Politics. Journal of Democracy 11, 2 (April): 5669. Linz, Juan J. 1978. The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Presss. Linz, Juan J. and Alfred Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Linz, Juan J. and Arturo Valenzuela, eds. 1994. The Failure of Presidential Democracy. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1981. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1st edition 1959. Mainwaring, Scott. 1999. Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil. Stanford: Stanford University Press. _____________. 2000. Democratic Survivability in Latin America. Pp. 1168 in Democracy and its Limits: Lessons from Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, eds. Howard Handelman and Mark A. Tessler. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Mainwaring, Scott, Daniel Brinks, and Anbal Prez-Lin. 2000. Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America, 19451999. Studies in Comparative International Development 36, 1 (Spring): 37-65. Mainwaring, Scott and Matthew Soberg Shugart, eds. 1997. Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mazzuca, Sebastin. 2000. Acceso al poder versus ejercicio del poder: Democracia y patrimonialismo en Amrica Latina. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Working Paper 245. McCleary, Rachel M. 1997. Guatemalas Postwar Prospects. Journal of Democracy 8, 2 (April): 12943. McClintock, Cynthia. 1999. Es autoritario el gobierno de Fujimori? Pp. 6595 in El juego poltico: Fujimori, la oposicin y las reglas, ed. Fernando Tuesta Soldevilla. Lima: Friedrich Ebert Foundation. McCoy, Jennifer L. 1999. Chvez and the End of Partyarchy in Venezuela. Journal of Democracy 10, 3 (July): 6477. McFaul, Michael. 1999. The Perils of a Protracted Transition. Journal of Democracy 10, 2 (April): 418. Merkel, Wolfgang. 1998. The Consolidation of Post-Autocratic Democracies: A Multi-level Model. Democratization 5, 3 (Autumn): 3367. Munck, Gerardo L. 2001. Democratic Consolidation. Forthcoming in Encyclopedia of Democratic Thought, eds. Paul Barry Clarke and Joe Foweraker. London: Routledge. Nylen, William R. 2000. The Making of a Loyal Opposition: The Workers Party (PT) and the Consolidation of Democracy in Brazil. Pp. 12643 in Democratic Brazil: Actors, Institutions, and Processes, eds. Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ODonnell, Guillermo. 1992. Transitions, Continuities, and Paradoxes. Pp. 1756 in Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective, eds. Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo ODonnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Schedler
91
_____________. 1996a. Illusions about Consolidation. Journal of Democracy 7, 2 (April): 34 51. _____________. 1996b. Illusions and Conceptual Flaws. Journal of Democracy 7, 4 (October): 1608. ODonnell, Guillermo and Philippe C. Schmitter. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. zbudun, Ergun. 1987. Institutionalizing Competitive Elections in Developing Countries. Pp. 393422 in Competitive Elections in Developing Countries, eds Myron Weiner and Ergun zbudun. Durham: Duke University Press. Pastor, Robert A. 1999. The Role of Electoral Administration in Democratic Transitions: Implications for Policy and Research. Democratization 6, 4 (Winter): 127. Plasser, Fritz, Peter A. Ulram, and Harald Waldrauch. 1997. Politischer Kulturwandel in OstMitteleuropa. Opladen: Leske + Budrich. Power, Timothy J. 2000. Political Institutions in Democratic Brazil: Politics as a Permanent Constitutional Convention. Pp. 1735 in Democratic Brazil: Actors, Institutions, and Processes, eds. Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Przeworski, Adam. 1986. Some Problems in the Study of Transitions to Democracy. Pp. 4763 in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives, eds. Guillermo ODonnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. _____________. 1991. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Przeworski, Adam et al. 1995. Sustainable Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Przeworski, Adam, Michael E. Alvarez, Jos Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. 1996. What Makes Democracy Endure? Journal of Democracy 7, 1 (January): 3955. Sartori, Giovanni. 1984. Guidelines for Concept Analysis. Pp. 1585 in Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis, ed. Giovanni Sartori. Beverly Hills: Sage. Schedler, Andreas. 1996. Dimensionen der Demokratiequalitt. Pp. 165180 in Die Qualitt der sterreichischen Demokratie: Versuche einer Annherung, eds. David F. J. Campbell et al. Vienna: Manz. _____________. 1998a. What Is Democratic Consolidation? Journal of Democracy 9/2 (April): 91107. _____________. 1998b. How Should We Study Democratic Consolidation? Democratization 5, 4 (Winter): 119. _____________. 1999a. Restraining the State: Conflicts and Agents of Accountability. Pp. 333 350 in The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies, eds. Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond, and Marc F. Plattner. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. _____________. 1999b. Civil Society and Political Elections: A Culture of Distrust? The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 565 (September): 12641. _____________. 2002. The Nested Game of Democratization by Elections. International Political Science Review 23, 1 (January). Schedler, Andreas and Shaheen Mozaffar. 2002. Introduction: The Comparative Study of Electoral Governance. International Political Science Review 23, 1 (January). Schelling, Thomas C. 1978. Thermostats, Lemons, and Other Families of Models. Pp. 81133 in Micromotives and Macrobehavior. New York and London: W.W. Norton. Snyder, Richard. 1998. Paths out of Sultanistic Regimes: Combining Structural and Voluntarist Perspectives. Pp. 4981 in Sultanistic Regimes, eds. H.E. Chehabi and Juan L. Linz. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Taagepera, Rein. 1998. How Electoral Systems Matter for Democratization. Democratization 5, 3 (Autumn): 6892. Tokatlin, Juan Gabriel. 2001. Argentina, el blindaje y despus El Pas (10 January): 4. Valenzuela, Arturo. 1997. Paraguay: The Coup that Didnt Happen. Journal of Democracy 8, 1 (January): 4355.
92
_____________. 1999. Chile: Origins and Consolidation of a Latin American Democracy. Pp. 19147 in Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, eds. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2nd edition. Valenzuela, J. Samuel. 1992. Democratic Consolidation in Post-Transitional Settings: Notion, Process, and Facilitating Conditions. Pp. 57104 in Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective, eds. Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo ODonnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Waisman, Carlos H. 1999. Argentina: Capitalism and Democracy. Pp. 71129 in Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, eds. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2nd edition. Whitehead, Laurence. 1989. The Consolidation of Fragile Democracies: A Discussion with Illustrations. Pp. 7695 in Democracy in the Americas: Stopping the Pendulum, ed. Robert A. Pastor. New York and London: Holmes and Meier. World Bank. 1998. World Development Report 198899: Knowledge for Development. Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Zakaria, Fareed. 1997. The Rise of Illiberal Democracy. Foreign Affairs 76, 6 (NovemberDecember): 2243.

Measuring Democratic Consolidation

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Measuring Democratic Consolidation

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

66

Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2001