The Sources of Democratic Consolidation PDF Download

Author: Gerard Alexander
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501720481
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Why did precarious and collapsed democracies in Europe develop into highly stable democracies? Gerard Alexander offers a rational choice theory of democratic consolidation in a survey of the breakdowns of and transitions to democratic institutions. Through an analysis of developments in Spain, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, Alexander explores how key political sectors established the long-term commitment to democracy that distinguishes consolidated democracies. Alexander makes a highly accessible rationalist argument about the conditions under which such commitments emerge, arguing that powerful sectors abandon options for overthrowing democratic rules only when they predict low risks in democracy. The author's argument parallels established claims about the predictability essential to the development of modern capitalism. The Sources of Democratic Consolidation outlines Alexander's claim that a political precondition, rather than an economic or social precondition, exists for consolidated democracies. Drawing on interviews and archival research, the author links his argument to evidence from the five largest countries in Western Europe from the 1870s to the 1980s and also discusses the implications for the prospects for democratic consolidation in other regions. Political pacts, power-sharing, and institutional designs, he says, may help stabilize uncertain democracies, but they cannot create consolidation.

Author: Juan J. Linz
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801851582
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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5. Actors and contexts

Author: Samuel R. Greene
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Democratization
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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This dissertation contributes to scholarly understanding of the causes of democratic consolidation in new democracies in the developing world by testing the causal relationship between democratic elections and consolidation in the developing world. First, I show that despite numerous approaches to the study of consolidation, a requirement that a state to meet institutional standards to be considered consolidated is acceptable to the sub-field's diverse foundational literature. Respect for democratic institutions by all key actors and institutional credibility in performance of state functions are hallmarks of a secure democracy that faithfully represent the sub-field's foundations. I then use this formulation of institutional standards to examine key cases of consolidation in new democracies, using careful study of crucial cases to test competing theories of the causal role of elections in the consolidation of new democracies. Heterodox theories of consolidation have become increasingly influential in the study of democratization. Such theories content that a causal link exists between either a single founding election or a series of elections and a state's attainment of democratic consolidation. By contrast, formally mainstream theories argue that conditions such as economic development, social modernization, civil society, and past democratic experience serve as drivers of consolidation. My study of new democracies in Central America and Africa shows that key cases in both regions fail to behave as heterodox theories predict. Institutional flaws remain in place after both initial elections and a cycle of successful elections. Absent the conditions of economic development or auspicious social conditions, initial elections failed to produce significant movement toward consolidation, while a cycle of subsequent elections did not drive consolidation. My case studies thus support the more traditional understanding of consolidation as a lengthy process. In key examples of democratization in the developing world, elections did not serve as the causal driver of consolidation.

Author: Carsten Q. Schneider
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134033575
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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This innovative book seeks to explain what factors account for the consolidation of young democracies in over thirty countries in Latin America and Europe throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Author: Karen Dawisha
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521599382
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Edited by two of the world's leading analysts of post-communist politics, this book brings together distinguished specialists on the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. The authors analyse the patterns of post-communist democratization in these countries, paying particular attention to the process of party formation, electoral politics, the growth of civil society, and the impact of economic reform on the emergence of interest groups. Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott provide theoretical and comparative chapters on post-communist political development across the region. This book will provide students and scholars with detailed analysis by leading authorities, plus the latest research data on recent political and economic developments in each country.

Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521855266
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.

Author: Yun-han Chu
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231517831
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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East Asian democracies are in trouble, their legitimacy threatened by poor policy performance and undermined by nostalgia for the progrowth, soft-authoritarian regimes of the past. Yet citizens throughout the region value freedom, reject authoritarian alternatives, and believe in democracy. This book is the first to report the results of a large-scale survey-research project, the East Asian Barometer, in which eight research teams conducted national-sample surveys in five new democracies (Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Mongolia), one established democracy (Japan), and two nondemocracies (China and Hong Kong) in order to assess the prospects for democratic consolidation. The findings present a definitive account of the way in which East Asians understand their governments and their roles as citizens. Contributors use their expert local knowledge to analyze responses from a set of core questions, revealing both common patterns and national characteristics in citizens' views of democracy. They explore sources of divergence and convergence in attitudes within and across nations. The findings are sobering. Japanese citizens are disillusioned. The region's new democracies have yet to prove themselves, and citizens in authoritarian China assess their regime's democratic performance relatively favorably. The contributors to this volume contradict the claim that democratic governance is incompatible with East Asian cultures but counsel against complacency toward the fate of democracy in the region. While many forces affect democratic consolidation, popular attitudes are a crucial factor. This book shows how and why skepticism and frustration are the ruling sentiments among today's East Asians.

Author: Samuel P. Huntington
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806186046
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Between 1974 and 1990 more than thirty countries in southern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe shifted from authoritarian to democratic systems of government. This global democratic revolution is probably the most important political trend in the late twentieth century. In The Third Wave, Samuel P. Huntington analyzes the causes and nature of these democratic transitions, evaluates the prospects for stability of the new democracies, and explores the possibility of more countries becoming democratic. The recent transitions, he argues, are the third major wave of democratization in the modem world. Each of the two previous waves was followed by a reverse wave in which some countries shifted back to authoritarian government. Using concrete examples, empirical evidence, and insightful analysis, Huntington provides neither a theory nor a history of the third wave, but an explanation of why and how it occurred. Factors responsible for the democratic trend include the legitimacy dilemmas of authoritarian regimes; economic and social development; the changed role of the Catholic Church; the impact of the United States, the European Community, and the Soviet Union; and the "snowballing" phenomenon: change in one country stimulating change in others. Five key elite groups within and outside the nondemocratic regime played roles in shaping the various ways democratization occurred. Compromise was key to all democratizations, and elections and nonviolent tactics also were central. New democracies must deal with the "torturer problem" and the "praetorian problem" and attempt to develop democratic values and processes. Disillusionment with democracy, Huntington argues, is necessary to consolidating democracy. He concludes the book with an analysis of the political, economic, and cultural factors that will decide whether or not the third wave continues. Several "Guidelines for Democratizers" offer specific, practical suggestions for initiating and carrying out reform. Huntington's emphasis on practical application makes this book a valuable tool for anyone engaged in the democratization process. At this volatile time in history, Huntington's assessment of the processes of democratization is indispensable to understanding the future of democracy in the world.

Author: Sunhyuk Kim
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822972174
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
What role did civil society play in Korea's recent democratization? How does the Korean case compare with cases from other regions of the world? What is the current status of Korean democratic consolidation? What are the prospects for Korean democracy?In December 1997, for the first time in the history of South Korea (hereafter Korea), an opposition candidate was elected to the presidency. Korea became the first new democracy in Asia where a horizontal transfer of power occurred through the electoral process. Sunhyuk Kim's study of democratization in Korea argues that the momentum for political change in Korea has consistently emanated from oppositional civil society rather than from the state. He develops a civil society paradigm and utilizes Korea's three authoritarian breakdowns (only two of which resulted in democratic transitions) to illustrate the past and present influences of Korean civil society groups on authoritarian breakdowns, democratic transitions, and post-transition democratic consolidations. One of the first systematic attempts to apply a civil society framework to a democratizing country in East Asia, The Politics of Democratization in Korea will be of use to political scientists and advanced undergraduate and graduate students working in comparative politics, political theory, East Asian politics, and the politics of democratization.

Author:
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346930912
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Politics - History of Political Systems, grade: 1,3, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, course: Party Government in Europe, language: English, abstract: In this paper, the stability of party and government systems in the "new" member states of the European Union from Central and Eastern Europe is investigated, as well as the process of democratic consolidation in those countries. The research aim is to examine how significant the discrepancies between the established Western democracies and the postcommunist EU members still are, three decades now after the system transformations in the early 1990s. Besides the rather broad comparison between West and East, variances among the different postcommunist states and over time is examined. For this purpose, a literature review is made by summarizing and then comparing the findings of multiple authors, before an own evaluation of current data from the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) is made. In the end, the main conclusion of this paper is that there are similarities as well as differences between the "old" and the "new" EU member states thirty years after the collapse of communism. In terms of government stability and democratic consolidation, however, the considerable differences mainly do not exist on an interregional, but rather on an intraregional level, given the significant variance among the postcommunist states. Therefore, the results are not completely unambiguous, leading to the necessity of further research in this field.