polsic

POLSCI 202

UMASS Boston

Prof. Shuai Jin

Regime Change

Regime Change: Shift from one regime type to another

· Democratization

· Regime becoming more democratic

· Democratic transition: transitions from authoritarianism to a basic minimum democratic threshold

· Democratic consolidation: Process by which a new democratic order becomes institutionalized and therefore more likely to endure. Democracy becomes ‘the only game in town’

· Democratic breakdown

· Waves of regime change (Table 5.1)

Causes of Democratization (overview)

· Structural factors:

· Domestic

· Culture, identity, religion

· Economic conditions

· Military

· International:

· U.S. foreign policy

· Soviet foreign policy

· Changes in the Catholic Church

· The European Union

· Globalization

· Short-term catalysts:

· Economic crisis such as inflation, unemployment

· War

· Change in leadership

· Political reforms initiated by authoritarian leaders

· Process of transition

· Bottom-up transition

· Top-down transition

· Foreign imposition

Culture and Democracy

Two views of culture:

Primordialism

· Primordialism treats culture as something that is objective and inherited; something that has been fixed since “primordial” times; innate and unchanging.

· According to this view, culture exists prior to, and remains largely unchanged by political interactions.

· Primordialist arguments imply that democracy is not for everyone.

Constructivism

· Constructivism treats culture as something that is constructed or invented rather than inherited.

· A democratic culture is required for democracy. However, cultures are malleable and are not given once and for all.

· Cultures can change in response to social, economic, and political factors.

· Cultures are not impenetrable barriers to democratization.

· The speed with which cultures can change vary from culture to culture. In this sense, it’s still easier for some cultures to adopt democracy than others.

What is it about culture that matters for democracy?

What components of culture that really matters for democracy?

A Civic Culture: Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture, 1965

· The part of culture that matters for democracy (political culture): how individuals think and feel about the political system and its various parts, and about the role of the self in the system.

· Three types of political culture:

· Parochial—suitable for traditional system of African tribes.

· Subject—suitable for centralized authoritarian systems.

· Participant—suitable for democracy.

· Only “participant” or “civic” culture is compatible with democracy.

A Civic Culture: How to study a country’s political culture?

· Almond and Verba believed that we can study culture by conducting public opinion surveys.

· They studied the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Mexico.

· They found that the United States and United Kingdom were the most stable democracies and had political cultures that most closely resembled the civic culture.

A Civic Culture

What are the three elements of a civic culture that make it compatible with democracy?

· Civic engagement: citizens actively participate in public affairs.

· Political equality: citizens value equal rights and obligations, do not tolerate giving some people political rights which excluding others.

· Solidarity: citizens generally trust and respect one another, and are willing to lend a helping hand, even when they might disagree on matters of public policies. They tolerate divergent views because they trust that even their opponents have the best interests of the community in mind.

A Civic Culture: Measuring civic culture among citizens

Putnam (1993): social capita–collective value of social networks and shared norms that promote reciprocity, trust, and social cooperation

· A “good” culture encouraged working for the common good; in a “bad” culture, reciprocity is limited to one’s family and people only care about self-interest.

· Measure: density of a society’s network of societal groups and associations

· Voluntary associations cultivate the civic culture.

A Civic Culture in terms of values

Inglehart and Welzel (2005)

Measuring culture according to two major dimensions:

· Traditional values v.s. secular-rational values: the importance of religion, traditional family roles, and deference to authority.

· Survival values v.s. self-expression values: the importance of physical and economic security v.s. the importance of self-expression and personal autonomy on issues such as gender, racial and sexual equality, environmental protection (post-materialist concerns).

Secular-rational and self-expression values are the core components of a civic culture.

Problems of the cultural research

Problems with the survey method

Hard to use surveys to study the emergence of democracy because surveys would need to be conducted in dictatorships.

Even if surveys were allowed in dictatorships, would the respondents reveal their true preferences?

Individuals in different countries often understand the “same” question in vastly different ways (terms such as democracy, good government)

Direction of causality:

Culture affects Democracy or

Democracy affects Culture

Economic Conditions

Rich countries are likely to be democracies.

Poor countries are likely to be autocracies.

There are exceptions to the general pattern: India, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia

· What explains the positive association between the level of economic development and democracy?

· What explains the exceptions?

The Modernization Theory

· Lipset (1959): the social requisites of democracy

· Economic development will cause a political transformation from dictatorship to democracy.

· Economic development leads to Social changes then to Political changes

· “As (countries) develop, social structure becomes complex, labor processes begin to require active cooperation of employees, and new groups emerge and organize. As a result, the system can no longer be effectively run by command: the society is too complex, technological change endows the direct producers with some autonomy and private information, civil society emerges, and dictatorial forms of control lose their effectiveness. Various groups, whether the bourgeoisie, workers, or just the amorphous “civil society,” rise against the dictatorial regime, and it falls.” (Przeworski and Limongi, 1997)

Two ways economic development leads to political change:

· The rise of new social classes: the new middle class including entrepreneurs, working class.

· Cultural changes: economic development encourages citizens’ values to be more supportive of democracy and less supportive of non-democracy.

Challenges to Modernization Theory

· Exceptions: Poor democracies & wealthy non-democracies

· Countries adopted democracy despite weak or nonexistent middle class.

· Wealthy monarchies in the Middle East

· The direction of causality problem

The existence of wealthy non-democracies

The role of oil:

· Oil-rich governments use low-tax rates and patronage to purchase political support and relieve pressures for democracy

· Oil generates revenues enabling governments to repress oppositions and increase internal security

· Growth based on the export of oil fails to bring about the social and cultural changes that tend to promote democratization.

· Resource curse: countries depending on one single valuable commodity are

· Less likely to be democratic

· More likely to suffer from civil wars

The Survival Theory

Przeworski and his coauthors

· “Dictatorship are equally likely to die and democracies to emerge at any level of development. They may die for so many different reasons that development plays no privileged role.”

· “The more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances it will sustain democracy.”

· “History gradually accumulates wealthy democracies, since every time a dictatorship happens to die in an affluent country, democracy is there to stay.”

Why democracies are more likely to survive in rich countries?

· Choice between democracy and dictatorship can be thought of as a choice between (a) a system in which you are guaranteed a minimal standard of consumption (democracy) and (b) a system in which you win or lose everything (dictatorship).

· When you are rich, getting a bigger share of the pie affects your welfare only a little. In contrast, losing everything would be disastrous.

External structural factors:

· U.S. foreign policy

· Soviet foreign policy

· Changes in the Catholic Church

· The European Union

· Globalization

· Neighborhood effect (peer pressure): countries in the same region tend to follow their neighbors in terms of adopting a regime type.

· Global effect (global norm): the overall level of democracy in the world affects the pressure of democratization in particular countries.

Short-term catalysts

· Economic crisis such as inflation, unemployment, corruption

· Military conflicts

· Political crisis: change in leadership, division among ruling elites, popular protest

· Political compromise made by authoritarian leaders: political reforms initiated by leaders

Process of democratic transition

· External imposition: A transition in which external forces impose democracy

· Bottom-up transition: One in which the people rise up to overthrow an authoritarian regime in a popular revolution.

· Top-down transition: One in which the dictatorial ruling elite introduces liberalizing reforms that ultimately lead to a democratic transition.

Democratic consolidation

Rendering democracy as “the only game in town”

A long list of “conditions of democratic consolidation”

popular legitimation, the diffusion of democratic values, the neutralization of antisystem actors, civilian supremacy over the military, the elimination of authoritarian enclaves, party building, the organization of functional interests, the stabilization of electoral rules, the routinization of politics, the decentralization of state power, the introduction of mechanisms of direct democracy, judicial reform, the alleviation of poverty, and economic stabilization

Illiberal Democracies

· The “partly free” middle category, also called “mixed regimes”, “hybrid regimes”

· Regimes that combine elements of democracy such as voting and elections, with non-democratic elements such as restrictions on political contestation and a free press and individual rights.

Elections in Authoritarian Regimes

· Elections are increasingly common in non-democracies (Ethiopia, Russia)

· Electoral authoritarianism is where leaders hold elections and tolerate some pluralism, yet democratic norms are violated

· Hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime: where the leader's party wins with overwhelming majorities

· Competitive authoritarian regime: opposition parties win substantial minorities

· These are distinct from politically closed authoritarian regimes, where no opposition party is granted legal space in the political arena

· Dictators use elections in a number of ways to stabilize their rule

· Institutionalized ways of distribution of regime rents, recruiting and rewarding local political elites

· Co-opt as well as divide and control the opposition groups

· Provide information to the leaders

Should opposition parties participate in these elections?

· Why does the opposition accept losses in elections it claims are fraudulent?

· When and why do authoritarian incumbents accept electoral defeat and step down from power given that they don’t have to?

Implications of these elections: a link to democratization?

Autocracy -> Democracy

· Cultural arguments, modernization theory: better explains the first wave of democratization

· International factors: better explain the second and third waves of democratization

Democracy -> Autocracy

· Democratic breakdown: outright reversion of democracy to autocracy. i.e. military coup

· Democratic deconsolidation or backsliding: a process of gradual erosion of democratic institutions and norms.

· “A process of incremental (but ultimately still substantial) decay in the three basic predicates of democracy – competitive elections, liberal rights to speech and association, and the rule of law.” Ginsburg and Huq(2018a)

· Subversion by stealth

The role of the military

· The most common causes of regime change from democracy to non-democracy is a military coup.

· Military identity is a key factor in explaining regime change: whether a military traditionally perceives itself as subordinate to or independent of civilian authority.

· Military identity as “defenders of the nation”: for the good of all citizens- justifies military intervention.

The case of Costa Rica

· The second reverse wave in Latin America:

· Military coups in Brazil in 1964, Argentina in 1966, Uruguay in 1973, Chile in 1973

· However, Costa Rica democratized in 1948 and its democracy survived to the present day.

· A strong tradition of civilian rule and a non-existent military

Military Coups

· Myanmar in February 2021

· Mali in August 2020

· Sudan in April 2019

· Zimbabwe in November 2017

· Thailand in May 2014

Democratic Backsliding

Elected leaders to take steps

· To increase its ability to remain in office: the opposition becomes unable to win elections or assume office if it wins

· Examples: changing electoral formulae, redistricting, changing voting qualifications, harassing the partisan opposition, or imposing restrictions on NGOs.

· To increase its discretion in policy making: established institutions lose the capacity to control the executive

· Examples: shifting power from the legislature to the executive, reducing the independence of the judicial system, or using referendums to overcome constitutional barriers.

Subversion by stealth

· “the use of legal mechanisms that exist in regimes with favorable democratic credentials for anti-democratic end” (Varol 2015)

· It is difficult to identify a tipping point during the events: no single, cataclysmic point at which democratic institutions were demolished… the steps toward authoritarianism might conform to the letter of the law. But each step, legal in itself, might undermine liberal democracy a little bit more.

Opposition to stealth

· Opposition party: not very effective

· The public

· People who oppose policies/ideologies of the backsliding government

· People who support policies/ideologies of the backsliding government

· people who care about democracy

· People who do not care about democracy

Defending democracy from stealth

· Everything depends on whether people who are at all concerned about democracy anticipate the effects of particular steps on the long-term future.

· People who care about democracy must be able to see through the stealth, and turn rapidly against the backsliding government

· This is a difficult, perhaps impossible challenge for individual citizens

· The fact is that backsliding governments have enjoyed continued popular support.

Regime change

· Regime is continuously changing.

· From autocracy to democracy

· From democracy to autocracy

· Within democracy

· Within autocracy

Many questions remain unanswered

· We understand more of democratization than transitions of democracy into autocracies.

· Why would citizens support backsliding governments?

· Why would citizens allow elected leaders to manipulate the system such as in current Russia?

· We understand more of earlier democratization than recent ones.

· Why democracy is established in Tunisia, but not in the other Arab spring countries?

· We understand more of change than the lack of change.

· The resilience of the authoritarian regimes such as China

The case of the United States

· In what year did the United States of America achieve democracy?

· 1776: the Declaration of Independence

· 1787: the signing of the Constitution

· 1791: the Bill of Rights

· 1863: end of slavery

· 1920: the right to vote for women

· 1965: the Voting Rights Act

· None of the above

The case of the United States

· Is the United States experiencing democratic backsliding?

· Did the United States experience a coup attempt on Jan. 6, 2021?