Transitions to Democracy

Democratic sentiments

While there may be democratic feelings in one part of a nation, that doesn't necessarily mean that that is true for all parts of the nations

Democratic sentiments

Outside influence

According to Rustow, those looking to understand the root of what causes democracies to exist must include democracies that weren't created as a result of outside influence. He says that outside influence is a foreign policy issue, not a comparative governments issue.

Outside influence

Immigration influx

Rustow also believes that countries that become democracies due to an influx of immigration and new ideas resulting from said immigration should also be excluded from research regarding the beginning of democracies

Immigration influx

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Rustow's 10 points

Methodology

1. The factors that keep a democracy stable may not be the ones that brought it into existence: explanations of democracy must distinguish between function and genesis.

2. Correlation is not the same as causation: a genetic theory must concentrate on the latter.

3. Not all causal links run from social and economic to political factors.

4. Not all causal links run from beliefs and attitudes to actions.

5. The genesis of democracy need not be geographically uniform: there may be many roads to democracy.

6. The genesis of democracy need not be temporally uniform: different factors may become crucial during successive phases.

7. The genesis of democracy need not be socially uniform: even in the same place and time the attitudes that promote it may not be the same for politicians and for common citizen

8. Empirical data in support of a genetic theory must cover, for any given country, a time period from just before until just after the advent of democracy.

9. To examine the logic of transformation within political systems, we may leave aside countries where a major impetus came from abroad.

10. A model or ideal type of the transition may be derived from a close examination of two or three empirical cases and tested by application to the rest

National Unity

National unity: the vast majority of citizens in a democracy-to-be must have no doubt or mental reservations as to which political community they belong to

- boundaries must endure and the composition of citizenry must be continuous -> "people cannott decide until somebody decideds who are the people"

- must precede all the other phases of democratization

Background Condition

" To single out national unity as the sole background condition implies that no minimal level of economic development or social differentiation is necessary as a prerequisite to democracy. These social and economic factors enter the model only indirectly as one of several alternative bases for national unity or for entrenched conflict"

"The difficulty that democracy finds in resolving issues of community emphasizes the importance of national unity as the 'back ground condition of the democratization process. The hardest struggles in a democracy are those against the birth defects of the political community"

Warning: a vocality of national unity could be problematic as it has often been used by people who feel least secure in their sense of national identities such as the Germans and the Italians

Class Struggles in Democracy

Preparatory Phase

"I hypothesize that, against this single background condition [national unity], the dynamic process of democratization itself is set off by a prolonged and inconclusive political struggle."

"Such a struggle is likely to begin as the result of the emergence of a new elite that arouses a depressed and previously leaderless social group into concerted action"

"Democracy was not the original or primary aim; it was sought as a means to some other end or it came as a fortuitous byproduct of the struggle. But, since the tangible evils that befall human societies are legion, Bryce's single road dissolves into many separate paths. No two existing democracies have gone through a struggle between the very same forces over the same issues and with the same institutional outcome. Hence, it seems unlikely that any future democracy will follow in the precise footsteps of any of its predecessors."

Sweden: fight in Stockholm against tariffs, wages, military and suffrage

Turkey: industrialization versus agricultural development, Kemalist bureaucracies

Decision to Democratize

"What concludes the preparatory phase is a deliberate decision on the part of political leaders to accept the existence of diversity in unity and, to that end, to institutionalize some crucial aspect of democratic procedure"

"Decision means choice, and while the choice of democracy does not arise until the background and preparatory conditions are in hand, it is a genuine choice and does not flow automatically from those two conditions."

"A decision in favor of democracy, or some crucial ingredient of it, may be proposed and rejected-thus leading to a continuation of the preparatory phase or to some sort of abortive outcome."

Decision Phase

Sweden: national suffrage and proportional representation

British compromise of 1688

Deciding to like democracy

Habituation Phase

Rustow explains that people are resistant to change so getting a democracy up and running is a big success in itself.

It will take a few decades to transition completely as those who are adamantly against democracy retire and/or die.

Ex:

"The transformation of the Swedish Conservative Party from 1918 to 1936 vividly illustrates the point. After two decades those leaders who had grudgingly put up with democracy or pragmatically accepted it retired or died and were replaced by others who sincerely believed in it. Similarly, in Turkey there is a remarkable change from the leadership of Ismet Inonii, who promoted democracy out of a sense of duty, and Adnan Menderes, who saw in it an unprecedented vehicle for his ambition, to younger leaders in each of their parties who understand democracy more fully and embrace it more wholeheartedly