pols 550 comparative politics

POLS 550 Comparative Politics

Discussion of Chapters 2-4, Transitions to Democracy

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General impressions of the article Did you like it? Why or why not? Do you think it provides a useful framework

of analysis? If so, how? How would you classify the

argument from a theoretical perspective?

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Some more specific questions: What does Rustow mean in his discussion of

genetic versus functional theories of democracy?

What is the distinction between the two, and what is his focus?

Why does he talk about these two types of arguments in the first place?

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Rustow: Transitions to Democracy Basic point: Rustow argues that “single world-wide

explanations of democracy” aren’t helpful, and may not even be possible. In his critique of Lipset’s well-known article that examines statistical correlations on democracy, Rustow states that Lipset’s “article well illustrates the difficulty of applying the functional perspective to the genetic question. Strictly interpreted, his data bear only on function.”

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Rustow: Transitions to Democracy From this and from his more general review

of the literature, Rustow concludes that there is a need for a separate “genetic theory” of democracy, by which he means a theory that focuses on the genesis or the origins of democracy.

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Rustow: Transitions to Democracy Once we make the move, however, we need

to be aware of a number of methodological points. He starts us off with seven (pp. 21-22) …

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Rustow: Transitions to Democracy 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. Correlation is not the same a causation: a genetic theory must concentrate on the

latter. Not all causal links run from social and economic to political factors. Not all causal links run from beliefs and attitudes to actions. The genesis of democracy need not be geographically uniform: there may be many

roads to democracy. The genesis of democracy need not be temporally uniform: different factors may

become crucial during successive phases. 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 citizens.

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Rustow: Transitions to Democracy

Rustow, in listing seven issues, understand very well that he is making the study of democratic transition and potentially very messy process. As he puts it, “Each proposition pleads for the lifting of some conventional restriction, for the dropping of some simplifying assumption made in the previous literature, for the introduction of complicating, diversifying factors.” But, as he also states, “It ain’t necessarily so.”

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This is because the genetic perspective requires or makes possible a number of new restrictions. He lists three:

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.

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

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.

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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.

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As Rustow explains it, “That diachronic data, covering more than a single point in time, are essential to any genetic theory should be obvious. Such a theory, moreover, must be based on cases where the process is substantially complete.” Rustow is telling two things here:

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First (in reverse order), he’s telling us that for the purposes of theorizing on the genesis of democracy, we have to look at cases where the genesis has actually been completed; that is, we need to look at countries that have successfully made the transition.

Second, he’s telling us that we have to use historical data (diachronic simply means historical). As he puts it, “The study of democratic transitions will take the political scientist deeper into history than he has commonly been willing to go. This implies many changes in method, beginning with suitable substitutions for survey data and for interviews.”

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

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His basic logic here is that there has always been a convenient division of labor between the subfields of comparative politics and international relations, and that we should leave the study of the influence of international factors to IR scholars.

He also suggests that the dynamics of democratic transition when strongly influenced by external factors are likely to be different from the dynamics of democratic transition when “internally generated,” and, for this reason, it makes sense for a theory of democratic origin discount countries where external influences played an obvious role.

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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.

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Here, Rustow is basically making an argument for carrying out case studies as opposed to broad-based quantitative analysis. This is a pretty standard argument.

As he puts it, “the more nearly complete the coverage, the shallower it will have to be. The number of possible variables is so enormous (economic conditions, social cleavages, political alignments, psychological attitudes) that they could be handled only be means of the kind of simplifying assumptions that we rejected earlier on logical grounds….The country monograph [i.e., a case study] would avoid this danger. “

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With these methodological issues in mind, Rustow then proceeds to introduce his argument, which he conveniently breaks into four parts: Background conditions Preparatory phase Decision phase Habituation phase

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Background conditions Rustow reduces the “background conditions” necessary to

democratic transition to a single condition: national unity, by which he means that 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.

As a “background condition” Rustow means that national unity must precede all other phases of democratization; except for this, though, timing is irrelevant. That is, doesn’t matter when it was achieved, in premodern times or very recently. Nor does it matter by what means it was achieved.

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Background conditions Key Implication: To single out national unity

as the sole background condition implies no minimal level of economic development or social differentiation is necessary as a prerequisite to democracy.

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Preparatory phase By itself, national unity will not necessarily lead to

democratization. A “trigger” for democratization is needed. To Rustow, this trigger is …?

a prolonged and inconclusive political struggle.

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Preparatory phase Why does the struggle have to be prolonged

and inconclusive?

The answer: Basically, because these two conditions create the incentive for entrenched forces to compromise.

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Preparatory phase Key Implications: Counter-intuitively,

Rustow argues that democracy is often the product of intense polarization, rather than pluralism. He also suggests, à la Samuel Huntington, that it perfectly feasible there to be “democracy with democrats”

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Preparatory phase Key Implications: Lastly, Rustow suggests that the nature of

the struggle will likely play out very differently in different places at different times. As he puts it, “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 same footsteps of any of its predecessors.”

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Decision phase Countries don’t become democracies through

“absentmindedness.” Instead, as Rustow puts it, “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.”

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Decision phase Countries don’t become democracies through

“absentmindedness.” Instead, as Rustow puts it, “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.”

This can happen in one fell swoop, or it can happen in a piecemeal fashion.

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Decision phase Key points. Decision means choice (or agency).

Democracy never flows automatically from the first two phases.

Rustow also states that while the decision phase may well be considered an act of deliberate, explicit consensus, the decision itself flows from conflict and disagreement.

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Habituation phase This phase can be summed up very easily: “A

distasteful decision, once made, is likely to seem more palatable as one is forced to live with it.”

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Summing up: “The model here presented makes three broad assertions.

First, it says that certain ingredients are indispensable to the genesis of democracy. For one thing, there must be a sense of national unity. For another, there must be entrenched and serious conflict. For a third, there must be a conscious adoption of democratic rules. And, finally, both politicians and electorate must be habituated to these rules.”

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Summing up: Secondly, the model asserts that these ingredients

must be assembled one at a time. Each task has its own logic and each has its natural protagonists…. The model thus abandons the quest for ‘functional requisites’ of democracy; for such a quest heaps all tasks together and thus makes the total job of democratization quite unmanageable.

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Summing up: The model explicitly rejects what are sometimes known as

preconditions of democracy. It also rejects that “consensus on fundamentals” is necessary for democratic transition. The basis of democracy, in fact, is not maximum consensus, but rather a tenuous middle ground between imposed uniformity (such as would lead to some sort of tyranny) and implacable hostility (of a kind that would disrupt the community in civil war or secession). A Rustow puts it, “A people who were not in conflict about some rather fundamental matters would have little need to devise democracy’s elaborate rules for conflict resolution.”

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