(texto para el 27-mar-12) capitalist development and democracy

8/2/2019 (Texto Para El 27-Mar-12) Capitalist Development and Democracy

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Dietrich Ruescherneyer is Professor of Sociology and Director of theCenter for the Comparative Study of Development at Brown Uni versity. Heis the author of P ow er a nd th e D iv is io n o f L a bo urand co-edi tor (wi th PeterEvans and Theda Skocpol) of B rin gi ng t he S ta te B ac k I n.

Evelyne Huber Stephens is Professor of Political Science and Sociology, amember of the Research Faculty at the Center for Urban Affairs and PolicyResearch, and Direct or of t he Lati n Amer ican and Cari bbean Studi esProgram at Northwest ern Uni versity. She is the author of T h e P o li ti cs o fWor ker s' Pa rt ic ipa tion : the Peruv ian Approach in Compar at ive Perspea ioe ,andother on Latin America and the Caribbean.

John D. Stephens is Professor of Political Science and Sociology and onthe Research Faculty at the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at

Northwestern U niversity. He is the author of T he Tr ans it ion f rom Cap it al ismto Socialismand co-author (w ith E velyne Huber Stephens) of DemocraticSocial ism in Jamaica ,and related art ic les on reformist soc ia li sm.

r

Capitalist Developmentand Democracy

Dietrich Rueschemeyer,

Evdyne Huber Stephens,

and John D. Stephens

University of Chicago PressChicago


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r1

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IIntroduction: the Problem ofCapitalist Development andDemocracy

This book examines the relati on bet ween capitali sm and democracy or, moreprecisely, between the transformations of society that came with capit al isteconomic development and the long- te rm chances of democra tic forms of rule.We will review past research, offer a new theoretical framework that canaccount for the apparent contradictions of earlier findings, and put theframework to the test in three sets of broad historical comparisons - of theadvanced capi talist count ries, of Lati n America, and of Central America andthe Caribbean islands.

That capitalism and democracy go hand in hand is a widely held belief.Indeed it is a commonplace of western political discourse. Editorials andpolitical pronouncements insist regularly that capitalist develop-ment - economic devel opment driven by capit al i nterests in competi tion witheach ot her - wil l also bring about pol itical freedom and democratic parti ci pa-t ion in government . In fact , democracy and capi ta li sm are often seen as v ir tua llyidentical.

The East-West conf ron ta tion gave this proposit ion a special qual ity of proud

asser tiveness. And the downfal l o f the sta te social is t regimes of eastern Europeis celebrated by many as the f inal p roof. I ronical ly, a qui te s imi la r p roposit ionwas central to the views of Lenin, though he gave it a very different slant."Bourgeois democracy" was for him t he const itutional form that perfect ly fi tsthe capitalist economic order. But in this view capitalism and democracy gohand in hand because democracy, while proclaiming the rule of the many, infact protects the interest s of capit al owners. Whatever their di fferences in theconcepti on and valuat ion of democracy, bot h these views share an import antclaim: the unrestrained operationof the market for capital and labor constitutesthe mater ia l base of democracy/Democracy is the charac terist ic po li tical form .J.)of capitalisni.]

The classics of ni neteenth-centur y poli tical theory al so tended toward theview that the t ransfo rmat ions wrought by oap ital is t development would bringdemocracy. But their reactions to t hi s prospect were very different from what


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2 I ntr od uc tio n

one might expect knowing the thought o f the ir twen tieth-century hei rs . Alexisde Tocquevi lle and John Stuart Mil l were apprehensive about full-fledgeddemocracy, and they were not al one in this. Their fear of "false democracy"(Mill) and of the "tyranny of the majority" (de Tocqueville) expressed theanticipations of many Liberals and bourgeois conservatives of the time. Bycontrast , a t the lef t o f the pol it ica l spect rum Marx op ted for ful l democracy andsaw in universal suffrage a major step in the transition from capitalism to

socia li sm. His "dictatorship of the proletar ia t" was no t so very differen t f rom deTocquevi lle's " tyranny of the major ity, " except tha t for Marx this was a vision ofhope whil e for de Tocqueville it was one of di saster.

These reactions give us a first sense that the questions surrounding therelationship between capitali sm and democracy may be more compl ex thancur ren t o rthodoxies a llow. Actua lly, the twen tieth cen tu ry has made this evenmore clear than it was already in the nineteenth. Our century offers manyexamples of cap ital is t pol it ical economies tha t p rospered without democracy;many were in fac t ruled by harshlyauthoritarian political regimes. South Koreaand Taiwan after World War II come to mind as well as in recent decadessuch Latin American countries as Brazil and Chi le. And ~ven Nazi German;and t he various Fascist regi mes i n Europe bet ween the two Word Wars do notexhaust the list . On the ot her hand, virtually all ful l-fledged democraci es weknow ar e associated wit h capitali st polit ical economies, and virt ually al l arecreat ures of the twent ieth century. If t his is the cent ury of repressive regimesvastly more burdensome than any known in history, it is also the century ofdemocracy.

Even a cursory review of history suggests some general iza tions tha t po in t toan assoc ia tion between cap ital is t development and democracy bu t do no t set tlethe question. An agrar ian soc ie ty befo re or in the inc ip ient s tages of penetrat ionby commercial market relations and industrialization is unlikely to gain orsustain a democratic form of government. Democracy by any definition isextremely rare in agrarian societies - both in the agrarian societies thatconsti tu te the bu lk of recorded history and in today's less developed countriest hat stil l rely largel y on agri cult ure for their subsistence. The ancient Gr eek

democracies, of which Athens was the most famous, were at best rareexcept ions in the pre-capitalist history of Europe.' Whether or not we acceptthem (as wel l as a few other cases) as true exceptions, the typical forms of r ulein agrar ian societ ies are and have been autocracy and o ligarchy.

To t his one must add immediately that government i n t he agrarian societiesof history was almost invariably inefficient and weak when compared to theP?wer and capaci ty of modern states. T he most tyrannical regimes of hi storyd id not have the capaci ty to shape and transfo rm socie ty tha t we take for g ran tedeven in today's democracies. It i s this increase in the capaci ties of states thataccounts for the fact that ours is also the century of totalitarian and veryrepressive authoritarian rule.

The relat ionship between cap ital is t development and democracy has not onlybe~n the object of political argument and broad speculation in politicalphilosophy. For several decades now, it has been subjected to careful and

In tr odu ctio n 3

systematic empir ical research in sociolo~, po li tical . science, and history: I t i sthis research that constit utes the foundat ion on w hich ou: own work bUIlds:

Empi rical r esearch on democracy has in fact been a major concer~ of SOCIalscience in the post-World War I I era. After.World War I I, when NaZI Germanywas defeat ed, when Stalinist r ule had conquere~ eastern E~rope.' an~ w~envirtually all former colonies became independ~n~new states, . .social scientistsdevoted very considerable energies to iden1J.iYmg.th.e cond.I1J.ons.that n :akedemocracy possi ble and likely. T he rise of authontanan r egimes III relativelyadvanced countri es of South America sti mulated a new wave of research (seee .g . O 'Donnell 1973 and Col lier 1979). More recent ly, the return of democracyto such countries as Spain, Portugal and Greece as well as advances ofdemocra tiza tion in Lat in Amer ica gave this research ano ther impetus (see e .g .O'Donnell Schmitt er and Whit ehead 1986).

The results of these decades of research are in many ways impressive. Wecan with conf idence go beyond qu ite a few commonplace v iews that s ti~l informmuch of tne publ ic discussion on democracy and its chan~es. But nel th,er arethe resul ts o f these nearly two generat ions of research conclusive . In par~cula.r,the impact of capitalist development on the chances of democracy 1S still

controversial.Two distinc tive t radi tions of research have come to qu ite di fferen t and as yet

unreconciled results. They employed radically different research strategies andmethods so d iffe rent that scholars in e ither camp often barely took not ice of thework of' the other side. Quantitative cross-national comparisons of manycoun tr ies have found consisten tly a posit ive correlat ion between developmentand democracy. They thus come to relat ively op ti rr~js~c con~lusions abo~t thechances of democracy, not on ly in the advanced cap ital is t n~tIo~s bu t a ls? m thedevelop ing coun tr ies of today. By con trast, compara tive histoncal s tud ies t~atemphasize qual itat ive examination of complex sequences tend t? . trace . the nseof democracy to a favorable historical constellation of. c~n?ItIons m earl,ycapitali sm; Their conclusions are theref ore far mor e pessmusnc about t oday s

developing countries. . . .The contrad ic to ry resul ts o f the two research t radi tions represen t a dI ff i. cu lt

problem precisely because they d~rive f:oo: d~fferent modes of rese.arch. (_JIvencontrasting methodologies, bywhich cntena 1S one to evaluate the inconsistentfindings? Our own work takes off from this ir_npasse. It bui l~s on the research . o fboth traditions and seeks t o reconcile t heir met hodological and subst antIve

contradictions.In chapter 2 , a fter descr ib ing and evaluat ing the tw~ resea :ch t radi tions, .we

develop a methodological approach which, when combmed \Vl~ the theoreticalideas developed in chapter 3, promises to transcend the Impasse. In thef oll owi ng three chapters, we put these i deas to the t est in fresh anal yses of ,thecompl ex evidence. Based on an i ntegrated t heoretical and methodol ogicalf ramework, we present our own comparat ive histor ica l investiga tions of a largenumber of cases. These will, we submit, resolve the controversy about therelat ionship between development and democracy. And since this ~ontroversy

has been at the cent er of empiri cal democracy research, our st udy wil l do more


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4 Introduction

tha~ merely resolve an esoteric scholarl db,' . .major conditions favoring and' hibi Y de ate, It will throw new light on the

W m 1 lung emocr acye are convinced that the main f di f' . .

work _ a positive though n t f in my? the cross-national statisticalmen t and demo~racy _ mus~ sferdect , cor re aoondbetween capi ta li st develop-explaining this r b findi an . as an. accepte result. There is no way ofthe spurious eff~ctU~}~~!~~g, re~lc~te~ in :ny studies of d iffe rent design , as

terms with it At the n :e

0 s. hny

eory of democracy must come, to. same time s 1 .repli cated, does not carry its 0 ' nl a . corre anon, no matter how oftensequences accounti ng for the ; ~sf: :tn~~l~~~~t does not i de~tify the causalwhy many cases are at odds with it N . ' not to mention the reasonsbe reached b diff ..' or can It account for how the same end canpecul ia r "bla~k ~o~~,e~ h ls tonc~ rou tes. The repeated sta ti st ical f inding has agrounded empirical a~a~; :~~er at can be overcome onl y by theoretically well

, Co~parative historical studies we ar e c r th b . .light into the black box Thi ' ' ~ _ f1c : ar ry i e est promise of sheddi nghas been part icu larly ' rl 'c ' -h ' - ~ISth nlJtO!H_Y v1ecause comparative historical workhi , In eorenca argume t F '

ist ori cal research ives r 'eh ' n. ar more Importantstructural conditio~s a ~ ~Sl~ ~ :~ to ~ e ~e nc esa~~ thfieirrelations to surroundiniaccounts, Causal anaiysis is inh IS ltl n ispensa e or d,eveloping valid causal

At th ' eren y sequence analysis,e same tune co . h' 'conven tional h is to ry '~ pr :~~~a~~~on I~,onca! re~earch i~ able, to go beyondtheoret ica l genera liza tion Anal~ ' a ll I~ hl~oncal particularity and aim forser ies o f case analyses. I~seeks I~ eYtO~tn~e c_o~parat ive h is tory bui lds on athat do justice to each case and at th s a IS . sans actory explanatory accountsconsistent with each other. In th e same ?me are theoret ica lly coherent andproven explanatory power. e process It develops a body of theorems of

Such comparative historical case anal sis m b .?ya framework of theoretical ideas Wi~ u ust e gwded ~rom the beginningIII the face of an endless multitud' f 0 ~bfat, r e analysis lacks orientationwhich we develop in chapter 3 b '~d

0POSSI Y re evant. f~cts, The framework

of i ndividual cases and gives th Ul th on p~st research , I t in fo rms the accoun ts

turn sub ject to rev is ions sugges~:d b ethreuca lumtyl and coherence, yet i t i s inA f Y e case ana ysesramework of theoretical conce t d . . .

problem that haunts the co ? s ~ r: p~OpOSltlOnSalso mitigates anothermena _ the fact that onl mpa~aove istorical study of large-scale pheno-

required detail. We tackl:t~i;I;~~f nu;be~ of cases ca? be studied in theo~ investigations to the limit, We a:; Iref y by stretchmg the scope of ourunrverse in the three f yze ~ arge number of cases, cl ose to thedevelopment over relati~tuf; 0 c~untnes ~elected, and we trace theirhistorical studies incl ude :are ~~sp e~ods o~ or ne. In fact, our comparativestud ies. Yet the cases are sti ll too f ies, an qUbl tea few cross-nat iona l s ta ti st ica l

I. ew m num er to allow b th I

ana yn c conclusions. For this there are t " y emse ves, securetoo complex interrelations among th 00 Ta r :y ~osslbly relevant factors andtheoretical framework makes . ,em. t IS ere that a carefully built

important sense the findin s of critical contribution. It represents in anenlarges the reach and vali~ty fathvast blo~y of prev~ous work, and it thus

o e ana YSISsubstan tial ly.

Introduction 5

Our theoretical framework incorporates the major findings of the cross-nat ional quant itat ive stud ies, However, we depar t f rom the theoret ical under-p inn ings of much of the cross-na tional s tat is tica l work, which often adop ted thethen cur rent models of modern izat ion theory. In this s tructural -funct iona lconcep tion of soc ia l order, society, po li ty, and economy are seen as more or lesswell-functi oning systems i nt egrated pr imari ly by shared values and culturalpremises. Democracy arises due to its functional fit with the advancedindustrial economy. To the extent that the development of democracy isattri buted to an agent, as i n Lipset's (1959) cl assic article, it is the middle classthat is seen as the primary promoter of democracy. The upper-class, andespecial ly the lower c lass , a re seen as the enemies of democracy,

By contrast, we employ, like most of the comparative hi stori cal work fromMax Weber to Guillermo O'Donnell, a "pol itical economy" perspect ive thatfocuses on actors _ individual as well as collective actors - whose power isgrounded in control of economic and organizational resources and/or ofcoercive force and who vie w ith each other for scarce resources in the pursuit ofconf lict ing goals. While such a perspect ive does recog '11ize the role of ideas ,values and non-material interests, especially when they are grounded ininstitutions and collective organization, it differs sharply from the functionalistand cul tu re-centered premises of moderniza tion theory.

How, then, do we conceive of democracy and it s condit ions? Our most basi cpremise is that democracy is above all a matter of power. Democratizationrepresents fi rst and foremost an increase i n pol itical equali ty. This idea is theground upon which all of our work stands, The central proposition of ourtheore tica l a rgument v ir tua lly fol lows f rom this: i t i s power relat ions tha t mostimportantly determine whether democracy can emerge, stabilize, and thenmaintain i tsel f even in the face of adverse cond it ions.

There is f ir st the balance of power among diffe rent classes and class coal it ions.This is a fac to r o f overwhelming impor tance. It i s complemented by two otherpower configurations - the structure, strength, and autonomy of the stateapparatus and i ts inter re la tions with civi l soc ie ty and the impact of transnationalpower relationson bo th the balance of c lass power and on sta te -soc ie ty relat ions.

A focus on class and class coalitions may be surprising to some, while it isperhaps too easily accepted by o thers, We emphasize social c lass , f ir st , becausethe concept is i n our view a mast er key t o understanding the social str ucturingof interests and power in soc ie ty, and second , because the organizat ion of classinterests is consti tutive of major collective actors. T he organi zati on of classinterests is, however, a complex process in which not only the forms ofcollective action but the very interests actually pursued are socially andhist ori call y constructed. T hus, the subj ecti ve understandi ng and polit icalposture of cl ass actors cannot be read off t he underlying class st ructure in any

one-to-one fashion.None the less, the po li tical postu res of g iven classes are not inf in itely variab le

ei ther, Based on our theoret ical understanding and past histor ica l and sociolo-g ical research , we expected classes to exh ib it def in ite cen tral po li tical tenden-

cies in the struggle for political democracy. One central axis was defmed bywhat benefits and losses classes could expect from extensions of political


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6 I ntr od uc tio n

inclusion; the other was the class's ability to organize itself and engage incollective acti on in defense of class i nt erests. This led us to the hypot hesisfoll?wing Barrington Moore, that large landlords engaged in "labor repressive';agncul tu re would be the most implacab le opponents o f democracy. However, incontrast to Moore, as well as to Leninists and l ibera l soc ia l scien tists, we alsoexpected the bourgeo is ie / to oppose suffrage ex tension to the working classes assuch a move posed a potential treat to their interests. We expected the urban

working class to be the most frequent proponent of the full extension of?emocratic rights because this promised to inc lude the c lass in the pol ity whereI t could fur ther pursue i ts interests and because the working class, unl ike o therlower classes, had the capacity to organize it self. It is the capacity t o organizeand express its interests t hat di ffer entiated the working class from the smallpeasantry. We hypothesized that the middle classes would favor their owninc lusion, but would be ambivalent about fur ther extensions of po li tical r ights,perhaps swinging to one side or ano ther on the basis o fpossible a ll iances. Thus,in a given historical case, one would have to examine the s tr uc tu re o f c la sscoalitionsas well as the rel at iv e p o wer o f d ij fe re n t c la s se sto understand how theb a la n ce o f c la s sp o werwould affect the possiblities for democracy.

Class power is in our view intimately related to the development of the. . . )increasmg orgaruzational density of, civil society. This proposition seems at firstglance similar to - bu t in real ity isqui te d is tinc t f rom - cla ims of moderniza tiontheorists and p lu ral is ts that the growth of intermediate groups and associat ionstends to be supportive of democracy. Civil society, in our conception, is thetotality of social institutions and associations, both formal and informal, that arenot strictly product ion-related nor governmental or famil ial in character.Capi talist development furt hers the growth of ci vil society - by increasing t heleve l of urbaniza tion , by br inging workers together in factor ies, by improvingthe means of communicat ion and transpor tat ion , byra is ing the leve l o f l iteracy.Streng then ing the organiza tion and organ izat iona l capaci ty of the working andmidd le c lasses serves to empower those classes and thus to change the balanceof c lass power. , A dense c iv il soc ie ty a lso has an importance for democracy on i tsown, because i t estab lishes a counterweight to sta te power.

I n modern societies the st at e - the set of organizations involved in makingand implementing binding collective decisions, if necessary by force - isinvaria~ly one major component of the overal l landscape of power i n societ y.There IS no cont emporary society in which the Structure of domi nation cansimply be understood by looking at the distribution of economic and socialpower in civil society. And the state is in varying degrees setoff from andindependent of other power centers. Since the st at e is not only an apparatus ofImp.l~mentation and enforcement but also the arena in which binding collectivedeClS!~nSare arr ived at, i t i s o f obv ious importance to an understanding of theconditi ons of democracy. The shape of state structures and their rel at ions too ther power concentra tions are therefore a second cluster o f cond it ions shap ingthe chances of democracy.- A thi rd cluste r o f cond it ions is consti tu ted by transnationa l power relat ions.

Obviously, power relat ions do not s top a t the borders o f po li tica lly organ izedsocieties. St ates stand in close interact ion wit h power centers beyond their

Introduction 7

borders. In fact they often derive much of their autonomy vi s-a-vis their ownsocieties from this involvement in external relations. In additi on, economicrelat ions and economic organizat ions have increasing ly t ranscended nat ionalborders. These, too, are likely to be modified by state action. Yet, howevermodified, the impact of powerful interests - political as well as econo-mic - beyond a country's borders also enters the balance of power thatdetermines t he chances of democracy. In varying degree, t hey i nfluence the

balance of c lass power and they affec t s ta tes and sta te -society relat ions.One critical aspect of all three clusters of power, as well as of their

inter re la tions, i s the fac t that soc ia l pat te rns , once forged, of ten persis t beyondthe ir o rigina l condi tions. This negates the possib il ity o f a "presen tist" exp lana-tion of democracy, one that involves only factors observably active in the presentmoment of history, and it voids any mechanical account of the impact of class,s ta te , and transnat ional power on consti tut ional form. Here is another powerfu lrationale for engaging in comparative historicalanal ysis, which can take suchpersi stencies i nto account and respond sensiti vely 'to alternative paths ofcausation.

Our own comparat ive investigations not only cover a very large number ofcases in h is tor ica l depth bu t a lso focus on the areas of the wor ld most importantfor the history of democratization. We first tum to the advanced capitalistcountries focusing on how democracy was f ir st ful ly estab lished as wel l as howdemocratic rule subsequentlty fared in the critical period between the twoWorld Wars. We secondly study the complex processes of democratiza-t ion - of ten onlypart ia l democrat izat ion - and of reversals of democra tic rule int he countri es of L at in America. Thirdl y, we compare the countri es of CentralAmerica with the island societies of the Caribbean. The whole set of casesexamined represen ts the areas with the most ex tensive democrat ic experience .At the same t ime, there are many examples ofstable non-democra tic reg imes aswell as of breakdowns of democratic political systems that can be analyzedcomparatively side by side with instances of democratization and stabledemocratic rule, gi ving ample oppor tunity to use the analytical comparativeh is to rica l method to the ful lest exten t.

What is the upshot of our analyses? First, it is not an overall structuralcorr espondence bet ween capi talism and democracy t hat explains t he rise andpersistence of democracy. Some have conceived of such a cor respondence as asimple mutua l reinforcement be tween a f ree market for goods and services anda market for poli tical outcomes. Other s (as f or instance Cutright 1963) haveseen democracy more d iffusely as a high ly "differen tiated" pol it ical form thatf it s the more d iffe ren tiated social s truc tures produced by cap ital is t develop-ment. Our analyses do not lend support to such overall correspondenceproposi tions. Neither do they confirm the view of the bourgeoi si e as t he mai nagent of democracy that has been central to both classic liberal and marx-ist -len in is t theory. Rather - we conclude - capi tal is t development is assoc ia tedwit h democracy because it transforms the class st ructure, st rengthening theworking and middle classes and weakening the landed upper class. It was not

the capitalist market nor capitalist s as the new dominant force, but rather t hecontradict ions of capi tal ism that advanced the cause of democracy.


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8 I nt ro du ct io n

A brief summary of our main findings should help to prepare and guide thereader through the theoret ical a rguments and the histor ica l evidence presen tedin the following chapters. We found that social classes behaved in a quitesystematic manner across our historical cases and in accordance with ourexpectations. T he working class was the most consistent ly pro-democraticforce. The class had a st rong interest in ef fecti ng it s pol itical incl usi on and i twas more insulated f rom the hegemony of dominant classes than the rural lower

classes. Exceptions to the pro-democratic posture of the working class occurredwhere the c lass was ini tial ly mobil ized by a charismat ic but au thor itar ian leaderor a hegemonic part y linked t o the state apparatus.

T he l anded upper-cl asses which were dependent on a large suppl y of cheaplabor were t he most consistently ant i-democrat ic force. Democratization forthem posed the possib il ity o flosing this labor supply. The bourgeoisie we foundto be generally supportive of the installation of constitutional and representativegovernment , bu t opposed to ex tending po li tical inc lusion to the lower c lasses .FJr the landed classes as well as the bourgeoisie threat perception wasimpor tant both a t the t ime of the ini tial insta llat ion of democrat ic rule and for i tslater consolidation. If these classes felt acutely threatened in their vital interestsby popular pressures, they invariably opposed democracy and, once democraticrule was installed, attempted t o undermine it .

The middle classes played an ambiguous role in the installation andconsolidation of democracy. They pushed for their own inclusion but theirattitude towards inclusion of the lower classes depended on the need andpossibilit ies for an alli ance with t he working class. T he middle classes weremost in favor of ful l democracy where they were conf ron ted with int ransigentdomi nant classes and had the opti on of allying with a sizeable working class.However, if they started feeling threatened by popular pressures under ademocratic regime, t hey turned to support the imposit ion of an authori tarianalternative.

The peasantry and rural workers a lso p layed var ied roles , depending on the ircapacity for autonomous organization and their susceptibility to the influence ofthe dominant c lasses. Independen t family farmers in small -ho ld ing countrieswere a pro-democratic force, whereas their posture in countries or areasdominat ed by l arge landhol di ngs was more aut horitari an. Peasants l ivi ng onl arge estates remained by and large unmobili zed and t hus di d not playa role i ndemocrat iza tion . Rural wage workers on p lantat ions d id at tempt to organize ,and where they were no t repressed, they joined other working-c lass organiza-tions in pushing for political inclusion.

As ant ic ipated , we did observe systemat ic var iat ion across regions in the c lassstruc tu re and therefore in c lass al liances and the dynamics of democrat izat ion .Most importantly, t he working-class was smaller and weaker and t he l andedcl ass stronger in Lati n Ameri ca and the Car ibbean.which made for a balance ofclass power less favorab le for democra tiza tion than in the core countries . Dueto the relat ive weakness of the working class, the midd le c lasses played here theleading rol e in pushing for democratization, wi th the result that democracy

often remained restricted.

I ntro du ctio n 9

We also found systematic variation across regions and time periods in ther ole of the st ar= ~onsolidation of st at e power was an essenti al prerequisit e fordemocratization. i'his process was more di fficul t in Lati n A merica than in theother r egions we investigated, and this cont ributed to t he long delay of even aninstitutionalization of contestation in many cases.

The state was stronger relative to civil society in Latin America and theCar ibbean than in the core countries. This was par tly related to the compara tive

weakness and heterogeneity of the dominant c lasses and par tly to the h is to ry ofstate formation and to external support for the mil itary in t he post-World WarII period. The effects of this lopsided balance of power were greater stateautonomy and intervention into politics, or outright imposition of authoritarianrule by the coercive apparatus of t he state.

The impact of transnational structures of power on democratization alsovari ed across our r egions, being st ronger i n L at in America and the Caribbeanthan in the core countries . Economic dependence had negative effects, thoughrnostlv i n indi rect wavs. It shaped the class structure in wavs inimical fordemo~rati zati on. Eco~omic growth l ed by agrari an exports 'reinforced theposition of large landholders. Industrialization with imported capital intensivetechnology kept the working class small and weak. Geo-po li tica l dependencerelat ions were even more impor tan t. Geo-po li tica l interests o f core countriesgenerated direct i nt ervent ions and support for the repressive apparatus of thest at e and thus creat ed an unfavorable balance of power bet ween state and ci vi lsociety for democratization. The effects of British colonialism, though, deviatedfrom this negative pattern in so far as the colonial presence prevented thedominant classes from using the state apparatus to repress the emergingorganizations of subordinate classes. Instead, it allowed for the gradualemergence of a stronger civi l society, capable of sust ai ni ng democracy aft erindependence.

Pol it ica l part ies emerged in a crucial role as media to rs in bo th the insta llat ionand consoli dation of democracy. Strong parties were necessar y to mobi lizepressures f rom subord inate c lasses for democrat izat ion, but i f the ir p rogramswere too rad ical , they sti ffened resis tance among the dominant c lasses againstdemocracy. Once democracy was insta lled , the par ty system became cruc ia l forprotecting the interests of the dominant classes and thus keeping them frompursui ng author itarian alternat ives, Democracy coul d be consolidated onlywhere t here were two or more strong compet ing pol itical parti es at least one ofwhich effect ive ly protec ted dominan t c lass interests , o r where the party systemallowed for direct access of the dominant classes to t he st at e apparat us.

The main focus of our analysis allowed us to reinterpret the central, androbust , f inding of the cross-nat iona l s ta ti st ical stud ies tha t economic develop-ment is associ at ed with democracy. I n t he course of our comparative work, wewere also able to prov ide reinterpretat ions of o ther fmdings of these stud ies: thepositive association of democracy with a legacy of British colonialism andPro testan tism and the negat ive associat ion of democracy with e thn ic d iversi ty.In each case, the comparative historical analysis showed that the modernization

interpretation was inadequate and that the relations of class, state, and


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1 0 I nt ro du cti on

internat iona l power were essent ia l in understand ing why these societal charac-ter is tics a ided or impeded the development of democracy.

One last issue has to be taken up in this brief introduction to the problems weintend to pursue. The concept of democracy has been given very differentmeanings. Clarifyingone's conception of "democracy" is not j ust a question off inding an adequate and precise operat iona l defmit ion. Rather i t involves more

complex i ssues of meaning. The marxist crit ique of "bourgeois democracy"raises perhaps the most central i ssue : is the claim of democracy to consti tu te therule of the many real, or is this claim a sham that makes the de facto rule of thefew more effective and secure behind a screen of formally democraticinstitutions? To anticipate our position and put it with apodictic brevity: noactua lly exist ing democracy can cla im to const itute in a real is tic sense the ruleof t he many; but "bourgeois" or formal democracy does make a di fference forthe process of pol it ical decision-making and for the ou tcomes of tha t p rocess.

This position has methodological consequences. The concepts of democracyused in our research - as well as in virtually all other empirical studi es - aim toident ify t he really existing democracies of our world and t o disti nguish t hemfrom ot her forms of rule. Our operating concepts are therefore not based on themost far-reachi ng ideals of democrati c t hought - of a government thoroughlyand equall y responsi ve to t he preferences of all it s ci tizens (Dahl 1971) or of apolity in which human beings fulfill themselves through equal and activeparti ci pati on in collective self-rule (Macpherson 1973). Rather, they orientthemselves to t he more modest f orms of popular part icipat ion i n governmentthrough represen ta tive par liaments tha t appear as real is tic possib il it ies in thecompl ex societies of today. Our definit ions of democracy focus on the st at e' sresponsibi li ty to par liament (possibly complemented by d irec t e lect ion of thehead of the executive), on regular free and fair elections, on the freedom ofexpression and association, and on the extent of the suffrage. Robert Dahl,whose careful conceptualizations probably had the greatest influence onempiri cal democracy research, reserved t he term "polyarchy" for t his moremodest and inevitably somewhat formal version of democracy (Dahl 1956,

1971).Why do we care about formal democracy if i t considerably falls short of theactua l rule of the many? This quest ion assumes par ticular sal iency in the l igh t o ftwo of our f indings, namely tha t democracy was a resul t of the contradict ions ofcapitali st development and that it could be consoli dated onl y i f t he interest s ofthe capit al ist classes were not di rect ly threatened by it. The full answer t o thisquesti on will become clear as we proceed wi th our analysi s. But it is possi bl e toanticipate our conclusion briefly already here. We care about formal democracybecause it tends to be more than merely formal. It tends to be real to someextent . Giv ing the many a rea l voice in the formal col lect ive dec is ion-making ofa country is t he most promi si ng basis for fur ther progress in t he dist ributi on ofpower and other forms of substant ive equal ity. The same fac to rs which suppor tthe i nst al lation and consol idati on of formal democracy, namel y growth i n the

strengt h of ci vil society in general and of the lower classes i n par ticul ar, alsosupport progress towards greater equality in political participation and towards

Introduction 11

eater social and economic equality. Ultimately, .we .seein democr~cy.- even i~fumodest and largel y f or~al. contemporary realizations - the begmmng of t hself-transformation of capitalism.

. . . t

f this volume is simple and follows the line of reasonmg JUSThe structure 0 . . h d 'bing and

tched. Chapter 2 offers a review of existing researc, escnskel ting the two tradi tions of research on devel opment and democracy: It~~~~l ~des wit h reflections on the met hodological probl ems of reconci1~~con trad ic tory resul ts o f research employing very d iffe rent methods. C~adtedevelo s our theoretical framework f or the study of devel opment an rional

? . g on the three power clusters of class, state, and transnatIonac r ac y r o cu s in f d d it list

1 t ions Chap ter 4 presents the comparative analyses 0 aq v.ance capi a I~~~ntrie~. Chapter 5 deals with democratization ir: Latin America, and. chat~r6 com ares the Caribbean islands and the countries of Central America. . e

ncl~ing chapter 7 reviews the theoretical p~siti?ns developed at the o~tse~n~;'e light of these comparative historical investiganons It ends by explonng eimplica tions of our f ind ings for the future of democracy.


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2

Capitalist Development and

Democracy: The Controversy

In the comp~r.a tive stu~y o~ macro-social phenomena two rad ical ly di fferen tresearch ~adI~ons. coexist _wItheach other - cross-national statistical work and~ompara tIve histor ical s tudies ' ,~his may be - and is of ten - seen as just anotherInstance of t~e age-o ld opposrnon between quant itat ive and quali tat ive inquiry

or, mo~e r~dlcally, between social science and humanistic scholarship.A mmonty of scholars.- among them Jeffery Paige (1975), John Stephens

(1979c) , and Char les Ragm ( .1987) - have insis ted tha t the two research modes~hould ~omplement and be mtegrated with each other rather than treated asIrreco~~i1able opposites. In research on development and democracy, theopposit ion between the two modes of work has a part icu larly intense characterHer~ weencounter n.ot just ~ d ivergence of method but sharp ly contradiCtor ;:f i!1d l~gs.As noted , this const itutes a diff icul t d ilemma unless one isp repared todIsml~s one mode of research out of hand as inadequate. This chapterdescnbes and e~al uates the two bodies of research and seeks to l ay the basis fora way to reconci le and transcend the con tradict ions.

~omparative Historical and Cross-national Quantitativeesearch on Development and Democracy

. The contradi ct ions between these two research traditi ons did not often lead toactual co?tro~ersy and debate. Many who worked in the more qualitativecomparative historical mode hardly became aware of the other id b 'th . I' Sl e, ecause

e.y S Imp y could ~ot concerve of a research strategy that claims to come tovah? r~sult s by taki ng ~ ~ew pieces of informat ion about many countries ands~bJe~tmg the .m to . stat Is tlca l, cor re la tiona l ana lysis . In turn, the emphasis onhi storical particul ar ity ~nd the small number of cases to which the historicalapproach co~!d be app lied , appeared radica lly unsu ited for an exp lo ra tion of thecausal condlilons of democracy in the eyes of students who conceived of the

r

iI

I The Controversy 13quant itat ive analysis o f a large number of cases as the only viab le substi tu te forthe experimental approach t hat is impossible i n macro-soci al analysis; theytherefo re searched for ways of study ing the cond it ions of democracy throughstatistical inference from cross-national research covering many countries. Thegulf between these met hodological concept ions was - and is - so deep that thework of the other side was easily dismissed if it was noticed at all.

Ignoran t dismissal was especial ly f requent among the histor ica lly mindedstudent s of democracy. The quanti tative analysts paid more at tent ion to t hecomparat ive histor ica l work, though , as we wil l see , they often d isregarded themore sophi st icat ed theoretical ideas advanced by the other side, especially ifthese could not be tested with the crude measures suitable for macro-quantitative statistical analysis. This asymmetry has little substantive justifica-t ion. Both sides grapple with diff icul t, ye t fundamental methodolog ical issuesthat are hard to do justice to at the same time; and each side makes differents trateg ic dec is ions on which issues are to be g iven the most a ttent ion and whichare to be treated with relat ive neglec t

We wil l fi rst offer a select ive account of both research traditions. This wiliint roduce not only t he probl ems at i ssue in the contrast between comparativehistor ica l and sta ti st ical investigat ions of the cond it ions of democracy but also a

large number of ideas used in our own account. The chapter then turns toreflections on the questions raised by the divergence of the two researchtraditions. We will offer methodologi cal arguments for an approach that cantranscend the impasse and reconci le the contradictory f indings.

Early quant ita tive cross-national s tud ies

Seymour Martin Lipset published in 1959 a now classic paper linkingdemocracy to economic development. It opened a long l ine of increasingl ysophisticated quantitative cross-national studies. Lipset's theoretical positionder ived f rom the nine teenth-century c lassics o f social theory, especial ly f romDurkheim and Weber but also from Mar x, combining a syst emic conception of

society with a revised version of social evolutionism. In many ways, his approachto the problems of development resembled tha t of moderniza tion theory. At thesame time, Lipset did not subscribe to the value determinism and theequi libr ium assumpt ions tha t came to character ize espec ia lly later versions ofmodernizat ion t heory as wel l as his own later work. He combined a systemicview of social change with a resolute focus on divergent class interests andconflict.

Lipset begins with the observation that greater economic affluence in acoun try has long been thought o f as a condi tion favorab le for democracy: "Themore well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain demo-cracy" (Lipset 1959/1980: 31). He then proceeds to put this idea to the test bycross-national comparison.

He compares European and Latin Ameri can countries on the interrelateddimensions of wealth, industrialization, education, and urbanization anddemonstra tes tha t European stab le democracies scored on average h igher in a ll


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14 Th e C o n tro ve rsy

of these dimensions than European d ictatorships . Examples of the indicators heuses are per capita i ncome, telephones per 1,000 persons, percent of peopl eemployed in agriculture, percent literate, and percent living in cities of differentsizes. A comparison of democracies and unstable dictatorships with stabledictatorships in Latin America comes to very simi lar results at a lower level ofdevelopment.

In his theore tical account for these relat ionships , Upset focuses on modera-

t ion and tolerance . Education, he con tends, broadens one 's out look , increasestolerant at titudes, restrai ns people from adopting extremist doctrines andincreases their capacity for rational electoral choice. Increased wealthmodera tes the lower c lasses and thus makes them more prone to accept gradualchange. Actua lly, i t i s the d iscrepancy in wealth rather than i ts overal l level tha tis decisive, but since there is generally more inequality in poorer countries thesetwo factors are closelyrelated. In countries wi th grea t inequal ity of wealth, thepoor are more likely to be a t hreat to the privileged and the established order.The rich in turn tend to be hostile to democracy, both because thev feelthreatened and because they of ten view i t even as moral ly wrong to let th~ poorand the wretched participate in pol it ical dec is ions - an arrogant a tt itude whichin turn feeds the resentment of the poor. Thus, the mi ddle class emerges as t hemain pro-democrat ic force in Upset 's ana lysis , and this class gains in size with

soc ioeconomic development . In sum, Upset argues that industr ial iza tion leadsto increases in wealth, education, communication, and equality; these develop-ments are associ ated with a more moderate lower and upper class and a largermiddle class, which is by nature moderate; and this in turn increases theprobability of stable democratic forms of politics.

Subsequent studies employed far more refined statistical t echniques. Butthey confirmed the posit ive relation between development and democracy.While they explored alternative as well as complementary hypotheses andsought to detail the causal mechanisms underlying the connection betweendevelopment and democracy, they added little to a more comprehensiveinterpretation of this relationship.

Phillips Cutright (1963) brought correlational- and more generally multiva-r iate - ana lysis to bear on these problems. He argued tha t averages of di fferents?cial a.nd economic indicators are far t oo crude a measure of development,discarding the more precise information available. Furthermore, differences inthe character o f the pol it ica l o rder must no t be just c rudely classi fied becausethey then canno t be related with any precision to the quan ti tat ive info rmationon social and economic conditions: "It makes little difference that in the verbal?iscussion. o~national political systems one talks about shades of democracy if,In the sta ti st ical assessment , one canno t dist inguish among nations" (Cutright1963: 254).

Cutright constructed scales of economic development, of "communicationsdevelopment" as well as o f "po li tical development" or, in effect , democracy,~ach combining several specific measures. ' He then subjected these quantirat-rve scores for 77 countries to a cor relat ional ana lysis .

The correlati on between the i ndices of communi cation development anddemocracy (or pol it ica l development) was r = 0.8], while the correlation of

T he C ontro versy 15

democracy with economic development was 0.68, significantly low~r. Cutrightconcluded tha t his main hypothesis - that po li tical insti tut ions are Interdepen-dent with the leve l of social and economic development - was confi rmed.

The theoret ical account Cutr igh t offered for these f ind ings is s imple and n01fully developed. More strongly than Lipset's it reflects the assumption~ ofmodernization theory - of evolutionism and funct ional system integrat ion.National societies are conceived as interdependent systems with sttrong equili-

brium tendencies. Greater divisi on of labor and structural differentiation ineconomy and society demand more complex and special ized pol it ical insti tu -tions, if the system as a whole is to be in equilibrium. He considersrepresentat ive democracy as the form of government sufficie~tl~ cOII_lplex.odeal with a modern, increasingly heterogeneous social order. ThIS Identif icationof representative democracy with political differentiation is also the reason whythe t it le o f his paper speaks of "po li tical development" rather than democracy.

In any less than per fec t corre la tion , many coun tr ies wil l s tand significan tlyabove or below the regressi on line. Relative to i ts level of social or economicdevelopment a country may have "too much" or "too little" democracy.Commenting on this, Cutright offered on the one hand a number of ad hochypotheses explaining such "deviati ons" from a presumed equili brium. Forinstance, he speculated, democracy may have flourished in the westernhemisphere more than in Europe because of the absence of large-scaleinternational conflict. And he suggested that case studies focus on deviant casesin order to gain further insights into the particular conditions favoring orhindering "political development".

On the other hand, he turned the mathematical equation representing theoveral l relat ions between social , economic and pol it ica l development in a ll 77countries into a "prediction equation:"

The concept of interdependence and the statistical method of this study (lead)us to consider the existence of hypothetical equilibrium points toward which eachnation is moving. It is possible for a nation to be politically overdeveloped orunderdeveloped, and we suggest that either political or non-political changes willoccur to put the nation into equilibrium. (Cutright 1963: 264)

This prediction presupposes an extremely tight integration of national systems.It furthermore i mpli es the assumption that the social and economic develop-ment indicators represent the structural conditions that in the long run aredec is ive for the chances of democracy. However, these factors cannot explainon the ir own why any deviat ions f rom the predicted configura tion should ex is tin the first place. Other conditions, such as those considered in the ad hochypo theses, become then by impl icat ion merely temporary obstac les to repre-sentative democratic forms of government or passing favorable circumstances.

Six years later, Cu tr igh t and Wiley (1969) publ ished a study tha t respondedto a number of questions raised by cr it ics . I t consti tuted a sign if icant advance inquan ti tat ive comparat ive research on democracy. They selected 40 countries

that were self-governing throughout the period from 1927 to 1966, thusexcluding the effects of foreign occupation and colonial rule on the form of


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16 The Cont roversy

government. This represen ts a smal l, but s ign if icant advance toward the idea l ofemploying units of analysis that are independent of each other - a t echni calp resupposit ion of causal inference f rom cor relat iona l analysis tha t can never beful ly met for human societ ies , especial ly in the twent ieth cen tury.

With this sample ofcountries they stud ied democracy in relat ion to soc ial andeconomic development in four successive decades, 1927-36, 1937-46,1947-56, and 1957-66. In this way they were abl e not onl y to examine the same

re la tionsh ips in four d ifferent per iods but also to subject the question of causaldi rect ion to a "cross- lagged" cor re lat iona l tes t. Their conclusion: the posi tiveassociation between social and economic development and democracy holds foral l four decades, and the data suggest a causal pr io ri ty especial ly for economicdevelopment.. The analysis then turned to the conditions of change in politi cal representa-

non over time. What accounts for stabil ity of regime form i n the face of socialand economic change? And which factors are associated with declines inpolitical representati on, whi ch occur in spit e of the fact that literacy rates andenergy consumption, the indicators of social and economic development, hardlyshow similar declines? Here a simple measure of social security provisions,based on the age and number of national social security programs, provedilluminating.

Changes in pol it ica l represen tat ion were virtual ly conf ined to nat ions thatrated low in the provision ofsocial securi ty and at the same t ime high in l i teracy.This led Cutright and Wiley to a revision of Cutright's earlier equilibriumtheorem which predicted that countries with a political representation "toohigh" or "too low" in view of thei r level of soci al and economic development,:ould decline or increase in political representation; Only nations high inl iteracy and low in social secur ity provisions conformed to this expectat ion.Where literacy as well as social security were low, little or no change wasobserved . Nei ther d id any sign if icant po li tical change occur in countries wi thhigh social security, whatever their levels of literacy.

The interpretation of these results given by Cutright and Wiley stayed asclose as possible to the original equilibrium model : economic developmententails division of labor and social differentiation to which representati vedemocracy is the most adequate constitutional response. This functionalistargument is now complemented by a causal hypothesis concerning socialdevelopment : increasing l iteracy and re la ted aspec ts o f social change foster apopulation's interest and capability in political participation and thus engenderpressures for democratization. .

The stabilizing effect of social security provisions, which constitutes the mainn~w fmding~ is explained by t wo ideas, the second of which is only obliquelyhinted at . Fi rs t, sat isfying major economic interests of the populat ion streng-thens people's a llegiance to the pol it ica l s ta tus quo , independen t of consti tu-tional form. Demands for democracy, in this view, derive their strengt h fromunmet economic needs.

. ~ he .second explanation can be combined with the first, but it is a sharply

dist inctive argument once fully developed. The capaci ty of a government todeliver social securi ty programs can be taken as an indication of a st rong and

Th e C o n tro ve rsy 17

effective state apparatus, and - so we interpolate the argument - such stateapparatuses may be strong enoug~ to majnta~n the. const itut ion~l s ta tus . qU?:strong enough to defend i tse lf against forces III soc iety demanding a VOice Incollective decision-making, effective enough to "bribe" them into quiescence,and even powerful enough to crush them.

Retreat from comprehensive theoretical interpretations

Subsequen t studies changed and ref ined the ind ica tors for democracy/ as wel las the measures of social and economic development ; they analyzed differen tsamples of countries, and exami ned constitutional change over time. Moreimport ant, however, was a subtle but significant shift in the relation of thesestudies to i ssues of theory. Typ ica lly, they exp lored proposi tions derived f romalternat ive theoret ical views of the relat ion between development and demo-cracy, considering now in addition to modernization theory also the moreconf lict -o rien ted ideas of wor ld -system and dependency theor ies , At the sametime, they tended to refrain from such broader theoretical i nterpret ations asoffered by Lipset and Cutr igh t and focused more and more on spec if ic tes tablehypotheses.

Ken Bollen's work, arguabl y the most careful of this type, brought furthermethodological ref inements together with confi rmation of the basic empir ica lgeneralizations. Bollen also responds to a wider range of theoretical arguments.His paper on "Pol itical Democracy and t he Timing of Development" (Bollen1979) takes off f rom the skept ic ism abou t any clear-cut relat ionship betweensocioeconomic development and democracy t hat we will encounter when weturn to the comparative-historical studies. To anticipate, this view seesfavorable conditions for democracy rooted in the particular historical constella-t ion of early capi tal ism and i t maintains tha t such favorable cond it ions are no tgoing to be repeated.

Bol len formulated this as the hypothesis that "the ear lier a coun try beg ins todevelop , the higher i ts level o f democracy," not ing tha t one cou ld well argue the

opposite byv ir tue of a diffusion of the democrat ic ideal over t ime which wouldexert more pressures for democracy in lat e developing count ries. Using twodifferent measures for the "beginning" of development, he found no significantassoc ia tion between the t iming of development and po li tical democracy. Theinterpretat ion of this negative finding is carefully l eft open. It could, forinstance, be the result of the opposite - and mutually canceling - effects ofdifferent factors associated with the timing of development.

His analysis demonstrates again a rather robust assoc iat ion between econo-mic development and democracy. This is especi ally significant because heexamines a very large sample of 99 countries and because he employs adifferent set of indicat ors for political democracy. The association betweenpolitical democracy and economic development was fundamentally unaffectedby this different operationalization.

Bollen's study also throws light on the role of cultural factors and on theimpact of state strength on democracy. He found political democracy to be


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1 8 T he C on tro ve rsy

positi~ely a~sociated ~th the proportion of Protestants in a country andnegative ly WI0 the f rac tion of domest ic economic product ion used for govern-T?ent expenditures. In subsequent publications, Bollen explored the interrela-tIons between political democracy and income inequalit y as well as betweendemocr~cy and the degree of a country's dependence on other countries int ransnat iona l economic relat ions. To these issues we now turn.. The rel ~tion between income inequal ity and democracy had been a central

I ssue for Lipset (1959 /1980) aswell as for some of the c lassic au thors on whosework he built hi s own argument. If these arguments lead us to expect chancesfo r demo~rac~ to be more favorable under condi tions of reduced inequali ty, thereverse direction of causation is equalJy plausible: wherever democracv is morethan a mere formal sham, it should over time contribute to a red~ction ofinequality. Either or both of these relationships between inequality anddemo.cracy sh~uld resu~t in fairly clear-cut negative correlations, although bothare likely to Involve tirne-Iags the length of which is not easily specified.Empirical analyses have had trouble identifying clear-cut patterns.

A number of ear ly quant itat ive studies came to con trad ictory resul ts. Bol lenand Jackman (1985b) concluded from their review of these studies as well astheir own analysis that no relationship could be established once the level ofdevelopment was t aken into account. Muller (1988) argued that this was true

only if democracy and inequality are measured at a single point in time. Hefoun~ th~t the length of a country 's experience with democracy has a significantneg~?ve ~pact on i ncome i nequality - independent of level of development,pOSIt:lOn.m the world system, and the population's age structure. This is agradual Impact, measurably effective only after about two decades of democra-tic experience . .Convers.ely, while the degree of income inequality does not seemto affect the mauguratum of democracy, it does show a close relation to thechances of maintaining a democratic form of government.

The issue. is far from settl ed. Mul ler's findi ngs were challenged by Weede(1989) who introduced literacy in add it ion to leve l o f development and the agestru~ture of the population as control variables; this el iminated the centralf indu~g of Muller - the negative correlation between inequality and democratic~xpenence. In tum, Muller (1989) replicated his earlier findings even withliteracy as a control, using new measures for democratic experience andliteracy.:' .

The exploration of the relation between democracy and economic depen-dence l~d to resul~s o~e must judge ambiguous. Various authors had argued, onthe baSIS of quali tative assessments and theoreti cal considerations that theimpact of advanced "core" countries on the political economy of dependent"peripheral" countries would d iminish the chances of democracy. "Outside thecore, democracy is a rar ity" (Chiro t 1977 : 22). Thomas and o thers (1979) drewfrom several, not altogether consistent, empirical tests the conclusi on thateconomic dependence was indeed associated with political centralism.tHo, ,:ever, Bol len (1983: 476, n .13) found no significant effec t modifying therel~tIon between democracy and level of development when he introduced such~anables as pene~rati~n by multinational corporations, foreign trade concentra-non and US foreign ald. A complex classif ication distinguishing countries at the

T he C on tro ve rsy 1 9

core of the capi tal is t wor ld system, per ipheral countries and semiperipheralcoun tr ies, Which was based on pol it ica l aswel l as economic considerat ions - ontrea ty membersh ips , mi li tary intervent ions, and diplomat ic re la tions as wel l astrade flows - did lead to the conclusion that democracy had, independent of acountry 's level of economic development , worse chances in per iphera l and - toa lesser extent - in semiperipheral nations. 5 This finding suggests that geo-pol it ical internat ional conf igurat ions. may be more impor tant than economic

dependency as determinants of the chances of democracy. Shift ing the focus topolitical international relations is also suggested by the results of Muller (1985),who found no evidence that breakdowns of democracy were the result ofeconomic dependence, but observed a significant negative relation between aid,especial ly mili tary a id, by the Uni ted States, and the stabi li ty of democracies .

Quite a few other cross-national statistical studies have also dealt withspeci fi c conditions or consequences of democracy - investigating further itsrelation to economic inequality and to a country's dependence on othercountries in transnat ional economic relations or examining- for instance theimpact of democratic rule on economic performance. Th-e details of thesecomplex and often con trad ictory research f indings need not detain us here .research findings need not detain us here.

A last quantitative study to be reviewed here departs from the cross-sectional

mode of analysis of earlier work. Hannan and Carroll (1981) seek to identifysocial and economic cor re lates of transitionsfrom one formal political structure

. to ano ther. This "even t-history method" par tial ly confi rms, part ial ly modifiesand complements the f ind ings of cross- sect iona l research . Hannan and Car ro llfound that in the 90 countries studied for the period from 1950 to 1975, only afew of the variab les examined had sign if icant effects on the t ransi tions f rom oneof four political forms to another. High l evels of economi c product ion werenegatively, ethnic diversity positively associated with overall rates of change inpol it ica l form. The most s table po li tical s truc tures were mul ti -par ty systems: ofthe 39 countries with multi-party political structures in 1950, 28 had such asystem still (or again) in 1975. In line with what one would expect fromcross-sec tional ana lyses, Hannan and Car rol l' s even t-history analysis showedthat richer countries are less likely to move from multi-party politics to politicalcentra li sm, bu t the same holds for t ransit ions away f rom cen tral ized po li ticalforms: "Stated loose ly, successful coun tr ies retain the ir pol it ical st ra tegies. "(Hannan and Carroll 1981: 30-1). Ethnic diversity was not only found todestabilize formal political structures in general, but had a particularly negativeeffect on democracy: it was especially associated with transitions out ofmulti-party systems and with changes into one-party regimes.

The whole gamut of quantitative cross-national research was dismissed bymany and attacked as inadequate by a few. Its empirical concl usions as well asits - generally sparse - theoretical grounding, primarily in modernization theory,were sharply contradicted by investigations that focused on the histori es of afew countries and analyzed them in the light of more complex theoreticalarguments. These studies were cr it ica l of the a-histor ica l quasi -evolut ionarygeneralizations t hat informed modernizati on theories. Their own commonground in theoretical conception has been characterized by a focus on


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20 T he C ontroversy

lo~?- te rm effec ts of past conf licts and histor ical s tructures, by a search for thecritical collective actors in historical change, and by an emphasis on thechanging wor ld historica l environment of na tional histor ies. We offer a sketchof some of these comparat ive histor ica l works before turn ing to an evalua tion ofboth strands of research.

Early comparat ive historical invest igat ions

Karl de Schweinitz (1964) formulated a theoretical position that sharplycontradicts the no tion tha t today 's advanced capi tal is t coun tr ies represen t thef~t~re state toward which less developed countries wil l t ravel on roads roughlysimilar to the paths taken by the "early developers" . Democracy asknown in theWest was in his view the privilege of the original capi talist countries. Hereeconomic development was slow. Its decentralized character encouraged liberalpolitical concepti ons and ideals. The working class was not yet mobilized.There was no demonstration effect from neighboring more advanced countriesthat would have st imulated ind ividual and col lect ive consumption demands.~h~s, . it was far easier than in today's developing nations to impose the

d iscipl ines of consumpt ion, o f work, and of pub lic order that are necessary foreconomic development.Later developing countries need a stronger state also for a number of other

reasons - among them a very d iffe ren t interna tional economic env ironmentwhich islikely to trap the less advanced countries in unfavorable positions in thetransnational division of labor, and new technological options that can beexploited only with larger lumps of investment than private savings can sustain.The pressures toward grea ter cen tral izat ion go beyond economic considera-t ions and necessi ties . States in late developing countries also have more reasonto i~t~rvene repressively because their rapidly changing societies are moremO?lhzed. At the same time, they have rri ore effect ive means - mili tary andpol ice technology, modem systems of communica tion and transportat ion, aswell as ~etter forms of organization - to impose the three disciplines of

consumpt~on, work, and public order. If that imposition succeeds, democracy is?ot v~ry likely since democratizati on now depends largely on the val ues andmten tions of the rul ing groups. I f i t does no t succeed, ne ither development nordemocracy have good prospects. De Schwei nitz concludes (1964: 10-11):"The development of democracy in the nineteenth century was a funct ion of anunusual conf igur :a tion of histor ical c ircumstances which canno t be repea ted .The Euro-American route to democracy is closed. Ot her means must now bedev ised for bui ld ing new democrat ic s ta tes ." The remainder of the book makesclear that he sees the possibilities of developing democratic political structuresas limited indeed.

Two generations earlier, in 1906, Max Weber voiced an opinion on thech~n~es.of bourgeois democracy in Russia that is similarly skeptical and roughlyakin .m I ts reasonmg. While h is passionate sympathies lay with the st ruggle ofthe liberal democrats in Russia, his analysis of the impact of capi talism on the

r1! T he C on tro ver sy 2 1

Russian economy and espec ial ly on the Russian agrar ian struc ture led him to arather negative prognosis.

True, the bureaucracy of the autocratic regime of the Tsar would hardlysurvive the tensions and conflicts of capitalist transformation: "As far as t henegative side of t:be problem is. concerned, the view of the 'developmentaltheor is ts ' wil l be Tight .The RUSSianautocracy of the past has . .. by any humanestimate no choi ce but to dig i ts own grave" (Weber 1906: 350). But that does

not mean that it will be replaced by a democratic regime. The project ofdemocrat ization would have to rely primarily on the power of Western ideas,while it faces overwhelming structural obstacles. These obstacles are inWeber's view firstly grounded in the conditions of the Russian politicaleconomy, particularly in its agrarian problems. But the progress of democrati-zat ion is a lso not favored by the charac ter o f advanced capi ta li sm i tsel f, whichbeg ins to penetrate the Russian economy. Capi ta li sm in the twent ie th centuryrepresents in Weber's judgement an increasingly hostile environment forfreedom and democracy: "It i s completely ridiculous to a tt ribu te to roday'sadvanced capitalism an elective affinity with 'democracy' not to mention'freedom' (in an y meaning of the word)." Successful democratization in Russianow has to overcome obstacl es that derive from the political and economicprobJems of late and uneven capi tal is t development as wel l as f rom the changed

character of cap ital ism anywhere. I ts only hopes are in Weber's view the idealsof bourgeois liberal reform - a sl ender reed to Jean on."

An even more skeptical view of the relation between capitalism anddemocracy that applies to early capitalism as well can be inferred from hisanalysis o f the role of law and bureaucracy in the r ise of cap ital ism. Here Weber(1922/1968) argues for a functional correspondence or "elective affinit y"between early, competitive capitalism and the predictability of formally rationallaw and bureaucratic administration. Formal rationality and thus predictabilityare compromised by substant ive demands of just ice. Democracy, however, i s inWeber's view precisely the institutional arrangement through which suchsubstant ive demands are invading and transforming the pure formalism of law.In critical ways, then, democracy and even early capitalism were at odds witheach other.

M o re r ec en t c om p ar at iv e h is to ri ca l w o rk

Guillermo O'Donnel l (l979b) sought to exp lain authori tar ian developments inSouth America during the 1960s and 1970s that seemed at odds with theop timism implied in modernizat ion theory. Argent ina, Brazi l, Uruguay, andother countries turned away from democratic constitutional forms at fairly highlevels of development and, he argued, for reasons precisely related to theircomparatively advanced stage of development. O'Donnell 's analysis was basedon a pol it ica l economy framework, roughly comparab le to tha t o f Max Weberand de Schweini tz. He gave par ticular a ttent ion to the economic and pol it ica ldependence of a late developing country on the developed core of the capi ta li st


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22 The C ontroversy

world economy and to t he responses of t he st at e and of cl ass-based pol itics t othe prob lems engendered by this dependency.

Import . subst itut ion industr ia liza tion ( lSI) had expanded the urban middlean~ working classes and brou~ht to power populist coalitions which deliberatelyactIva~ed popul~r. forces, particularly through labor organization, and includedthem In the P?IJ! J.ca lp rocess . Economic growth underwrote the costs o f soc ia lwelfare policies .. However, the progress of "easy," or "horizontal," i.e.

cons~me: goods 1mpor: substitution. behind high tariff walls depended ongrOWIng Impor ts of capi ta l .goods, pa id for by exports of p rimary goods. Thisdevel opment st r~tegy ran into troubl e when t he for ei gn exchange r eservesaccum~lated d~r~g W_orldWar I I were exhausted and both pr ices and demandfor Latin Amenca s pnmary exports declined in the 1950s. The severe balanceo.fpaym~r:ts problems caused domestic inflation. Attempts to impose stabiliza-non policies hurt the popular sectors, divided the populist coalitions andcreated political crises. '

.Th~ gr~wth of lSI had also enlarged the number and range of t echnocraticroles In the public and private sectors. Prominent on the minds of thesetec~nocrats w~s the "deepening" of industrialization, i.e. the creation of acapi ta l. goods indust ry. However, successfu l pursu it o f this s trategy entai led:eductIoI1 of popular consumption in order to generate higher domesticmvestm:n~ levels (as . taxa tion of the wealthier sec to rs was not even considered~s a r~alIstIc alternative), and attraction of foreign capital. The crucial obstaclesIn this p~th were militant l~bor movements and populist politicians. Thisconstellation led to the.formation .0 :a coup coalition among civilian and militaryt~chnocr.a ts and the big bourg:OIsIe. They d iscarded democracy as incompa-~ble WItJ: t'urther. economic development and installed bureaucra-t ic -authori tar ian regimes. These . regimes ~nsulated economic po licy makersf rom pop_ular p ressures and deact ivated unions and lef t-wing pol it ica l par tiesby fo~ce If neces~ary. Thus, it was exactly in the more advanced of the Lati~Amencan counrnes that part icularl y harsh authorit ari an rule was i mposed int he 1960s and 1970s.

O'Donnell asserted. o~ the basis of ~ese findings an "elective affinity"between a~vanced capitalist development in dependent political economies andbureaucratic authoritaria~ rule. Though the wider and longer-term significance0 :such developmen~s ~s t reated wit h caut ion, hi s perspective i s radicallydIfferent. from the OptIn:Ism of mu~h of modernization theory: "It is impossibleto say, WIthout sys.terr:atI~comp~ratIve research, but it is a disquieting possibilitythat such authontanamsn:s mIg~t be a more likely outcome than politicaldemocracy as o ther coun tnes ach ieve or approach h igh modernizat ion (O'Don-nell 1979b : 90) .. O'D~nnelI places great emphasis on a country's dependent position in theinternat ional economic system. Dependency theory - as wel l as i ts c lose cousinworld ~stem theory (see Wall~rstein 1974 and 1976) - generally tends to se~eco .nomlc dependence as creat ing pressures toward authori ta rian rule ( see e .g.Chirot 1977; Thomas 1984). '

Seve~ year~ ?efo re


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24 The Controversy

good chances of col lect ive ac tion tha t are due to sol idary vi llage communi tiesand weak ties to the - often absent -landlords. This picture bears a strikingsimilarity to t he sket ch of t he factors Weber considered relevant i n the earlystages of the Russian revolut ion . The communist take over occur red in Russiaonly after the system of domination broke down in the revolution at the end ofWor ld War I, which was fueled by peasan t discon ten t.

Moore's v iew of the condi tions for the reac tionary revolut ion f rom above thatends in fasci st dictat orship can be put in simil arly apodict ic form as foHows: acoalition led by a strong state and powerful landowning classes includes abourgeoisie that is not without some st rength but depends on the support of thesta te through trade protec tion ism, favorable labor leg islat ion and other mea-sures that in d ifferent combinat ions character ize top-down, sta te -sponsoredindustrialization. Agricultural labor remains significantly controlled by repress-ive means rather than pr imari ly through the market. Owing to vi llage and workstructures that do not favor solidarity, the peasant revolutionary potential is low.The internal tensions and contradictions of industrialization under reactionarysponsorship lead to experiments wi th democracy that do nOI , however, yieldresults acceptable to the dominant classes. Fascist repression is the finaloutcome. The similarity of this path to the developments in Argentina andBrazil in the 1960s and 1970s did not escape t he notice of O'Donnell. In fact,

he exp lores the broader theoret ical impl ica tions of h is own analysis p rec isely bylinking it to Moore' s work and by extending Moore's ideas beyond the cases ofJapan and Germany (O'Donnell 1979b: 88-90).

T he emergence of parliamentary democracy represents the oldest route tomodernity. The pict ure Moore offers here is more compl ex than in the case oft he other two routes. Confli ct and a fai rly even bal ance of power between thelords and the crown are a first condition. A strong bourgeoisie, at odds in itsinterest s wi th the rural domi nant class and even able to entice landlords i ntocommercial pursuits, is of critical importance: "No bourgeoisie, no democracy"(Moore 1966: 418). Moore also notes that in all three cases of democraticdevelopment studied there was a revolutionary, violent break with the past,unsettling the established domination oflandlords and crown. Other conditionsthat emerged as significant in the rise of communist revolution and fascist

dictatorship show, however, no c lear-cut pa ttern in the h is tor ies represent ingthe democrat ic route: whi le labor repressive agricu lture was presen t in Franceand the United States, English agriculture relied rather exclusively on themarket. The capacit y of rural labor for collecti ve action - the revol utionarypotential of the peasantry - was high in France but low in England and theUnited States.

On the case of India, Moore takes a simi lar position as de Schweinitz: thereare complex conditi ons that all ow the insti tutional legacy of post-colonialdemocracy to survive. But due to the limited compatibility of freedom andeff iciency under curren t condi tions, Ind ian leaders have to face cruel choicesbetween effective democracy and effective development. The argument revealsa conv ict ion that informs Moore's ana lysis of al l rou tes into the modern wor ld :"The tragic fact of the matter is that the poor bear the heaviest costs ofmodernization under both socialist and capitalist auspices." Therefore, moder-

The Controversy 25

nizat ion is no t possible withou t "ei ther masked coercion on a massive scale, asin the capitalist model including even Japan, or more direct coercion approach-ing the soc ia li st mo~el" (Moo. re 19??: 410).

In her incisive review of S O C I a lOrigins, Skocpol (1973) takes Moore to task ona number of point s, among them his neglect of the variably autonomous role ofstates and his lack of an inter societal perspect ive .f She argues tha t a st rong statewith a capacity for repression - something absent i n England for example, dueto the reliance on the navy for military power - is an essential element of theauthoritari an class coalition. Her argument for the importance of t he interso-cietal perspective is, in part, a plea for integrating Moore's domestic classanalysis with the central ideas of dependency theory and Wallersteinianwor ld-system theory. But a t the same t ime, i t i s an argument for the importanceof inter state relat ions in analyz ing domest ic pol it ics and the variab ly autono-mous role of the sta te. Concep tua lizing sta tes as standing at the inter sect ion ofdomestic and international power relations proved to be exceptionally fruitful inher own comparat ive study of social revo lut ions (Skocpo l 1979).

Moore's ana lysis is open to qui te importan t o ther cr it icisms, One was br ie flynoted earlier and will occupy us later at some length: the role of the workingclass in democratization is rather radically neglected. This is in part aconsequence of Moore's focus on long h is tor ical gesta tion per iods. In addi tion,

it follows from his defmition of democracy which focuses on public contestationof political issues rather than on inclusive participation in the political process.The democratic struggles of the working class then appear only to extend anotherwise already largely established pattern. We will argue for a very differentVlew.

Another impor tant cri tique takes off f rom the apparen tly innocuous fac t thatthe time periods taken into account for the different countries vary considerablyin length. Whi le t he cases of democratization are pursued over very long ti meperiods, the discussion ofJapan and Germany breaks off with the establishmentof Fascism. This can be defended on ly by arguing tha t post-war democrat iza-t ion in these two coun tr ies was exclusively a resul t o f foreign imposi tion , whichin turn is -like all questions of international context in Moore's ana-lysis - excluded from the explanatory framework.

I f this exc lusive focus on domestic developments is modified and if the t imeper iods considered are adjusted in theoret ical ly mean ingful ways, i t i s possibleto argue tha t the react ionary path to pol it ical moderni ty has some poten tial forleadi ng - by tortuous detours - to democratic political forms. This argumentgoes far beyond the cases ofJapan and Germany. France came at var ious po intsin the n ine teenth century qui te c lose to the reac tionary path model , yet i t r ight lyfigures as one of the main cases of democratization." Spain, Portugal, andGreece as well as Argentina and Brazil may well be seen as instances of asimilar development toward democracy in the twentieth century (Ruesche-meyer 1980).

Yet, these as well as other critiques notwithstanding, Moore's book repre-sents a tower ing achievement . It helped transform the social sciences byreestablishing the comparative historical mode of research as the mostappropriate way of analyzing macro-social structures and developments.


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26 The Cont roversy

Tw o m o de s o f r es ea rc h - c on tr ad ic to ry r es ul ts

Our rev iew of quan ti ta tive cross-na tional and comparat ive histor ica l s tudies onthe relation between capitalist development and democracy has shown usresults that rather consistently contradict each other. We are faced with aserious dilemma because the two research traditions are separated by twot hings at once: by opposite findi ngs and by different methods.

The fir st research t radit ion covers many count ries, takes for each count ryonly a minimum of standardized, aggregate, but not always reliable informationinto account, and translates that information - on occasion not with greatdeli cacy - into numerical expressions in order to subject it to compl ex mathe-matical operations. It sees the quant itat ive analysis of a large number of cases asthe onl y viable substitute for the experimental approach that is impossi ble i nmacro-social analysis.

The other tradition studies only a few countries at a time, and while thecomplexity of such analyses far exceeds the possibility of testing the explanatorypropositi ons with so smal l a number of cases, these works are attentive t o manyfac to rs suggested as relevant by common sense and theoret ical a rgument , theytreat h is to rica l par ticular ity with care, they give weight to the h is to rica l genesis

of social and political structures and developments, and they betray an attractiveawareness of long-term histo rica l developments in d iffe rent par ts o f the wor ld .Taken together, the two research t radi tions high ligh t fundamenta l methodo-

logical issues that are hard t o do j usti ce t o at the same ti me. Faced with difficultd ilemmas, each makes d iffe rent s trategic decisions on what to give prior ity.

The quant itat ive cross-na tional research, which we respec t for i ts breadth ofcoverage, the objectivization of analysis, and the quantitative testing of specifichypotheses, has come to a number of consistent results. The outstandingfinding is that there exists a stable positive relationship between socioeconomicdevelopment and democracy.

The comparative historical tradition of research, which we respect for its~nalyses of historical process and for the sophistication of theoretical argument,ISby contrast extremely skeptical of the chances of democracy in contemporary

developing countries. These authors do not only deny that there exists aconsistent and theoretically plausible relationship between democracy anddevelopment , capitali st or otherwise, but they al so see the odds of democracyespecially in developing countries as extremely unfavorable. They find the mainreasons for this wor ld historical change since t he first rise of capi talism in t hedifferent and more powerful role of states (including the expansion andtransformation of the military forces) in both less developed and advancedindust rial countri es, in the different balance of power bet ween dominant andsubordinat e classes and different pat terns of class alliance in less developedco~ntries , and in the d ifferen t t ransnat iona l env ironment in which late-comingnations have to advance the ir projec ts o f development .

How can this dilemma - created by contradictory results of different res-earch methods - be resolved? Before that question is approached, one pointshould be made clear. This is not a conflict between divergent quasi-

The Cont roversy 27

hilosop,hical, "meta-theore~cal" positions, as was argued for dif~er~nt theories~f the state byAlford and Fnedland (1985) . In that case the conf lict ing analys~swould simply talk past each o ther. The con trad ic to ry resul ts . a t I ssue here can ~nour view be confronted with each other mu~~ mor~ directly;. they a:e Inpr inc ip le open to resolut ion on the b~sis of empirica l evidence. This, too, IStheway in which they have been. treated In the past :- by Max Weber no less than bythe quant itat ive methodolog is ts o f today. We wil l f ir st turn to some methodolo-gical arguments and r efl ecti ons, givi ng emphasis t o those that chal lenge the

widely accepted monopoly of the quantitative cross-nation~lmethodology, andthen seek to arrive at a judgement about the best foundations of a strategy ofresolving the contradictions.

Methodological Reflections

Crit ique and counterc ri tique

A convenient st art ing point for examining the cont radictions between the t woresearch traditions is O'Donnell 's critique of cross-national statistical research,one of the rare responses from a comparative historical scholar to the othersi de. O'Donnell argues, fi rst, that causal inferences from quantit at ive cross-nat iona l evidence imply the assumpt ion that the causa l cond it ions which affe~tthe chances of democracy today are the same as those which shaped democra ticdevel opments during the early rise of capi talism, an assumpti on t hat may wel lbe wrong. This, of course, invokes the fundamental claim made by all thecomparat ive h is to rica l analysts we reviewed - tha t democrat ic developmentswere rooted in a historical const el lation not likely to be repeat ed. However,quant itative research results make it diffi cult to sustain the lines of argumentthat have been advanced so far. Bollen (1979), as we have seen, found noconsis tent relat ionship between the t iming of development and democracy or,more preci sel y, none that overrides t he associati on between democracy andleve l o f development. Fur thermore, the sta ti st ical assoc ia tion betwe~n dem?-

cracy and level of development holds even if the most advanced industrialcountri es are excluded from the analysis (see e.g. Cut right 1963: 258; Marsh1979: 238). T hat means i t cannot be "explained away" by a strong associ at ionbetween democracy and the h ighest levels of development achieved by the ear lymodernizers. 10

Next O'Donnell charges that if "deviations" from the central tendencyidentified by multivariate analysis are dismissed as due to idiosyncraticobstac les, " the basic parad igm is rendered immune to empirica l falsi fica tion"(O'Donnell 1979b: 5). This objection seems rooted in the comprehensiveinterest in each case charact er istic of comparative hist ori cal research; ratherthan dismissal the deviant case deserves special attention. The objection isplausible in the context of comparative historical analysis. It i s not conv incing asa cri tique of t he stati stical approach, whi ch f oc~ses on a number of vana?les

whi le randomi zi ng t he effects of others. True, In the ear ly work of Cutright


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28 T he C on tr over sy

(1963) we encountered interpretive arguments, wedded to the neo-.evolut ionism and the equ il ibr ium assumptions of modernizat ion theory tha t f itO'_Donnel l's char.ge rather exact ly. However, Cutright h imself addu~ed theevidence ~orvery Important modifications of~e assumed equilibrium tendency(see Cutright and WIley 1969). And later studies no longer viewed the statisticalasso~iat ions as conf irming complex macro- trends, but used them rather t

(texto para el 27-mar-12) capitalist development and democracy

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