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Abstract
This article argues that much of the work on democratization and democratic consolidation is obscured by a conceptual fog, when at the very least some of this confusion could be ameliorated by parsing out components that are obviously liberal in nature. An admission of the importance of liberalization and liberal consolidation as distinctly different in form and measurement from democratization and democratic consolidation are the first steps to better research on the varieties of causation that constitute and propel the dissolution of more authoritarian regimes towards more liberal democratic regimes. Acknowledging that the liberal in liberal democracy is unpopular for some, and that liberal democracy does not necessarily mean American liberal democracy, go a long way to freeing these terms from ethnocentric misconceptions, as well as cementing analytical clarification. Though all modern democracies have both liberal and democratic components, democratic consolidation does not guarantee liberal consolidation.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Kheang Un, Beth McGowan, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. He is also very appreciative of the financial and moral support provided by the Center of Southeast Asian Studies and the Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University, including multiple federally funded Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships for the Burmese language. The views expressed herein are the author's own.
Notes on contributor
T.F. Rhoden is an independent consultant with seven years working and living experience in Myanmar and Thailand. He is a current PhD candidate in political science with the Department of Political Science, Northern Illinois University, 415 Zulauf Hall, DeKalb, IL 60115-5700, USA.
Notes
1. Geddes, Paradigms and Sand Castles, 51.
2. Of course, this question has deeper political philosophic (meta-theoretical) roots, but in the spirit of social science and academic inclusivity, this article will speak about “concepts.”
3. Kurki, Causation in International Relations. These include types of causation that fall outside the Humean tradition.
4. Diamond, Developing Democracy.
5. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 269. See also Huntington, The Third Wave; and Huntington and Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy. Schumpeter's oft-quoted definition is worth repeating here: “The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote.”
6. Karl, “Imposing Consent?”; cf. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 4. Linz and Stepan call it “electoralist fallacy.”
7. Przeworski, Democracy and the Market, 26.
8. Schedler, “What is Democratic Consolidation?,” 91–92.
9. Collier and Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives.”
10. Gerring, “The Case Study,” 107; Bunce, “Comparative Democratization,” 723; Whitehead, “Comparative Politics”; Collier and Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives,” 430; Collier and Mahon, “Conceptual ‘Stretching’ Revisited”; and Sartori, “Concept Misformation.”
11. Schedler, “What is Democratic Consolidation”; O'Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule; and Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition.
12. Svolik, “Authoritarian Reversals and Democratic Consolidation,” 166.
13. Schedler, “What is Democratic Consolidation?,” 103.
14. For more complex procedural definitions, see Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy; Diamond, Developing Democracy; Schmitter and Karl, “What Democracy Is”; Dahl, After the Revolution; Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy. For an example of some substantive issues, see Phillips, Democracy and Difference, Phillips, Engendering Democracy. For a more process-oriented approach, see Tilly, Democracy; and Barber, Strong Democracy.
15. Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” 30.
16. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 239.
17. O'Donnell, “Delegative Democracy.”
18. Ibid., 54.
19. Ibid., 66.
20. Coppedge et al., “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy.”
21. Cf. Munck and Verkuilen, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy.”
22. Coppedge et al., “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy,” 248 (my italics).
23. Cf. Zakaria, The Future of Freedom, 29–58.
24. Kurki, “Politico-Economic Models of Democracy,” 9.
25. Baker and Pasuk, A History of Thailand, 269.
26. Kubicek, “Authoritarianism in Central Asia,” 36–38.
27. Silitski, “Lukashenko: Politicheskaya Biografiya,” 82.
28. Schmidt, “Delegative Democracy in Peru?,” 99–132.
29. Dahl, After the Revolution, 11.
30. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory, 12–13.
31. Gwyn, “The Separation of Powers,” 83–4; and Ceaser, Liberal Democracy and Political Science, 206.
32. Cf. Winters, Oligarchy. Winters does well to revitalize the original Aristotelian significance of extreme wealth in the meaning of “oligarch.” An oligarch can and does exist in both lower and higher levels of democracy. The question here is not whether they rule themselves, but rather if the political right to rule extends beyond themselves.
33. Joshi, “The Protective and Developmental.”
34. O'Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, 8.
35. Ibid., 10.
36. O'Donnell, “Why the Rule of Law Matters,” 39–41.
37. For another de-liberalized conception of the rule of law, see Weingast, “The Political Foundations”; and for an interesting argument against the focus on the rule of law, see Carothers, “Rule of Law Temptations”; and Carothers, “The Rule of Law Revival.”
38. Ceaser, Liberal Democracy and Political Science.
39. Nor does it exclude violent consequences. An interpretation of the five-year American Civil War which viewed the issue of slavery from the perspective of a conflict between liberalism and democracy would not be without merit. Though most would probably argue that liberal democracy most of the time is a regime which seeks nonviolent resolutions of such issues – nonviolent resolution of issues being one example of something beyond just the additive effect of liberalism or democracy itself.
40. For example, see Linz and Stepan, “Toward Consolidated Democracies,” 16.
41. Sen, “Democracy as a Universal Value.”
42. Ibid., 8–9.
43. Notice that Amartya Sen chooses not to use the phrase “liberal democracy” at all in his article.
44. Inglehart and Welzel, “How Development Leads to Democracy,” 38.
45. Mallory, “China's New Constitution.”
46. Abueva, “Filipino Democracy and the American Legacy.”
47. Valdés-Ugalde, “Janus and the Northern Colossus.”
48. Aung San Suu Kyi, “Nobel Lecture.”
49. Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, 92.
50. Interestingly, the word “democracy” itself has become so popular in the Burmese language that, unlike the word “liberal” or “liberalism” which is translated into Burmese via a Pali/Sanskrit loan word, “democracy” is carried over wholesale into the Burmese language in its English form despite there being a suitable Pali/Sanskrit loan word already in existence. Burmese now has a least one word in regular use that etymologically comes from ancient Greece.
51. Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism.