Democracy in Hard Places

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

2019 APSA Panel Proposal
“Democracy in Hard Places”

Scholars since Seymour Martin Lipset (1959) have argued that the likelihood of getting and keeping democracy is dependent on the existence of structural preconditions, such as a literate public and a developed economy. However, as we have learned from the democratization experiences of such countries as India and Indonesia, liberal democracy can be built and maintained in polities that lack these structural pre-requisites. This panel brings together scholars of Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia to identify instances in which democracy has emerged and survived despite endemic poverty, illiteracy, and a high degree of ethnolinguistic and religious difference, and to derive lessons from these experiences for scholars and practitioners.

Nancy Bermeo’s paper analyses how Timor Leste has managed to build and sustain democracy despite grinding poverty, a miniscule middle class, imperfect political institutions and the ravages of war. It challenges structural arguments and argues instead that the country’s positive trajectory is largely due to the nature of its long, armed struggle against the Indonesian state.  The body of the paper shows how the legacies of war on state institutions, political parties and political elites enabled the country to establish democracy against the odds. The paper concludes by putting the Timorese case in comparative perspective with Mozambique, Haiti and (possibly) other cases.

Rachel Riedl’s contribution highlights the fact that the plurality of third wave democratization episodes occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, and several of those remain vibrantly democratic – even increasing the quality of contestation and participation over time.  Her paper examines two such cases – South Africa and Benin – in order to explore the pathways through which elites and citizens alike established and maintained democracy against all odds. The paper will also offer a medium-n analysis of all African democracies using standard measures of state capacity, development, ethno-linguistic and religious fractionalization, etc. to consider the regional trends in comparative analysis. In both South Africa and Benin, and across much of sub-Saharan Africa, she argues, the post-authoritarian orders are based on a set of negotiations over varied rules and resources among non-democrats.  She argues that it is not democratic ideals that drive democratization, but strategic calculations among non-democrats that the bounded uncertainty democratic institutions offer can best ‘satisfice’ the competing interests of those who seek power and those who can no longer retain hegemonic control.

Ashutosh Varshney’s paper analyses perhaps the paradigmatic case of democracy in a hard place: India. Scholars from Barrington Moore to Robert Dahl to Adam Przeworski have highlighted the ways in which India’s democracy appears to confound most scholarship on democratization. India’s massive illiteracy, low per capita income, and inegalitarian caste system all constitute obstacles to democratization that India was somehow able to overcome. In this contribution, Varshney explores the politics behind India’s democratization, focusing on the principles adopted by India’s freedom movement against British rule, the kind of nation-making in which the founding fathers invested their organizational and ideological efforts, the type of Constitution that was created and which remains largely intact until now, and the democratic temper demonstrated by the early leadership.

Scott Mainwaring and Emilia Simison’s paper begins with an overview of some of the difficult obstacles to survival that confronted Latin American democracies in the third wave of democratization: initial low per capita GDPs in some countries, high rates of poverty in several, high inequality in most, and periods of terrible economic performance in most. Despite these obstacles, the breakdown rate of democratic regimes in Latin America dropped precipitously compared to earlier generations of democracy in the region. The rest of the paper focuses on the survival of democracy in one country, Argentina since 1983. Although Argentina had some democratic advantages such as one of the most developed economies in the region, the country had nevertheless experienced five democratic breakdowns between 1930 and 1976. Moreover, as measured by a drop in per capita GDP, Argentina suffered the second (1998-2002) and third worst (1984-90) economic declines under democracy in Latin America in the third wave. Under democracy, it also experienced hyperinflation, and the greatest increase in poverty and inequality of any Latin American country. During the 1998-2002 crisis, the country once had five presidents in thirteen days. The paper explores reasons for the survival of democracy in the light of these difficult challenges.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 44: Comparative Democratization

Individual Presentations

• The Puzzle of Poor Democracies - Nancy Bermeo, Princeton University

• Africa’s Democratic Outliers: Benin, South Africa, and Beyond - Rachel Beatty Riedl, Cornell University

• A Very Hard Place: Democracy in India - Ashutosh Varshney, Brown University

• Democratic Survival in Argentina - Scott Mainwaring, Kellogg Institute; Emilia Simison, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Chair

• Tarek E. Masoud Harvard University