Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

Series Editor

Hanspeter Kriesi

Department of Political and Social Science, European University Institute, San Domenico Di Fiesole, Italy

Democracy faces substantial challenges as we move into the 21st Century. The West faces malaise; multi-level governance structures pose democratic challenges; and the path of democratization rarely runs smoothly. This series examines democracy across the full range of these contemporary conditions. It publishes innovative research on established democracies, democratizing polities and democracy in multi-level governance structures. The series seeks to break down artificial divisions between different disciplines, by simultaneously drawing on political communication, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, and political economy.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14889

Editor

Ursula van Beek

Democracy under Threat

A Crisis of Legitimacy?

Editor

Ursula van Beek

Transformation Research Unit (TRU), Department of Political Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

ISBN 978-3-319-89452-2     e-ISBN 978-3-319-89453-9

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939710

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

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We would like to dedicate the book to our dear friend and colleague, the late Prof. Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski, who had travelled with us on our intellectual journey from the start and who thus made a major contribution to the creation of TRU.

Preface

Peeking cautiously from behind the erstwhile Iron Curtain, as this author had done, democracy seemed an unattainable dream—the epitome of individual freedom, political liberty and an enviable lifestyle. In the relatively stable bipolar world of the time, definitions were simple: black and white, with few shades of grey in between. When that world collapsed, a host of new democracies sprang up, indicating a similarly positive reading of democracy from other authoritarian vantage points across Africa, East Asia and Latin America.

The Western liberal model was emulated by emerging democracies since the onset of the Third Wave of democratization in the early 1970s (Huntington 1991). However, the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989 strongly reinforced the conviction about the model’s viability, so much so that the demise of communism was described as “the end of history” (Fukuyama 1992). The anticipated universalization of Western liberal democracy was to be the final form of human government that would mark the end of the ideological evolution of mankind. The legitimacy of democracy had reached its global peak.

While it is true that the disintegration of the Soviet Bloc accelerated the democratization process with the number of democracies reaching a record height, Fukuyama’s bold assertion that liberal democracy won the day globally did not materialize. Instead, what followed was not so much the replication of liberal democracy in different corners of the world, as the emergence of an internally greatly diversified new empirical category known as “young democracies” that have sprung up in widely varied cultural contexts.

The Wall Street Crash of 2008 and the resultant global economic recession underscored more clearly the fact that cultural relativism rather than normative universalism had set in. The global crisis accentuated the limits of Western-led approach to political and economic global development and integration by exposing diverse modes of insertion into the world system by individual countries and regions. The case in point has been the upsurge in autocratic regimes and the strengthening of existing ones, such as Russia and, most notably, China whose economic success implicitly validates the authoritarian development model.

In the increasingly more fragmented world, the urge to identify the “enemy” that defines us has once again surfaced, highlighting contrasts between cultural and religious values and giving rise to a nationalist brand of populism, which is inherently undemocratic. At the same time, globalization—the single most profound source of international transformation since the Industrial Revolution—exerts ever-growing pressures on democracy.

The key question this book poses is whether the legitimacy of democracy has been compromised as a result of so reconfigured a global landscape. The question is valid because political legitimacy is the wellspring of a regime to efficiently function and persist. The chapters that follow make it clear there are no easy answers to this leading question. Besides the impacts of economic globalization, digitalization and mass migration, which variably affect all countries, each national state is also subject to their own internal political and social dynamics, history and regional influences. The quality of democracy, and consequently its legitimacy, is therefore affected by different sets of factors and diverges across countries and regions.

The opening theoretical section of this book sets all these issues in context. It introduces the reader to the fluctuating fortunes of democracy over time, it exposes the perplexing complexity of the world in which we live today, and it explains what this complexity might imply for democracy and its legitimacy.

The volume builds on a history of monitoring democracy for more than two decades in several countries across all the major cultural regions of the world. The consecutive projects on democracy were first conducted by an international team of researchers known as the Transformation Research Initiative (TRI) based at the Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Since 2015, the informal team has been institutionalized at the university as the Transformation Research Unit (TRU).

Beginning with two comparative studies of South Africa and Poland (van Beek 1995; Wnuk-Lipinski 1998), the sample was subsequently expanded to include East Germany (later unified Germany), Chile, South Korea and Turkey (Van Beek 2005, 2010; Van Beek and Wnuk-Lipinski 2012; Taiwan Journal of Democracy 2015). Three criteria guided the original choice of the included countries:

- They had to have emerged from different types of authoritarian regimes

- They had to be maximally diversified in terms of culture so as to fit the “most different cases - most similar outcomes” research design, and

- They had to be the success stories in democratization in their respective geographical locations.

Poland, South Africa, Chile and South Korea were chosen on the basis of Freedom House indicators, which in the early post-transition period placed each of those countries as a democratization leader; Turkey was added as an example of a successful democracy in the Islamic world. Unified Germany and Sweden became the control cases.

The story of those countries since those heady days is first told by combining macro-analyses with the analyses of micro-level developments to identify factors that promote consolidation, are responsible for lack of consolidation or contribute to democratic de-consolidation.

A closer look at the cases starts with Poland, Turkey and South Africa. These three countries are examined individually because they have become the most troubling ones in the sample and jointly illustrate the divergent ways in which democracy can be, and has been, eroded to the possible detriment of its legitimacy.

The four remaining countries are assessed within their regional contexts for two different reasons. The first two, Chile and South Korea, remain highly rated democracies with no evident internal legitimacy problems, but each one is located in a region where potential challenges to democracy are more likely to come from outside the two countries’ own borders. In Latin America, Chile is the exception rather than the rule in democratic quality, whereas South Korea and other democracies in the region, more specifically Taiwan, are under the shadow of their giant non-democratic neighbour, China.

The two control cases of Germany and Sweden are also examined in the wider Western European context. This is because the region as a whole is affected by the same globalization-induced problems ranging from financial crises to immigration, and from climate change to terrorism, all of which impede their problem-solving capacity as nation states. The starting assumption here is that if a legitimacy deficit should be observed even in the well-established Western democracies, then it can be concluded that democracy as a form of government is in crisis.

Two aspects bearing heavily on democracy receive attention at the global level. The first considers the nature and severity in which globalization puts under pressure the sustainability of welfare states, linking this discussion to the recent emergence of populism in a growing number of middle-income and high-income countries. The other aspect reviewed is the impact on the legitimacy of democracy of the global “screen culture” embedded in Television and the Internet. The works of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley provide the metaphorical context for this discussion.

No book exploring the long string of problems democracies face today should end without offering at least a tentative suggestion at a remedy that might help democracy overcome its current difficulties. The final chapter does just that. It proposes for democracy to learn from the long history of ideas and experiences of diplomacy. The lessons are badly needed!

References

Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The end of history and the last man . Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Huntington, Samuel. 1991. The Third Wave. Democratization in the late twentieth century . Norman: Oklahoma University Press.

Taiwan Journal of Democracy . 2015. 11 (1): 1–162. This edition of the journal was dedicated entirely to publishing the findings of a research project conducted by the Transformation Research Unit (TRU) focused on the impact on democracy of the global financial crisis and the following recession. http://www.tfd.org.tw/opencms/english/publication/journal/data/Journal0022.html

Van Beek, Ursula (ed.). 1995. South Africa and Poland in transition: A comparative perspective. Pretoria: HSRC Publishers.

Van Beek, Ursula (ed.). 2005. Democracy under construction: Pattern from four continents. Bloomfield Hills and Opladen: Barbara Budrich Publishers and Pretoria: van Schaik Publishers.

Van Beek, Ursula (ed.). 2010. Democracy under scrutiny: Elites, citizens, cultures. Bloomfield Hills and Opladen: Barbara Budrich Publishers.

Van Beek, Ursula and Wnuk-Lipinski, Edmund. 2012. Democracy under stress: The global crisis and beyond. Bloomfield Hills and Opladen: Barbara Budrich Publishers and Stellenbosch: Sun Press and STIAS.

Wnuk-Lipinski, Edmund (ed.). 1998. Values and radical social change: Comparing Polish and South African experience. Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences.

Ursula van Beek

Stellenbosch, South Africa

.

This book reports on the findings of the second part of a project entitled: “Global Democracy: Political Institutions and Cultural Contexts” funded by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF). The results of the first part of the project were published in the Taiwan Journal of Democracy. Vol. 13. No. 1, July 2017.

The authors wish to thank the NRF for their support.

Contents

Part I Theoretical Aspects and Overview

1 Globalization, Populism and Legitimacy in Contemporary Democracy

Dieter Fuchs and Hans-Dieter Klingemann

2 Temporal Models of Political Development: In General and of Democratization in Particular

Laurence Whitehead

3 Democratic Quality and Legitimacy in the TRU Countries

Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Ursula Hoffmann-Lange

Part II Critical Cases

4 The Return of Nationalist Ethos: The Loss of Liberal Democracy in Poland?

Ursula van Beek

5 Identity Politics: Extreme Polarization and the Loss of Capacity to Compromise in Turkey

Yilmaz Esmer

6 Political Radicalism: Responding to the Legitimacy Gap in South Africa

Nicola de Jager and Cindy Steenekamp

Part III Regional Aspects

7 Democratization in Chile: A Long-Run and Comparative Perspective

Laurence Whitehead

8 Democratic Resilience in South Korea and Taiwan

Joseph Wong

9 Globalization and Political Legitimacy in Western Europe

Dieter Fuchs and Edeltraud Roller

Part IV Global Aspects

10 Globalization and Social Protection: An Economic Perspective

Krige Siebrits

11 Global Electronic Screen Culture: Legitimacy at Stake?

Pierre du Toit

12 Lessons for Democracy: Diplomacy to the Rescue?

Christer Jönsson

Part V Conclusions

13 The Question of Legitimacy in Contemporary Democracies

Ursula van Beek, Dieter Fuchs and Hans-Dieter Klingemann

Index

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Hierarchical model of support for democracy (Fuchs 2007: 166)

Fig. 2.1 The web of qualities: Latin America (selected countries) (Recreated from Morlino 2011: 256)

Fig. 2.2 The web of qualities: Eastern Europe (selected countries) (Recreated from Morlino 2011: 257)

Fig. 3.1 Liberal democracy index

Fig. 3.2 Radar screen graph South Africa for “liberal democracy” 1990 and 1995

Fig. 3.3 TRU cases, dimensions of liberal democracy 1995

Fig. 3.4 TRU cases, liberal democracy 2007

Fig. 3.5 Impact of recession 2008–2010

Fig. 3.6 TRU cases, liberal democracy 2014

Fig. 3.7 Governance indicators TRU countries 1996–2015

Fig. 3.8 Preference for democracy in the seven countries

Fig. 3.9 Essential for democracy: Civil rights protect people’s liberty against oppression

Fig. 3.10 Government should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for vs. people should take more responsibility to provide for themselves

Fig. 3.11 Incomes should be made more equal vs. we need larger income differences as incentives for individual efforts

Fig. 3.12 Mean confidence in governmental institutions

Fig. 3.13 Share of respondents believing that individual human rights are respected in their country

Fig. 3.14 Perceived deficit in the quality of democracy in respondents’ country

Fig. 3.15 Evaluation of democracy and authoritarian alternatives: Sweden

Fig. 3.16 Evaluation of democracy and authoritarian alternatives: Chile

Fig. 3.17 Evaluation of democracy and authoritarian alternatives: Korea

Fig. 3.18 Evaluation of democracy and authoritarian alternatives: South Africa

Fig. 4.1 Economic and cultural orientations

Fig. 4.2 Support for political parties and religiosity of supporters

Fig. 4.3 Support for opposing narratives

Fig. 4.4 Impact of PiS narrative by reaction to statements

Fig. 4.5 Impact of anti-PiS narrative by reaction to statements

Fig. 5.1 US presidential elections: 1960–2016

Fig. 6.1 Relationship between quality of governance, legitimacy and support for democratic regimes

Fig. 6.2 Levels of support for regime type

Fig. 7.1 Liberal democracy index for the TRU countries 1980–2014 (V-Dem Data: Version 7)

Fig. 7.2 Dimensions of liberal democracy in Chile 1990, 2008, 2014 (V-Dem Data: Version 7) ( Dimensions of Liberal Democracy (anti-clockwise on diagram) : V2xlg_legcon = Legislative constraints on the executive index; V2x_jugcon = Judicial constraints on the executive index; V2xcl_rol = Equality before the law and individual liberty index; V2xel_frefair = Clean elections index; V2x_suffr = Share of population with suffrage; V2xme_altinf = Alternative sources of information index; and V2x_freep_thick = Expanded freedom of expression index)

Fig. 7.3 Governance in Chile 1996–2015 ( World Bank : Worldwide Governance Indicators)

Fig. 7.4 Web of democratic qualities: Latin America (selected countries) (Morlino 2011: 257)

Fig. 7.5 Control of corruption in Chile and the other TRU countries—Evolution from 1996 to 2015 ( World Bank : Worldwide Governance Indicators)

Fig. 9.1 Institutional structure and political culture

Fig. 9.2 Hierarchical model of support for democracy

Fig. 9.3 Preference for democracy (Response categories “very good” and “fairly good”)

Fig. 9.4 Preference for autocracy (strong leader) (Response categories “very good” and “fairly good”)

Fig. 9.5 Unambiguous support of democracy (difference between democracy and autocracy i.e. proportion of citizens who prefer democracy as rule of government (“very good” and “fairly good”) and at the same time reject a strong leader (“fairly bad” and “very bad”)

Fig. 9.6 Preference for democracy for different age cohorts (2010–2014) (response categories “very good” and “fairly good”; definition of age cohorts: before/after WWII (1885–1945), 1960s–1970s (1946–1957), 1980s (1958–1968), 1990s (1969–1981), 2000s (1982–2000))

Fig. 9.7 Preference for autocracy (strong leader) for different age cohorts (2010–2014) (response categories “very good” and “fairly good”; definition of age cohorts: before/after WWII (1885–1945), 1960s–1970s (1946–1957), 1980s (1958–1968), 1990s (1969–1981), 2000s (1982–2000))

Fig. 9.8 Satisfaction with the functioning of democracy (codes 6–10; scale 0 = extremely dissatisfied … 10 = extremely satisfied)

Fig. 9.9 Satisfaction with the functioning of democracy for different age cohorts (codes 6–10; scale 0 = extremely dissatisfied … 10 = extremely satisfied)

Fig. 10.1 Harmonised unemployment rates in OECD countries, 1970–2015 (percentages of the labour forces of 15 countries)

Fig. 10.2 Part-time employment in OECD countries, 1990–2015 (percentages of total employment in 14 countries)

Fig. 10.3 Public social expenditure in OECD countries, 1980–2015 (percentages of GDP, unweighted averages for 19 countries)

Fig. 10.4 Selected components of tax revenues in OECD countries, 1980–2015 (percentages of GDP, unweighted averages for 20 countries)

Fig. 10.5 Convergence in the strictness of employment protection regulation in OECD countries, 1985–2013 (standard deviations of indices for 20 countries)

List of Tables

Table 3.1 TRU cases, liberal democracy index, regional comparisons 2014

Table 3.2 World Bank Governance Indicators, TRU countries 2015

Table 3.3 Human Development Index, major components, changes 1990–2014

Table 3.4 Number of respondents in the seven TRU countries in different waves of the World Values Survey (WVS)

Table 3.5 Anti-establishment parties (latest election results)

Table 3.6 Confidence in political institutions among MPs and supporters of government and opposition parties in the most recent surveys

Table 3.7 Democratic quality, legitimacy and political demands in the TRU countries

Table 4.1 Voting results by age group

Table 4.2 Voting results by education level

Table 5.1 Turkey’s democracy scores, 2010–2015 according to international IDEA

Table 5.2 Five-item gender equality scale

Table 5.3 Polarization around religious values and sexual orientation

Table 5.4 Polarization around gender equality and morality

Table 5.5 Polarization around social distance and overall divergence means

Table 6.1 Assessment of government performance, 2006 and 2013

Table 6.2 Levels of institutional trust, 1995–2013

Table 9.1 Determinants of satisfaction with democracy 2014 (OLS regression)

Table 9.2 Date of European Value Surveys/World Value Surveys

Table 9.3 Constructs and indicators

Table 10.1 Poverty and income inequality in OECD countries, mid-1980s to recent years (poverty rates and Gini coefficients for 13 countries)

Table 10.2 Per capita public social expenditure in OECD countries at constant 2010 prices, 1980–2013 (indices for 19 countries, selected years)

Table 10.3 Measures of the generosity, adequacy and incentive effects of social protection programmes in OECD countries, 2001–2015 (percentages for 23 countries)

Table 10.4 The strictness of employment protection regulations in OECD countries, 1985–2013 (indices for 20 countries)

Table 13.1 V-Dem liberal democracy index and regime type, 2006–2016

Notes on Contributors

Dirk Berg-Schlosser    is Professor Emeritus at Philipps University, Marburg, Germany. He is the former Director of the Institute of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Marburg. He was Chair of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and served as Vice-President of International Political Science Association (IPSA). His research interests include political culture, empirical democratic theory, development studies, comparative politics and comparative methodology. His major publications in English are: Tradition and Change in Kenya (1984), Political Stability and Development (with Rainer Siegler 1990), Political Culture in Germany (ed. with Ralf Rytlewski 1993), Poverty and Democracy (ed. with Norbert Kersting 2003), Conditions of Authoritarianism and Democracy in Europe 1919–39 (2 vol. ed. with Jeremy Mitchell 2000 and 2002), Perspectives of Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe (ed. with Raivo Vetik 2001), Democratization—the State of the Art (ed., 2nd ed. 2007), Mixed Methods in Comparative Politics (2012), International Encyclopedia of Political Science (8 vol., co-ed. with Bertrand Badie and Leonardo Morlino 2011) and Political Science—A Global Perspective ( with Bertrand Badie and Leonardo Morlino, 2017).

Nicola de Jager    is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and a research member of the Transformation Research Unit (TRU), where she heads the southern African regional sub-unit. Her recent books include South African Politics (2015) and Friend or Foe? Dominant Party Systems in Southern Africa (co-edited with Pierre du Toit, 2013). She has published in a number of peer-reviewed journals on topics of religion and politics, democratization, South African and southern African politics. She became a nationally rated researcher (NRF-rated) in 2014.

Pierre du Toit    is Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, with a specific research interest in the durability of democracies. Research on the role of the state in democratic transitions was published in the book State Building and Democracy in Southern Africa—Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa . His subsequent research has been on negotiated peace settlements, which is the subject of the 2001 book South Africa’s Brittle Peace—The Problem of Post-Settlement Violence . A long look at the South African democratic transition, mostly through the view presented by the World Values Survey, is presented in Liberal Democracy and Peace in South Africa—The Pursuit of Freedom as Dignity , co-authored with Hennie Kotzé. This was followed in 2013 by a work co-edited with Nicola de Jager on dominant party systems, Friend or Foe? Dominant Party Systems in Southern Africa. The increasing presence of social media as a platform within the public sphere of democracies leads in 2014 to another co-authored book, this time with Barend Lutz, Defining Democracy in a Digital Age. Political Support on Social Media .

Yilmaz Esmer    is Professor of Political Science at Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul, Turkey. He is the Vice Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the World Values Survey Association and has been the principal investigator for Turkey of the World Values Surveys and European Values Study since 1990. He is also a member of the TRU research team based in Stellenbosch, South Africa. His research interests include comparative values, modernization and democratization, social change, voting behaviour and quantitative methods. He is the author of numerous articles and the co-editor of Measuring and Mapping Cultures: 25 Years of Comparative Value Surveys (2007) (Co-edited with T. Pettersson).

Dieter Fuchs    is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. His research interests are focused mainly on democratic theory, comparative analysis of political cultures and European integration. His main publications include Citizens and the State (1995) and Cultural Diversity, European Identity and the Legitimacy of the EU (2011).

Ursula Hoffmann-Lange    is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Bamberg University, Germany. She has had visiting appointments at the University of Texas and Vanderbilt University in the USA and at the Institute for the Social Sciences (GESIS) in Mannheim, Germany. She is currently a Research Associate at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She is the Secretary of the Research Committee “Political Elites” of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) since 2012 and was a member of the Executive Committee of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) 2003–2009. Her research interests include elite theory and elite research, political culture, democracy and democratization, political representation. She is the author of numerous publications in her fields of expertise and is the co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites due to be published in 2018.

Christer Jönsson    is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Lund University, Sweden, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) 2009–12. His research interests include international negotiation, diplomacy, and the role of transnational networks in international cooperation. Among his publications are Communication in International Bargaining (1990), International Cooperation in Response to AIDS (co-author 1995), Essence of Diplomacy (co-author 2005), and The Opening Up of International Organizations (co-author 2013) along with several book chapters and articles in leading academic journals.

Hans-Dieter Klingemann   is Professor Emeritus of the Free University of Berlin; em. Director, Social Science Centre Berlin; President, Berlin International—University of Applied Sciences. He was elected Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (1999), a Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2001) and a Corresponding Member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (2017). In 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR).

Edeltraud Roller    is Professor of Political Science at the Unit of Comparative Politics at the Department of Political Science at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. Her main research areas include welfare state cultures, the performance of democracies and political support in old and new democracies. She has published extensively and has edited a number of books. She is the author of The Performance of Democracies (2005).

Krige Siebrits   is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, where he teaches Public Economics, Fiscal Policy, Institutional Economics and Development Economics. Before taking up his current position, he worked at the Department of Finance (now National Treasury), the Bureau of Market Research at the University of South Africa and the Department of Economics at the University of South Africa. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stellenbosch University. His main research areas include fiscal policy, government spending, political economy and the economics of institutions.

Cindy Steenekamp    is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Studies, an M.Phil. in Political Management cum laude and a Ph.D. (Stellenbosch University). She is the co-Principal Investigator of the World Values Survey and Elite/opinion leader survey in South Africa. Her primarily survey-related research focusses on elite-mass studies and cross-national studies. Her research interests include political behaviour, political culture, democratization, comparative studies and South African politics. She is the co-author of a book and has contributed several journal articles and book chapters. She has presented reports on her research at various national and international conferences as a member of SAAPS (South African Association of Politics Studies) and IPSA (International Political Science Association).

Ursula van Beek    is Professor and the founding director of the Transformation Research Unit (TRU) at Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Her research interests include path dependency and historical memory in the context of cross-cultural comparative research on democratization. In addition to contributing articles to academics journals, she has co-authored and edited a series of books on the processes of democratization in five new and two well-established democracies. They include: Poland and South Africa in Transition: A Comparative Perspective (1995), Democracy under Construction: Patterns from Four Continents (2005), Democracy under Scrutiny: Elites, Citizens, Cultures (2010), Democracy under Stress: The Global Crisis and beyond (2012).

Laurence Whitehead    is Senior Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, Oxford University, UK. During 2005/2006, he was Acting Warden there and in 2011/2012 has served as Senior Proctor of the University. He is editor of an Oxford University Press series, “Studies in Democratization” and President of the Conseil Scientifique of the Institut des Ameriques in Paris. His most recent books include Latin America: A New Interpretation (2006) and Democratization: Theory and Experience (2002). Among his most recent edited publications are: Let the People Rule? Direct Democracy in the 21st Century (2017) and Illiberal Practices: Territorial Variance with in Large Federal Democracies (2016). In recent years, he published articles in The Journal of Political Ideologies, the Taiwan Journal of Democracy , Perspectives on Politics , Democratization and the Journal of Democracy .

Joseph Wong    is Professor of Political Science and he is currently the Ralph and Roz Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Canada, and the Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President (international) for the University of Toronto. He was previously the Director of the Asian Institute at the Munk School. He was a Visiting Fellow at the colleges of St. Antony (2008) and Nuffield (2014) at Oxford Univerisity. Prof Wong has published widely in leading academic journals. In addition to book chapters, he has also published four books, including Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea (2004), Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia’s Developmental State (2011), Political Transitions in Dominant Party Systems: Learning to Lose , co-edited with Edward Friedman (2008), and Innovating for the Global South: Towards a New Innovation Agenda , co-edited with Dilip Soman and Janice Stein (2014). He is currently co-authoring a book with Dan Slater (University of Michigan) on democracy and development for Princeton University Press.

Part I

Theoretical Aspects and Overview

© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_1

1. Globalization, Populism and Legitimacy in Contemporary Democracy

Dieter Fuchs1   and Hans-Dieter Klingemann^2

(1)

Department of Social Sciences, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

(2)

Berlin International—University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany

Dieter Fuchs

Email: dieter.fuchs@sowi.uni-stuttgart.de

Is democracy under threat? In the past several years, this question has caused an intense and controversial debate. Larry Diamond (2015) as well as Steven Levitsky and Lucian Way (2015) speak of a “democratic recession,” Nancy Bermeo (2016) calls it “democratic backsliding,” while Roberto Foa and Yascha Munck (2017) name it “deconsolidation.” Arch Puddington and Tyler Roylance (2017) see the nature of the challenge to democracy as “the dual threat of populists and autocrats.” The authors differentiate between an internal challenge for democracy caused by populists and an external challenge for democracy caused by the autocrats.

Most of these analyses are descriptive and are conducted on global scale. Puddington (2017: 3) presents an aggregate analysis of changes of political regimes based on various Freedom House indicators for the period of 2007–2016. The results show a substantive democratic decline in all respects. However, these descriptive and global analyses do not answer two important questions. First, what causes the challenges facing contemporary democracy? Major proposals relate to societal development and to technological and demographic change in particular. However, the most significant and consequential of them all is the challenge of globalization (Kriesi 2013: 1–2). According to many authors, globalization has fundamentally changed the conditions under which nation state democracies function. If the institutional mechanisms and actions of the relevant political actors do not process these challenges adaptively, a crisis of legitimacy may result. This crisis of legitimacy, in turn, provides the arguments for populists and autocrats to challenge democratic rule in general. Second, it may well be that globalization hides different developmental trajectories in different countries and regions. In our analysis, we operate on the premise that the conditions for a successful adaptation to these challenges vary widely across countries and regions. To test this assumption, this volume presents empirical studies for such different regions as Western and Eastern Europe , Latin America, South Africa and East Asia.

This introductory chapter presents, in four steps, a theoretical framework for the empirical analysis of the relationship between globalization, populism and the legitimacy of democracies. In a first step, we discuss the concept of globalization and the impact of globalization on nation state democracies. In a second step, we discuss the phenomenon of populism, the challenge of the autocrats and its consequences for democracy. In a third step, we develop the concept of the legitimacy of democracies. In the process, we distinguish between objective and subjective legitimacy. In the fourth and final step, we draw some conclusions and discuss the conditions for a successful adaptation to the challenge of globalization and the specific challenges of the populists and autocrats.

The Concept of Globalization and the Impact of Globalization on Democratic Nation States

Modern democratic theory has long taken for granted that democratic nation states exercise control over factors that determine societal developments within their territories. Part of this assumption is that the fate of a national community lies, above all, in its own hands (Held 2006: 290). It is on this premise that a central democratic mechanism is grounded: citizens can hold rulers to account for the results of their decisions and actions by voting them back into or out of office. According to a number of theorists of globalization and democracy, this basic premise has become obsolete (Held 2006; Held et al. 1999; Zürn 1998; Archibugi 2008; Habermas 2001, 2012). What, then, is globalization according to these theorists and what is its impact on democratic nation states?

The most common definitions of globalization originate from David Held. A recent one reads as follows: “Globalisation denotes a shift in the spatial form of human organisation and activity to transcontinental or interregional patterns of activity, interaction and the exercise of power. It involves a stretching and deepening of social relations and institutions across space and time …” (Held 2006: 293). Jürgen Habermas (2001) defines globalization similarly: “It [the concept] characterises the increasing scope and intensity of commercial, communicative, and exchange relations beyond national borders. […] The term is just as applicable to the intercontinental dissemination of telecommunications, mass tourism, or mass culture as it is to the border-crossing risks of high technology and arms trafficking, the global side-effects of overburdened ecosystems, or the supranational collective network of governmental or non-governmental organisations. But the most significant dimension is economic globalisation, whose new quality can hardly be doubted […]” (2001: 65–66).

The spread and concentration of cross-border communications and relations of exchange such as business and financial transactions have far-reaching and problematic consequences for nation states. First, problems emerge outside nation states that nonetheless have an impact within nation states. Second, the governments of other nation states take decisions that have serious implications for one’s own nation state. Yet these decisions are not legitimized by the citizens and the government cannot be held to account for them. Third, globalization gives rise to transnational actors such as multinational corporations and international organizations such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. The consequences of these three developments are, according to Held et al. (1999): “First, the locus of effective political power can no longer be assumed to be national governments – effective power is shared, bartered, and struggled over by diverse forces and agencies at national, regional and international levels. Second, the idea of a political community of fate – of a self-determining collectivity – can no longer meaningfully be located within the boundaries of a single nation alone. Some of the most fundamental forces and processes which determine the nature of life-chances within and across political communities are now beyond the reach of nation-states” (1999: 103). In a later publication, Held goes on to argue that “the idea of community that rightly governs itself and determines its own future – an idea at the very heart of the democratic polity – is today, accordingly, problematic” (Held 2006: 291–292).

Similarly, Habermas (2012) holds that processes of globalization generate progressively interdependent world society that increasingly limits nation states’ scope for action. Nation states have “sought to compensate for the resulting loss in their problem-solving capacities with the help of international organisations” (2012: 15). This, however, comes with a twofold problem for legitimacy according to Habermas. On the one hand, international organizations “lack the degree of legitimation even more remotely approaching the requirements for procedures institutionalised via nation-states” (Habermas 2001: 71). On the other hand, democratic procedures in nation states are hollowed out by the transfer of competences from nation states to international organizations (Habermas 2012: 15). Formally, these procedures remain intact, but they are tied less and less to decisions that are relevant for the life circumstances of individuals.

From these diagnoses, both authors derive consequences for democracy. Held (2006) proposes a model of cosmopolitan democracy. The core idea, consistent with his diagnosis, is that democracy has to be extended to the regional and global levels. Habermas formulates two imperatives based on his diagnosis: first, the “requirement to extend political decision-making capabilities beyond national borders” and, second, the “necessity of extending democratic procedures beyond national borders,” which, from his perspective, means a “transnationalisation of popular sovereignty” (Habermas 2012: 15–16).

It is very much open to doubt to what extent the propositions of Held and Habermas are realistic (Dahl 1999, 2001). It is also open for discussion whether the impact of globalization is as acute as the two authors would have it. Yet even if one does not share these accentuated diagnoses, it is possible to establish the following consequences of globalization on the basis of their analyses:

1. 1.
The scope for action by rulers of democratic nation states is becoming narrower, and the attribution of their accountability for social conditions is getting more difficult. The effectiveness of the mechanism of government and opposition for the citizens is thus partly undermined.

2. 2.
The global economy and the increasing power of transnational corporations mean that nation states find themselves increasingly in competition over scarce capital investments. This, in turn, can lead to restrictions on welfare-state provisions.

3. 3.
The emergence of external problems that have internal consequences (e.g. organized crime; environmental problems; terrorism; drug, arms and human trafficking) and the inter-linkage of various kinds of problems (e.g. economic growth and environmental protection) imply an increasing complexity of problem areas.

4. 4.
A far-reaching and problematic consequence of globalization and the relatively open borders of democratic nation states are the refugee and immigration flow of the last decades. This has a considerable impact on the conflict structure of Western European democracies in particular (see the following section on globalization and populism).

These theoretically postulated consequences of globalization impact legitimacy not on an immediate level, but on one mediated via the perceptions and evaluations of the citizens.

Four hypotheses can be formulated here:

1. 1.
The complexity of the problem areas and the lack of transparency of the political decision-making processes, which take place in part within the framework of international organizations and regimes (Canovan 2004: 295), can lead to a cognitive and emotional overburdening of the citizens.

2. 2.
Global economic competition and the increasing power of multinational corporations can lead to restrictions on welfare-state provisions and impact jobs provision within the country. This results in an increase in subjectively felt economic and social risks.

3. 3.
Refugee and immigration flows can generate the sentiment that one’s national identity is under threat.

4. 4.
All this can lead citizens to believe that their rulers do not sufficiently take into account the concerns and needs of the citizens on fundamental issues and that they are increasingly incapable of solving key political problems.

It is an empirical question to what extent these hypotheses actually hold in individual countries and regions. Populist parties and leaders, for their part, address some of these perceptions and evaluations.

Globalization and Populism

Populism is not a uniform phenomenon; it appears in different forms in different countries and at different times. The core of populism, according to Cas Mudde (2004: 543), is that populist parties and leaders construct an opposition between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elites.” Margaret Canovan (2001) argues in a similar vein. Populist parties and, above all, charismatic leaders claim to implement the true, unmediated will of the people and offer simple solutions for doing so. They lay the blame for the political deficits of democracies on the political elites as well as international organizations and regimes such as the European Union. These characteristics apply for both right-wing populism and left-wing populism.

A fundamental characteristic of right-wing populism is the construction of a sharp frontier between the inside and the outside. The identity of one’s own nation is pitted against the identities of the “others,” that is, the strangers. Seen from this perspective, the movements of immigrants and refugees pose a threat to one’s own identity. Mudde (2007: 18–19) refers to this as “nativism.” One’s own identity, in turn, is often defined so as to discriminate against minorities within the population, such as homosexuals, and those who opt for alternative lifestyles. As such, right-wing populism has decidedly illiberal components.

Some very different conclusions have been drawn in the debate on populism and its impact on democracies today. For example, Erica Frantz (2017) has taken a very sceptical position, whereas Mudde (2013, 2014) has adopted a moderate one. Frantz (2017) begins with a descriptive statement: “Populism is spreading across the globe. In Europe, populist parties have won victories in Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, and Switzerland; and they have joined governing coalitions in Finland, Norway, and Lithuania. More broadly, strongmen with populist agendas have become presidents – including Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Donald Trump in the United States.” She then makes a somewhat dramatic assessment: “But the consequences are worrisome, because research suggests the very real possibility of democratic backsliding worldwide. Populist takeovers are associated with personalist dictatorships and the dismantling of democratic institutions […] Contemporary populists […] promote a disdain for traditional political institutions, praise the advantage of strong and decisive leadership, and vocalize deep distrust of experts, and the ‘establishment’”.

She refers to the examples of Venezuela under Chávez, Russia under Putin and Turkey under Erdoğan. Their tactics, she points out, are similar: they come to power through elections and, once in power, stir up discontent towards institutional constraints on their power, marginalize the opposition and weaken civil society. Frantz (2017) refers to this form of regime change as “authoritarianisation” and lists Hungary under Orbán and Poland under Kaczyński as additional examples. She concludes thus: “In short, the global surge in populism poses a serious challenge to democracy” (Frantz 2017).

The process of authoritarianization by populist parties and their leaders that takes place within democracies constitutes the internal challenge for democracy. According to Puddington and Roylance (2017) and Puddington (2017), this internal challenge is complemented by an external one launched by the “modern authoritarians.” As opposed to previous totalitarian systems, the latter use more refined and more nuanced strategies of repression and claim more effective solutions to current complex political problems. At the same time, they try to undermine the democratic process by launching systematic campaigns of disinformation. Electronic media are their most preferred means. Puddington (2017) cites Russia and China as prominent examples.

In contrast to the earlier quoted strong position taken by Frantz, the much less dramatic—but admittedly also older—is the assessment made by Mudde (2013, 2014). He analyses the development of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) in Western Europe and arrives at the following conclusion: “…while PRRPs might have affected the position and salience of certain issues for some parts of the population, they seem to have rarely changed their more long-term attitudes” (Mudde 2013: 7). Regarding party systems, he concludes: “In summary, it is clear that they have not been a major factor in party system change in Western Europe. While their rise has changed the identity of some of the political parties in some of the party systems of Western Europe, this analysis shows that PRRPs have hardly changed the systemic interactions between the relevant political parties within most countries” (Mudde 2014: 223). Regarding democratic regimes, Mudde (2013) maintains the following: “Upon closer scrutiny, it is not that surprising that PRRPs have not changed the democratic nature of the system as they support both popular sovereignty and majority rule. Their relationship with liberal democracy is less supportive, however, they are essentially monist, highly sceptical about minority rights and the politics of compromise” (2013: 10).

In crucial aspects, Edgar Grande and Hanspeter Kriesi present similar findings in their analysis of “the transformative power of globalisation and the structure of political conflict in Western Europe.” They argue that globalization has given rise to a two-dimensional political conflict structure, namely economic and cultural. The Poles of the economic dimension are neoliberalism vs. interventionism; those of the cultural dimension are cosmopolitanism vs. nationalism. Their analysis also holds that the “right-wing populists” have not transformed the structures of party systems in Western Europe, but that the problematic consequences of globalization have led to a weakening of the “neoliberal-cosmopolitan” camp and a strengthening of the “interventionist-nationalist” camp (Grande and Kriesi 2012: 22). This strengthening entails, above all, negative attitudes towards immigration and European integration. According to Kriesi et al. (2012), there are no indications of an anti-system character of right-wing populist parties, but rather a shifting of positions within the two-dimensional conflict structure. Specifically, there is a shift from a neoliberal to an interventionist position along the economic dimension, and a shift from a cosmopolitan to a nationalist position along the cultural dimension.

Conceptualizing Legitimacy

The title of this book is tied to the question of whether democracy is under threat because of the perceived decline in its legitimacy. According to David Easton (1965, 1975), legitimacy of democracy accounts for its persistence and functioning. Easton considered the production and implementation of generally binding decisions for solving societal problems and realizing political goals to be the function of the political system for society. This concept has subsequently established itself in political science. A precondition for the fulfilment of this function of the political system is the compliance of members of society with the generally binding rules, which is in turn are decisively influenced by the legitimacy of the regime. To the extent that a political regime is viewed as legitimate, the probability rises that the decisions of the political system are accepted even when one disagrees with their contents. Without this compliance, a resilient democracy is simply not possible; without the legitimacy of the regime, in turn, compliance is not conceivable.

In the following, we propose to conceptualize legitimacy as one form of support for a political regime among several forms that have functional relevance for the persistence and functioning of a democracy.

Legitimacy is generally defined as the normative justification of a political regime (Habermas 1996; Beetham and Lord 1998; Follesdal 2006; Fuchs 2011; Kriesi 2013; Van Ham and Thomassen 2017). Justification, in turn, is based on values that make claims to general validity and thus have a normative character. How this justification takes place can be illustrated as follows: a political regime that claims to be a democracy can be regarded as normatively justified or legitimate to the extent that it complies with democratic values. The question is who ascertains the extent of compliance by certain democratic regimes and thus establishes the legitimacy of a given regime.

One possibility is to draw on established democracy indices such as Polity IV, Freedom House and Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). These indices specify normative standards of democracy by which experts assess democratic regimes according to the extent to which the regimes meet these democratic standards. The more positive are the assessments, the higher the quality of a democracy and the higher its legitimacy. We refer to legitimacy established in this way as objective legitimacy.

There are, however, two problems here. The first problem lies in defining the normative standards, which, given the multiplicity of definitions of democracy, is not a simple matter. The binding nature of the assessment of legitimacy depends on the binding nature of these standards. The Varieties of Democracy project found one intelligent solution to this problem (Lindberg et al. 2014). On the basis of intensive research on debates in the democratic theory literature, the authors have identified a number of key normative models of democracy, developed indicators for these different models and collected the corresponding data. Each researcher can then decide for him- or herself which normative model to use in the assessment of a political regime in general and a democratic regime in particular.

The second problem is the functional relevance of objective legitimacy. For the question of the persistence and functioning of a democracy, objective legitimacy is less relevant than the question to what extent the citizens regard their democratic regime as legitimate. We refer to the latter as subjective legitimacy. In order to define and illustrate subjective legitimacy, we draw on a hierarchical model of support for democracy by the citizens, see Fig. 1.1.

Fig. 1.1  Hierarchical model of support for democracy (Fuchs 2007: 166)

The above model distinguishes between three levels of a democratic system and assigns to each of them “attitudinal constructs.” The highest level is that of culture. In contrast to the wide-ranging concept of political culture in the tradition of Amond and Verba (1963), in this model culture is conceived more narrowly by following the sociological concept of culture limiting it to basic value orientations (Hofstede 1980; Schwartz 1992; Gerhards 2006). In the case of democracy, this encompasses democratic values, with the corresponding attitude of citizens’ “commitment to democratic values.” Democratic values comprise democracy as a value and the related notions of the sovereignty of the people, including the values of liberty and political equality of citizens. At this cultural level, then, it is already possible to formulate a definition of legitimacy: citizens regard a democratic order as legitimate to the extent that they prefer democratic values. At the cultural level, then, preference for democracy and the legitimacy of democracy are identical.

The next level in the above Figure is that of the political regime, which is determined by its institutional structure, which in turn is usually specified by a constitution. At this level, two forms of support are significant: the legitimacy of the regime on the one hand and the performance of the regime, which can also be referred to as effectiveness, on the other.

In defining this legitimacy, we can draw on the oft-cited David Easton (1975: 451): “[Legitimacy] reflects the fact that in some vague or explicit way [a person] sees these objects as conforming to his own moral principles, his own sense of what is right and proper in the political sphere.” Citizens themselves assess the extent to which the regime complies with the values preferred by them and regard the regime accordingly as more or less legitimate. According to Easton, legitimacy is a form of diffuse support for the regime and the most important criterion for diffuse support is the independence of the short-term outputs of the decision-makers. Diffuse support constitutes a reservoir of positive attitudes towards the regime, a buffer against discontent with day-to-day outputs produced by the regime. Legitimacy means that the regime is supported for its own sake because it has institutionalized the values that the person in question considers important. The source of this legitimacy is, above all, primary socialization and adult-age socialization (Easton 1975). This requires that agencies of socialization such as the family, the school and—in the case of adult-age socialization—mass media convey information accordingly. These conditions can be expected to be present especially in longer-established democracies and democratic cultures.

In addition to legitimacy, Easton posits a second form of diffuse support that he calls trust. Trust is the result of the assessment of a series of outputs over a longer period of time produced by various decision-makers: “[…] that trust will be stimulated by the experiences that members have of the authorities over time […] In time, such sentiments may become detached from the authorities themselves and take the form of an autonomous or generalised sentiment towards all incumbent authorities and perhaps the regime as well” (Easton 1975: 448). Thus, these experiences can be generalized, i.e. decoupled from concrete decision-makers and attributed to the regime as a whole. In this case, the independence of outputs as the criterion of diffuse support refers to short-term outputs of concrete decision-makers. Easton (1975: 436) refers to satisfaction with these short-term outputs of concrete decision-makers as specific support .

The generalized experiences as a source of trust ultimately refer to the performance of the regime. We have thus used the term performance in the model illustrated in Fig. 1.1. We thereby also link up with empirical studies of the performance by democracies (inter alia Roller 2005). It is possible to distinguish between two dimensions of regime performance: systemic performance on the one hand and democratic performance on the other (Roller 2005).

Systemic performance refers, firstly, to the realization of “normal” policy objectives such as economic growth, domestic security and social security. The core of systemic performance, however, is solving fundamental problems of society, such as safeguarding a minimum standard of living for all citizens and securing of the state’s monopoly on violence and thus of stateness as such. The latter has been pointed out in particular by Linz and Stepan (1996). Referring to the solving of fundamental problems of society, Lipset (1981) uses the term effectiveness. The idea is that a well-functioning democracy can exist only once these fundamental problems have been solved to some degree.

Democratic performance is based on the premise that a democratic regime is institutionalized in a given country. In almost all democracies, this happens through a constitution. The question, however, is to what extent constitutionalized democratic values and norms are implemented in practice. For example: Is the liberty of citizens actually protected? Is there an effective protection of minorities? Is the basic democratic norm of political equality realized in the form of actual equality before the law? Is the criterion of impartiality met in the processing of citizens’ demands? [1] Legitimacy is about the congruence of democratic values with the democratic regime, and democratic performance is about the congruence between codified democratic values and the reality of democracy.

The lowest level of the model in Fig. 1.1 comprises the actors. The corresponding attitudinal construct is satisfaction with the actions and outputs of these actors, i.e. what Easton (1975: 436) refers to as specific support.

The model shows two directions of influence between the various attitudinal levels. On the one hand, the influence from top to bottom is indicated as an overflow of values onto the lower levels; on the other hand, the influence from bottom to top, which emanates from the lowest level and is generalized onto the highest level, refers to a generalization of experiences. Which direction of influence is dominant in a given country depends, among other factors, on how consolidated is the democracy. In the established democracies of the West where democratic cultures have developed over longer periods of time, the direction of influence can be assumed to be from top to bottom. In new and non-consolidated democracies, by contrast, the influence from bottom to top is more likely, i.e. experiences with the actors of the democratic system and the democratic mechanisms play a key role.

What are the possible consequences of the expression of the attitudes on these different levels for the democratic system? Of particular importance is the commitment to democratic values. If a clear majority of citizens show such a commitment, this means that no other form of government other than democracy is desired. Democracy as a system of rule is thus fundamentally seen as legitimate. This basic commitment can impact the legitimacy of the regime twofold. A democratic regime is considered legitimate in the eyes of the citizens to the extent that the latter see congruence between their democratic value orientations and the democratic regime. Yet it is also possible that the citizens maintain that the democratic values they support are not sufficiently institutionalized in the regime in their country. Klingemann (1999, 2013) refers to this type as critical citizens; the possible systemic consequence is merely that these citizens want a different form of democracy from the one existing in their country.

The situation is different if the majority of citizens do not prefer democratic values but favours autocratic values, such as a strong leader who is independent from the contestation between the parties and a controlling parliament. In such a case, there is incongruence between the autocratic values and the democratic regime in place in a given country. This, in turn, means there is potential among the citizens for a regime change. In order for a regime change to happen, this potential needs to be mobilized by parties and politicians. According to the earlier cited Frantz (2017), this has occurred in recent years where populist leaders pursued a strategy of attaining power legitimately by means of democratic elections but have subsequently insidiously hollowed out liberal principles and democratic procedures and have increasingly concentrated power in their leadership. Frantz (2017) refers to this process of regime change as “authoritarianisation.” In Europe, Poland and Hungary provide examples of such a process. Turkey has also been in a process of authoritarianization for some time.

What are the possible consequences of performance deficits as perceived by citizens? Shortfalls in solving fundamental problems of a society are of particular significance. If, for instance, the stateness of a political system via a monopoly on violence and a comprehensive bureaucracy is not secured, it is of secondary importance whether the political system is democratic. The same holds if the living standards of many citizens fall under a minimum threshold. Deficits in solving such problems can be a source of preference for an autocratic leader who claims to be able to solve the basic societal problems.

If citizens perceive deficits in democratic performance and at the same time exhibit commitment to democratic values, then two very different consequences are conceivable. The first possibility is that citizens will advocate a different form of democracy, one in which they expect performance shortfalls to be either absent or manifest to a much lesser degree. The second possibility is that citizens will hold a corrupt and incompetent class of politicians responsible for the deficits in democratic performance. An example of the latter is Italy where a majority of citizens regard their political class as corrupt and incompetent for decades but nonetheless express a markedly high preference for a democratic system of rule.

Elections are the institutional mechanism for absorbing discontent with the outputs of political decision-makers. Citizens can vote decision-makers back into—or out of—office depending on performance assessments. This mechanism, however, presupposes that there is a functioning opposition and that party competition offers alternatives. A problem emerges if citizens regard almost all political parties and politicians as a single out-of-touch class that does not look after the interests and demands of the citizens. In such a situation, populist parties that construct the opposites of “the pure people” and “the corrupt elites” are able to mobilize voters.

One final question cannot be left out: When can a legitimacy crisis be said to occur? There are no theoretical criteria for answering this question, only considerations of plausibility. First, it is possible to distinguish between legitimacy erosion and legitimacy crisis. An erosion of legitimacy is more difficult to pinpoint. It occurs when a decrease in legitimacy can be established from a certain point in time. Such erosion can take place at various levels of legitimacy. The onset of a legitimacy crisis, on the other hand, can be established with a high level of certainty. It happens when the degree of legitimacy falls under the 50% mark, i.e. when a large majority of citizens deny the legitimacy of democracy as such or reject the democratic regime in their own country. However, a regime change is only probable if there is a plausible alternative. After the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe , the communist alternative has become obsolete. The alternative to democracy discussed today is a more or less authoritarian or autocratic regime. Larry Diamond et al. (2016) speak of a new and unexpected competition between democratic liberalism and authoritarian illiberalism.

Conclusion

We can simplify and summarize the various attempts to understand the challenges facing contemporary democracy: globalization has generated problems for democracy that have caused an erosion of legitimacy of democracy. In turn, this erosion of legitimacy has given populists and autocrats an opportunity to further contest democratic policies and procedures. There are differences in the evaluation of the threat these developments pose for democracy. Frantz (2017) and Puddington (2017) are much more concerned than, for example, Grande and Kriesi (2012) or Mudde (2013, 2014). The divergent views can be partially explained by the fact that these authors analyse different countries. A systematic explanation of the differences between countries can be achieved by taking into account the different conditions for a successful adaptation to these challenges. Comparative research into democratic development has generated at least four promising theoretical and empirical approaches:

Socioeconomic    modernization Comparative democracy research has shown with considerable clarity that socioeconomic modernization has consistent effect on the development and stability of democracies (Lipset 1994; Teorell 2010).

Political    culture The political culture paradigm developed by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (1963) points to the historical observation that despite similar stages of socioeconomic modernity some democracies failed under the pressure of a socioeconomic crisis while others survived. These authors argue that for this reason socioeconomic modernity has to be supplemented by the concept of political culture. This approach has been developed further in the following decades, and it has also been broadened by including long-term cultural traditions as an explanatory factor (Huntington 1996; Fuchs and Klingemann 2002; Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Fuchs and Roller 2016).

Regime    structure It has been shown that the structure of democratic regimes can affect the adaptation to a populist or autocratic challenge. For example, it is more likely that a positive disposition towards a strong leader will develop in a presidential system than in a parliamentary system (Linz 1994).

Actors/    elites Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and Lawrence Whitehead (1986) have convincingly demonstrated that attitudes and behaviour of the key political actors and members of the elites represent a factor in its own right when it comes to the explanation of the emergence and the stability of democratic regimes. The legitimacy of democracy erodes and its stability declines if political actors and elites are corrupt, resort to clientelism or destruct the rule of law.

This volume presents analyses of democratic regimes from different regions with different levels of socioeconomic development and different cultural traditions. The focus is on established Western European democracies as well as on five young democracies: Chile, Poland, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey. The degree to which these democracies can be considered legitimate and how potential differences can be explained by the various factors mentioned above is an empirical question.

Note

1. 1.
On this see: Kriesi (2013: 617).

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© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_2

2. Temporal Models of Political Development: In General and of Democratization in Particular

Laurence Whitehead1

(1)

Nuffield College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

Laurence Whitehead

Email: Laurence.whitehead@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Models of Directional Political Change

Terms such as democratization, modernization and transformation all carry with them two tacit implications. First, that the processes under consideration are directional from a previous (probably outmoded and indeed inferior) state towards a subsequent (more advanced, superior, and probably more settled) condition; and second, that consequently such processes are to be viewed positively, even though they may well involve some intervening costs of adjustment.

The Transformation Research Unit (TRU) at the University of Stellenbosch framed its comparative work in this way, and the countries it has selected for comparison—Chile, Korea, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, Germany and Sweden—have broadly matched this pattern for a couple of decades after the end of the Cold War. However, the global financial crisis of 2008 delivered a sharp setback to any assumptions of steady and necessary progressive change, and the subsequent decade has witnessed some major deviations and setbacks (Van Beek and Wnuk-Lipinski 2012). For example, in the literature on comparative democratization it has become common to deploy such notions as “reverse waves” and “backsliding” , and narrative coverage of national developments in such countries as Poland and Turkey have lent apparent support to such terminology.

So the current TRU project raises some challenging issues about the directionality of transformation, and in particular of democratic political development. These are issues that need to be carefully examined for each case using comparative empirical techniques employed in this volume. But they also need to be tackled from a more general and even theoretical point of view. This chapter is a contribution to the second type of investigation, although it has been formulated with some national specifics in mind. In particular, the chapter on Chile and South America, elsewhere in this volume and written by the same author, aims to connect the more theoretical issues discussed here with the case material presented there.

Our point of departure is a review and comparison of the four most applicable macro-historical models of democratization that can be distilled from the scholarly literature. Although the focus of attention here is democratic political change it will be apparent that these four models can also be applied to other topics that can be found under the broad rubric of political development, for example state formation. This chapter offers some reflections on the general notion of models of temporal directionality, followed by more specific accounts of the four models under consideration, including the contrasts between them, and ending with a discussion of how they relate to each other. But to begin with, we need a brief outline of the observable features of a political change and of the grounding they provide for the models under consideration.

Viewed from close up, every real-time ongoing process of democratization or regime change presents many features that seem a chaotic jumble. Participants and contemporary observers record widespread myopia, crossed purposes, parochial short-term miscalculations of interest, together with more principled actions that nevertheless often express unrealizable illusions concerning possible political futures. Buried within all this noise there are also some more far-sighted actors, and some structural, institutional, and even moral constraints and guidelines that may acquire sufficient traction if not to control the direction of events then at least to steer proceedings away from the most undesirable outcomes. In general, however, surprise, contingency, improvisation, and abrupt course corrections are standard fare during any regime transition (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986). [1] After the turmoil, those who emerge as winners receive the best hearing, as the might-have-beens fade from view. It becomes hard to avoid selective and retrospective justifications not only because the newly empowered are expected to explain their successes, rather than to dwell on reasons why they might have almost failed, but also because after the turmoil and insecurity of the crisis period, a new order requires legitimation, including the crafting of a clear and attractive myth of origin.

However, methods are available to help the scholarly analyst screen out some of this subjectivity and distortion. Comparative and theoretically informed perspectives can help the observer to draw back from the immediacy of these confusing impressions and to scale back the noise they contain while dialling up the signal. Through modelling and paired comparisons, the benefits of retrospection can be captured while maintaining distance from the pitfalls. More examples and longer time horizons can support an interpretative framing of the issues that helps identify underlying patterns, sequences and directional trends. At the same time, since these are not only uncertain but also complex multidimensional and context-specific episodes, it remains essential to check all interpretations against the raw experience of each case and to keep a close eye on the scope conditions within which any inductively based medium-term generalizations must be contained. By standing back and reflecting, the analyst can hope to identify regularities, likely causal sequences, and perhaps even law-like necessary progressions that were initially obscured by all the apparent contingency and uncertainty. But it is also important not to stand back so far that one loses depth perception concerning the material under review. These are reasons for favouring area-based comparative studies—including paired comparisons—and supporting the view that democratizations should always be framed as long-term, complex, multidimensional processes which are at least partially reversible and are always open-ended (Whitehead 2002).

Two vital ingredients for an effective standing back operation of this kind are the specification of case-appropriate models of political development and change, and the identification of relevant directional patterns of temporal sequencing. This chapter reflects on the four temporal models that seem best suited to the comparative evaluation of the large set of post-Cold War democratization processes. Another chapter in this volume applies these reflections to the specific example of Chile since Pinochet, and also to Chile’s neighbours. In this field, the utility of any model is heavily determined by its applicability to at least some significant cases. But before turning to any applications we should work through the logic of investigating temporal model directionality in general. There are three terms here that each require to parsing.

The first term for debate is model. As the study of politics has moved from history towards science, the use of models has become more prominent. Economic models led the way in the social sciences, but recent enthusiasts have not always remembered the precautions advocated by the earliest economic modellers (Marshall 1981). [2] In comparative politics, the choice and design of any model depends on what it is intended to illuminate (or, ideally, explain). All models need to be clearly specified and logically structured, but beyond that, design choice must consider multiple criteria. One possibility is to privilege statistical tractability; at the other pole is inductive approximation to the case material; and in both cases, the influence of adjacent models is also pertinent. Political science in general now encourages what it calls formal modelling, which stresses internal coherence, clarity and tractability and advancing beyond the existing suite of options. But that is highly stylized and decontextualized, and is too narrowly construed for the task in hand, which at its broadest is to offer interpretative guidelines that help to explain the course and direction of various countries’ political development.

Such a macro-historical topic requires an encompassing and configurative approach, strongly attuned to the texture of the relevant cases. That is the type of model under consideration here. Even so, it is possible to formulate hypotheses and explanatory schemas that highlight key features of the process and investigation, that identify specific drivers of change as worthy of focused attention, and that direct the enquiry towards certain crucial arenas of interaction, each with its own expected dynamics and timescale. The four models presented below are all of this type. They could all apply to other aspects of political development as well as to democratization, but they can be made more precise by applying them that narrower question, and they can be further refined by the addition of scope conditions such as “in Latin America” and “since 1990.” Each model works by proposing an as if analogy with the cases under investigation (Freund 1968). [3]

First, the step-change model compares these experiences with an idealized picture of elite strategic interactions, as outlined in the just cited transitions study. Here, the driver of change is an agreement by a coalition of pro-democratic elites to cooperate on a wholehearted agenda of regime change (a pact). The arena of action concerns the state institutions engaged in regulating the access to, and accountability of, public office-holders, that is a constitution. The pace of the change in question is just a few years (a quick transition), and the expected direction is rapidly upwards followed by a new stable equilibrium of consolidation. By comparison, under the second—unilinear—model the idealized political change is driven by long-term ineluctable processes of socio-economic modernization. The arena on which this operates is the outlook and desires of the entire society, but more particularly its ever-growing middle class. Since political processes and agency are largely screened out of this model, the timescale involved is imprecise, but in any case very long multigenerational run. This is a gradual process that can be blocked or diverted for long periods, but its ultimate direction is once again progressive, although in this case with no clearly identifiable end point.

As regards, the third—degenerative—model (at least as derived from Polybius, on more below) the envisaged political change is evidently regressive and also ineluctable. The arena of action is again the collective outlook of the population, but this time in particular that of new leaders supported by feckless youth. The timescale is two generations, and the process ends with an accelerated decline and then a definitive crisis.

The fourth and final—oscillatory—model envisages a mixed and ambiguous outcome, neither utopian nor dystopian, but indefinitely and continuously unsettled. The arena of action is both institutional and societal. Within that large public space contentious politics, with a succession of both stand-offs and compromises, provides the staple fare. Dissatisfactions arise successively from diverse sources, and whatever remedies or reforms emerge only meet part of the demand, and the price of stimulating new challenges. The timescale for this is indefinite and extensive, and it whether on balance the direction of political development is positive, negative, or on balance flat remains one of the permanent sources of contention and debate.

It is possible to construct additional macro-temporal models of directional change, but between them the four just summarized cover most of the terrains we need to explore. A fuller exposition of each can be found below. Each model is a schematic simplification. To avoid prejudging either the directionality or the normative content of the political developments under consideration, it is better to have these four options available than to limit comparative study to only one or two.

The second term for consideration here is directionality. Comparing these four models, it is evident that the assumed underlying direction of political change varies according to which schema is initially selected for testing against the cases and the evidence. Moreover, the assumption that there is an underlying direction—of any kind—must be built into the design of the model rather than inductively derived, since all our democratization processes are ongoing sequences with as yet unknown final results. The step-change transition model may presume a stable consolidated end state, but that assumption remains arguable—both in theoretical terms, (hence debates over de-consolidation, backsliding and hybridity), and empirically. [4] Similar objections apply to degenerative models which may be challenged on the likelihood, rather than the certainty, of democratic failure after two generations. [5] The two longer term models (unilinear and oscillatory) raise slightly different but equally challenging questions concerning their predictions about ultimate directionality. In theoretical terms, if the duration of the process is indefinitely elastic, how can we assume the fixity of the ultimate destination since what might count as a democratic advance in one century may not qualify in the same way in the next. Is the model really scientific, or covertly teleological? Empirically, what evidence would count as a refutation of the claim that in the end the model will still be vindicated. These problems with the assumption of directionality will be considered again in the conclusion.

The third term for consideration in this section is temporality. Not all social science models concern dynamic processes and how they develop over time. Indeed, one of the most effective ways to simplify and streamline an explanatory schema is to eliminate the time dimension. Static models can explore the structure of social or political relationships at a frozen instant such as the distribution of partisan preferences and demographic characteristics at the moment of an election contest. Introducing time series complicates the exercise since the composition of the variables may not remain entirely constant, and extraneous influences, external shocks, can destabilize the highlighted patterns of relationships. Introducing temporality into political analysis adds many possible levels of complication. [6] Long historical sequences affecting macro-level variables—such as changes in regime types over generations—are particularly exposed to complications of this kind. Models of long-run, ongoing—and therefore incomplete—comparative macro-processes such as political development and democratization are located at the extreme end of this spectrum of complications. For some social scientists, the conclusion is to avoid them (Smolin 2013). [7]

However, democratization processes do exist and require to be understood, even if the exercise in question is difficult. If they are not modelled explicitly, they will be subjected to arbitrary and dogmatic approximations of the same reasoning. Therefore, the approach adopted in this chapter is to explore the rationale, potential and pitfalls of such modelling exercises and thus to spell out the scope and limitations of their findings. This is a necessary foundation for the kind of work being undertaken by TRU. In particular, it underscores the importance of comparing a range of different model designs. The conclusion says more about how these four models can be used in combination, and about best practice, or at least avoiding bad practices, in this tricky field.

Although it may be too ambitious to refer to democratization theory, comparative work in this field has generated a range of middle-range propositions that provide useable frameworks for empirical research, and possible building blocks for more extensive theorizing about processes of political change. In particular, recent scholarly literature has been guided by simplifying and structuring assumptions involving temporal sequences that are directional, in the sense that the postulated more democratic outcomes assumed to be normatively superior, in crucial respects, to the authoritarian points of departure. The best version of this perspective is the three waves idea launched by Samuel Huntington in 1990, and periodically updated by Larry Diamond, notably with reference to what he pictures as the “reverse wave” of the recent past. Such contributions purport to identify totalizing global trends in real time. To advance beyond such very sweeping and over-schematic accounts, this chapter proposes four distinct sub-models: step-change; unilinear advance; degenerative; and oscillatory. All four of these models can find some corroboration from recent South European and Latin American history, but any more general accounts would require fuller specification of the scope conditions for each model.

As already noted, the standard 1980s account of a democratic transition can be summarized as a step-change account. It starts with the faltering of a pre-existing authoritarian regime. Under certain circumstances that open the way to a democratic transition. [8] There is a relatively brief period of high-level negotiations generating a new and democratic set of rules of the political game. The focus of the model is therefore on relatively short-term strategic interactions between key elites—which often involve pacts, although rupture and exclusion could also figure.

After a short hiatus, these become consensual and authoritative and consolidation ensues. Spain’s three years between the death of Franco and the ratification of the 1978 Constitution provides the classic template here. The reality did not fully match the model, of course (think of the seizure of the Cortes in 1981) but for heuristic purposes step-change proved a powerful schema, and various later episodes provided significant corroboration; for example, the six-year interval separating the release from prison of Nelson Mandela from the ratification the South Africa’s democratic constitution.

It is important to note the background assumptions framing this account. The preceding regime must be unambiguously non-democratic. There will be heightened uncertainty during the short transition, but that soon ends with a consensual and clearly democratic new set of rules of the political game. The state apparatus and the boundaries of the polity remain intact during the hiatus. Basic features of the social system, such as legal rights, the media, national security and the monetary system are not overturned (i.e. there is no social revolution). If all this applies, then the step-change “one shot” model of democratization may hold—although even then longer term tasks such as truth and reconciliation processes may be required before full and permanent habituation into the new system can be achieved.

But, evidently, these are quite restrictive conditions. In Latin America, for example, Pinochet’s Chile provided a reasonable approximation to Franco’s Spain, but the 1980 Constitution was neither consensual nor democratic, yet it remained in force for at least a quarter century, and has been only partially reformed even today. In other cases, it was not universally accepted that the preceding regime was authoritarian (Mexico’s PRI, Brazil after abertura); or national security was destabilized; or the monetary system collapsed; or truth and reconciliation was a sham, etc. All these complications add friction to the transition process, probably extending its duration, and in any case reducing the scope for rapid advance towards a unified and consensual consolidated outcome. In short, the step-change model is at best a partial approximation to the trajectories of political change that belong under the umbrella term democratization. Other models of directional change may provide a better fit in many cases. And indeed other models are to be found in the standard literature.

Thus, before the transition paradigm the dominant model was a more long-run and structural account—loosely referred to as modernization theory (Lerner 1964). [9] This belongs in a larger set of what can be termed unilinear models of progressive political change, once studied under the rubric of political development. Here, the starting point could be traditional society, rather than an authoritarian regime, and the timescale would spread over generations—possibly even centuries. So the postulated end state, a fully democratic and modern society, would not always be attainable within an observable timescale.

Daniel Lerner’s “state of mind” was about moving away from what he considered traditional parochialism and stasis, so that nationalist and communist as well as democratic movements could be progressive. During the Cold War, thinkers in this tradition debated authoritarian modernization as an at least temporary rival to Western democratization. Still, the main version of this model remained confident about the long-run direction of movement for two reasons. First, the forces at work (urbanization, literacy, the rise of the middle class) [10] were reliably present, and indeed almost ineluctable; second, there was at least one example of the superiority of the eventual outcome, namely US society, which could exercise a magnetic pull on the rest due to its unparalleled attractions. At the same time, it was also necessary to recognize that for an indeterminate period this natural progression could be blocked (hence crises in political development).

As traditional authority waned and before the full benefits of modernization kicked in, there might be an interlude of instability that could temporarily be exploited by totalitarian movements. Nevertheless, in the long run, and with correct reactions from the leading democratic powers, the unilinear logic of the model could be expected to prevail. After the fall of the Berlin Wall modernization, thinking became more confidently linked to ideas about the inevitable triumph of liberal democracy, although such strong determinism has understandably faded since the new millennium. [11] Currently, the most plausible variants of the thesis treat economic growth as conducive to the preservation of democracy once it has been established (Przeworski and Limongi 1997); and a broader human development version acknowledges multiple modernities including the renewal and persistence of some traditional values (Inglehart and Baker 2000).

This modernization approach in its various guises was the main post-1945 schema in US political science, implicitly reflecting Washington’s international leadership during the Cold War. But there was also an earlier variant of this model which focused more attention on the enlightened foresight of an imperial governing class—the British Whig interpretation—which envisaged progress in terms of phased extensions of the suffrage, controlled decolonization and related political choices that would stabilize the gradual socialization of widening circles of citizenship into the responsibilities of self-government. A more hubristic variant of the unilinear perspective, or liberal internationalism, has gained traction between the end of the Cold War and the nemesis of Iraq.

Taken together, these three variants of the unilinear model had considerable impact on the Western hemisphere, ranging from the post-colonial democracies established by Britain in the Caribbean to the Cold War democratization of Costa Rica, and various post-1989 trajectories in South America. Still, viewed from the perspective of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), in 2017 it seems clear that neither the step-change nor the unilinear model, nor even the two taken together, can account for the full range of democratization experiences in the subcontinent.

Two more models also have a claim to consideration. There is a well-attested more pessimistic thesis—the degenerative cycle—sometimes referred to as “political decay” (Huntington 1965). [12] It can be traced back at least as far as the writings of Polybius, in the middle of the second century BC. [13] According to his schema, under certain circumstances, due to the hatred generated by the experience of living under a tyrant, the people may be too fearful of further injustices to entrust government to another king, or to an aristocracy. “At this point the only hope which remains unspoiled lies with themselves… they convert the state into a democracy instead of an oligarchy… Then, so long as any people survive who endured the evils of oligarchical rule, they can regard their present form of government as a blessing and treasure the privileges of equality and freedom of speech. But as soon as a new generation has succeeded and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have by this time become so accustomed to equality and to freedom of speech that they cease to value them and seek to raise themselves above their fellow-citizens, and it is noticeable that the people most liable to this temptation are the rich. So when they begin to hanker after office, and they find that they cannot achieve it through their own efforts or on their merits, they begin to seduce and corrupt the people in every possible way, and thus ruin their estates. The result is that through their senseless craving for prominence they stimulate among the masses both an appetite for bribes and the habit of receiving them, and the rule of democracy is transformed into government by violence and strong arm methods” (Polybius 1979: 309).

In this model, democracy degenerates into mob rule and disorder over two generations. Obviously, this sequence reflected conditions in the ancient world that do not currently apply. However, twentieth-century Europe also provided material that could be used to construct more up-to-date equivalents of the same basic model (and recent comparative history is generating further food for thought along such lines). Vilfredo Pareto’s article in the Rivisti di Milano of 5 July 1920 on “The Plutocratic Cycle” foreshadowed the collapse of Italian democracy and spelt out a degenerative sequence that he envisaged as an inexorable, recurrent and generalizable process. It was a more focused derivation of the ideas he had systematized in 1916 in his vast Treatise on General Sociology, which set out his theories about elite circulation, the necessary fiction of popular representation, the pre-eminence of sentiment over reason and how that makes the aggregate pattern of response to collective events predictable and thus generates cyclical outcomes, etc. In the short article, he outlines how democratic governments fall unsuspecting prey to the baser instincts of greed that enable special interests to transform democratic rule for the common good into plutocratic rule for the few. The ruling plutocrats try to maintain the façade of democracy in order to delude the gullible masses, but there is an inevitable sequence through which democracy leads to plutocracy and thence either to rule by a minority using force, or rule by a manipulative and rapacious oligarchy leading to bankruptcy and anarchy. (So instead of one degenerative path there are two, allowing for oscillatory shifts between competing plutocratic elites.) [14] It should be noted that the driving force in these models is an evolution of public opinion attributable to negative learning and the opportunities democracies may provide for visible political corruption—a mechanism with as much surface plausibility as the dynamics assumed in the previous two accounts.

So, to conclude this theoretical reflection, it is worth questioning whether either positive or negative dynamics can necessarily be taken for granted. If contrary to the three previous models, both are active causal mechanisms, then a final temporal model merits consideration—oscillation—but in this case with the potential to generate directional changes that could be either positive or negative for democracy. But, in order to apply the idea empirically, two further issues of conceptualization need to be acknowledged. First, there may not be a single unitary a consensual definition of what can be classified as a positive democratic outcome—this may be an arena of legitimate political contestation. Second, this may reflect the fact that democracies have multiple dimensions and that for some periods of time some sections of the public may value progress on certain dimensions enough to tolerate regress on others; opinions on this can be divided and unstable. Once these two features of the contemporary scene are taken into account, it becomes easier to understand why oscillatory rather than either uniformly progressive or firmly degenerative sequences may be the order of the day.

Whereas the first three types of model are already well established in the literature and are in any case fairly self-explanatory, this fourth set of possibilities is under-theorized. [15] What follows is therefore a relatively full exposition of the concept and its possible applications.

In general, oscillatory models of change describe rhythmic temporal sequences driven by the interaction between a driving force and an intervening structure. The interaction produces an integrated outcome linking the upturn, the downturn and the two intervening (upper and lower) boundary limits or inflection points in a repetitive process. Since each oscillatory model has its own specific temporality and rhythm, it is not unusual to encounter multiple and overlapping oscillatory processes in a single long-run temporal sequence.

Consider, for example, some central features regulating the climate on our planet. In each model, the driving force is the flow of energy it receives from the sun. In the first diurnal temporal model, light from the sun interacts with the axial spin of the earth to produce continuous oscillations between day and night every twenty-four hours. In the second annual model, the rotation of our planet on a tilted axis produces the succession of the seasons. Then, there is a more long-term (multi-millennial) and irregular oscillation between warming and cooling phases in the earth’s history, in this case driven by the interaction of two energy sources (from the planet’s core as well as from the sun) and two intervening buffers or heat absorbers (the atmosphere and the oceans). In this example, three models of oscillatory climate determination can be separated out, although in practice, of course, they all coexist, together with some other intervening forces, such as asteroid impacts, which may also produce major climatic consequences but which obey no predictable rhythms.

While offsetting oscillations can work in harmony to produce patterns of underlying stability—for example, the rhythmic oscillations of both heart and lungs, which produce biologically stable life trajectories in mammals—oscillations can also clash with unpredictably dysfunctional consequences, or can also operate within a long-term directional trend, as when the combined operation of heart and lungs accompanies rapid growth in the early stages of a mammal’s life cycle and also accompanies senescence towards the end of the same cycle. So an oscillation can be directional, operating within either an upward or a downward underlying trend. It can even prove cumulatively explosive, such as in the case of a bicycle accelerating downhill when the brakes fail. So although many variants of oscillation are as smooth and regular as the diurnal and seasonal patterns of climate change, other variants can lurch out of phase; consider the hog cycle in commodities or the business cycle in finance. And there are some that can be erratic and involve unpredictable and abrupt switches in direction, as in the case of the hard to identify decisive turning points in global cooling and warming, particularly given the uncertain time lags involved. Celebrated examples of unstable oscillations include locust storms and infectious pandemics. In ecology, predator/prey ratios can also fluctuate erratically within upper and lower bounds.

As most of these illustrations show, on planet earth oscillatory processes are omnipresent and integral to the development of life and to environmental adaptations. For those who examine political processes from an evolutionary and biological rather than a purely mechanical perspective, oscillatory models of temporal sequence should be more than an afterthought, or a residual category. If political development encompasses competition, the dialectics of pressure and counter-pressure, and the need of agents to innovate and adapt in changing conditions of external constraint, then oscillatory models are just as essential a part of the political scientist’s toolkit as the mainstream options. [16] Prominent among the standard approaches has been the search for structural determinants, as in modernization theory; the mapping of agentic preferences, such as elite strategic interactions in the transitions literature; and the invocation of causal mechanisms, as in the degenerative account. In addition to these three, the comparative analysis of democratization processes should include models drawn from the study of life on earth.

What Evidence of Oscillatory Patterns?

Thus far the discussion has proceeded mostly at the level of theory, conceptualization and the discussion of methodological issues. But the oscillatory model can also be developed on the basis of supporting evidence drawn from the qualities of democracy work of Leonardo Morlino (Figs. 2.1 and 2.2).

Fig. 2.1  The web of qualities: Latin America (selected countries) (Recreated from Morlino 2011: 256)

Fig. 2.2  The web of qualities: Eastern Europe (selected countries) (Recreated from Morlino 2011: 257)

What the above figures indicate is that over recent years the leading Latin American and East European republics have been rated according to a series of eight qualities distributed on orthogonal axes. Over time and across countries, the ratings can vary quite markedly, with some qualities much more present than others. There can also be abrupt changes in these ratings—for example big improvements in participation offset by major declines in compliance with institutional rules (populism). One way of interpreting these patterns is to see them as kaleidoscopic shifts, always liable to further adjustments and mutations. If so this would provide some empirical backing for the oscillatory model discussed above.

The essence of a kaleidoscopic pattern of political development is that fragments of a total image keep shifting backwards and forwards, creating unstable if intriguing patterns that never settle into a unified whole. The effect is created by a succession of oscillations, either partial or interactive, that never reach an overall equilibrium. The essence of oscillatory dynamics is that such continuous fluctuations occur within a range that is constrained by some outer boundaries. These constraints operate to prevent the dynamic interactions from becoming cumulatively irresistible in one overall direction or another, for example, all white, or all black, in the case of a two-tone kaleidoscope.

More specifically relevant to our purposes here, an oscillatory democratization process would be one in which virtuous circle interactions tending towards consolidation generated cumulatively offsetting negative reactions (reduced fear of repression, increased complacency about political rent seeking, lowered media vigilance, etc.). Likewise, vicious circle dynamics would also produce corrective reactions, such as increased mobilization against the abuse of political privileges, stronger defence of core institutional guarantees, reduced tolerance of corruption. The outcome would be continuous turbulence, political contestation and shifts between these two boundaries, with little expectation of either a permanent regime breakdown or a lasting breakthrough to an untroubled democracy.

Most mainstream democratization studies of the late twentieth century did not contemplate the emergence of such sub-optimal results as a permanent condition, although the initial “Transitions” volumes of 1986 were guarded in their expectations. On the contrary, the dominant 1990s work on the dynamics of regime change in (the LAC region) virtually always assumed positive directional change. Indeed, for about 20 years after the late 1970s it was plausible to interpret the overall direction of political change in that region as a one-way shift from authoritarian (mostly military) rule to a fairly uniform and conventional pattern of presidential democracies. This regional interpretation roughly corresponded to Huntington’s proclaimed Third Wave (1990) at the global level—although various objections to that sweeping characterization were possible. For example, the decolonized Caribbean followed a different sequence (mostly step-changes to independence in the 1960s) and resulted in parliamentary democracies. The Central America isthmus was different again apart from Costa Rica and Belize the sequence occurred in the 1990s, and was associated with the conclusion of a series of Cold War insurgencies and reactions. Even in South America there were exceptions, such as Colombia and Venezuela (civilian electoral regimes established in 1958 with subsequent deviations), and in Chile (where Pinochet retained extra-democratic leverage until the end of the 1990s).

In view of all these complications, and some more in-depth academic critiques (Garreton 2003) the uniform regional wave thesis provides no more than a highly schematic and approximate device for framing the course and direction of regional political change, even during the best years for the argument. As evidence accumulated and more thorough studies became available initial assumptions, a more oscillatory account would seem just as appropriate for, say Argentina, Bolivia Colombia Ecuador, and Peru, between about 1980 and 2000.

Concluding Remarks

In section I, it was indicated that the conclusion would say more about modelling temporal patterns of macro-political development in general, and the problem of refutability when long-term models have indefinite end points, in particular. How—and from what standpoint—can directional models of change in general, and of democratization in particular, be defended? And if four temporal models are available how should the serious comparativist choose between them, or aim to combine them? Huntington’s wave theory offers an evocative but mystical and ungrounded metaphor as a substitute for refutable modelling.

In this discussion, I have noted that oscillatory processes can operate within longer run trends either up or down, but that if the trends are very long, and very aggregate, it may become impossible to refute their existence either by reference to start and end points or by demonstrating an underlying continuity of the relevant categories and concepts. The two shorter options of upward step-change and downward degeneration are less exposed to these objections, but then the question arises how they relate to each other. Oscillatory models have them integrally linked as part of a single repetitive process, whereas classical modernization has them set aside in the long run by much more ineluctable cumulative processes. In this debate, it may be useful to bring in Francois Jullien’s conceptual distinction between ideas of “maturation” versus “modelisation” (Jullien 2015). [17]

What all three sections of this chapter have, in different ways, attempted to demonstrate is that the positive directionality of Latin America’s democratization processes should not be assumed. Instead, different directional models all merit comparative evaluation. [18] Their scope conditions and built-in presuppositions must never be forgotten when choosing which to use to address a particular processes. Since all democratization processes are multidimensional and open-ended, their futures cannot be reliably predicted from their pasts. Nevertheless, these are not random processes either—there are driving forces at work, and these can be studied comparatively across cases. Therefore, the various available models can be used to generate probabilistic middle-range generalizations without preordaining any ultimate directionality. Given their different temporalities more than one model may be applicable at the same time, just as climate models can combine diurnal and annual dynamics into an integrated sequence.

Can we detect anything positive (progressive) about the underlying direction of democratization processes? To answer this, we must first identify the postulated drivers of such an advance (such as a “civilizing process,” for Elias; or the displacement of tradition by modernity; rising productivity and the shift to a knowledge economy; a postulated universal human desire for dignity and recognition; and others) and the scope conditions applicable to the cases under review, for example post-Cold War Latin America. Consider Huntington’s Third Wave from this perspective. In general, since the 1970s, the positive tendency still proves the most persuasive, but different subcontinents each responded to somewhat different causes according to distinctive temporal rhythms; contrast southern Europe in the 1970s, sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s, the MENA region after 2011, etc. Even within such regions over the past decade, national trajectories have increasingly diverged.

In any case, there are two alternative ways of specifying the upward direction of such processes, and they need to be assessed separately, not least because they operate over different time spans. Sometimes they reinforce each other, but not always. Indeed, degenerative models also apply over significant time spans in a number of cases, including some of the best rated democracies.

All in all, then, democratization is best understood as a multidimensional, long run, open-ended, and at least partially reversible process, especially when diachronic and synchronic indicators are taken into account. For the post-Cold War period qualities of democracy comparative evidence provides crucial insights and often supports a kaleidoscopic finding. Where that applies, oscillatory models of directionless political change merit as much consideration as their directional counterparts.

Notes

1. 1.
O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986: 19) highlighted “the high degree of indeterminacy of social and political action and the inordinate degrees of freedom that collective and even individual action may have at some momentous junctures of the transition.”

2. 2.
Alfred Marshall Principles of Economics (Macmillan, London, 1981): “The laws of economics are to be compared with the laws of the tides, rather than with the simple and exact law of gravitation. For the actions of men are so various and uncertain, that the best statement of tendencies, which we can make in a science of human conduct, must needs be inexact and faulty….(but)… since we must form to ourselves some notions of the tendencies of human action, our choice is between forming them carelessly and forming them carefully….” (pp. 26–27). See also Appendices C and D for more elaboration of the reasons why social models need to be constantly re-checked against their empirical referents.

3. 3.
Compare the ideal types, which Max Weber defined as “the one-sided accentuation of one of more points of view and the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, and more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, and are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct.” These are models of the kind appropriate to complex multidimensional processes such as democratization which are inextricably linked to value orientations, and where the precise content of the term varies (within limits) over time and space. Such models are “only instruments…purely experimental procedures which the scientist evolves deliberately and arbitrarily, according to the needs of the investigation, and which he abandons without qualm if they do not meet his expectations…In themselves, ideal types are neither true nor false, but simply, like any other technical tool, useful or useless” (Freund 1968: 60 and 66).

4. 4.
For example, does Japanese democracy fully satisfy Huntington’s two-turnover test? In the Spanish, step-change transition can we really disregard tejerazo of 21 February 1981? What of ETA?

5. 5.
Was ancient Athenian democracy certain to fail from internal sources, or was it the Macedonian conquest of 321BC that guaranteed its end?

6. 6.
See, for example, the 1998 special issue of the International Political Science Review 19, 1, on “Democracy and Time,” which contains a wide range of examples from such eminent democracy specialists as Linz, Santiso, Schedler and Schmitter, but which is more concerned with democracy than with the specific temporalities of democratization.

7. 7.
However, those who suffer physics envy may feel reassured by the encouragement offered by one of that discipline’s leading theorists of temporality, Lee Smolin, who relates his contribution to analogous movements in social theory. He advocates “a relational philosophy according to which all properties ascribed to agents in a social system arise from their relationships and interactions with one another. As in a Leibnizian cosmology, there are no external timeless categories or laws. The future is open, because there is no end to the novel modes of organization that may be invented by a society as it continually confronts unprecedented problems and opportunities. This new social theory attempts to refashion democracy into a global form of political organization able to guide the evolution of the burgeoning multiethnic and multicultural societies” (Smolin 2013: 264). For a parallel view of temporality from the grand historical sociology tradition, see Norbert Elias (1992). For him, the progression of time should be understood as an advance towards a higher synthesis (derived from social experience) rather than as an ungrounded abstraction that screens out the social foundations of the concept.

8. 8.
For a useful account of the “transitions” debates of the 1980s, see Cecilia Lesgart (2003).

9. 9.
It started as an approach to comparative development studies. Daniel Lerner (1964), for example, was trying to overcome the ethnocentrism of Europeanization and Americanization when he promoted the terms in the 1950s. And he derived it from some quite grounded insights into the effects of urbanization, etc., in the Middle East. Still, he defined modernity as a state of mind involving “expectation of progress, propensity to growth, readiness to adapt oneself to change”; and he paved the way for subsequent theorizing with his highly debatable assertions that: “The nations of the North Atlantic area first developed the social processes- secularization, urbanization, industrialization, popular participation- by which this state of mind came to prevail. The ‘Western Model’ is only historically western, sociologically it is global….the same basic model reappears in virtually all modernizing societies on all continents of the world, regardless of variations in race, color, or creed.” Preface to the second edition (1964: viii/ix).

10. 10.
Secularization was always the odd man out in Lerner’s analysis (especially odd in the Middle East) and was dropped by S. M. Lipset (see chapter two of Political Man) who narrowed the focus to economic development in chapter two of the book (1960). When Ronald Inglehart reintroduced secularism as one of the values of modernity in the 1970s, he concentrated on secular attitudes towards political authority, rather than secularization tout court. For an alternative interpretation still within the same long-run directional tradition, see Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens (1992).

11. 11.
For a recent literature review that essentially vindicates Lipset, while emphasizing the endogenous aspects of modernization theory, see Julian Wuchenpfennig and Franziska Deutch (2009).

12. 12.
See “Political Development and Political Decay” in World Politics (1965), in which Samuel P. Huntington contested the modernization approach on the grounds that “Most modernizing countries are buying rapid social modernization at the price of political degeneration,” by which he meant “the decay of political organization and the increasing dominance of disruptive social forces”(1965: 415). For an example see Fabrice Lehoucq “Costa Rica: Paradise in Doubt” in Journal of Democracy (2005).

13. 13.
Indeed, a more rambling version can be found in book 8 of Plato’s Republic, where it is embedded within a cyclical account of successive changes in regime type, from nobility through oligarchy to democracy, and then tyranny.

14. 14.
See Charles H. Powers, ed. The Life and Times of Vilfredo Pareto: The Transformation of Democracy (Transaction, New York 1984) and Joseph Femia “Pareto’s Concept of Democratic Plutocracy” Government and Opposition Summer 1995.

15. 15.
Samuel P. Huntington’s “three waves” (1993) metaphor is an extremely popular notion of an oscillatory democratization process. But it is more descriptive than explanatory; and it refers to very aggregate global movements that extend over centuries. The oscillatory processes of interest to students of post-Cold War Latin America arise within national trajectories of political development. These are cycles that operate on much shorter timescales (typically a handful of years) and should be modelled by reference to more précised drivers and indicators.

16. 16.
Thus, Dan Slater proposes “democratic careening” as just such an addition to the comparativist toolkit. He defines it as “political instability sparked by intense conflict between partisan actors deploying competing visions of democratic accountability” (2013: 729). The particular conflict he highlights is between “vertical” and “horizontal” (we might say populist or institutional) understandings of democratic accountability.

17. 17.
This contrast is one of twenty ontological presuppositions that in Jullien’s (2015) view distinguishes the European from the Chinese tradition of analytical thought. (Note that the contrast is a question of distance between the two ideas, not frontal opposition. Thus, it is possible to model within a maturation framework, but not effective to force the model onto the reality. A situation must mature to the point where the insights of a model can be activated without strain.) The cumulative effect of reviewing these twenty differences of outlook is certainly useful in that it provides a disciplined vantage point for interrogating one’s own underlying assumptions. The Europe/China attributions must be treated with care, however. For example, in the realm of political thought Edmund Burke would appear as much a “maturation” thinker as Confucius, while Mao-Tse-Tung in his prime was a Marxist modeller (although—like Huntington—at the end of career he seems to have reverted towards cultural essentialisms).

18. 18.
“the decision to invoke a particular temporal structure depends on how the analyst frames the research question” says Paul Pierson (in Mahoney and Reuschemeyer 2003: 179). Note however that, as this chapter’s comparison of four alternative frames shows, the same decision may also determine which line of causal explanation the analyst will prioritise.

References

Elias, Norbert. 1992. Time: An Essay. Oxford: Blackwell.

Freund, Julien. 1968. The Sociology of Max Weber. London: Penguin.

Garreton, Manuel Antonio. 2003. Incomplete Democracy: Political Democratization in Chile and Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Huntington, Samuel P. 1965. Political Development and Political Decay. World Politics 17 (3): 386–430.

Crossref

Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Inglehart, Ronald, and Wayne E. Baker. 2000. Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values. American Sociological Review 65: 19–51.

Crossref

Jullien, Franscois. 2015. De L’Etre au Vivre: Lexique euro-chinoise de la pensee. Paris: Gallimard Paris.

Lehoucq, Fabrice. 2005. Costa Rica: Paradise in Doubt. Journal of Democracy 16 (3): 140–154.

Crossref

Lerner, Daniel. 1964. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Free Press.

Lesgart, Cecilia. 2003. Usos de la Transicion a la Democracia: Ensayo, ciencia y politica en la decada del ‘80”. Buenos Aires: Homo Sapiens.

Linz, Juan J. 1998. Democracy and Time. International Political Science Review 19 (1): 19–37.

Crossref

Lipset, Seymor Martin. 1960. Political Man. New York: Doubleday.

Mahoney, James, and Dietrich R. Rueschemeyer. 2003. Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crossref

Marshall, Alfred. 1981. Principles of Economics. London: Macmillan.

Morlino, Leonardo. 2011. Changes for Democracy: Actors, Structures, Processes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crossref

O’Donnell, Guillermo, and Philippe Schmitter. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy. New York: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Polybius. 1979. The Rise of the Roman Empire. London: Penguin.

Przeworski, Adam, and Fernando Limongi. 1997. Modernisation: Theories and Facts. World Politics 49: 155–183.

Crossref

Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Slater, Dan. 2013. Democratic Careening. World Politics 65 (4): 729–763.

Crossref

Smolin, Lee. 2013. Time Reborn: From the Future of Physics to the Future of the Universe. London: Allen Lane.

Van Beek, Ursula, and Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski (eds.). 2012. Democracy Under Stress: The Global Crisis and Beyond. Stellenbosch: Sun Press.

Whitehead, Laurence. 2002. Democratisation: Theory and Experience. New York: Oxford University Press.

Crossref

Wuchenpfennig, Julian, and Franziska Deutch. 2009. Modernization and Democracy: Theories and Evidence Revisited. https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/cis-dam/CIS_DAM_2015/WorkingPapers/Living_Reviews_Democracy/Wucherpfennig%20Deutsch.pdf. Accessed September 18, 2017.

© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_3

3. Democratic Quality and Legitimacy in the TRU Countries

Dirk Berg-Schlosser1   and Ursula Hoffmann-Lange2

(1)

Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany

(2)

Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany

Dirk Berg-Schlosser

Email: bergschl@staff.uni-marburg.de

Ursula Hoffmann-Lange (Corresponding author)

Email: ursula.hoffmann-lange@uni-bamberg.de

The TRI (now TRU) projects followed the development of democratization in seven countries across major world regions for close to a quarter of a century. As was explained in the Preface, five younger democracies identified as democratic forerunners in their respective regions were originally selected for the analysis. Our first study of the democratic transition process, conducted in the mid-1990s, justified the selection of those cases. The second study, done some 10 years later, confirmed the ongoing democratic consolidation , but also revealed deficits in the political culture of the new democracies . In retrospect, the present analysis intends to establish whether these deficits were “childhood diseases” that all new democracies face after transitions, or whether the weaknesses have intensified over time, indicating that the consolidation processes in those countries have come to a halt, or even have been reversed.

Our analysis is conducted both at the macro-level (governmental /institutional) and the micro-level (individual citizens). In addition, the meso-level of major collective actors, such as anti-establishment parties, is also taken into account. This approach corresponds with Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan’s (1996) conceptualization of democratic consolidation , which distinguishes between these three levels. In this way, not only the initial high hopes—often based on some idealized notions of democracy—but also the “pains of the plain” relating to the actual reality become apparent.

The present volume reflects on the state of affairs in the countries of interest with their varying experiences since the major wave of transitions to democracy in 1989/1990. This period has been not only characterized by the vicissitudes of political life in each case—characteristic of all dynamic and, by their very nature, conflictual democracies —but has also witnessed the great common shock resulting from the demise of the Lehman Brothers investment bank in 2008 and the ensuing “Great Recession ” (Van Beek and Wnuk-Lipinski 2012). Our cases withstood this and other crises more or less successfully, but they are now also confronted with continuing problems of globalization, including volatile international financial markets, international migration , increasing social inequalities and, not least of all, the anti-democratic, authoritarian and populist threat to the very bases of their democratic legitimacy.

For these reasons, it is time to take stock of the latest developments and consider their implications for the future. The current trends apply to the cases considered here, but in a larger sense they also apply to the regions the cases represent (see the relevant chapters in Part III below). Since our first study more differentiated and valid macro-data have become available, beyond the Freedom House and Polity IV scores on which the original case selection had been based. These data are, in particular, the World Bank “good governance ” indicators (from 1996 onwards), the “Human Development Index ” (HDI ) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the “Varieties of Democracy” (V-Dem) dataset with a very rich longitudinal database going back to the beginning of the twentieth century and including almost all contemporary independent states.

The first section of this chapter is based on macro-level developments and on previous detailed case studies. This approach makes it possible to cover the differing kinds of authoritarian legacies in the new democracies and their overall development since the time of transition . It also provides detailed patterns of the various dimensions of democracy at different points in time. Governance and performance aspects are included as well.

The second section, following James Coleman’s (1990) general model of social explanations, deals with different aspects of the subjective perceptions of democracy at the micro-level as specified in the opening chapter by Dieter Fuchs and Hans-Dieter Klingemann. The analyses are based on data from several waves of the “World Values Survey ” and from surveys of parliamentarians conducted before and after the recent Great Recession . [1] On this basis, it is possible to both assess the impact of anti-democratic parties and social forces at the meso-level, which may present a threat to democratic legitimacy, and show the respective elite perceptions. All this, finally, leads to a number of conclusions and perspectives on further possible developments.

The overarching theoretical aim of the analyses is to identify the macro- and micro-factors that can explain both the resilience and vulnerability of democracies . Since Seymour Martin Lipset’s early analysis (1959), it has become generally accepted that industrialization has eroded traditional ways of life in the Western world by creating new employment opportunities. The ensuing urbanization along with the expansion of mass education freed people from rigid social controls, clearing the way for secularization and the development of democratic and socialist movements. Tatu Vanhanen (2003) emphasized that social differentiation and, more generally, the distribution of power resources have been the driving force behind democratization by fostering a rapidly increasing division of labour, eroding traditional bonds of authority and thereby empowering people to pursue more independent lives. Therefore, socio-economic development , urbanization and literacy have to be considered as factors supporting the spread of democracy. Lipset’s modernization theory has been discussed and empirically tested by many authors and has been, by and large, confirmed (Marks and Diamond 1992).

However, socio-economic modernization is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for democratic consolidation . Democracy may flourish even in societies with a low level of socio-economic development (as in India or Botswana ), or it may break down in highly developed societies, as was the case during the first half of the twentieth century in Germany and Italy. The breakdown of democracy in the latter two countries was due to political parties failing to implement effective political institutions; a high degree of political polarization and irreconcilable conflicts among major political parties; and an unwillingness on the part of crucial actors to mutually acknowledge the legitimacy of the other. The cited examples imply that political institutions and value orientations of both elites and citizens play an independent role in democratic development.

Political and socio-economic factors also play an important role in shaping political culture . In the short run, political and economic effectiveness enhance the political legitimacy of new democracies (“specific support ” in Easton’s [1965] sense). In the longer run, once established, a civic culture (Almond and Verba 1963) bolsters the existing democratic institutions against temporary economic crises or poor government performance by decreasing the citizens’ inclination to blame the democratic institutions rather than the current government or outside forces (“diffuse support ”).

Macro-Level Developments

The history of transitions to democracy in the countries of interest here has been documented previously. [2] For the present purpose, it is important to note that the respective authoritarian regimes from which these countries transited to democracy in the late 1980s and early 1990s were highly diverse. They varied from the orthodox “hardline” communist system in East Germany and the “post-totalitarian” one in Poland (for these notions, see, e.g., Linz and Stepan 1996) to the military dictatorships of the “personalist” kind in Chile and the “bureaucratic-authoritarian” type in South Korea (e.g. O’Donnell 1973), and they included the special “racial oligarchy” (Huntington 1991) of the apartheid regime in South Africa . The military regime in Turkey after the coup in 1980 claimed to preserve the secular and reformist tradition of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk when faced with conservative and Islamist forces.

Regime transitions were concluded by “pacts” in Chile , Poland , South Africa , South Korea and Turkey , and by complete “rupture” in East Germany. [3] As a result, in four of the cases at least parts of the former elites were able to retain a relatively protected position (the military in Chile and Turkey ) or were “transplaced” with at least some of their economic and social positions intact. [4] Only in East Germany , under the special circumstances of the unification with the West, did an almost complete “replacement” occur.

Overall Longitudinal Trends

Developments since then are mirrored in Fig. 3.1 based on the V-Dem data for liberal democracies , defined as “…protecting individual and minority rights against the tyranny of the state and the tyranny of the majority. The liberal model takes a “negative” view of political power insofar as it judges the quality of democracy by the limits placed on government . This is achieved by constitutionally protected civil liberties, a strong rule of law, an independent judiciary, and effective checks and balances that, together, limit the exercise of executive power” (Coppedge et al. 2015: 43). The components of this index will be further documented and discussed below.

Fig. 3.1  Liberal democracy index

(Source https://www.v-dem.net/en/data/data-version-6-2/. Last accessed January 12, 2017)

Figure 3.1 provides a first glance at the overall picture. Beginning in 1980 as a base year for the authoritarian regimes in all transition cases, there are the relatively early and gradual transitions in Turkey and South Korea , followed by the abrupt transformations in Poland , Chile and, somewhat later, in South Africa . Some of the remaining problems and weaknesses of the new democracies are reflected in the relatively lower—and later even declining—scores for South Africa and Turkey . By contrast, scores for (initially West) Germany and, even more so, for Sweden remained stable at high levels. Only in more recent years, in particular during and in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, do some turbulences and declines in all the cases become apparent. To these we turn later.

A closer look at the most recent data also reveals that our originally selected cases still are among the leading ones in their respective regions, with values for the liberal democracy index considerably higher than for regional averages, as shown in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1  TRU cases, liberal democracy index, regional comparisons 2014

East Asia

1.35

Korea

2.44

East Central Europe

2.22

Poland

3.09

EU

3.05

Germany

2.85

Sweden

3.37

Latin America

2.10

Chile

3.14

MENA

0.92

Turkey

1.29

Southern Africa

1.65

South Africa

2.14

Source V-Dem data set

The reasoning behind the original case selection has been thus confirmed even by this newer and more elaborate data set. The only somewhat surprising figure is the one for Germany , which is below the EU average and is even lower than the figures for Poland or Chile . However, the mystery can be solved by looking at the specific components of the index. The components comprise all six elements of the “electoral democracy index,” which are: freedom of association, expanded freedom of expression, clean election index, access to alternative information sources, per cent of population with suffrage and elected executive index. They also include three “liberal” components: equality before the law, individual liberty and judicial and legislative constraints on the executive. The lower value for Germany disappears and, in fact, becomes higher than the values for Poland and Chile when the “elected executive index” as a component of the electoral democracy index has been removed. Ongoing debates about the merits of the two systems of democratic government indicate there is no reason to assume that presidential democracies are more democratic than parliamentary democracies (Shugart and Carey 1992; Linz and Valenzuela 1994). For this reason, we have excluded the “elected executive index” component from the more detailed analysis below.

Detailed Patterns

When broken down by components, the specific strengths and weaknesses of each case become apparent. This is illustrated in Fig. 3.2 for South Africa in the period of transition . The eight dimensions of “liberal democracy” (excluding the “elected executive index”) are rendered in a cobweb or radar screen graph. The corners signify the eight dimensions mentioned above. The scale for the cobweb lines is indicated in the middle.

Fig. 3.2  Radar screen graph South Africa for “liberal democracy” 1990 and 1995

(Note The corners here signify the eight dimensions mentioned above. The V-Dem variable labels stand for: v2x_frassoc_thick = freedom of association; v2x_freexp_thick = expanded freedom of expression; v2xme_altinf = alternative sources of information; v2x_suffr = percentage of population with suffrage; v2xel_frefair = free and fair elections; v2xcl_rol = rule of law; v2x_jucon = judicial constraints of the executive; v2xlg_legcon = legislative constraints on the executive. The scale for the cobweb lines is indicated in the middle)

It can be seen that after the first free and fair elections in April 1994 that were open to all racial groups, the democratic quality with regard to freedom of association, expanded freedom of expression, alternative sources of information, per cent of population with suffrage, equality before the law and judicial constraints on executive was greatly enhanced (dark line). However, this was less so for free and fair elections and legislative constraints on the executive in view of the ANC ’s almost two-thirds majority in parliament .

When we look at the same dimensions for all TRU cases in 1995, a pattern emerges, as illustrated in Fig. 3.3.

Fig. 3.3  TRU cases, dimensions of liberal democracy 1995

This graph shows the somewhat reduced overall quality of democracy for Turkey , in particular with regards to the rule of law (light blue line in the interior), but also the already mentioned problems in South Africa (dark brown line). All other cases score relatively well on all the dimensions.

Twelve years later, but before the onset of the Great Depression , the overall picture is further improved with the rule of law in Turkey and free and fair elections in South Africa having been strengthened (see Fig. 3.4).

Fig. 3.4  TRU cases, liberal democracy 2007

Impact of the Great Recession

The consequences of the 2008 global financial crisis, often called the Great Recession —in contradistinction to the Great Depression following the 1929 Wall Street Crash—affected the TRU cases in varying degrees. In general, though, the Great Recession was a kind of natural experiment testing the democratic resilience of all the cases under consideration here (Du Plessis et al. 2015; Berg-Schlosser 2015; Hoffmann-Lange 2015). Its impact can be seen in Fig. 3.5.

Fig. 3.5  Impact of recession 2008–2010

(Source TRU data set, developed by Stan du Plessis 2015)

Figure 3.5 shows that the economically most developed countries, Germany and Sweden , were also the most affected by the recession as indicated by the lowest GDP growth rates in this period. The other cases fared much better. If we look at the impact of the recession on the quality of democracy, it turns out that the state of liberal democracy, by and large, was not affected very much. The major exception is Turkey where a strong decline can be observed in the more recent period (see Fig. 3.6 for the latest available data in 2014).

Fig. 3.6  TRU cases, liberal democracy 2014

In the case of Turkey , however, the trend applies in particular to the dimensions of the rule of law, freedom of expression and alternative sources of information and therefore cannot be attributed to the recession, which did not much affect Turkey . Clearly, other factors have been at work. The decline also precedes the coup attempt in July 2016 and the subsequent state of emergency. The change of the constitution to a strong presidential system points in the same direction.

Governance and Performance

The overall institutional background of the state of democracy in the considered cases is also related to their actual governmental processes and performance in a functional sense. The World Bank data are the only ones covering this aspect more fully. In addition to the “voice and accountability” and “rule of law” dimensions, which, taken together, can also be interpreted as measures of liberal democracy (Berg-Schlosser 2015), they comprise four other indices: “government effectiveness ” (i.e. the quality of the bureaucracy and public services), the “regulatory burden” (i.e. market-unfriendly policies like price and trade controls), “graft” (i.e. the exercise of public power for private gain) including various forms of corruption, nepotism or clientelism, and “political stability” or its opposite, the extent of social unrest and violence.

The most recent values are presented in Table 3.2. The Gini index of income distribution, which has been added, together with the political stability or social unrest indicator, shed some light on the overall social situation in a country.

Table 3.2  World Bank Governance Indicators, TRU countries 2015

Country

Voice/Acc.

Rule of law

Gov. Eff.

Reg. Qual.

Contr. Corr.

Pol. Stab.

Gini index

Chile

0.99

1.33

1.08

1.35

1.26

0.40

50.5

Germany

1.43

1.78

1.74

1.67

1.82

0.71

30.1

Korea

0.67

0.95

1.03

1.16

0.49

0.10

N.A.

Poland

1.04

0.80

0.80

1.00

0.58

0.87

32.6

South Africa

0.63

0.06

0.27

0.30

0.04

−0.18

63.4

Sweden

1.60

2.04

1.81

1.81

2.25

0.97

27.3

Turkey

−0.37

−0.06

0.23

0.33

0.11

−1.28

40.2

Source https://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/worldwide-governance-indicators. Last accessed October 4, 2017

The graphs in Fig. 3.7 show the six governance indicators for our cases and their developments over time. They span the period starting in 1996 the first post-transition year for which such data are available; to early 2008, before the onset of the recession; to 2015 for which the latest data are available.

Fig. 3.7  Governance indicators TRU countries 1996–2015

Again, the graphs in Fig. 3.7 are revealing. They show a rather stable situation in our two benchmark cases, Germany and Sweden , with relatively high scores on all of the dimensions. By contrast, South Africa has experienced a considerable decline over this period, in particular with regard to the control of corruption and government effectiveness and an increase in social unrest and violence. Turkey , the other more critical case, despite some earlier improvements, also demonstrates a decline in most indicators, especially in terms of political stability and increasing violence. Chile , Poland and South Korea have largely maintained their somewhat more mixed patterns, not yet reflecting the reversals under the PiS government in Poland after 2015, and the scandals concerning the incumbent president in South Korea in 2016.

Figures in Table 3.3 provide the relevant information about the actual socio-economic performance of the countries of interest. The figures are based on the latest Human Development Index (HDI) , which is compiled annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) . Its three major components consist of an indicator of the average life expectancy at birth, which also reflects the overall nutrition, health and sanitary situation in a country; an indicator for the level of education (here measured by the mean years of schooling); and an indicator for the Gross National Income (GNI) per capita (here expressed in US$ calculated on the basis of purchasing power parities, PPP, for the year 2011).

Table 3.3  Human Development Index, major components, changes 1990–2014

Country

Chile

Germany

Korea

Poland

South Africa

Sweden

Turkey

HDI rank 2014

42

6

17

36

116

14

72

HDI 2014

0.832

0.916

0.898

0.843

0.666

0.907

0.761

HDI 1990

0.699

0.801

0.731

0.713

0.621

0.815

0.576

HDI change

0.133

0.115

0.167

0.130

−0.045

0.092

0.185

Life expectation 2014, years

81.7

80.9

81.9

77.4

57.4

82.2

75.3

Life expectation 1990, years

73.7

75.4

71.7

70.9

61.5

77.6

63.1

Life expectation change

10.0

5.5

10.2

6.5

−4.1

4.6

12.2

Education 2014, years

9.8

13.1

11.9

11.8

9.9

12.1

7.6

Education 1990, years

8.1

8.8

8.9

9.7

6.5

10.5

4.5

Education change

1.7

4.3

3.0

2.1

3.4

1.6

3.1

GNI/cap. $2014

21,290

43,919

33,890

23,177

12,122

45,636

18,677

GNI/cap. 1990 $

8767

31,994

12,064

9915

9987

30,155

10,494

GNI/cap change $

12,523

11,925

21,826

13,262

2135

15,481

8183

GNI change %

142.8

27.2

180.9

133.8

21.4

51.3

78.0

Source http://hdr.undp.org/en/data-explorer. Last accessed January 12, 2017

The overall HDI has increased considerably for most of our cases with the notable exception of South Africa where a decrease in average life expectancy has been noted and can be attributed to the high prevalence of HIV /AIDS . The other HDI components show positive developments for all the countries. The increase in life expectancy is particularly remarkable for Turkey . The increase in mean years of schooling is, somewhat surprisingly, highest in Germany and South Africa . Gross National Income per capita, in absolute figures, has increased most strongly in South Korea . The relative increases in Chile and Poland , where the GNI per capita more than doubled in the last 25 years, are also remarkable. South Africa with the lowest percentage increase is a laggard also in this respect.

The perceptions of citizens of these countries of the successes and failures in the respective cases and, in particular, aspects of political legitimacy including changes over time have to be seen against the political and socio-economic developments occurring since transitions to democracy took place.

Micro-Level Perceptions

This part of the chapter analyses micro-level developments and complements the macro-analysis for the seven TRU countries. The analysis is limited to a small number of crucial indicators showing support for democracy, expectations associated with democracy (free elections , civil rights, welfare provisions and a reduction in income inequalities), as well as beliefs in the legitimacy of democracy. For the latter, four indicators are included: confidence in political institutions; confidence in political parties; the feeling that human rights are protected; and perceived deficits in the functioning of democracy.

In our analysis, the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) constitutes a special case because the transition to democracy in 1989/90 involved the unification of Germany and the adoption of the constitutional and legal framework of the West German Federal Republic. At the same time, the transition to democracy and a market economy was not as taxing on the East Germans as on citizens in the other post-communist countries. The much smaller population size of GDR, compared with West Germany , and the high level of socio-economic development in latter allowed bolstering the transition process by transferring billions of Euros to rebuild GDR’s infrastructure and to subsidize its transition to a market economy. Yet despite huge public and private efforts over a period of the more than 25 years since the German unification, the economic product and salaries in the eastern section of the unified Germany still trail those in the western part. The unemployment rate in the east is also considerably higher.

Survey research confirms that the experience of the political and economic transitions, which affected deeply the personal lives of most East Germans, and persisting east–west disparities have left their mark on political culture . The differences in political orientations between the two parts of Germany confirm the relevance of relative deprivation for political dissatisfaction and indicate that Germans in the eastern part feel they have been treated unfairly.

Yet, despite the dramatic impact of post-unification changes, not least the long-lasting unemployment that was unknown under communist rule, a recent report shows that in the 25 years after German unification a remarkable convergence in value orientations has taken place between the two parts of Germany (Holtmann et al. 2015). Nevertheless, some marked differences remain. Especially notable is the higher level of dissatisfaction with politics, which manifested, among others, in the results of the 2017 elections to the German parliament (Bundestag), with much higher support for the Left party and the Right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the eastern states.

Historical experience makes possible two types of comparisons. On the one hand, former East German and Polish citizens can be compared to establish whether or not their common experience of communist rule between 1945 and 1990 has had the same impact on their respective support for democracy. On the other hand, a comparison between German respondents from the eastern and western parts of the country can show the effect on political orientations of persistent regional disparities.

Database

Unfortunately, indicators for political culture , especially with regard to support for democracy and political legitimacy, are not as comprehensive as those for the macro-indicators. The only comparative database that includes all seven TRU countries is the World Values Survey (WVS) . However, the WVS started out with a rather small number of countries. Only two of our countries (Korea and South Africa ) took part in all six waves of the WVS , and another three (Chile , Sweden and Turkey ) participated in five of the six waves. Nevertheless, all seven countries were included in the last two waves and provide information on recent developments, especially on whether the Great Recession had an effect on the value orientations and political perceptions of the citizens (Table 3.4).

Table 3.4  Number of respondents in the seven TRU countries in different waves of the World Values Survey (WVS)

WVS wave

Chile

West Germany

East Germany

Korea

Poland

South Africa

Sweden

Turkey

1. 1981–1982

0

0

0

970

0

1574

954

0

2. 1989–1990

1500

0

0

1251

901

2736

0

1030

3. 1996–1997

1000

1017

1009

1247

1153

2785

1009

1881

4. 1999–2001

1200

0

0

1200

0

2828

1015

3401

5. 2006–2007

1000

988

1076

1200

1000

2821

1003

1346

6. 2010–2013

1000

1032

1012

1200

966

3443

1206

1605

Total

5700

3037

3097

7068

4020

16,187

5187

9263

The years indicated in the table provide the actual range of years in which the different survey waves were conducted. They may differ from the periods provided on the website of the WVS which are based on all countries participating in each wave

Source World Values Survey, cumulated file

The analysis covers the period from the mid-1990s up to the mid-2010s. The number of variables that can be used for assessing support for democracy and the legitimacy of the democratic institutions over time is relatively small. The indicators used here were chosen for their theoretical relevance and for meeting the requirement of having been included in the two most recent waves of the WVS .

The availability of two surveys of parliamentarians (2007 and 2013) using WVS questions to assess the political orientations of MPs provides important insights into developments at the intermediary level and allows comparisons with the orientations of citizens. The availability of these data offers information about differences between the elites and the citizens, and shows the degree of polarization within party systems with respect to basic democratic values and the performance of the democratic political system .

The WVS uses two different kinds of scales, from 1 to 4 and from 1 to 10. For the sake of better comparability of the scores reported here, all values were rescaled to a range from 0 to 1. The resulting scores can roughly be interpreted as percentages of the maximum score. For determining the overall score for the citizens of all seven countries, a weight was used that standardizes the number of citizens within each country to 1000 and of MPs to 100, so that each country has the same influence on the overall result.

Support for Democracy

Support for a democratic political system is the most basic aspect of a civic culture . It shows whether the concept of democracy receives positive evaluations by the populations at large. However, since there is no universally accepted definition of democracy, a positive evaluation is not sufficient without knowing what people associate with democracy, especially since most dictators nowadays claim to be genuine democrats. Therefore, Larry Diamond has concluded that while “there is a broad desire for democracy in the world, stretching across regions,” there is also a “strong authoritarian temptation” outside of the West (Diamond 2008: 33). The simplest test for distinguishing between paying lip service to democracy and a deeper understanding of the essence of democracy is to contrast different types of political regimes and to ask respondents to rate them independently. In this way, the respondents are not forced to choose between democracy and authoritarian regimes , which may produce an unrealistically high share of affirmative answers in favour of democracy, given the latter’s social desirability.

In the WVS , respondents are asked to rate three different types of political systems: an autocratic system with a strong leader, a military regime and democracy. [5] The mean evaluations for democracy confirm the high level of social desirability associated with the concept of democracy. For the most recent wave, the lowest means to be found are 0.63 in Korea , 0.66 in South Africa and 0.68 in Poland . Korea experienced a decline since the mid-1990s from 0.75 to 0.63. South Africa started out from a very high level of 0.81 that was upheld until wave 5 and then experienced a dramatic decline from 0.80 to 0.66. By contrast, Chile shows a steady increase from 0.71 to 0.83.

The mean evaluations of having an authoritarian system show that the differences between the countries are considerably higher for this indicator. The score for authoritarian systems was defined as the higher score for either autocratic leadership or military regime . Overall, autocratic leadership was considerably more popular than military regimes. In wave 6, it received a score of 0.43 overall compared to 0.29 for a military regime . Its lowest score was 0.24 in West Germany , its highest 0.56 in South Africa . The data confirm the existence of pockets of support for authoritarianism even in the two long-standing democracies , with a slight increase in recent years. Among the new democracies , support for authoritarian regimes has declined in Chile , Poland and Turkey , while it has increased in Korea and especially in South Africa . In the latter country, support for democracy and authoritarianism is now at the same level (0.66 and 0.64).

Support for democracy was defined as an unequivocal preference for democracy over an authoritarian system . The relevant calculation was done by subtracting the score for authoritarianism from the score for democracy and then recoding negative values into 0 and positive values into 1. Therefore, a value of 0 encompasses all respondents who have given an authoritarian system a higher or an equal rating. Figure 3.8 shows the share of respondents who indicated a preference for democracy, however small.

Fig. 3.8  Preference for democracy in the seven countries

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 1–6. Percentage of respondents with a preference for democracy over autocratic leadership and military regime)

The time series goes back to the third wave of the WVS in the mid-1990s. It can be seen that the two consolidated democracies (including the eastern part of Germany ) achieve 80% or more support for democracy. At the same time, we can observe a steady increase in Chile , which reaches 68.9% in wave 6. Poland , for which scores for the last two waves only are available, has slightly lower levels and shows a small increase. The three remaining countries display idiosyncratic patterns. Turkey started out with 60% support for democracy, followed by a decline to 39% around the turn of the century and a rebound to 50% in the last two waves. Korea started out with close to 70% in the 1990s, but has since experienced a steady decline to about 45% in the last two waves. South Africa stands out as a special case. After the initial enthusiasm for democracy and a share of 69%, support for democracy has steadily declined, with a particularly severe drop between 2006 and 2013. These very different country-specific patterns become even more interesting once we include the results of the MPs later in the analysis.

Political Expectations

The evaluations of democratic and authoritarian regimes are rather general and do not provide information about what people expect from democracy. The last two waves of the WVS included a battery of four items asking respondents to evaluate which characteristics of a polity they thought were essential for a democracy. Two of the items dealt with economic policy issues (state aid for the unemployed and a system of progressive taxes).

The other two of the four items addressed the fundamental principles of a liberal democratic order:

- People choose their leaders in free elections

- Civil rights protect people from state oppression.

The latter two items were included only in the last two waves of the WVS and show similar results.

Free elections were considered as somewhat more important with a range 0.84–0.77. This is not altogether surprising since civil rights are a more abstract concept than general elections and not all people understand that a free and democratic society depends on a guarantee of civil rights, minority protection and the rule of law. While support for general elections has been more or less constant in our seven countries—with the exception of South Africa where this support has declined from 0.81 to 0.67—slight but uniform erosion in support for civil rights can be observed even in the consolidated democracies (Fig. 3.9). The differences between the two established and the five Third-Wave democracies have not narrowed, however. The short time period precludes any conclusions on whether this decline indicates a long-term trend or is rather a minor fluctuation. Overall, the relatively high scores for both indicators support the conclusion that citizens have by and large understood that free elections and the protection of civil rights are indispensable features of democracy.

Fig. 3.9  Essential for democracy: Civil rights protect people’s liberty against oppression

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 1–6. Average scores on a 10-point scale, rescaled to range 0–1)

The data also include several items asking for economic policy preferences. Since these items refer to the sociopolitical cleavage that traditionally has been the major conflict line within democratic party systems (cf. Lijphart 1999: 79–82), [6] it makes sense to analyse the subjective importance of economic policy issues to find out to what extent demands for a strong role of the state in economic policymaking and the provision of welfare for the citizens are associated with democracy. Rather than using the items on progressive taxes and state aid for the unemployed, which have very low correlations with other political orientations and have been included only in waves 5 and 6 of the WVS , two other items were deemed more pertinent because they ask for more fundamental economic policy value orientations and have been already included in previous waves. Respondents were confronted with two sets of contradictory statements and were asked to indicate their own position on a 10-point scale:

- Government should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for vs. people should take more responsibility for themselves.

- Incomes should be made more equal vs. we need larger income differences as incentives for individual efforts.

The first of these items addresses the conflict between individual self-reliance and government responsibility for the citizens’ well-being. Figure 3.10 reveals interesting differences between the countries. Koreans put the highest demand on their government , indicating a rather widespread mindset of reliance on welfare provisions (“Versorgungsmentalität”). Sweden is the contrasting case, although demands for more government responsibility have markedly increased compared to the mid-1990s. There is a relatively large discrepancy between Germans in the eastern and western parts of the country, with the former putting a considerably higher emphasis on an active welfare state. This confirms the findings of many other studies (Holtmann et al. 2015: 180–182). However, the gap between the two regions has narrowed somewhat over the period of observation primarily because scores in the western part of Germany have increased. The scores for Chile , South Africa and Turkey show fluctuations without any discernible trends.

Fig. 3.10  Government should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for vs. people should take more responsibility to provide for themselves

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 1–6. Average scores on a 10-point scale, rescaled to range 0–1)

Figure 3.11 provides the average scores for the item referring to income equity. The highest expectations for a reduction in income differences can be found in Chile , Germany (both in the east and west) and in Turkey . The German data reveal a slight upward trend, however, while the patterns for Chile and Turkey show fluctuation on a high level. Conversely, Korea and Poland show the lowest averages. While the Polish citizens started out from an extremely low level of 0.23, the scores have steadily increased, although they still remain the second lowest. It looks as if in Poland demands for income equality were initially associated with the communist rule and therefore enjoyed little support. Once Poland had gone through the shock of a rapid transition to a free market economy, Polish citizens seem to have come to the conclusion that inequalities have gone too far. Korea , by contrast, shows a fairly low level throughout and next to no change over time. In Sweden , support for more income equality has considerably increased between the last two survey waves and has reached a mean of 0.57 in wave 6.

Fig. 3.11  Incomes should be made more equal vs. we need larger income differences as incentives for individual efforts

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 1–6. Average scores on a 10-point scale, rescaled to range 0–1)

The South African data are a mystery. Income inequality is rather high in the country and has even slightly increased over the last decades (Gini Index 67.0 in 1999 and 70.0 in the 2010s; UNDP 2013). At the same time, despite the fact that South Africa is the poorest country in the study, the data show that South Africans are not particularly adamant in demanding government action against the existing income inequality . Support for more income equality has even declined over time from 0.60 to 0.43. Since the development is linear over four survey waves, data errors can be ruled out.

Political Legitimacy

Survey research uses a large number of indicators for measuring political legitimacy. There is a vast body of literature dealing with trust in political actors and confidence in political and societal institutions, emphasizing that these are important preconditions for legitimacy that determine the acceptance of government decisions by the citizens. However, many studies have shown that over the last decades trust in politicians and confidence in political institutions have declined, especially in the most advanced democracies (e.g. Norris 1999; Pharr et al. 2000; Dalton 2006). There is an ongoing controversy about the causes of this decline. Critical social scientists and in particular the media tend to blame it on poor government performance , a host of political scandals and a lack of transparency in political decision-making. Others stress that the decline is the result of a value change in modern democracies . They assume that the value change is driven by the proliferation of higher education which, in turn, increases political sophistication and fosters a more critical attitude towards established politics, politicians and political parties (in particular Inglehart 1997; Inglehart and Welzel 2005). This theory posits that low levels of political trust are not to be interpreted as a legitimacy deficit, but rather as a corollary of a mature democracy in which the citizenry closely monitors governmental activities and actively intervenes in policy decision-making; an example is John Keane’s model of monitory democracy (2009, 2011).

Even if the presence of such sceptical democrats can be interpreted as an asset, rather than a threat to democracy, very low levels of confidence in political institutions indicate a distance to established politics. Such a distance may eventually endanger the compliance by citizens to observe governmental decisions without which no political regime , especially not a democratic one, can survive in the long run. Moreover, it would be naïve to expect that the great majority of citizens in new democracies are relieved that the previous authoritarian and repressive regime has been replaced by democratic institutions . Transitions to democracy are frequently plagued by intense conflicts of interest between contending political groups trying to take their chances. Without sufficient trust in the new political leadership and the democratic institutions , it will be very difficult for the democratic regime to find popular support for the difficult first steps to overcome the legacies of authoritarianism in society and politics. Therefore, low levels of confidence in political institutions are probably even more damaging in young than in established democracies .

From its inception, the WVS has included questions about confidence in a wide range of political institutions and societal organizations. A factor analysis of the degree of confidence in the central governmental institutions , i.e. national government and parliament , the civil service, the police and political parties confirm that these confidence ratings reflect a single underlying dimension. The first principal component explains 58% of the total variance, and the scalability coefficient Cronbach’s α is 0.82.

Nevertheless, confidence in political parties was treated separately for two reasons. Even though they are universal and necessary participants in democratic decision-making, political parties are not governmental institutions and do not have the right to take binding decisions. At the same time, effective competition among parties advocating different policies is indispensable. Still, confidence in political parties tends to be fairly low nearly everywhere because political parties are widely seen as pursuing particularistic interests.

Figure 3.12 provides the average scores for confidence in the four governmental institutions and shows considerable differences between the countries. The scores range between 0.35 and 0.70. The development over time is characterized by ups and downs without any uniform trend.

Fig. 3.12  Mean confidence in governmental institutions

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 1–6. Mean confidence in national government, national parliament, civil service and police. Average scores on a 4-point scale, rescaled to range 0–1)

In Korea , the first survey was conducted when the country was still under military rule. Therefore, it seems likely that the very high score in that wave cannot be considered a true reflection of the actual confidence level. The other five Korean scores fluctuate and are always below the arithmetical mid-point of the scale. Only Swedish scores and those for western Germany are fairly stable remaining above 0.45. Scores for citizens in the in eastern part of Germany started out at a considerably lower level in the mid-1990s, but have reached those of the Western counterparts in wave 6. The South African time series starts already under the authoritarian apartheid regime , but with considerably lower levels than in Korea . This result confirms that the apartheid regime —despite its repressive character—was less successful in keeping political dissatisfaction and protest at bay. At the time of the second survey, in 1990, the South African democratization process was still at its beginning, but confidence had markedly increased from 0.50 to 0.59. By 1996, South African democracy had reached its honeymoon peak with a score of 0.62, which remained at 0.59 and 0.57, respectively, in the next two waves, before it markedly declined to 0.46 by 2013. While this decline has been not as sharp as the erosion of support for democracy, it confirms that South African democracy is going through difficult times. The results for Chile and Poland are even less promising. Both countries started out with very high levels of confidence in democratic institutions , which rapidly evaporated and fell to only 0.42 (Chile ) and 0.36 (Poland ). Turkey , finally, started out with high levels of confidence in political institutions and even experienced a considerable improvement after the AKP took power in 2002. In the last WVS wave, Turkey came out on top among the seven TRU countries. This shows that the current Turkish system of government enjoys broad political support, although it only qualifies as electoral democracy, combining competitive elections with considerable deficits in civil rights and rights for the political opposition.

Compared to confidence in governmental institutions , confidence in political parties is much lower, even in the two established democracies . However, after a period of particularly low confidence around the turn of the century, we can observe an upward trend since the mid-2000s in six of the seven countries. Again, South Africa is the great exception in that respect, even if the level of confidence in political parties is still the second highest among the seven countries. Sweden has the highest stability in confidence ratings in both governmental institutions and political parties.

Among the few questions asking for assessments of political reality included in the WVS , one deals with the perceived democraticness of one’s country and the other one with the degree to which human rights are respected. The first question was only included in the last two waves of the WVS , the second one in the last three. Figure 3.13 provides the development of the average scores for the belief that human rights are respected since the turn of the century. While the figure for the importance attributed to the protection of human rights showed a slight decrease, the belief in the actual protection of human rights increased in all countries, except South Africa and Sweden .

Fig. 3.13  Share of respondents believing that individual human rights are respected in their country

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 1–6. Percentage of respondents perceiving “a lot of respect” or “some respect” on a 10-point scale)

A more direct measure of legitimacy was recently proposed by Bernhard Wessels (2016), which is the differential between the importance attributed to different aspects of democracy and the evaluation of how well these aspects are actually realized in the respondents’ country. Such a differential can be calculated for the importance attributed to living in a democracy and the assessment of how democratically is the country actually governed by subtracting the score for the realization from the importance score. The deficits perceived by respondents with regard to democratic quality in their own country range from 0.16 to 0.35 in wave 5, and from 0.13 to 0.28 in wave 6 (Fig. 3.14). Again, the perceived deficit declined in the eastern part of Germany and in Turkey between waves 5 and 6, while the perceived deficit increased in Chile from 0.16 to 0.28 and in Korea from 0.24 to 0.28.

Fig. 3.14  Perceived deficit in the quality of democracy in respondents’ country

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 5 and 6. Average scores for the importance of living in a democracy minus score for democraticness of the country, both measured on a 10-point scale, rescaled to range 0–1)

Meso-Level Consequences

Anti-System Parties

Changing popular attitudes also had an impact at the meso-level of aggregated political preferences and election results. Here, we pay particular attention to the largely anti-democratic and extremist parties on both the political right and left. The latest available national election results are presented in Table 3.5.

Table 3.5  Anti-establishment parties (latest election results)

Country

Protest/radical left

Populist/radical right

Total

Chile

dna

Germany, nat., 2017

EU 2014

9.2 (Linke)

7.4 (Linke)

12.6 (AfD)

7.1 (AfD)

21.8

14.5

Korea

dna

Poland, nat., 2015

EU 2014

8.8 (Kukiz‚ 15)

7.2

8.8

7.2

South Africa

6.4 (EFF)

6.4

Sweden, nat., 2014

EU 2014

5.7 (Vänsterp.)

6.3 (Vänsterp.)

12.9 (Swed.Dem.)

9.7 (Swed.Dem.)

18.6

16.0

Turkey 2015

11.9 (MHP)

11.9

Sources http://www.parties-and-elections.eu/; Freedom House country reports

As Table 3.5 shows, fairly strong anti-democratic or, at least, anti-establishment parties have emerged in Germany and Sweden , our two democratic benchmark cases. This development is partly the result of the global financial crisis, which has affected these countries more than the other countries in our sample. The emergence of anti-establishment parties is also a reflection of an increase in nationalist anti-European and anti-euro attitudes . More recently, the refugee crisis resulting from the war in Syria and international migration in general have also led to stronger nationalist and xenophobic reactions. This is also true for Poland . South Africa and Turkey have more specific radical left or radical right parties of their own. Chile and South Korea are the only countries in our study in which such political movements or parties have not been successful so far. In Chile , the two larger groupings of the centre-left Concertacion and the Conservative Alliance have alternated in government . However, the new electoral system of proportional representation introduced in 2015 replaced the “binominal system” in which the two top candidates in each district were elected at the disadvantage to smaller parties. The electoral amendment might change this situation in the future by allowing for a wider spectrum of parties in parliament . In South Korea , where parties are based more on regional and personal ties than on ideological orientations, no significant anti-system parties are represented in parliament .

Support for Democracy and Confidence in Governmental Institutions Among MPs and Citizens

The perceptions of members of parliament can be considered as another relevant meso-level factor since parliaments are representative political bodies with final decision-making power on legislation. The incumbents of leadership positions in parliament belong to the core political elite , and even parliamentary backbenchers are part of an influential stratum of sub-elites . Therefore, their political value orientations are collectively representative of their parties’ policy positions and reflect the degree of cooperative relations among the parliamentary parties and of consensus on the democratic political institutions .

In all seven countries, the great majority of MPs expressed a clear preference for democracy over authoritarian systems , which even increased between the 2006 and 2013 waves of the survey from 93.2 to 96.1%. This is true for all party groups represented in the seven parliaments. In each party group, more than 80% of MPs expressed a preference for democracy. The lowest shares were found among MPs of four political parties: the Conservative Alliance in Chile (82.6 and 96.0%), the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland (80.8 and 85.4%), the Democratic Alliance in South Africa (87.5 and 91.4%) and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey (81.9 and 89.8%). The data confirm, however, that between the first and the second waves of the survey support for democracy increased even among MPs of these four parties. This result does not imply, of course, that the four parties necessarily engage in active advocacy of liberty and civil rights for citizens, but it still shows that nearly all of their MPs support basic democratic principles such as free, equal and fair elections and freedom of expression.

The results of the evaluation of democracy and authoritarian systems confirm the importance of an elite consensus on democracy as the best political system (Higley and Burton 2006). This becomes obvious once the national patterns of support for MPs and citizens are taken into account. The following country-specific graphs include three different measures of support for democracy: mean evaluation scores of democracy as good or bad, mean evaluations for having either an autocratic leader or a military regime —whichever received the more positive rating—and the percentage of respondents in each group who preferred democracy over an authoritarian regime . In addition to the average ratings of MPs and citizens, those of the subgroup of citizens with at least some university education have been included as well, since public opinion research has time and again confirmed that respondents with higher education are more supportive of democratic principles and also more tolerant of deviating opinions and behaviours (e.g. Hoffmann-Lange 2008; McClosky and Brill 1983).

We can distinguish four clear patterns in our seven countries. The first pattern is found in the two well-established democracies , Sweden and Germany (Fig. 3.15 for Sweden ). The pattern is characterized by a very high evaluation of democracy and low support for authoritarian rule . Both orientations are rather stable over time. Citizens with university education show a slightly higher positive evaluation of democracy and display less sympathy for authoritarianism , while MPs show a near-universal preference for democracy. Overall, the differences between the three groups (MPs, citizens and citizens with university education) are not very high.

Fig. 3.15  Evaluation of democracy and authoritarian alternatives: Sweden

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 3–6, TRI and CMP surveys 2007 and 2013)

The second pattern for Chile and Poland (Fig. 3.16 for Chile ) shows an increase in support for democracy and a decline in support for authoritarian systems . Because support for authoritarian solutions is higher in those countries than in Sweden or Germany , the curve for the share of respondents with a clear preference for democracy is considerably below the one for a positive evaluation of democracy. This indicates that the consolidation of democracy does not only depend on a positive evaluation of democracy, but also relies on a rejection of authoritarian alternatives. Unfortunately, the MP data are limited to the last decade but confirm the important role of elites (MPs) for democratic consolidation .

Fig. 3.16  Evaluation of democracy and authoritarian alternatives: Chile

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 3–6, TRI and CMP surveys 2007 and 2013)

The third pattern for Korea and Turkey (Fig. 3.17 for Korea ) suggests that consolidation of democracy in these two countries is lagging behind Chile and Poland . While the average score for evaluation of democracy is not much lower than in Chile (Korea 0.63, Turkey even 0.83 in wave 6), sympathy for authoritarian systems has remained considerably higher and has even increased somewhat since the first decade after democratization (Korea 0.50 and Turkey 0.56 in wave 6). Instead of diverging, the curves for the evaluation of democracy and for authoritarian systems have developed in parallel in Turkey and even somewhat converged in Korea . Therefore, the share of respondents who prefer democracy to authoritarian systems is only 45.5% in Korea and 50.4% in Turkey , showing that about half of the citizens do not really care one way or the other. At the same time, the figure shows a considerable gap between MPs and citizens. In both countries, support for democracy has been stable and high, while support for authoritarian regimes has considerably decreased.

Fig. 3.17  Evaluation of democracy and authoritarian alternatives: Korea

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 3–6, TRI and CMP surveys 2007 and 2013)

South Africa is an exceptional case (Fig. 3.18). Even if we look at the independent ratings for democracy and authoritarian rule , the means are nearly indistinguishable and the percentage of respondents with a clear preference for democracy has declined to less than one-third among the citizens. Most of this decline occurred between the last two surveys, that is between 2006 and 2013. This is true for both ANC supporters and supporters of the major opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA). As in the other six countries, the evaluations of citizens with university education differ only marginally from those of the entire citizenry.

Fig. 3.18  Evaluation of democracy and authoritarian alternatives: South Africa

(Source World Values Survey, cumulated file, waves 3–6, TRI and CMP surveys 2007 and 2013)

Generally, education as such seems to be of minor importance for regime preferences. As Herbert McClosky and Alida Brill (1983) and Shmuel Lock (1999) show, professional status is a more important factor. Therefore, most parliamentarians in our seven countries, as professional politicians , embrace the democratic rules of the game and accept elections and opposition parties even if they dislike them personally.

Additionally, confidence in governmental institutions was again used as an indicator of political legitimacy of democracy, this time at the meso-level. It is only slightly higher among the MPs than among the citizens, with an overall mean in the last survey wave of 0.62, while the average score of the citizens was 0.48. Compared to the very high support for democracy, confidence ratings show that the impartial functioning of the governmental institutions is not taken for granted even by MPs. However, the picture changes dramatically if we take into account whether the respondents belong to either the governing or the opposition parties. MPs of the governing parties indicate significantly higher levels of confidence (0.71) than those of the opposition parties (0.51). On the one hand, this differential indicates that the opposition parties fulfil their constitutional watchdog role vis-à-vis the government . On the other hand, however, we should theoretically assume that in countries with well-functioning democratic institutions not even MPs of the opposition parties expect that the current government will overstep its role and tamper with basic constitutional rights or use its power to secure unfair advantages for its party or parties. This is only true, however, in four of our countries. The differences between MPs of the governing and opposition parties are relatively small (between 0.10 and 0.17) in the two established democracies , Germany and Sweden , as well as in Chile and Korea . These differences are much more pronounced in Poland (0.30), South Africa (0.30) and Turkey (0.37), thus indicating a fair amount of scepticism on the part of the opposition parties regarding the intentions of these countries’ governments.

The results for Turkey are particularly interesting because confidence in governmental institutions is even lower among the MPs of the opposition parties than among the citizens and has declined from 0.50 to 0.37 between the two survey waves. This rift has presumably deepened even further after the AKP government changed the system of government from parliamentary to presidential in the spring of 2017, whereby the rights of the political opposition were severely curtailed. Moreover, in both Turkey and South Africa the same dominant party has been in power for a long time, the AKP since 2002, the ANC since 1994.

Confidence levels in Poland , likewise, indicate a low level of mutual trust between the governing and opposition parties, regardless of which parties control the government . Between the two survey waves, control of the government shifted from the Law and Justice Party (PiS) to the Civic Platform (PO)—and in 2015 back to the PiS—which involved a drop of institutional confidence among the PiS deputies from 0.63 to 0.31 and an increase among those of the PO from 0.38 to 0.68.

The figures in Table 3.6 show that differences in confidence ratings between supporters of government and opposition parties are much narrower among the citizens. The differences are of the same magnitude only in Chile . It can also be seen that the scores of respondents who failed to indicate a vote intention—with the exception of Turkey —are closer to the (lower) values of the supporters of opposition parties. Overall, the degree of confidence citizens have in governmental institutions is roughly equivalent to that of the MPs of the opposition parties.

Table 3.6  Confidence in political institutions among MPs and supporters of government and opposition parties in the most recent surveys

Country

MPs

Citizens

Opposition parties

Parties in government

All MPs

Opposition parties

Parties in government

No vote intention indicated

All citizens

Chile

0.61

0.78

0.69

0.40

0.57

0.40

0.42

Germany

0.59

0.69

0.64

0.51

0.59

0.49

0.53

Korea

0.48

0.62

0.56

0.43

0.53

0.42

0.46

Poland

0.37

0.67

0.51

0.35

0.42

0.32

0.36

South Africa

0.39

0.69

0.60

0.42

0.50

0.40

0.46

Sweden

0.69

0.83

0.76

0.52

0.63

0.52

0.56

Turkey

0.37

0.74

0.59

0.50

0.66

0.57

0.58

Total

0.51

0.71

0.62

0.45

0.56

0.43

0.48

Source CMP survey 2013, World Values Survey cumulated file, wave 6

Party support was measured by asking for the vote intention of the respondents

Conclusions

The above assessment of the quality and legitimacy of democracy in our seven cross-area cases over the last quarter century makes apparent a few distinct patterns. [7]

At the macro-level , the overall liberal democracy index shows high and relatively stable scores for Sweden , Germany and Chile . The once similarly high score for Poland has declined somewhat in recent years, whereas the already lower values for Korea and, in particular, South Africa have diminished even further. Turkey has clearly crossed the line towards a hybrid regime in the wake of the constitutional changes to a presidential system and the severe infringements imposed on the judiciary implemented in 2017, which have not been covered in our index.

In terms of good governance , as per the World Bank indicators, our two benchmark cases plus Chile stand out as having high and stable scores. Poland and Korea form a middle group, with South Africa and Turkey clearly at the bottom. Sweden , Poland and Germany also show high levels of social stability and more equitable income distributions. By contrast, political stability is lowest in South Africa and in Turkey . Chile and Korea are in a middle group with a high level of social inequality in the former.

Overall socio-economic performance, as reflected in the HDI and its changes, was highest in Korea and Turkey . Chile , Germany , Poland and Sweden are in a relatively satisfactory middle group. South Africa clearly performs worst in this regard. Thus, in this case no clear-cut relationship between improving economic performance and better values on the democracy scores can be detected.

Our micro-level analysis has shown South Africa to be the most dramatic outlier among our seven countries. Not only has support for democracy declined, but so has confidence in political institutions and political parties, even though South Africa started off at a particularly high level of enthusiasm for democracy. At the same time, political demands by South African respondents are lower than in the other countries; for instance, only a minority demand that income differences be reduced. This also implies that the discrepancy between expectations and their perceived realization is not as high as one could expect, given the poor performance of the South African government in fighting socio-economic and political inequality. Overall, we can conclude that the original enthusiasm for democracy has been dampened, but that a majority of South African citizens seems to accept the deficiencies of their democracy with apparent indifference. Such an attitude may be, in part, due to the persisting loyalty to their party by ANC supporters. Notwithstanding such support, the continuing infighting does not bode well for the future of the ANC.

Support for democracy in Turkey and Korea has not taken very deep roots either. Turkish citizens are obviously pleased with the enormous economic progress their country has made since the AKP came to power in 2002. Confidence in the democratic quality of Turkey , governmental institutions and political parties improved over time. The recent referendum in support of President Erdoğan’s constitutional changes replacing Turkish parliamentary democracy by a system of strong presidentialism showed that the government still enjoys majority support, although the reforms were only confirmed by a narrow margin. Likewise, Korean citizens consider a satisfactory standard of living as more important than democratic rights, suggesting that they accept democracy as long as the economy is doing well. At the same time, the quality of democracy is higher in Korea than in Turkey . In 2017, the corruption scandal surrounding president Park Geun Hye resulted in an early presidential election and a change in government , which indicates that democratic institutions and democratically minded political elites in Korea are strong enough to weather even a major political crisis.

Poland and Chile seem to have made substantial progress towards the development of a democratic political culture . Support for democracy has been on the rise, while support for authoritarianism has declined. Nevertheless, confidence in governmental institutions and political parties remains lower in these two countries than in the other five.

Although the results on political culture in the five new democracies —which are now no longer so new anymore—show some progress, their political culture is still lagging far behind Sweden and Germany , with the latter two countries enjoying consistently high citizen support for democracy. Meanwhile, the eastern part of Germany has almost caught up with its Western counterpart. This is probably due to the fact that the democratization of East Germany took place under much more favourable conditions, having been bolstered by huge financial transfers from West Germany for rebuilding the East German economy, infrastructure and welfare system. Nevertheless, satisfaction with democracy is still somewhat lower in the east. Similarly, Germans in that part of the country are more likely to vote for protest parties of the left and the right in both state and federal elections . In this respect, the specific historical legacy of the forty years of communist rule and feelings of relative deprivation, compared to the better-off citizens in western parts of the country, come to the fore.

In all seven countries, MPs’ democratic orientations and their levels of satisfaction with democratic institutions are much higher than those of the citizens. This finding confirms previous studies of political representation and does not seem terribly surprising since most members of parliaments are loyal members of established political parties. Still, this should not be considered as an entirely insignificant result. Many of the populist parties in both the well-established and newer democracies have publicly denounced existing liberal democratic institutions , with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán going as far as to publicly advocate “illiberal democracy” as a superior alternative. So we cannot assume that elites are necessarily supportive of democracy.

At the same time, it cannot be concluded that only elites are the reliable guardians of democracy, as the theory of democratic elitism suggests (Best and Higley 2010: 9). The recent surge of populist or authoritarian political parties and leaders may rapidly change political landscapes in their countries (see again Table 3.5). Under such circumstances, widespread support for liberal democratic institutions , values and principles can immunize citizens against anti-democratic appeals by protest parties and may thus thwart those parties’ intentions.

Ultimately, however, a democratic political culture is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the stability of a liberal democratic polity. As long as the elites are unified in their support for democratic institutions , liberal democracy can persist even in societies that lack broad citizen support. Yet resistance against attempts by some elite groups to curb civil rights and political checks and balances will be weaker in such societies, as can be observed currently in Turkey and Poland . Moreover, people may not realize soon enough what damage even seemingly slight constitutional changes may do and they may therefore not oppose such changes early enough. We have seen several examples of democratic countries turning into authoritarian regimes within a short time. Once an authoritarian rule and a system of political repression have been established, it may be too late for effective resistance. However, with the exception of Turkey , we do not consider the other still not fully consolidated democracies in our study to be in any imminent danger of succumbing to authoritarianism , but they are certainly more vulnerable than the two well-established democracies . Therefore, continuous monitoring of political culture of both elites and citizens and guarding against populist extremism are a perpetual necessity in all democracies .

Notes

1. 1.
The first MP survey was conducted in 2007 by the TRI team members and supported by various research foundations (see Van Beek 2010). The second survey (CMP) was conducted in 2013 and supported by the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, whose generous support is gratefully acknowledged.

2. 2.
See Preface for details.

3. 3.
For this distinction, see also O’Donnell et al. (1986).

4. 4.
For this term, see also Huntington (1991).

5. 5.
Question: I’m going to describe various types of political systems and ask what you think about each as a way of governing this country. For each one, would you say it is a very good, fairly good, fairly bad or very bad way of governing this country?

- Having a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with parliament and elections .

- Having the army rule.

- Having a democratic political system.

6. 6.
It should be noted that Lijphart no longer included cleavages or issue dimensions in the second edition of his book that appeared in 2012. It is not clear if he believes that these have lost in importance or if he only disregarded them for the sake of theoretical parsimony. While it is obvious that especially the socio-economic cleavage plays only a small if any role in many of the Third-Wave democracies , it has retained its relevance in the older party systems of Europe and the Americas, although its importance has considerably declined for several decades, possibly with the exception of Sweden and Norway (cf. Hoffmann-Lange 2010).

7. 7.
For an overview of our major results on both the macro- and micro-levels (see Table 3.7).

Appendix

Table 3.7  Democratic quality , legitimacy and political demands in the TRU countriesa

Indicator

Chile

Germany b

Korea

Poland

South Africa

Sweden

Turkey

Macro-indicators

Liberal democracy score (V-Dem, 9 criteria, 2014)

3.14

2.85

2.44

3.09

2.14

3.37

1.29

Trend

→

→

↓

↓

↓

→

↓

Control of corruption (WB 2015)

1.26

1.82

0.49

0.58

0.04

2.25

0.11

Trend

→

→

→

↑

↓

→

→

Government effectiveness (WB 2015)

1.08

1.74

1.03

0.80

0.27

1.81

0.23

Trend

→

→

↑

↑

↓

→

↑

HDI 2014

0.832

0.916

0.898

0.843

0.666

0.907

0.761

HDI change 1990–2014

0.133

0.115

0.167

0.130

−0.045

0.092

0.185

Gini index

50.5

30.1

n/a

32.6

63.4

27.3

40.2

Trend

↓

↓

→

→

↑

→

Legitimacy of democracy

Preference democracy (%)

68.9

83.6

50.0

66.3

27.3

81.7

50.4

Trend

↑

↓

↑

↑

↓

→

↑

Confidence in political institutions

0.42

0.53

0.46

0.36

0.46

0.56

0.58

Trend

↓

→

↓

↓

↓

→

↑

Perceived respect for human rights (%)

54.1

87.9

71.0

71.6

54.9

82.4

45.2

Trend

→

↑

↑

↑

→

↑

↑

Perceived deficit in democratic quality

0.28

0.20

0.28

0.33

0.13

0.21

0.26

Trend

↓

→

→

→

→

→

↑

Political demands

Civil rights protect people’s liberty

0.66

0.79

0.67

0.82

0.64

0.85

0.73

Trend

↓

↓

↓

→

↓

↓

↓

Government responsibility for public welfare

0.64

0.57

0.72

0.61

0.47

0.50

0.63

Trend

→

↑

→

↑

→

↑

↑

Incomes should be more equal

0.72

0.65

0.39

0.41

0.43

0.57

0.61

Trend

↑

↑

→

↑

↓

↑

→

aBased on the most recent data available

bData for West Germans encompassing more than 80% of the German population; deviating results for East Germany are discussed in the text

References

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Part II

Critical Cases

© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_4

4. The Return of Nationalist Ethos: The Loss of Liberal Democracy in Poland?

Ursula van Beek1

(1)

Transformation Research Unit (TRU), Department of Political Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Ursula van Beek

Email: uvb@sun.ac.za

In October 2015, for the first time since Poland transitioned to democracy in 1989, a single political party gained an absolute majority in the Polish parliament . The Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc: PiS) cut its political teeth first as a member of the ruling coalition (2005–2007) and later as the largest opposition party in parliament (2007–2015). Although well known for its strong populist and Eurosceptic orientations, during both the presidential and the parliamentary elections the party toned down its strong pro-Catholic Church stance and temporarily suspended its customary preoccupation with Poland ’s perceived neighbouring enemies and with bringing former communist functionaries to book. Instead, PiS focused on the economy, social issues and education in a dynamic Western-styled electioneering campaign wooing voters in their own neighbourhoods and workplaces with promises of a better life for all.

Yet the party’s Manifesto (Program PiS) leaves no room for doubt where PiS stands politically. The document is couched entirely in nationalist rhetoric and is replete with references to history and tradition. The Manifesto considers the Catholic Church and the mass media as key players in the essential task of sustaining a national identity that is reflective of true Polish values . The nativist ethos also comes through clearly in references to Poland ’s foreign relations, especially in the context of the European Union .

Not surprisingly, following the installation of the incumbent regime European press reactions were uniformly negative, ranging from mildly cautious to highly alarmist, with the latter foreseeing the emergence of a paternalist-nationalist state crafted on the populist Hungarian model (Hassel 2015). Some of the international academic assessments expressed similar concerns, referring to the new government as illiberal (Freudenstein and Niclewicz 2016) and suggesting that Poland might be seeing the final days of its democracy (Kelemen and Orenstein 2016).

To come to grips with the dramatic political change, this chapter first explores the historical reasons for Poland ’s drifting away from liberal democracy. The analysis is guided by the assumption that examining the historical trajectory offers insights without which it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand why the agenda of the governing populist party resonates so well with so many citizens. The chapter also addresses the question of how the concept of liberalism is understood in Poland , and to what extent this understanding has a bearing on the shift in political preferences. The developments that have set Poland on a collision course with the European Union are discussed with reference to the controversy surrounding the Constitutional Tribunal , and the attempts by the executive to usurp power over the country’s judiciary as a whole.

The conceptual departure point for the discussion has been inspired by the 2016 study of the phenomenon of rising support for populist parties in developed Western societies by Inglehart and Norris (2016). The chapter examines the rise of populism in Poland in reference to this study.

The Rise of Populism in Western Europe

Much has been written on the subject of contemporary populism and the underlying dynamic that propels populist parties into having greater political influence or gaining political power (Mair 2002; Norris 2005; Albertazzi and McDonnel 2007; Gherghina Sergiu et al. 2013; Niznik 2016). Three common features seem to capture the essence of populism : an anti-establishment posture, authoritarianism , and nativism (Mudde 2007). Chief among them is the innate antagonism between the people and the political elite , leading to popular perceptions that the existing political establishment is corrupt and no longer represents the people. This anti-establishment sentiment is underpinned by a preference for a strong leader who is thought to better represent the will of ordinary people, and by a retreat into xenophobic nationalism .

Against this background, Inglehart and Norris (2016), focusing their attention on voter behaviour, empirically examine two theories about the demand side of public opinion that seek to explain mass support for populism . The first set of views refers to the profound effect the transformation from an industrial to post-industrial society and economy has had in the West. The process witnessed the collapse of manufacturing industries, the rise of technological innovation and the knowledge society, and unprecedented global flows of people, goods, and capital. The decline of industries has eroded organized labour to a large extent and caused the welfare safety net to shrink, producing much greater income and wealth inequality . The resultant rise in economic insecurity and feelings of social deprivation among people who do not benefit from the changes are said to fuel popular resentment of the political classes.

Inglehart and Norris’s second and related thesis cites a cultural backlash as the other main reason for the surge in votes for populist parties . This argument builds on the theory of value change that had emerged in step with the rise to formerly unknown levels of existential security experienced by the citizens of Western societies in the post-war period. Solid empirical evidence documents these developments beginning in the early 1970s when the post-war generation became politically relevant; having made itself first heard in the students protests of the late 1960s. The inter-generational shift , or the “silent revolution,” which facilitated the move from traditional values to more progressive norms of cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, individual liberty and support for left-libertarian parties, triggered a backlash among older generations and the less educated.

For the purposes of their analyses, Inglehart and Norris introduce the classic economic Left-Right cleavage in party competition, which they see as being currently intersected by the cultural cleavage dividing populism and cosmopolitan liberalism . Figure 4.1 offers a visual representation of the crosscutting relationship between the populist -cosmopolitan continuum and Left-Right orientations. [1]

Fig. 4.1  Economic and cultural orientations

(Source Adapted from Inglehart and Norris 2016)

In their empirical investigation, Inglehart and Norris first identified the ideological location of 268 political parties in thirty-one European countries utilizing data from the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey. They then used the pooled European Social Survey 1–6 (2002–2014) to examine the cross-national evidence at the individual level. This approach allowed them to assess the effect of the economic insecurity and cultural values theses, respectively, on voting behaviour for populist parties .

The investigation led Inglehart and Norris to two main findings of comparative relevance to the following discussion:

1. 1.
The measures that were used only partially confirmed the claim that populist support is due to the resentment of economic inequality and social deprivation.

2. 2.
All of the values scales that were used proved dependable predictors of voting behaviour in support of populist parties .

The overall conclusion the authors reached was that cultural values associated with specific social and demographic factors provided the most persistent and accurate explanation for voting in support of populist parties . Inglehart and Norris noted that the appeal of traditional values associated with support for populist parties was strongest among older generations, ethnic minorities, men, religious believers, and people with limited education. The authors expect that over time the generation gap will fade away as older cohorts with traditional attitudes are gradually replaced by their children and grandchildren who adhere to more progressive values . [2]

The Rise of Populism in Poland

The Ruling Party: A Programmatic Profile

Figure 4.1 offers a useful conceptual framework within which to profile PiS. On the strength of its own declarations alone, the party can be firmly placed at the populist end of the vertical continuum. The retrograde nationalist vision contained in its Manifesto is one of a Poland where the “teaching of the Catholic Church , Polish tradition and Polish patriotism have powerfully merged with each other to build the political identity of the nation” (Program PiS 2014: 10). The Church is at the centre. It is seen not only as having played a specific nation-building and civilizational role that is historically different than in other nations, but also as the protector of Polish identity . The Manifesto points out that during the 123 years Poland was effaced from the map of Europe by its neighbours, and again under communism , the Catholic Church provided a sanctuary for the preservation of “Polishness” and substituted for the non-existing sovereign state.

Placing Poland in the European context, the Manifesto ostensibly supports the ideals that have given rise to the notion of a unified Europe by stressing the civilizational richness of the continent that is derived from the diversity of its peoples. But, contrary to the logical progression from such an assertion to the idea of cultivating multiculturalism, the document goes on to argue that the only way in which to assure a strong and prosperous Europe is to preserve this diversity as a lasting feature of the cultural space. “Unification, or radical impoverishment of diversity, and the replacement of cultural heritage by primitive civilizational experiments translate into weakening the continent.” (Program 2014: 12). In a strongly worded passage, PiS rejects political correctness imposed not only by “cultural aggression” but also by administrative and legal means. “We do not accept the uncontrolled erosion of the sovereignty of the European fatherlands. We will defend our freedom decisively and will erect the strongest possible legal barriers to thwart such practices against Poland . This is our ‘Euro-realism’” (Program 2014: 13).

Figure 4.1 is also helpful in situating PiS on the Left-Right axis . The largely leftward position PiS occupies on that continuum confirms the contention that the traditional association of populist parties with the Right in Western Europe fails to capture some key features of contemporary populist parties elsewhere. Its Manifesto makes it clear that PiS, while pro-market in some respects, leans heavily towards economic redistribution and the welfare state. Before sketching the envisaged socio-economic “repair” programme under the heading “Project for Poland ,” 27 pages (Program 2014: 17–44) of the document are taken up by a highly contemptuous denunciation of the previous administration, which is being accused of having failed the nation on every level, from political to social, to economic, and to cultural . The “Tusk system”, [3] as the Manifesto terms it, is described as having misrepresented democracy with regard to both its essence and the procedures and mechanisms that characterize it. As such the “Tusk system” has worked to block the possibility of achieving positive economic and social changes in Poland .

The welfare system promised by PiS is structured around the “Polish family.” The Manifesto commits the party to supporting the family and its security, and unveils policies aimed at assuring secure family life and encouraging families to have more children. Stressing as fundamental and necessary for secure family life to have a job and roof over one’s head, the party undertakes to help create conditions conducive to achieving these goals. The document further promises an easy access to health services and education, as well as to state support for the aged and infirm members of the family. The specific benefits include, among others, a monthly subsidy of 500 zloty (± US$ 125) for the second and each subsequent child [4] ; social grants for poor families; the raising of taxation threshold for low-income families; care for chronic illness suffers; free preschool; free meals in primary school; free medicine for pensioners over 75 years (Program 2014: 107–122).

The Electorate: A Social and Demographic Profile

In stark contrast to the findings on voting support for populist parties in Western Europe presented by Inglehart and Norris, support for PiS cannot be associated with the same key social demographic factors. As results of the parliamentary elections of 26 October 2015 indicate (Polish Electoral Commisison: PKW 2015), voting patterns in Poland do not fit the model of old conservatives versus young liberals, nor the well educated versus the less well educated. In addition, more women voted for PiS than men in a ratio of 49 to 51% (Survey Report 2015: 2); while support across rural and urban areas was evenly spread (Survey Report 2015: 6).

Tables 4.1 and 4.2 show the election results, respectively, by age group and by the level of education of voters. The tables comprise results for only three of the seven parties that contested the election because of the relevance of those parties to the current discussion. [5] The parties include PiS, the liberal Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska: PO), and the United Left (Zjednoczona Lewica).

Table 4.1  Voting results by age group

Age group

Political parties (%)

PiS

PO

Zjednoczona Lewica

18–29

26.6

14.4

3.4

30–39

30.6

23.8

5.6

40–49

38.7

25.8

6.4

49–50

47.1

23.0

7.3

60 and above

48.7

28.1

9.3

Table constructed on data published by the Polish Electoral Commission on October 26, 2015. http://parlament2015.pkw.gov.pl/349_wyniki_sejm/0/0/19

Table 4.2  Voting results by education level

Level of education

Political parties (%)

PiS

PO

Zjednoczona Lewica

Primary

55.9

15.4

3.6

Vocational

53.0

19.3

5.3

Secondary

39.2

23.0

7.00

Higher

30.4

26.7

8.5

Table constructed on data published by the Polish Electoral Commission on October 26, 2015. http://parlament2015.pkw.gov.pl/349_wyniki_sejm/0/0/19

Looking at the results in Table 4.1, support for PiS among the 18–29 cohort might suggest that the youngest voters were the least inclined to vote populist . However, many of their votes went to two other parties: Kukitz’15, a right-wing anti-system party headed by a rock singer and the radically populist KORWiN headed by a controversial maverick. Thus, in total, 37.4% of that age cohort voted Right. When one adds to this result the low support for the United Left party, the picture that emerges is one of young voters leaning alarmingly strongly towards the Right end of the political spectrum (Election Results 2015).

Table 4.2 shows that the higher the voters’ education, the less they support PiS. Nevertheless, the percentage of voters with higher education who cast their vote for PiS was still substantial and, significantly, it was 3.7 percentage points higher than votes cast for the liberal PO party. [6] As Table 4.2 also illustrates, voters with higher levels of education show higher support for the Left. In fact, if the decisive vote was up to that cohort alone, the United Left party would have reached the mandatory 5% threshold for parliamentary representation .

The one variable applicable to Poland listed by Inglehart and Norris as a predictor of voting preferences for populist parties in the West is religiosity, in the Polish case measured by the frequency of mass attendance. [7] As the Fig. 4.2 indicates, 74% of those attending mass several times a week or once a week voted for PiS.

Fig. 4.2  Support for political parties and religiosity of supporters

(Source Graph constructed using data from Report on Survey November 22, 2015. http://www.newsweek.pl/polska/jak-religijnosc-wplywa-na-wybory-,artykuly,374493,1.html)

The significant support for the populist PiS over its liberal rival is a concern that cannot but raise the most important question: Why would Poland —the first country to break out of the Soviet Bloc and clear the road towards political freedom for others in the region—turn its back on liberal democracy?

An Interpretation

The title of this chapter refers to the “loss” of liberal democracy in Poland . The question that must necessarily precede any attempt to explain such a loss is to ask what exactly has been lost. To that end, one must come to grips with what liberalism means in Poland and how it has been understood in the context of freedom.

Polish commentators offer a useful start to such discussion by pointing out that the successful establishment and functioning of liberal democracy in Poland occurred under, what they term, the Western stimulus. The idea of liberal democracy, in other words, was a foreign import not a home-grown philosophy, and as such it carries no native tradition (Wnuk-Lipinski 1996; Szacki 2002). What is more, while transition to democracy in Poland was driven by the slogan of “catching up with the West,” for many Poles today the current troubled state of the West raises the question of whether catching up still makes sense and, if so, what does this actually entail. The raison d’etre, therefore, has been undermined, with negative consequences for Poland ’s liberal elite . But, of course, the roots of the problem reach much deeper and, as it is usually the case, can be found in history.

At least three historical factors can be distinguished in the search for a possible explanation for Poland ’s populist turn. The first has been a historical trajectory inauspicious to the entrenchment of liberalism . At the time when the American Revolution inspired the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen adopted in 1789, Poland embarked on her long struggle for independence. The struggle was not guided by the idea of the inviolable right to liberty of the individual, but that of the plurality. The relatively brief period of the regained independent statehood from 1918 to 1939 by a country sandwiched between communist Russia and the increasingly fascist Germany did little to sow the liberal seed. The subsequent attack by both these neighbours on Poland in September 1939 and the ensuing extermination policy against the Poles, and against the elite in particular, were once again mainly about survival as a nation. The forced post-war incorporation of Poland into the Soviet Bloc rekindled the desire to achieve freedom from foreign domination, but was yet again fuelled chiefly by the idea of national freedom. And throughout these turbulent two centuries, the Catholic Church —the very epitome of conservatism—was seen as the only refuge where one could feel truly Polish.

By contrast, Western liberal democracies might be internally differentiated but they are all contained within a common and well-defined value system. This normative delineation is based on the core belief in a specific place of the free individual in the collective. In the Western cultural sphere, this standing is defined by the rights and responsibilities of the individual rooted in the emancipating ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In other cultural spheres, the status of the individual in the context of the collective is decided by different cultural norms that have formed under different historical processes (Baszkiewicz 1998). This suggests that the transfer of democratic institutions and procedures and their implantation into a culturally alien ground might be a far easier task than the transplanting of liberal values necessary for a healthy growth of democracy.

In Poland , and elsewhere in the region, the final stages of communism witnessed what could be taken for the arrival of such a receptive normative climate in the upsurge of a civic culture driven by unrealized freedom aspirations and widely felt deprivations in the status of a citizen. This impression was particularly strong during the period of the domino effect starting with the emergence of the “Solidarity” Trade Union movement in Poland and the later Polish Round Table talks, moving on to the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the reform negotiations between the communist elite and the opposition in Hungary. This impression was misleading, however, because it was derived from the actions and opinions of the anti-communist elite who challenged the oppressive regime and whose discourse was conducted in the language of a democratic culture . The same could not be said for the respective societies at large, but even so, in the early stages of transformation the elite enjoyed authentic mass support, which created conditions conducive to the building of liberal democracy on the ruins of communism (Wnuk-Lipinski 2004).

The second factor that might explain Poland ’s populist turn relates to the length of uninterrupted democratic persistence in a given setting. As Robert Dahl (1997) noted, democratic consolidation requires a strong democratic culture characterized by sufficient emotional and pragmatic attachment to democratic procedures . For this to happen, time is needed. Many authors agree that the longer the period of uninterrupted democratic habituation lasts, the greater the chances for the entrenchment of a liberal civic culture and its acceptance as a natural social environment (Muller and Seligson 1994; Barry 1978; Schmitter and Karl 1991). Time has not been on Poland ’s side.

The third explanatory variable refers to the nature of the autocratic regime from which a country transits to democracy (Geddes 1999; Teorell 2010). Each type has a specific identity that creates a specific set of problems after transition . At the most general level, the communist type affected those it ruled by the Marxist idea of materialist determinism in which the human being was seen as subject to predetermined historical processes, which tended to instil passivity, risk-aversion, and reliance on the state. But the hypocritical nature and the internal contradictions of the communist system bestowed a much more tangible and damaging legacy. The theoretically attractive, but in reality duplicitous version of the “common good” as experienced under communism , has left many questioning this very principle on which good governance rests. The concepts of law and power were similarly corrupted. The former was equalled with the will of the ruling elite ; while holding power was seen more as a goal in itself and, especially, as a means of access to benefits.

The arrival of democracy in 1989 did not dispel the systemic confusion. A survey conducted three years hence revealed that only 9% of respondents thought democracy replaced communism for good; 27% assumed that even though the communist regime had collapsed it was difficult to say if that was a permanent state of affairs or not, and, significantly, 18% saw the Catholic Church as the new “leading force,” while 16% perceived “Solidarity” as a new dictatorship, and 15% thought the communists were still in power (Roszkowski 1995).

The difficult task of crafting a new democracy under such a taxing historical bequest soon began emerging, both at the elite and at the societal levels, and in between the elite and the society. The first cracks appeared with the disintegration of the nationwide “Solidarity” movement as it inevitably splintered into different ideological groupings and parties. The disintegration facilitated the entrance onto the political scene of many new actors and the comeback of some of the old communist ones, albeit reorganized under different guises. While this dynamic could be regarded as a natural progression towards the emergence of democratic multiparty politics, the political polarization that had emerged in Poland led to extraordinarily deep cleavages as the various parties clashed over all issues, including such core ones as market economy, privatization, and de-communisation. Equally troubling has been the carry-over authoritarian tendency of keeping closed the channels of communication between the elected representatives and their constituencies (Roszkowski 1995; Grabowska 1995; Wasilewski 1995).

At the same time, the arrival of capitalism brought social divisions and inequalities unknown under communism . This was despite the successful “shock therapy” that transformed the stale-planned economy into a thriving market economy, attracting foreign investment, promoting impressive economic growth, and creating a new middle class and financial upper classes. But rather than first building a strong and transparent state and putting in place appropriate regulation to assure an equitable development of the society as a whole, the neoliberal elite reduced the role of the state. Consequently, the considerable successes did not translate into the creation of a social welfare state of the Western European kind and the fulfilment of hopes for a just and participatory social order that most Poles associated with liberal democracy. Instead, economic exclusions appeared, especially of senior citizens and the young, with an unemployment rate among the latter at 21.1% in 2015, leading to the emigration of over 2.3 million young Poles to Western European countries , and indirectly contributing to Brexit (Karolewski and Benedikter 2016). And as promises for improvement were not met, frustrations developed eroding the legitimacy of the liberal regime .

As a consequence and rather ironically, liberalism , or more precisely the miscomprehension of the concept in Poland , has become the most divisive fault line splitting the nation. Instead of blurring political differences and allowing independent groups to coexist amicably and cooperate with each other on the basis of trust and tolerance , a new ideological monopoly emerged. In time, many citizens whose expectations were not fulfilled started to equate liberalism with all evil, perceiving it as divisive; anti-Catholic, hence anti-Polish; culpable of perpetuating neoliberal exploitation globally; and devoid of moral values . At the same time, liberal elite came to be seen as cold and rational technocrats obsessed with the market and disinterested in the welfare of ordinary people.

Polish cosmopolitan elite bear much responsibility for such popular misconceptions of liberal democracy. Preoccupied as they were with “catching up” with the West, they did not promote the political aspects of liberalism , nor did they impart to the society the emancipatory essence of liberal values , an omission that is sometimes attributed to their reluctance to openly promote such values for fear of evoking the animus of the Catholic Church (Szacki 2002). Instead, the liberal leadership collapsed the political and normative spheres into the economic one, creating the overwhelming impression that liberalism was essentially about everybody becoming rich, or at least better off.

Writing over two decades ago, Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski, one of Poland ’s leading sociologists and political commentators at the time (Wnuk-Lipinski 1996) warned against the absence of political thought. He also bemoaned the lack of a vision that would mobilize genuine support among the majority of the people and offer them, even if only partially, a sense of a new political identity . In his view, the articulation of a target goal was of critical importance for the democratic political process because it provided the average citizen with a reference point for the formulation of his or hers own political preferences: “If there is no vision, there is nothing to identify with, and there is nothing to support” (1996: 271), with the result that values morph into interests.

Unfortunately, Wnuk-Lipinski’s prophetic words fell on deaf ears. The detached liberal elite failed to appeal to peoples’ minds and hearts. By so doing, they had opened up a space for their critics from both the Left and the Right to enter with their tools of trade ready and honed to play on human emotions. Neither those on the Left nor those on the Right are afraid to stir up passions or paint the black and white picture of “us” the good ones versus “them” the bad ones, and both sides speak of emancipation—not of the human spirit, though, but from under the “dictatorship” of global capital or the EU . However, while the Left in Poland remains stuck in the passé Marxist terminology of class struggle and Western capitalist exploitation and as such attracts little public attention in the post-communist society, the messages of the Right fit perfectly into the troubled Zeitgeist with all its current anxieties (Tokarski 2016). And PiS has become adept at unscrupulously manipulating societal apprehensions by invoking the familiar calming symbols of the Church and the Polish nation under its moral guidance in an alien world.

PiS: Policies and Reactions

A veteran Polish sociologist coined the phrase “anti-communist bolshevism” to describe PiS and its policies (Staniszkis 2016). In her view, which reflects that of the majority of Polish academic commentators, the party displays an archaic concept of governance based on the conviction that ruling equates with instilling fear, and is about status, symbolism, and imposition of the government ’s will on the populace without encountering resistance; an attitude not unlike that of the erstwhile communist regime .

PiS is a radically conservative party. If political liberalism is understood as a system, which sets limits on government ’s interference with the private lives, worldviews, and habits of the citizens, the Polish ruling party’s policies represent the exact opposite. The policies are aimed at forcing the whole of the society to transform—for its own good—under the party’s “Good Change” slogan. Echoing the position of the Catholic Church , PiS is anti-abortion and anti-in vitro fertilization, and it stands for disciplinarian paternalism from the level of the government to that of the family, seeing the family, not the individual, as at the most essential component of the society. The party is also highly insensitive to feminist issues, censures homosexuality, and uses incendiary language about immigrants . In short, PiS stands against most of the values that are seen as progressive in Western democracies . And in trying to impose the “good change,” PiS is not averse to breaking the law and using underhanded tactics, including taking decisions in parliament late at night or early in the morning, with short notices given to opposition parties.

The “Good Change” slogan extends to Poland ’s foreign policy, especially within the European Union . On the face of it, Poland under PiS remains entrenched in EU structures and the party continues to pursue some of the main policy objectives of its liberal predecessors, but beneath that façade there is a fundamental paradigm shift . Whereas all of the country’s previous post-communist administrations regarded Europe as a chance for Poland to find security within the structures of NATO and enjoy prosperity and peace as a member state of the EU , PiS regards Europe not as a chance, but as a risk—if not a danger—for Poland . This reassessment is based not only on highly negative perceptions of the EU and pessimism about its future, but also on the way in which the ruling party defines the Polish nation; a definition that considers it to be a cultural and historical entity, not a political community of citizens. In line with this logic, and as already stated in its Manifesto, PiS continues to insist that the EU will survive only if it foregoes integration in favour of a union of sovereign national states (Stefan Batory Foundation 2016). Integration has been also questioned by PiS on the grounds of faulty representation . The Polish Foreign Minister, Jan Waszczykowski, speaking in parliament remarked that proponents of closer integration want economic governance to be coordinated by the political union and yet “today there is no fair and democratic way of electing legitimate authorities of such a union” (Speech January 29, 2016).

More belligerently, PiS asserts that it will not tolerate any outside interference into Poland ’s sovereign affairs, even if the country’s existing laws should be perceived to have been broken. This attitude ignores the fact that on accession to the EU Poland accepted the Copenhagen Criteria, which require the joining state to preserve the institutions of democratic governance and human rights, and respect the obligations and intents of the EU (Laboratorium Wiez 2016).

PiS’s aggressive stance has been contributing to Poland ’s diplomatic isolation and the country’s distancing from mainstream European politics. The collision course with the EU was set over PiS’s introduction of new media laws and, above all, those governing the Polish Constitutional Tribunal . In response, on January 13, 2016, the European Commission launched a formal investigation into PiS’s alleged disempowerment of the checks and balances principle protecting the independence of democratic institutions . This was the first such action taken by the EU against one of its full member states (Karolewski and Benedikter 2016).

The controversy surrounding the Constitutional Tribunal , both outside and inside the country, is so vast and complex that a broad outline only can be presented here. According to the European Commission, PiS is undermining the separation of powers principle by attempting to tip the balance in favour of the executive by using its majority in the legislative body against the judiciary. Is this the case? Unequivocally “yes.” Already as Prime Minister (2006–2007), Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the then and current leader of PiS, presented a project aimed at curbing the powers of the Constitutional Tribunal , thus making clear his party’s preference for a majoritarian model of democracy, rather than a liberal one based on the rule of law and separation of powers. Gaining power as a majority party placed PiS in a position to implement such designs.

Consequently, the Constitutional Tribunal debacle has emerged with the topic becoming a political battlefield for the government , parliamentary opposition, civil society organizations, and almost the entire legal profession in the country. In the broadest terms, PiS believes that its electoral victory in 2015 made it clear Poles wanted the new government to deliver a wholesale change, which in the party’s view should start not with amending the constitution , but with changing the institution that guards it, that is, the Constitutional Tribunal . The opposition maintains that if any changes were needed, the constitution should be amended and this should be done according to the procedures defined in that very founding document (Kultura Liberalna 2016: 2).

In the opinion of some members of the legal profession, the root of the problem can be found in the provision contained in the 1997 Constitution , which leaves both the organizational and the procedural aspects of the Constitutional Tribunal in the hands of the Legislative (article 197 of the constitution ). As they explain, the proviso is the result of an incomplete transformation from the communist political system in which the Sejm (parliament ) was the highest organ of state power, to one based on the principle of separation of powers. Among the many negative implications emanating from the proviso, the most concerning is the method of choosing judges for the Constitutional Tribunal ; the judges are selected by a parliamentary majority, and not by means of a compromise reached between the legislative majority and the minority.

Since a majoritarian practice has been in operation under the liberal government , PiS is able to claim that it merely continues an already established procedure. Some of the jurists stress that the European Commission failed to notice this irregularity when the liberal government was in power and only started to perceive it as a threat to the rule of law in Poland once the populist PiS took over. On those grounds they consider the intervention by the European Commission as hypocritical, arguing that if each EU member state is supposed to be treated equally, the same member state must also be treated equally in terms of consecutive parliaments, even if the respective assemblies are constituted by a majority of two different political parties (Debata akademicka 2016).

But a Report prepared for the Helsinki Foundation for Human Right (Report 2015–2016) makes it clear that PiS has gone well beyond simply perpetuating a bad precedence. The authors of the Report do refer to the contested selection of new judges, tracing its origins back to a temporary regulation of June 2015 enacted by the previous government that made possible for the then ruling liberal majority to nominate five new judges to the Constitutional Tribunal . However, this problem has been exacerbated by the regulatory amendments implemented by PiS since November 2015. These amendments effectively undermine the functioning of the Constitutional Tribunal as the executive has usurped for itself the right to verify the decisions taken by the Tribunal, refuse to accept them and/or carry them out.

In reaction to the amendments, there emerged a strong lobby defending the Constitutional Tribunal . Among the lobbyist are the courts—led by the High Court and the Supreme Administrative Court—various legal structures, law associations, law departments at universities, and the general public—with thousands of citizens participating in marches and demonstrations and presenting petitions to the government (Raport 2016). The most vocal and visible among the latter is the Committee for the Defence Democracy (KOD) founded in response to the constitutional crisis (Komitet Obrony Demokracji 2016).

In April 2016, the Centre for Research on Public Opinion conducted a survey to gauge public perceptions of the crisis surrounding the Constitutional Tribunal (CBOS 2016: 62). The results revealed that nearly half of the respondents declared they stood on the side of the Constitutional Tribunal and factions opposed to PiS; over a quarter expressed support for PiS on this issue, as shown in Fig. 4.3.

Fig. 4.3  Support for opposing narratives

(Source Figure constructed using data from CBOS Survey Report (62:4) 2016. http://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2016/K_062_16.PDF)

Supporting one or the other side in the debate was strongly correlated with the respondents’ self-identification. Of those supporting the position of the ruling party and its government , 59% placed themselves politically on the Right , and 69% were very religious, attending mass a few times a week. The majority of respondents supporting the Tribunal placed themselves on the Left (73%) or in the centre (62%) of the political spectrum and were mostly non-practicing Catholics (64%) or attending mass only on occasion (60%) (CBOP 62:4/2016).

To establish the impact of the opposing “narratives” meant to sway the public one way or the other, respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the following 10 statements, giving them five choices: “Strongly agree,” “Partially agree,” “Partially disagree,” “Strongly disagree,” and “Hard to tell”.

1. 1.
PiS attempts to disable the Constitutional Tribunal so it can rule unrestricted.

2. 2.
PiS only wishes to improve governance.

3. 3.
The Constitutional Tribunal wants to paralyse governance of the country and puts itself above the law.

4. 4.
The Constitutional Tribunal is doing its duty and safeguards democracy and the rule of law in Poland .

5. 5.
The opposition is using the Constitutional Tribunal to attempt to overthrow a legally elected government .

6. 6.
The opposition cares for democracy and the rule of law in Poland .

7. 7.
The EU , its politician, and its institutions care about democracy and the rule of law in Poland .

8. 8.
The EU , its politician, and its institutions have been from the start unfriendly towards PiS and support the opposition.

9. 9.
The European Commission cares for democracy and the rule of law in Poland .

10. 10.
The European Commission has little understanding of Poland and what is happening in that country.

Two indicators were constructed on the basis of the responses. The first showed the effect of PiS’s “narrative”; the second one the anti-PiS “narrative”. The first indicator was constructed by counting the “Strongly agree” and “Partially agree” responses with regard to the following statements:

- PiS wishes only to improve governance.

- The Constitutional Tribunal wants to paralyse governance of the country and place itself above the law.

- The opposition using the Constitutional Tribunal attempts to overthrow a legally elected government .

- The European Commission has little understanding of Poland and what is happening in that country.

The second indicator was constructed by counting the “Strongly agree” and “Partially agree” responses with regard to the following statements:

- PiS attempts to disable the Constitutional Tribunal so it can rule unrestricted.

- The Constitutional Tribunal is doing its duty and safeguards democracy and the rule of law in Poland .

- The opposition cares for democracy and the rule of law in Poland .

- The EU , its politician, and its institutions care about democracy and the rule of law in Poland .

- The European Commission cares for democracy and the rule of law in Poland .

Figure 4.4 illustrates reactions to the PiS narrative by the number of statements with which the respondents have agreed. Thirty-one per cent of respondents did not agree with any one of the five statements; eleven per cent of the respondents agreed with all five statements.

Fig. 4.4  Impact of PiS narrative by reaction to statements

(Source Figure constructed using data from CBOS Survey Report (62:11) 2016. http://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2016/K_062_16.PDF)

Positive reactions were noted for less than two statements (Average: 1.86).

Figure 4.5 shows reaction to the anti-PiS narrative, once again by the number of statements with which the respondents have agreed. Twenty-six per cent of respondents did not agree with any one of the five statements; twenty per cent agreed with all five statements. Positive reactions were noted for more than two statements (Average: 2.31). The results show that in April 2016 just under half of the respondents (45%) stood on the side of the Constitutional Tribunal , against a little more than a quarter (29%) of those who backed PiS on this issue, with neither of the respective “narratives” being fully accepted, but with slightly more credibility given to anti-PiS interpretations.

Fig. 4.5  Impact of anti-PiS narrative by reaction to statements

(Source Figure constructed using data from CBOS Survey Report (62:12) 2016. http://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2016/K_062_16.PDF)

More than a year later, in July 2017, with the powers of the Constitutional Tribunal having been seriously curtailed in the interim by the ruling party, a survey revealed that 45% of respondents were critical of the Tribunal. The assessments were closely correlated with party political preferences: 47% of PiS supporters approved of the Tribunal, against 74% of polled supporters of the liberal PO party who held critical opinions about it (CBOS 2016).

Having successfully hollowed out the Constitutional Tribunal by assuring the constitutionality of laws PiS tries to push through the parliament would not be questioned, the party set its sights next on disempowering the National Judicial Council and the Supreme Court. When the proposed amendment laws regarding these two institutions were first mooted in early 2017, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in an unprecedented statement of February 2, 2017, accused the government of having used a fait accompli to undermine the constitutional foundations of the state, and of trying to dismantle the remnants of the independence of the judiciary in the country. She called on all judges to resist those attempts by appealing to their honour and civic duty (Chief Justice 2017).

In the opinion of the Supreme Court judges, the proposed laws would divest the National Judicial Council of its main function, which is to guard the independence of the courts and the autonomy of the judges. Invoking Article 187 of the Constitution , the Supreme Court pointed out that the proposed amendment would violate the constitution by shifting the control of the nomination of judges from the judiciary to the politicians . Article 31b of the proposed legislation would in effect make the nomination of each new judge subject to parliamentary majority. On February 2, 2017, the proposed law was thus summarily dismissed as unacceptable by the Supreme Court (Supreme Court statement 2017).

Despite the strong objections by the judiciary and widespread public protests, a  bill was rushed through parliament in July 2017 that would pave the way for government control of the Supreme Court. [8] It is worthwhile noting that during the relevant parliamentary debate a PiS MP explained that the law was meant to “correct” the judiciary system in Poland by enabling the much delayed process of de-communisation to take place, which the ruling party accused the judiciary of having failed to conduct (Parliamentary Debate 2017).

In a surprise move, Poland ’s President, Andrzej Duda, vetoed the proposed judicial reforms. The former member of PiS, who earlier rejected a meeting on the crisis with the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, stated he did not feel the law would strengthen a sense of justice. But he added a new law was necessary and that with the help of experts he would prepare relevant amendments within two months on both the Supreme Court and the National Judicial Council. Thus, at the time of writing, the final outcome remains uncertain (Presidential Veto 2017).

President Duda’s veto and especially continuing public disaffection suggest the ruling party might find it harder to impose its will than it assumes. A case in point has been public resistance to the earlier attempt by PiS to push through at speed an expensive reform of the educational system. The proposed reform was not tabled for public debate or comments, and no explanation was given as to why PiS deemed it necessary to return to the educational system that had existed in communist Poland . A series of mass protests by teachers and teachers associations rolled across the country in October 2016 (Kultura 2016/41).

The demonstrations by teachers were but part of a series of protests against the top-down “reforming” tendency of PiS that has become its hallmark. But the game changer appears to have been the massive display of opposition to the proposed amendment to the abortion law. Since 1993 Poland has had one of the most stringent legislations in Europe , with abortion available only in cases of rape, incest, serious foetal defects, or threat-of-life to the mother. The 1993 law was a compromise between the communist era of unrestricted abortions and the pro-life proponents of a total ban, strongly supported by the Church. PiS decided to walk away from the compromise, proposing an amendment to the law that would make all abortions illegal, regardless of circumstances.

Anger at the proposal brought out thousands onto the streets. The “Black Protest,” so named after the mostly black-clad female marchers, was the first significant political setback for PiS (Kulisz 2016). The unprecedented withdrawal of the proposal by PiS in the face of the mass protest was the immediate consequence, but there were other, more future-projecting implications. First, the protest of October 3, 2016 was the outcome of an unmatched in speed and breadth public mobilization not only of women but also of men, with many of the participants having been previously politically disengaged. Second, even some of the newspapers known for their Right-leaning sympathy expressed disapproval, with one editor declaring that for him the “good change” was over (Dziennik.pl. 2016). Third, by withdrawing the proposal PiS let down its own Catholic-conservative electorate inviting criticism under the suspicion that either the party was never actually committed to the proposal and merely was using it in a political game, or that it withdrew from its earlier position out of weakness so as not to deepen further the public wrath that it found it could not control (Kultura Liberalna 2016: 40).

The temporary dip in approval ratings for PiS quickly recovered to former levels, but the party’s arrogance might have been somewhat tempered by the realization that it is not invincible and cannot rule as it pleases. Meanwhile, citizens had a chance to remind themselves of the power they wield to decide their own affairs.

Concluding Reflections

In Poland , the living memory of a deeply troubled history and the teaching of the Catholic Church are inseparably enmeshed and jointly define the psyche of the nation. The cultivation of liberalism in such ground, like that of an exotic plant, requires special care. As the above analyses documented, such care was not taken. Having defined liberalism mainly in economic terms, Polish liberal elite implemented their ambitious economic programme with great success and managed to change the country into the poster child of post-communist transition . And for a time high expectations of a better life for all, buttressed by robust economic growth, stimulated constituencies to favour liberal economic and political reforms . Yet while the liberal neo-capitalist model was highly successful in producing a new middle class and financial upper classes as well as attracting foreign investment, the lower strata of the population began to feel gradually disenfranchised as high hopes were replaced by a socio-economic decline, aggravated by what was perceived as a disconnect between the elite and the citizens. And as liberalism —such as it was understood in Poland —lost its lustre, the traditional mindset came to the fore opening the door for another political option to enter.

Comparing support for populism in Poland with support for populist parties in Western Europe , as examined by Inglehart and Norris, two conclusions can be drawn. First, on the basis of election results, which revealed strong populist tendencies among the young cohort, the optimistic expectation that when the older generation dies there will be return to more progressive values , is not pertinent to Poland . Second, the finding that the economic factor plays a lesser role in populist support than the cultural factor is equally inapplicable. Instead, in Poland , the two factors work together, reinforcing each other. PiS assures this by combining leftist redistributive measures, approximating Western European social market economies, with a rightist populist agenda that coincides with the conservative Catholic values of large sections of the electorate. Whereas the economic measures have been exerting a positive socio-economic influence, the extreme brand of populism PiS represents is dragging the country backwards. The blurring of the Church-state line; the re-emergence of deep suspicion of neighbours, Germany and Russia in particular; xenophobia; and intolerance all have raised their ugly heads under the current regime , alienating Poland from the European Union and its values .

Does this mean that Poland is witnessing its final days of democracy, as some fear? The ultimate outcome of the government’s interference with the judical system and its efforts to undermine the separation of powers principle are not possible to predict. However, there is room for guarded confidence in the robust civic engagement of many among the majority of citizens who do not support PiS and who are ready to stand up in defence of their democratic institutions and civil liberties. Still, to return to power and retain it, liberal elite will have to reinvent themselves. In the cultural sphere, unlike their Western counterparts, they do not have the rich repository of emancipatory values to fall back upon, so they will have to become creative and start from scratch. In a country as overwhelmingly Christian as Poland , Christianity could prove a useful catalyst to help make the connection between liberal values and the legacy of the Christian tenets of equality of status and individual liberty on which liberal democracy rests. In the economic sphere, liberal elite —and not just in Poland —will have to learn how to put the people first.

Notes

1. 1.
The authors note that the traditional association in Western Europe of populism with the Right fails to capture certain core features of today’s populist parties in other parts of the world.

2. 2.
Unfortunately, the study does not offer a speculative explanation as to why the “older cohorts”, the very sixties’ generation who drove the “silent revolution,” should now turn their backs on the progressive norms they had fought to achieve.

3. 3.
The term refers to Donald Tusk, President of the European Council since December 1, 2014, who was the Prime Minister of Poland and co-founded the liberal Civic Platform party, which PiS defeated in the October 2015 election.

4. 4.
This core campaign promise (called 500+) has been implemented; the others have been either implemented partially or not at all.

5. 5.
With a voter turnout of 50.92% the seven parties, which gained parliamentary representation included: Peace and Justice (PiS) 37.58% of votes; Platforma Obywatelska (PO) 24.09%; Together 3.62%; KORWiN 4.76%; Polish Peasant Party (PSL) 5.13%; United Left (ZL) 7.55%; Kukiz’15 8.81%. http://wiadomosci.onet.pl/kraj/wybory-parlamentarne-2015-pkw-podala-ostateczne-wyniki/zqe59j.

6. 6.
More telling still has been the relative drop in support for PO when compared with the 2011 election in which 48% of the electorate with higher education voted for the liberal party against only 22% of voters who cast their ballot for PiS.

7. 7.
The remaining group Inglehart and Norris associated with support for populist parties were ethnic majorities. It is not possible to apply this category to Poland , which in the wake of the Holocaust and the post-World War II mass expulsions of minorities left the geographically shifted country with one of the most mono-ethnic societies in the world.

8. 8.
Commenting on the manner in which the bill was passed by the parliament , the former judge of the Constitutional Tribunal , Prof M Safian, stated that if the bill was passed when the Tribunal was still functional, it would have been invalidated on the grounds it violated due process of law (Woszczyk 2017).

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© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_5

5. Identity Politics: Extreme Polarization and the Loss of Capacity to Compromise in Turkey

Yilmaz Esmer1

(1)

Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Turkey

Yilmaz Esmer

Email: yilmaz.esmer@eas.bau.edu.tr

A few months before drafting this chapter, the author took part in a television news programme with two other discussants. The discussion was to centre around the findings of a recently concluded survey on religion and religiosity. As all observers of Turkey agree, the country is very much bifurcated politically and the views of the two other participants were diametrically opposed to mine. Nevertheless, and very much unlike the usual fare nowadays, the debate was calm and cordial with no harsh exchanges or unruly bouts of temper on display. Starting immediately after the programme, I was bitterly criticized by a number of friends and associates merely for appearing on the same programme with these individuals. I was scolded not because of what I said or did not say but, as one friend put it, for “sitting around the same table with these guys.” Such is the degree of the profound polarization that Turkey is faced with.

This personal anecdote demonstrates the main theme of this chapter and leads the way to its central hypothesis: elevated levels of polarisation are detrimental to the healthy functioning of a democratic system of government . Put differently, there is a negative correlation between the degree of polarization and the viability of democratic institutions . Furthermore, there is reason—and evidence—to assume that this correlation holds true for established as well as emerging democracies . Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Ursula Hoffmann-Lange concur with this hypothesis when they write in Chapter 3 of this volume that “Democracy may flourish even in societies with a low level of socioeconomic development (as in India or Botswana ), or it may break down in highly developed societies. This was the case during the first half of the twentieth century in Germany and Italy, due to the failure of the political parties to implement effective political institutions, a high degree of political polarisation and irreconcilable conflicts among the major political parties, as well as an unwillingness on the part of the crucial actors to accept each others’ mutual legitimacy” (italics added). As Berg-Schlosser and Hoffmann-Lange point out and as history has taught us only too well, increased value fragmentation can ring alarm bells even for non-democratic regimes but is especially troublesome for democracies .

Since the outbreak of the global financial and economic crisis in 2007–2008, a number of interrelated developments have been haunting liberal democracies . The causal roots of these threats to what all observers believed to be solidly consolidated regimes may or may not have germinated in the bedrock of widespread economic hardships that followed the crisis . However, the thorny issue of causality notwithstanding, correlations are impossible to ignore.

The economic consequences of the financial crisis , such as persistently high unemployment rates couple with stagnation and even recession , austerity measures, deterioration of income distribution, and increasing poverty, to name a few, are all known too well. Concurrent with global economic slowdown , certain political developments raised not only eyebrows but also, and much more importantly, the fears about the well-being of consolidated democracies . Numerous polls and surveys as well as election results tell the same story which is apparent even to the casual observer. A marked increase in nationalistic and anti-immigration sentiments, xenophobic outbursts, anti-intellectualism, and deep dissatisfaction with globalization and its institutions manifest themselves both in the USA and Europe . Parallel to these developments, we observe a deepening polarization in a number of countries which, we believe, poses a serious threat to the well-functioning of democratic regimes .

In this chapter, polarization is defined as viewing, understanding and interpreting the world through one’s identity be it ideology, political affiliation, ethnicity or religious denomination. Thus, those who identify themselves with the same group tend to develop similar views on a range of unrelated issues such as global warming, the alleged Russian involvement in the US presidential elections , or even the pros and cons of vaccinating children. Indeed, “categorization extends to all aspects of life, not just political, and peaceful coexistence is no longer perceived by citizens as possible” (McCoy and Rahman 2016: 2). Political polarization , on the other hand, is usually defined more narrowly, referring to strict identification with a political party. But that alone will not always pose a serious threat to the regime . Much more significant are the ideological and affective distances between the core supporters of the parties in question. It is high degrees of partisan identification coupled with deep ideological schisms that causes concern for the regime .

Iyengar et al. (2012: 405) rightly point out that “Scholarship on political polarisation , with very few exceptions, focuses exclusively on policy preferences.” However, they add that “policy-based division is but one way of defining partisan polarisation . An alternative, and in our view, more diagnostic, indicator of mass polarisation is the extent to which partisans view each other as a disliked out-group.” Analyses of polarization based solely on policy preferences are indeed rather limited. A wider perspective is adopted in this chapter, identifying three dimensions of political polarization : policy preferences, values and affect (i.e. feelings for the “other pole” also referred to as social distance). These three dimensions are correlated and frequently form a “spiral of polarisation .”

Identity politics , which paves the way to polarized societies, has always been with us, but the era of so-called post-truth politics, many claim, has reached the point where facts are no longer relevant for political campaigns. In fact, it seems like we live in a period that allows repeated confirmations of Haidt’s claim that “Once they [people] accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds” (Haidt 2012: xvii).

More than a few analysts claim that facts, data and expertise do not matter any longer for the politics of even countries whose citizens enjoy the highest levels of education. The title of Tom Nichols’ recent book, The Death of Expertise, sums up this era of “new and post-truth politics” in just two words: expertise and death (Nichols 2017). In short, “facts are no longer accepted as evidence” (The Economist 2017a). It is not difficult to predict that polarization will deepen “when facts are no longer accepted as evidence” and when the important question for a voter is not “what is in this [policy] for me?” but rather “what does my group say I should think?” If, in the years to come, voters continue on this path, we shall return to a postmodern version of tribal politics as in the case of the Brazilian voter who asks in desperation: “Chief, I have done everything as you asked me to. Now I would like to know who I voted for” (Harrop and Miller 1987: 29).

An appreciable amount of literature has accumulated on the increasing (and, for many, frightening) levels of polarization in the USA. The Economist (2017b) sums up the US political scene succinctly:

One of the steadiest trends in American politics is the decline of “swing voting”, or changing the party one supports in presidential elections . Data compiled by Corwin Smidt of Michigan State University show that from 1952–1980, a fifth of those who voted in consecutive elections switched sides. Since 2000, that share has halved. American politics have become so polarised along partisan lines that only a tiny sliver of the electorate remains genuinely open to persuasion. (italics added)

The last phrase of the paragraph quoted above is also painfully true for Turkey where “only a tiny sliver of the electorate remains genuinely open to persuasion” as will be shown in the following sections.

The pivotal importance of party identification in American political life (and to varying extents in Western European democracies ) is neither a new discovery nor a novel idea. In their classical study of the US presidential elections of 1952 and 1956, Campbell et al. (1964: 67) conclude that “Few factors are of greater importance for our national elections than the lasting attachment of tens of millions of Americans to one of the parties.” What is relatively new, however, is the fact that the electoral gap between the presidential candidates has become much narrower. Also, the proportions of votes won by the two candidates have become astonishingly stable (Fig. 5.1). Indeed, in the last five presidential elections since 2000, the widest gap between the two major candidates was seven percentage points, which means that a loss of only four percentage points by the top candidate was sufficient to put him below his rival in terms of popular vote. Even Donald Trump, who was so hard to swallow by the Republican establishment, succeeded in pulling 46% of the popular vote thanks to the partisanship of American voters. Had he been an independent candidate with exactly the same views and policy promises, one can venture to speculate that he would have fared considerably worse than Ross Perot. [1]

Fig. 5.1  US presidential elections: 1960–2016

(Source https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/popular-vote/)

Baffumi and Shapiro’s (2009) description of the new and ideological American voter is only too close to home for the observers of Turkish voters as well. Today’s voters, they show, mostly vote along party lines but their partisanship has assumed a profoundly ideological character.

Another indication of increasing polarization of the American electorate is the change in how citizens who identify themselves with one of the major parties feel about the other party. This is an indicator of the affective dimension mentioned above. Based on American National Election Studies (ANES; http://www.electionstudies.org/) data, there has been an almost steady decrease in the positive feelings about the opposite party. Also significant is the fact that “feelings are mutual” for the supporters of both parties (Groenendyk 2018; Kimball et al. 2013; Lelkes 2016). If democracy, more than any other, is a system that is dependent on the willingness and capacity to compromise, a recent poll from Gallup (March 9–29, 2017) is worrisome. We are informed that only 15% of Democrats would like their party’s leaders to compromise with the Trump administration.

Commenting on another significant of indicator of affective polarization, Iyengar et al. (2012) cite a 2010 survey which found that about half of the Republicans and a third of the Democrats said they would be unhappy if their sons or daughters married someone identified with the opposite party.

We have hypothesized that a broadly and deeply polarized society is not good news for the healthy functioning of a democratic system of government . First and foremost, when a great majority of the electorate base their votes on identity rather than on an evaluation of candidates, parties and policies, voting becomes a “census of population” rather than a bona fide election, that is, it becomes an exercise in counting rather than choosing. At least as important is the fact that extreme polarization makes compromise between competing political camps increasingly difficult, if not impossible, while the capacity and willingness to cooperate and compromise is crucial for any competitive political system. Added to that is the increasing number of citizens who harbour intensely negative feelings towards members of the opposing party, an attitude that reduces further the capacity to compromise.

In addition to these theoretical concerns, there are recent scholarly articles arguing that citizens are increasingly turning a cold shoulder to democracy and democratic values . Foa and Mounk (2017: 14) are the latest in the series of analyses heralding pessimism for the future of democracy in a wide variety of countries. [2] The authors argue that not only is there a general and increasing dissatisfaction with democracy even in wealthy, consolidated democracies but, more alarmingly, compared to the older generations, the younger cohorts are much more disenchanted with democracy in their respective countries. Their conclusion is rather bleak: “There are strong indicators that the consequences of democratic deconsolidation may turn out to be just as serious in the heartland of liberal democracy as they have been in its periphery.” This conclusion is well in line with data on polarization summarized above: there may be a reason to be concerned even in “the heartland of democracy.”

To be sure, pessimistic analyses concerning the future of democracies do not go unchallenged. Norris (2017) disagrees with Foa and Mounk’s conclusions on various grounds. First, according to Norris, the disenchantment with democracy (particularly of the millennials) is not a universal phenomenon and is not observable in a number of countries. Second, she raises the question that Foa and Mounk may be looking at a cohort rather than a generation effect. Fuchs and Roller, in Chapter 10 of this volume, also conclude that “in contrast to the results presented in the Foa and Mounk study, there is no clear trend of an increasing preference for a strong leader the four Western countries.”

A detailed discussion of this debate on whether or not citizen support for democracy has been diminishing is beyond the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, the hypothesis that polarization poises threats to democracy at a number of levels and will have adverse effects on the cultural foundations of democratic regimes is tenable regardless of the outcome of this debate.

With this hypothesis in mind, we now turn our attention to the Turkish case.

Turkish Democracy in the Last Decade: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Turkey has never been a perfect democracy by Western standards. However, except for brief military interruptions since 1950, when for the first time power changed hands peacefully through free and fair elections , Turkey has never been classified as authoritarian either. In fact, with respect to universal suffrage, Turkey was ahead of a number of today’s consolidated democracies . It not only passed Huntington’s “two times turnover test” more than once (Esmer 2002a), but Turkey ’s secular democracy was once regarded as a successful model for other Islamic countries of the Middle East to follow. As late as 2011, one could read in The New York Times that:

As Egypt struggles to reinvent itself, many experts in the region say that it might look to Turkey for some valuable lessons.

Arriving at a template that effectively integrates Islam, democracy and vibrant economics has been a near-impossible dream for Middle East reformers stretching back decades. To a large extent, Egypt’s inability to accommodate these three themes lies at the root of its current plight.

But no country in the region has come closer to accomplishing this trick, warts and all, than Turkey . As a result, diplomats and analysts have begun to present the still-incomplete Turkish experiment as a possible road map for Egypt. (Thomas, Jr. 2011)

In the same article, a prominent expert on Turkey and the Middle East was quoted as saying that “Turkey is the envy of the Arab world. [3]

If that statement was true then, it most assuredly is not anymore!

The backsliding of Turkish democracy in recent years is not a casual impression. Neither is it based on journalistic accounts whose number, by the way, has been increasing at an exponential rate in the past few years. This “progress in reverse” has been and is constantly being confirmed by all major and well-regarded indices of democracy such as the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House , Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) , the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, or the Global Democracy Ranking, Vienna. For instance, between 2012 and 2015, Turkey ’s global democracy ranking, according to one prominent index of democracy, went down from 88th to 97th (The Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2015). Freedom House ratings follow a similar pattern. From 2005 through 2012, Freedom House gave Turkey a score of 3 on the two dimensions (civil liberties and political rights ) that it evaluates. In 2017, Turkey ’s civil liberties score was 5 and its political rights score was 4. Thus, the overall freedom score went up from 3 to 4.5. [4] This is a rather significant deterioration by all counts. Perhaps the 2016 Report of the Global Democracy Ranking Institute of Vienna (2017) sums it up in one sentence: “The decrease of democracy in Turkey is remarkable and obvious.”

Table 5.1 summarizes the highly respected Stockholm-based IDEA Institute’s scores on various dimensions of Turkish democracy between the years 2010 and 2015 (the latest year for which data were available at the time of writing). It will be noted that of the 19 measures considered by IDEA, Turkey has shown an improvement on only one measure during this period: electoral participation; the fact that the proportion of those who went to the polls increased somewhat can hardly be a sign of improvement in the quality of democracy. At the same time, the drop in what IDEA labels as “elected government ,” “clean elections ” and “civil society participation” is especially significant and worrisome.

Table 5.1  Turkey’s democracy scores, 2010–2015 according to international IDEA

Dimension

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2010–2015

Representative government

0.72

0.67

0.67

0.67

0.59

0.56

0.16

Clean elections

0.81

0.71

0.71

0.71

0.60

0.58

0.23

Inclusive suffrage

1.00

1.00

1.00

1.00

1.00

1.00

0.00

Free political parties

0.59

0.56

0.56

0.57

0.57

0.53

0.07

Elected government

1.00

1.00

1.00

1.00

0.65

0.65

0.35

Fundamental rights

0.52

0.52

0.52

0.43

0.43

0.41

0.11

Access to justice

0.54

0.55

0.54

0.45

0.45

0.44

0.11

Civil liberties

0.60

0.60

0.59

0.51

0.49

0.46

0.14

Social rights and equality

0.35

0.36

0.37

0.30

0.30

0.30

0.05

Checks on government

0.52

0.52

0.52

0.46

0.43

0.43

0.09

Effective parliament

0.55

0.56

0.57

0.51

0.45

0.45

0.10

Judicial independence

0.54

0.52

0.50

0.44

0.42

0.42

0.11

Impartial administration

0.50

0.50

0.50

0.41

0.39

0.38

0.12

Absence of corruption

0.49

0.49

0.49

0.49

0.43

0.43

0.06

Predictable enforcement

0.48

0.48

0.48

0.35

0.35

0.34

0.14

Civil society participation

0.76

0.68

0.63

0.54

0.53

0.54

0.22

Electoral participation

0.74

0.87

0.87

0.87

0.74

0.84

−0.10

Direct democracy

0.42

0.42

0.41

0.39

0.38

0.35

0.07

Subnational elections

0.55

0.55

0.55

0.52

0.50

0.50

0.04

Source https://pbs.twimg.com/media/. International IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), www.idea.int

Note All scores are between 0 and 1.00

To top it all, in April 2017, Turkish citizens voted in favour of abandoning the parliamentary system of government in favour of a regime , which could be described as an extraordinary presidential system with no checks or balances. Essentially, with a 51.3% majority (with both the figure and the integrity of the electoral process highly contested by the opposition), Turkey embarked on yet another adventure. The headline in The New York Times (2017) read: “Erdogan claims vast powers in Turkey after a narrow victory in referendum.” One need not be as pessimistic as the title of an article in The Washington Post [5] proclaiming that Turkish democracy might be dead and predicting that it might get a lot worse, but it would be overly optimistic to hope that the direction of this new adventure leads towards liberal democracy.

Polarization Reaches an Alarming Stage: Elite and Citizen Level Data

In tandem with the deterioration of the quality of democracy, polarization of Turkish population has accelerated and, according to more than few observers, has reached alarming levels in the last five or six years.

For a formal test of this postulation, we should ideally have access to time series data extending to the present. However, the most recent WVS /EVS survey in Turkey , our main data source, was completed in 2011, making it impossible to compare the degree of present-day polarization with that of 2011 [6] or before. At the same time, comparisons with time periods earlier than 2011 will not be relevant for the more recent surge in the intensity of negative feelings for the “other” in the country. Despite this shortcoming, however, WVS /EVS data allow us to gauge the level of polarization in Turkey in comparison with other countries albeit with a four- to six-year lag. In addition to the WVS /EVS data, we refer also to our survey of parliamentarians conducted in 2008 and again in 2013 in six countries (Chile , Germany , Poland , South Africa, South Korea and Sweden ) in addition to Turkey . Finally, we draw on the findings of some more recent surveys of the Turkish population which shed light on the degree of present-day polarization among citizens.

Using WVS /EVS data from 1990, (the first year WVS was conducted in Turkey ) up to 2011, Kaya and Sunar (2015: 17) track the degrees of divergence between what they define as the main Poles in Turkish politics. They conclude that “the results of our analyses do not support the idea of a bifurcated Turkish society. As in the case of the American debate on the country’s ‘culture wars,’ short-term political tensions and circumstantial evidence that are abundant in the mass media do not always stand up to academic scrutiny.” However, apart from the fact that 2011 was the latest year of data collection, a weakness in Kaya and Sunar’s analysis appears to be the way they define the “Poles.” Indeed, in any assessment of political polarization , the crucial first step is the designation of the Poles. This is relatively easier in a two-party system such as the USA, but requires further assumptions in multiparty systems. In their above-mentioned article, Kaya and Sunar lump all nationalist and Islamist political parties together and compare them, as an aggregate, with all parties of the centre-right and centre-left. A more preferable and uncontaminated effort would be a comparison between the two major parties, which together poll around three-fourths of the popular vote. Thus, in order to avoid further complications and judgemental decisions, this chapter is based on comparisons between the followers of the two major parties, the Justice and Development Party (AKP)—party of the Islamic right—and the Republican People’s Party (CHP) —party of the centre-left.

When we compare the differences between the two major parties in 1990 (the Motherland Party (ANAP) on the centre-right and the Social Democrat Populist Party (SHP) on the centre-left) [7] and in 2011 (the Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Islamic right and the Republican People’s Party (CHP) on the centre-left) on various dimensions, we largely concur with the conclusion that an increase in polarization during this period is an exception rather than the rule. Most notably, we find a significant increase in the gap with respect to our “women’s rights and gender equality scale” (Esmer 2012). Table 5.2 gives the scores on a five-item gender scale [8] in 1990 and 2011. It is observed that the difference in scores between the supporters of the two major parties more than doubled from 1990 to 2011. Perhaps this is not a surprise since the most relevant distinguishing factor between the values of the two Poles in an Islamic society is the position of women and the attitudes and values concerning gender roles (see, e.g., Esmer 2002b; Norris and Inglehart 2002).

Table 5.2  Five-item gender equality scale

1990

2011

ANAP

25.55

AKP

26.37

SHP

30.12

CHP

37.27

Difference

4.57

Difference

10.90

Source www.worldvaluessurvey.org

Note Scores are on a scale of 0 to 100 and are calculated for the two major parties of the given year

In the absence of longitudinal citizen-level data after 2011 and in view of the fact that no significant increases in polarization until 2011 have been observed, it might be instructive to take a more detailed look at polarization from a comparative perspective. For this purpose, Turkey is compared with the six other TRU countries in the parliamentarians study plus eight others (Australia, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Spain and USA) to expand the base for comparison. This set of countries comprises parliamentary and presidential systems; two as well as multiparty systems; societies of all major religions; and consolidated as well as relatively new democracies . In all cases, the WVS /EVS data collected in 2011 or thereabouts have been used.

Tables 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5 show the differences between two major parties in these 15 countries for the following dimensions, which may have one or more indicators depending on data availability: (a) religious values (importance of religion for self; importance of religion for children; religious interpretation of constitution is a characteristic of democracy); (b) gender equality (employers should give preference to men over women; being a housewife is as fulfilling as work; men make better business leaders than women); (c) sexual orientation (accept homosexual neighbour); (d) moral values (abortion; divorce); and (e) tolerance (tolerance for a neighbour of different race or religion). [9] We note that we have at least one indicator of the three dimensions of polarization that we identified above: values (religiosity, homosexuality, etc.); affect (would/would not like to have as neighbour); and a rather indirect policy indicator (employers should give priority to men over women).

Table 5.3  Polarization around religious values and sexual orientation

Major political parties

% saying religion very important

% saying religion very important for children

Religious interpretation of the constitution an aspect of democracy (mean on scale of 1–10)

% not wanting homosexual neighbour

Justifiability of homosexuality (mean on scale of 1–10)

Chile

UDI, Ind. Dem. Union

26.8

71.4

3.37

39.3

5.3

PDC, Christian Dem Party

24.5

70.8

4.37

32.1

5

Difference

2.3

0.6

1.00

7.2

0.3

Germany

CDU-CSU

16

86.0

1.99

20.1

6.12

SPD

12.6

88.5

2.38

27.2

5.73

Difference

3.4

2.5

0.39

7.1

0.39

South Korea

Grand National Party

30.1

67.8

3.02

86.9

2.8

Democratic

26.1

73.9

3.20

80.6

3.46

Difference

4.0

6.1

0.18

6.3

0.66

Poland

PiS, Law and Justice

70.3

33.8

4.39

53.4

2.23

PO, Civic Platform

39.5

67

3.31

32.7

4.39

Difference

30.8

33.2

1.08

20.7

2.16

South Africa

ANC, African Nat Congress

53.6

57.7

6.79

41.3

4.49

DA, Democratic Alliance

63.6

48.3

5.92

31.7

3.53

Difference

10.0

9.4

0.87

9.6

0.96

Sweden

MS, Moderates

6.6

97.4

1.85

3.3

8.24

SD, Social Democrats

8.3

93.6

2.04

6.4

7.91

Difference

1.7

3.8

0.19

3.1

0.33

Turkey

CHP

51.8

73.3

4.57

76.4

1.95

AKP

76.1

52.7

5.72

91.9

1.48

Difference

24.3

20.6

1.15

15.5

0.47

Australia

Australian Labour Party

13.4

88

2.27

12.9

7.06

Liberal Party

19.5

78.4

2.27

16.2

6.3

Difference

6.1

9.6

0

3.3

0.76

Japan

LDP—Liberal Democratic

6.3

95.8

2.05

n/a

4.16

DPJ—Democratic Party

3.6

96.8

2.31

n/a

4.65

Difference

2.7

1.0

0.26

n/a

0.49

Mexico

PRI

56.1

64.9

4.49

22.5

4.52

PAN

59.0

66.4

4.50

24.5

3.97

Difference

2.9

1.5

0.01

2

0.55

The Netherlands

PvdA

8.6

90.9

2.13

5.1

8.14

VVD

2.0

96

2.08

2.5

8.63

Difference

6.6

5.1

0.05

2.6

0.49

New Zealand

Labour

22.1

83.3

2.55

18.1

5.93

National

17.3

85.3

2.14

12.8

5.79

Difference

4.8

2.0

0.41

5.3

0.14

Romania

Partidul Democrat-Liberal

53.4

45.5

3.93

57.4

2.22

USL

54.5

47.6

3.9

59.8

2.09

Difference

1.1

2.1

0.03

2.4

0.13

Spain

PSOE

6.9

90.6

3.78

6.4

7.06

PP

17.6

80.6

3.75

8.2

6.07

Difference

10.7

10

0.03

1.8

0.99

USA

Republican

54.5

41.5

2.70

31.7

4.05

Democrat

34.5

63.5

2.66

12.2

6.7

Difference

20.0

22

0.04

19.5

2.65

Source www.worldvaluessurvey.org

Table 5.4  Polarization around gender equality and morality

Major political parties

% saying employers should give priority to men over men

% strongly agreeing that being housewife is as fulfilling as work

% strongly agreeing that men make better business leaders than women

Justifiability of abortion (mean on scale of 1–10)

Justifiability of divorce (mean on scale of 1–10)

Chile

UDI, Ind. Dem. Union

26.8

24

1.9

2.84

6.89

PDC, Christian Dem Party

24.8

13.8

4

2.52

6.75

Difference

2

10.2

2.1

0.32

0.14

Germany

CDU-CSU

16

24.3

6.3

4.63

6.46

SPD

16.1

22.8

8.3

4.49

6.47

Difference

0.1

1.5

2

0.14

0.01

South Korea

Grand National Party

42.8

10.6

11.8

2.99

4.13

Democratic

25.6

9.2

6.5

3.49

4.68

Difference

17.2

1.4

5.3

0.5

0.55

Poland

PiS, Law and Justice

30.1

9.5

6

2.17

3.73

PO, Civic Platform

25

5.8

6.6

3.46

5.21

Difference

5.1

3.7

0.6

1.29

1.48

South Africa

ANC, African Nat Congress

30

19.4

17.8

4.31

4.76

DA, Democratic Alliance

31.1

15.4

16.6

3.31

4.6

Difference

1.1

4

1.2

1

0.16

Sweden

MS, Moderates

2.3

9.8

1.3

8.26

8.36

SD, Social Democrats

1.1

11.7

1.1

7.7

8.17

Difference

1.2

1.9

0.2

0.56

0.19

Turkey

CHP

49.6

23.8

17.8

2.6

3.71

AKP

67.4

33

26.9

1.98

2.97

Difference

17.8

9.2

9.1

0.62

0.74

Australia

Australian Labour Party

7.8

19.6

2.2

5.99

7.25

Liberal Party

11.4

20.8

2.5

5.55

6.94

Difference

3.6

1.2

0.3

0.44

0.31

Japan

LDP, Liberal Democratic

42.4

19.6

6.6

4.43

5.69

DPJ, Democratic Party

42.6

14.3

3.9

4.96

6.13

Difference

0.2

5.3

2.7

0.53

0.44

Mexico

PRI

16.9

21.1

4.8

2.92

5.21

PAN

19.2

22.6

6.8

2.67

4.75

Difference

2.3

1.5

2

0.25

0.46

The Netherlands

PvdA

5.9

8.6

0.7

6.98

7.43

VVD

7.7

4.8

1.6

7.24

7.76

Difference

1.8

3.8

0.9

0.26

0.33

New Zealand

Labour

8.3

18.5

0.6

5.41

6.74

National

5.5

17.1

2.7

5.23

6.57

Difference

2.8

1.4

2.1

0.18

0.17

Romania

Partidul Democrat-Liberal

44.6

17.1

12.5

2.72

3.65

USL

43.5

14.5

13.6

2.78

3.66

Difference

1.1

2.6

1.1

0.06

0.01

Spain

PSOE

13.3

15.6

2.6

5.36

7.53

PP

19.5

14.4

5.4

4.08

6.72

Difference

6.2

1.2

2.8

1.28

0.81

USA

Republican

6.7

30.7

2.6

3.55

5.6

Democrat

5.5

18.8

1.3

5.9

6.87

Difference

1.2

11.9

1.3

2.35

1.27

Source www.worldvaluessurvey.org

Table 5.5  Polarization around social distance and overall divergence means

Major political parties

% not wanting neighbour of different religion

% not wanting neighbour of different race

Mean of percentage differences

Mean of percentage differences

Mean of mean differences

Chile

UDI, Ind. Dem. Union

7.1

5.4

1.9

PDC, Christian Dem Party

4.7

5.7

4

Difference

2.4

0.3

2.1

2.41

0.44

Germany

CDU-CSU

15.3

16.2

6.3

SPD

13.4

18.2

8.3

Difference

1.9

2

2

2.71

0.23

South Korea

Grand National Party

33.2

39.5

11.8

Democratic

36.6

35.6

6.5

Difference

3.4

3.9

5.3

6.60

0.47

Poland

PiS, Law and Justice

8.8

6.1

6

PO, Civic Platform

1.8

3.6

6.6

Difference

7

2.5

0.6

14.27

1.50

South Africa

ANC, African Nat Congress

17.7

20.1

17.8

DA, Democratic Alliance

9

20.1

16.6

Difference

8.7

0

1.2

5.71

0.75

Sweden

MS, Moderates

3.3

2.0

1.3

SD, Social Democrats

3.8

3.4

1.1

Difference

0.5

1.4

0.2

1.70

0.32

Turkey

CHP

25.6

30.9

17.8

AKP

44.9

42.2

26.9

Difference

19.3

11.3

9.1

16.84

0.75

Australia

Australian Labour Party

3.7

5.2

2.2

Liberal Party

4.3

5.2

2.5

Difference

0.6

0

0.3

3.36

0.38

Japan

LDP, Liberal Democratic

36.4

31.3

6.6

DPJ, Democratic Party

33.9

20.4

3.9

Difference

2.5

10.9

2.7

2.89

0.43

Mexico

PRI

14.7

11.3

4.8

PAN

15.5

9.5

6.8

Difference

0.8

1.8

2

1.90

0.32

The Netherlands

PvdA

1.3

3

0.7

VVD

2

8.1

1.6

Difference

0.7

5.1

0.9

3.26

0.28

New Zealand

Labour

1.4

2.4

0.6

National

0.8

2.2

2.7

Difference

0.6

0.2

2.1

2.54

0.23

Romania

Partidul Democrat-Liberal

22.7

32.4

12.5

USL

22.2

27.3

13.6

Difference

0.5

5.1

1.1

1.91

0.06

Spain

PSOE

3

3

2.6

PP

5.3

8.6

5.4

Difference

2.3

5.6

2.8

5.63

0.78

USA

Republican

3.4

7

2.6

Democrat

2.4

4.1

1.3

Difference

1

2.9

1.3

9.70

1.58

Source www.worldvaluessurvey.org

For each country, we look at the absolute differences between the supporters of the two major parties for 12 indicators using WVS /EVS data for 2011–2004. [10] The last two columns of Table 5.5 give the arithmetic means of the absolute differences of percentage points and the arithmetic means of scale means for each of the 15 countries.

In terms of percentage point differences, Turkey , with a mean percentage divergence of 16.84, comes out as politically the most polarized of the 15 countries examined. Sweden is at the opposite end with a divergence score of only 1.70. Turkey ’s mean divergence with respect to eight indicators is almost 10 times that of Sweden . If these eight measures are taken as indicators of political polarization , Turkey is the most polarized country in this sample, to be followed by Poland and the USA. By the same token, Sweden seems to be the most harmonious of the 15 cases. For anyone who has been following the media accounts on this topic, these findings should not come as a surprise. [11]

We hasten to add, once again, that these data are roughly six years old while observers of Turkish politics are almost unanimous in their opinion that polarization has been on a sharp rise since then. Nevertheless, the 15-country comparison offers strong clues about what to expect in the years to come. That prediction has been confirmed by more recent research on the micro-level.

Some micro-level cross-sectional data can be found on the degree of political polarization in Turkey . Among these, a recent survey (2015–2016) commissioned by the German Marshall Fund of the USA [12] is noteworthy. In a few sentences, “the survey […] highlighted that 83 percent of the respondents do not want their daughter to marry someone voting for the party they feel distant to; 78 percent reject the idea of doing business with someone voting for the “other” party; and perhaps most dramatically, 74 percent reject the idea of his or her children playing with the children of someone who votes for the other party” (Erdogan 2016).

When no less than three out of four people in any society “reject the idea of his or her children playing with the children of someone who votes for the other party,” one is faced with a serious and deep polarization in any sense of the word. So much so that Hurriyet, a leading and “middle-of-the-road” daily, called the findings “alarming” (Hurriyet 2016). If these findings are reflective of the actual situation, even with a generous margin of error, then Hurriyet’s choice of vocabulary is certainly not an exaggeration.

Another recent survey of the Turkish youth between the ages of 18 and 29 revealed that the younger generation was even more sharply polarized compared to the general population. [13]

Although the surveys cited above eliminate any need for further evidence on the critical levels of political polarization the Turkish society is experiencing, yet another confirmation can be found in a report analysing data from surveys conducted by KONDA, a public opinion research firm. The report (Yilmaz 2017) is based on data collected from 213,717 respondents between March 2010 and April 2017. Even the title of the report is rather revealing: “codes for the frozen Turkish politics.” And the author’s conclusion from her analysis of this huge data set is rather familiar, if not encouraging. “Simply put, Turkish politics is frozen and polarized around identities. So much so that, one can predict one’s party preferences simply by asking about the television channels the person gets his/her news from.” [14] The report gives ample evidence of the level of polarization that the Turkish society is experiencing.

We conclude this section by noting that Turkey is one of the key cases in the large-scale, comparative research project on polarization supported by the US National Science Foundation under the supervision of Jennifer McCoy (McCoy and Rahman 2016).

Elites Lead the Way

In addition to the large comparative rift in Turkish politics around 2011 (Tables 5.3, 5.4, and 5.5) which we argued was an indication of even higher levels of polarization in the years to come, another set of data is worthy of attention.

In a review article on polarization , Hetherington (2009: 447) argues that elites lead the way to polarization and the masses follow. Commenting on polarization in the USA, he writes: “In general, it is important to remember that elite stimulus is at the root of this change in mass behaviour. Had elites not become more ideologically polarized, party sorting on the mass level would not have occurred.” Further, “if elites provided clear signals about attitudes , mass polarisation might follow, at least among those who follow politics closely.”

In many instances, elites exploit the existing cleavages for electoral gains (McCoy and Rahman 2016). This tendency, when carried too far, results in the total or almost total loss of capacity to compromise.

In a more recent article based on Congressional roll-call voting, Boxell, Gentzkow and Shapiro (2017) concur with Hetherington and show that polarization started in the US Congress long before it was detected among citizens with either Democratic or Republican Party affiliations.

In the case of Turkey , it is also much more likely that elites lead the masses towards polarization or convergence, rather than the other way around. In fact, although there is no hard data to verify this, there is a more or less solid consensus that the elite rhetoric, which is sharp, divisive and conflictual, is mainly responsible for driving the Turkish electorate further apart.

As elaborated by Ursula Hoffmann-Lange and Dirk Berg-Schlosser in this volume, we are fortunate to have access to time series data from the political elites of Turkey as well as the six other TRU countries. And if Hetherington’s and our assumptions about the primacy of elite values are correct, then one would expect to observe increased polarization among the elites in recent years. With respect to Turkish parliamentarians , that is indeed the case!

In a previous article, Esmer (2015) showed that among the parliamentarians of the seven TRU countries (Chile , Germany , Poland , South Africa , South Korea , Sweden and Turkey ) surveyed in 2007 and again in 2013, polarization in the Turkish parliament increased significantly on a variety of dimensions between the MPs of the two major parties. In fact, Turkish parliamentarians were the most polarized of those seven countries on a number of vital dimensions. [15]

Conclusions

Alongside the profound and protracted economic impact of the global financial crisis , we have witnessed significant political developments in a number of Western democracies in the last decade or so. How much of a threat these developments pose to democratic regimes as we know them is a question that is still passionately debated by analysts. Suffice it to note, there is much concern about the rising popularity of both left- and right-wing “extremes” in almost every major European country. And in some of these countries, these groups, once regarded as marginal and insignificant, have already managed to become coalition partners. With these facts in mind, this chapter referred to the increasing and accelerating political polarization in a number of countries and assumed that extreme polarization is detrimental to democracies .

In the case of Turkey , all research shows that polarization has attained dangerous levels. This is true with respect to all three dimensions of polarization : affect, value and policy. In fact, both elite and mass data lead us to the conclusion that Turkey ’s level of polarization is one of the highest among both consolidated and new democracies . At the same time, all international ratings point to a decrease in the quality of democracy in Turkey in recent years. Did the former cause the latter? We do not have a satisfactory answer to that question but the correlation is difficult to ignore.

Notes

1. 1.
Ross Perot was a billionaire who ran as an independent in the 1992 presidential elections and succeeded in winning 19% of popular vote.

2. 2.
Foa and Mounk (2017) base their analysis partially on findings of the World Values Surveys, a data source which we also utilize in this chapter.

3. 3.
Hugh Pope, project director for the Turkish Office of the International Crisis Group.

4. 4.
Freedom House uses a scheme where higher scores indicate a decrease in rights and liberties.

5. 5.
The title of the short article by Nicholas Danforth, senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Project, was “Turkish democracy might be dead—and things could soon get a lot worse.” The concluding sentence of the article reads: “The worst-case scenario is that Erdogan will push the country to the point where even he is no longer capable of maintaining stability” (Danforth 2017).

6. 6.
Although there are recent surveys some of which we refer to later in the text, the WVS /EVS is the only data set with a consistent methodology that allows decades of meaningful comparisons.

7. 7.
AKP was not in existence in 1990, and Social Democrat Populist Party was CHP’s substitute.

8. 8.
The additive scale is the sum of 5 items from WVS/EVS. They are (i) employers should/should not give priority to men over women; (ii) best way to be independent for a women is employment; (iii) child suffers if mother works; (iv) being a housewife is as satisfying as work; and (v) unmarried women should have children if they so desire. All items were coded so that greater scores indicate greater gender equality, and the score was scaled to 100 for ease of interpretation.

9. 9.
For the exact wording of survey questions, readers are referred to www.worldvalues.org.

10. 10.
We believe absolute differences are more meaningful than relative differences. Suppose in a given country, 2% of party A and 3% of party B supporters agree with a certain statement. Although that would translate into a difference of 50% between the two parties, clearly, in substantive terms this is hardly as meaningful as the difference between, say, 40 and 50% or a difference of only 25%.

11. 11.
If we consider the four variables measured as 10-point scales, once again the USA, Poland and Turkey (this time joined by South Africa) emerge as countries with the greatest divergence between the two parties.

12. 12.
It is reported that the fieldwork for the face-to-face survey was conducted in the week of 3 December 2015 and the sample size (number of completed interviews) was 1024 (Hurriyet, February 1, 2016).

13. 13.
The initial findings of this survey supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey were reported in the daily HaberTurk, December 22, 2017.

14. 14.
Translated from Turkish by the author.

15. 15.
For a detailed analysis of polarization among parliamentarians of seven countries between 2007 and 2013, see Esmer (2015).

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© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_6

6. Political Radicalism: Responding to the Legitimacy Gap in South Africa

Nicola de Jager1   and Cindy Steenekamp^1

(1)

Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Nicola de Jager

Email: ndejager@sun.ac.za

Radicalism is not a new dynamic for South Africa . The 1940s held the potential for political and social reform in South Africa with the promise of a more inclusive approach towards the black majority in the country. But rather than going this route, the 1948 elections ushered in a nationalist racial oligarchy. The nationalist forces capitalized on the painful memories of the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) to draw popular support, especially among the radicalized youth (Grundlingh 2002). Their victory brought to power the National Party (NP), which instituted the policy of apartheid , thus halting the reforming momentum in the country for nearly fifty years.

Contemporary South Africa arguably stands at a similar crossroads, although this time the political context—a democratic regime and an open society—is different. The current rise in radicalism, as evidenced in the self-styled “radical” and “militant” Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), [1] a radicalized, nationalistic youth and a growing willingness to consider non-democratic forms of government , could potentially see South Africa ’s reversion from a democratic regime back into an authoritarian one. But an alternative to radicalism has also been evidenced in South Africa ’s history. During the 1990s—a period of transition and negotiations culminating in the first democratic elections in 1994 and the promulgation of the 1996 Constitution —a more moderate dynamic came to the fore carrying South Africa over the democratic threshold. While the first two phases (one radical and the other moderate) in South Africa ’s history provide context and precedent, focus will be given to the contemporary period towards understanding the recent rise in radical politics. Using longitudinal data from the World Values Survey (WVS), we show that support for democratic rule has declined, while support for non-democratic rule has increased in South Africa between 1995 and 2013. We argue that this radicalism—a willingness to consider regimes beyond democracy—is a response to a legitimacy gap —an increasing dissatisfaction with the incumbent government’s performance .

Quality of Governance, Legitimacy Gaps and Radical Responses

Legitimacy is defined by Lipset (1981: 4) as “the capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for the society.” A democratic government , unlike an authoritarian regime , needs the support of its citizens to maintain its legitimacy, while legitimacy itself is heavily influenced by the performance of the current government . Huntington (1991: 48) recognized that the “legitimacy of most regimes declines over time, as choices are made, promises are unrealised and frustrations develop.” But the consequences of this decline in legitimacy are different for established democracies as opposed to newer democracies . Studies show that in many established democracies , citizens are increasingly dissatisfied with the way in which their political system functions and with the performance of various state institutions (Dalton 1996, 1999; Klingemann 1999). However, this dissatisfaction does not necessarily translate into the delegitimation of democracy as it only relates to the way in which the system is performing, not the desirability of a democratic regime (Klingemann 1999: 33). In newer democracies , such as South Africa , where democratic norms and values have yet to become fully entrenched, it is more likely that a decline in perceived performance of the incumbent government will erode support for democracy as a regime type over time.

In addition to legitimacy, for democratic stability and endurance, political culture theory stresses the importance of “moderation and tolerance ” versus the “dangers of political extremism and unfettered populism ” (Diamond 1993: 10). Scholarship on democratic consolidation , similarly, underscores the necessity of the “development of a pattern, and ultimately a culture , of moderation , cooperation, bargaining , and accommodation among political elites ” (Diamond 1993: 10). Political theorists have argued for specific elements of a political culture to come to the fore in order to manage a core dilemma of democracy: balancing conflict and consensus. These elements include moderation , which recognizes and accommodates differing political beliefs ; pragmatism, instead of a rigid ideological approach to politics; a certain level of institutional and social trust; willingness to compromise; and a basic level of civility in the political discourse, which implies a respect for other views (Diamond 1993: 10).

While literature acknowledges democratic political culture as one of the key conditions for democratic consolidation , it is precisely in these newer democracies where a higher proportion of the public expresses radical views (Jou 2016). A common divide in transitional countries is the “democratic-authoritarian cleavage”—supporters of the new regime versus the sceptics (Moreno quoted in Jou 2016: 593). According to Dalton (2006: 20), “polarization along the left/right dimension is substantially greater in the less affluent and less democratic societies than in advanced industrial democracies .” Radicals are understood as those who identify with ideologies of the extreme left or right, and who are thus willing to consider other types of regimes besides democracy; they adhere to their beliefs in an uncompromising manner, as opposed to the moderates whose views are more flexible; and they are not averse to subverting the rule of law to achieve their goals (Greenberg and Jonas 2003: 380–381; Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán 2013: 127). Literature shows that those on the radical right and left share similarities: political engagement that goes beyond the bounds of democratic participation, including the use of violence; resentment towards mainstream politicians and policies; and a tendency towards authoritarian measures (Jou 2016: 597).

This polarization is evident in new democracies and has consequences for consolidation prospects, where a democratic form of government is not necessarily considered the “only game in town.” According to Jou (2016: 593), in cases where other regime types are considered to be viable alternatives, the legitimacy of the democratic regime may be brought into question. These radical ideological positions pose salient challenges for an emerging democratic regime as they often signify anti-system postures. Extreme political polarization in Southern and Western European countries during the inter-war period played a key role in the collapse of democratic regimes and their replacement with dictatorships (Jou 2016: 594). In their empirical study of democratic breakdown and survival in Latin America , Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán (2013) found that democratic survival was dependent on strong support for democracy and avoidance of radical policy positions. On the other hand, they found these democracies were vulnerable to breakdown if political actors were indifferent to the intrinsic value of a liberal democracy and if they pursued radical policy preferences. Thus, the prevalence of radicals and the popularity of their policies constitute a threat to democratic survival .

What fuels these radical tendencies? Jou (2016: 601–603), in his empirical study of radical views in new democracies , found that quality of governance—low corruption, an impartial judiciary and effective administration—together with electoral rules not based on plurality had the greatest influence on assuaging extreme views. In terms of quality of governance, his research found that the more governments were seen to be honest, law-abiding and effective, the less the citizenry were inclined towards radicalism. Thus, an antagonistic anti-system opinion could best be ameliorated through improving quality of governance by state authorities who are trusted as impartial guarantors and enforcers of democratic rules. And so, we come back to the question of legitimacy. Quality of governance engenders legitimacy as it instils a sense that the current political institutions are the most effective and appropriate ones for the interests of the society. Without quality of governance, legitimacy declines and new democracies become vulnerable to radical responses.

In this chapter, we trace two historical periods in South Africa : the first representing a triumph of radicalism—the 1940s leading up to the 1948 elections and the electoral victory of the NP , and the second period, representing moderates coming to the fore—the 1990s leading up to the democratic 1994 elections and the electoral victory of the African National Congress (ANC). With this historical context in mind, we turn to contemporary South Africa and trace the rise of radicalism. Using survey data from the WVS , we investigate whether radicalism is a response to a legitimacy gap which has been created by poor quality of governance. The salience of understanding this legitimacy gap and the growth of extreme responses lies in the long-term stability and persistence of South Africa ’s democratic regime .

1940S–1990S: Triumph of the Exclusivist Nationalists

Long years afterwards the effect of this election will be felt here in South Africa .

—General Jan Smuts 1948 (quoted in Heard 1974: 34)

Ironically, the 1948 election held the potential for political and social reform and the liberalising of a system historically characterized by segregation. Instead, South Africa embarked on a radical and racist trajectory. To the surprise of many, the NP with its slogan of “Apartheid ” won the 1948 elections . The outcome of the constituency-based electoral system and a constitutional provision that provided greater representation in rural areas resulted in the NP winning the elections against the incumbent United Party (UP), by 79 to 71 seats, even though the UP won in terms of absolute votes (UP: 625,328 and NP: 462,491) (Heard 1974). The outcome of the 1948 election would forever alter the course of history in South Africa .

At the time, there were strong indications that the UP was moving towards a more reformist and inclusive approach, especially with regard to the black majority. This was reflected in their Fagan Report and their candidate, J. H. Hofmeyer, to replace Jan Smuts as leader of the party. The Fagan Report was the outcome of the work of a commission set up by the UP in 1946 to investigate the issue of black African migration into urban areas during World War II. The Fagan Commission (1948) rejected the concept of separate development and found that the flow of Africans into urban areas was irreversible and, significantly, that it should be facilitated to ensure the much needed influx of labour into the cities. Jan Smuts, the then Prime Minister, was soon to retire and had recently appointed Hofmeyer as Deputy Prime Minister and thus his successor. Hofmeyer was considered to have “liberal tendencies” (Heard 1974: 33). The NP, under D. F. Malan, used both of the above indications of reform to stir up and appeal to fears among the whites, claiming that the UP would “bring about the destruction of ‘White Civilization’ in South Africa ” (Heard 1974: 34).

The socio-economic context also provided fertile ground for stoking resentment, which could be channelled into a radical, nationalistic fervour. During the South African War (1899–1902), nearly 30,000 Boer people, [2] predominantly women and children, died in the poorly administered British concentration camps (Grundlingh 2002: 23). In addition, the War led to a process of rural dislocation and the migration of many impoverished Afrikaners into the urban areas (Welsh 1969: 265). The bitter memories of the War and the hardships of the dislocations were, understandably, projected onto the English and would impart “a rich potential for possible future use along nationalistic lines” (Grundlingh 2002: 24).

Besides stoking up racial prejudices, white fears and resentment, another powerful factor which explains the rise of the NP to power was its appeal to nationalism . The party’s nationalist mobilization was particularly successful among the large numbers of younger, more radical Afrikaners as it capitalized on an inherent increase in nationalist sentiment among them. According to Welsh (2015: 31), the NP and its close allies, the Dutch Reformed Church and the Afrikaner Broederbond [3] , constituted a “nationalist movement, comparable to other anti-colonial nationalist movements.” The stirred-up nationalist fervour was succinctly captured by D. F. Malan in 1941 when he wrote:

We are no political organization in the ordinary sense of the word. We are much more than that. [We] embody two basic principles without which no Afrikaner volk [community] would ever have been possible. The one is the National idea and the other is the idea of our restored Afrikaner volk unity. (translation quoted in Welsh 2015: 31)

The apartheid state would essentially become a “partisan ethnic state” (Gagiano and du Toit 1996: 57). It was partisan in that it had failed to deliver public goods to all citizens impartially, irrespective of race, communal affiliation or political loyalty. It was ethnic in having become the “instrument of one community, and deliver[ing] public goods to that community at the expense of others” (Gagiano and du Toit 1996: 57). It was characterized by an exclusive nationalism and an Afrikaner nationalism , which served to promote the interests of white South Africans, and Afrikaans speakers in particular, providing preferential treatment for them in both the public and private sectors to the exclusion of black South Africans.

The state legalized its chosen ideology in a variety of ways. The Minister of Labour, for example, was empowered to declare that certain categories of jobs were reserved for whites only. And in 1953 the Bantu Education Act meant that African education was taken out of the hands of missionaries and into the hands of the apartheid government . Prior to 1953, mission schools had trained approximately 95% of all school-going Africans (Welsh 2015: 41). The deliberate aim of the Act was to provide an inferior education, which would keep blacks at a substandard level and become a source of cheap, low-skilled labour. Pass laws, which aimed to restrict access to urban areas, were consolidated by legislation in 1952. They obliged black males and later females, to carry passes making it difficult for Africans to remain in urban areas. The NP also created a new “moral” climate through the systematic racism of the 1950s legislation categorizing the people of South Africa into distinct racial and ethnic groups. Using racial classification, the party prohibited black South Africans from participating in the electoral system. In addition, the NP sidelined voices of opposition by giving undue advantage to Afrikaners , squeezing out UP sympathizers and sidelining English-speaking bureaucrats. The ruling party also ensured continued support for itself through deploying members of the Broederbond into key positions in the government .

As Butler (2009: 16) noted, 1948 represented a triumph for “a new and non-conciliatory generation of Afrikaner politicians .” Instead of reform, South Africa embarked on a radical, nationalistic and racist trajectory, the scars of which are still evident in contemporary South Africa . The NP held power for more than forty years. Its oligarchic rule, based on an exclusionary white nationalism , manifested in a system of marginalization of the majority of the population and privileging their own ethnic and cultural group.

The 1990S: The Rise of the Moderates and the Negotiated Transition

The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.

—President Nelson Mandela (1994)

Negotiations were by no means the inevitable solution to the political conflict in South Africa (de Jager 2015: 77). By 1988, the situation in the country was considered to be dire, with an international discussion group concluding: “the auguries for a ‘negotiated settlement’ … are poor” (Johnson 1989: 375). The decision to turn to negotiations and the collective drafting of an interim constitution (which would form the framework for the final 1996 Constitution ) was a promising outcome for the country, leading to the negotiated settlement that many have referred to as miraculous. The negotiations route required both sides to moderate their standpoints, compromise on their goals and become less parochial.

During the period of transition (the late 1980s and early 1990s) from apartheid to democracy, the ANC emerged as the main protagonist from within the broader-based liberation movement . The negotiations were thus dominated by two role-players: the ANC and the NP , of which neither could by any stretch of the imagination be described as liberal democrats or moderate. The ANC was, in fact, not dissimilar to other African liberation movements, which tended to produce one-party systems, not democracies , and have been prone to identify the movement, its ideology, and its leader with “the corporate will of the entire nation…seen as an undifferentiated community” (Giliomee 1995: 93). When such movements become governments, they argue for exclusive nationalism in which their struggle credentials produce the claim of a right to rule, forever (Southall 2013: 5). This narrative tends to expunge political rivals and their contribution from history. In the negotiations , the challenge for the ANC was therefore to moderate its stance so as to allow for political pluralism and an institutionalized system of checks and balances (de Jager 2015: 91). Similarly, the challenge for the NP and its members was to recognize the value and voice of individuals, regardless of their race or ethnicity, and to accept the choice of the majority, which would inevitably mean its electoral loss at the polls.

Negotiations and bargaining are key elements in any transition process towards creating a new democracy. In order to attain a nonzero sum solution where the agreement is mutually acceptable to all parties involved, negotiations must be characterized by cooperation and compromise. Indeed, Huntington (1991: 165) regards compromise and negotiations among the elites as “the heart of the democratisation process” . Central to Huntington’s analysis is the participation/ moderation trade-off. Huntington argues that in order to participate in the birth of a new democracy the moderate political forces need to get into a position of strength to shape a new democratic order. The success of South Africa ’s transition reflected the broadly moderate political behaviour of the representatives that came to the fore within the ANC and the NP . Had the negotiation been driven by radicals within the ANC and/ or the NP, or by even more radical organizations outside these parties, a peaceful transition would have been unlikely. South Africa ’s negotiated transition serves to highlight the salience of moderate leadership in a conflict situation. Credit is, to a great extent, due to the astute and decisive leadership of Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk. Both were committed to the negotiation process, guided their respective constituencies towards the negotiations route and succeeded in establishing a relationship of mutual trust as a foundation for the process.

Once the talks had begun, they proved a quintessential part of the democratization process as both sides moved towards the recognition of the importance of the rule of law, an inclusive and competitive electoral system, the role of civil society and accountability for democratic governance. Both sides gradually shifted their positions towards the middle-ground, as they compromised on their original demands. The NP let go of its insistence that there be a minority veto by the whites and a system based on group representation , accepting instead a system based on the voice of individuals. The ANC , for its part, consented to constitutional supremacy, proportional representation and devolution of power to the provinces, and accepted the idea that a future legislative body would not have absolute freedom to write a constitution as it saw fit, but would adhere to a broad set of principles that had been previously negotiated (Giliomee 1995: 96).

The success of the negotiations and the later constitutional drafting process depended on whether all contending parties approached them in a spirit of “good faith” (de Jager 2015: 91). On this basis, an expectation was placed on all parties to the talks to show a commitment to peace, to be open to compromise in the common interest, and then to regard all agreements reached, in particular the interim and final constitutions, as binding and irrevocable (du Toit 2001: 101–102; 109). It would thus become important in the future, especially for the principle of constitutionalism, that the negotiations process and its outcome, the Constitution , be regarded as a social contract and not merely as a transfer of power mechanism.

The 1996 Constitution and Beyond: A Period of Ambivalence

Never again will the courts rubber stamp or stand helplessly by while unjust laws are made to take away people’s rights…Now judges are the champions of the people, testing the actions of the legislatures and the executive against the fine standard we have set out ourselves in this Constitution .

—Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa (2011)

The negotiations culminated in South Africa ’s first non-racial, democratic elections held on the 27 April 1994 and in the later promulgation of the 1996 Constitution . A key outcome was the agreement that South Africa would adhere to the principle of constitutionalism; that is, it would respect the “supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law” as endorsed in the Constitution ’s founding provisions (Republic of South Africa 1996). Thus, no individual, institution or political party was to be above the law and the law was to be neutrally applied. The principle of impartially, and by implication the principle of quality of governance, has been specifically stipulated a number of times throughout the Constitution . For example, in Chapter 8, which covers the Courts and Administration of Justice, section 165 (2) reads “the courts are independent and subject only to the Constitution and the law, which they must apply impartiality and without fear, favour or prejudice” (Republic of South Africa 1996). It is evident that the drafters of the Constitution understood the importance of the principle of non-partisanship towards ensuring quality of governance and wanted it entrenched in the highest law of the land. Cyril Ramaphosa (2011: 9), who played a crucial role during the negotiations and the drafting of the Constitution , called the Constitution a “shield.”

Although the Constitution makes provision for quality of governance, the ANC ’s exercise of power has strong elements of partisanship, especially under the incumbent President, Jacob Zuma. To date, President Zuma has survived four votes of no-confidence and a number of motions of no-confidence , but his position is protected because of the dominant party system with the ANC holding 249 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly . The problem of partisanship is clearly illustrated in the expansion of the cabinet to 35 ministries, from the 28 during the administration of the predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. It is highly likely the expansion was meant to disburse a debt of gratitude by Jacob Zuma to those who had ensured his ascendency to the presidency. In such a patronage network (which extends beyond the government and into the state), facilitated by cadre deployment, [4] justified by a belief in controlling all centres of power [5] and evidenced in state capture, [6] access to the state and its resources comes down to partisan interests as opposed to representation of and delivery to the broader public. These dynamics have contributed to a chequered record of governance.

Since 1994, the ANC has been elected to govern in five consecutive national elections . Nevertheless, the longevity of the ANC’s reign appears tenuous, as evidenced by factions breaking away from the party, declining voter support and an upsurge in public protests.

The ruling party has experienced two breakaways in its post-apartheid history, namely the formation of the Congress of the People (COPE) in 2008, primarily in reaction to the recalling of Thabo Mbeki as president, and the formation of the EFF in 2013, led by the former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema. The EFF is a self-proclaimed leftist, radical party, targeting the workers, youth and the disenfranchised for their support, while prompting a combative and hostile form of opposition politics. Its modus operandus is one of the provocation and protest politics, mobilizing people at a grassroots level. Participating in its first national elections in 2014—a few months after it was established—the EFF gained 6.35% of the vote and 25 seats in the National Assembly . Nevertheless, in the 2016 local elections , the EFF attained slightly over 8% of the overall vote—a much smaller increase in support than expected from the national elections (IEC 2016). Its support base thus remains fairly small, but its radical politics still continue to appeal. Julius Malema’s statements to the news station Al Jazeera prior to the 2016 elections are illustrative of an uncompromising and undemocratic rhetoric. Malema (2016) stated that the opposition “will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun.” He went on to say: “Part of the revolutionary duty is to fight and we are not ashamed if the need arises for us to take up arms and fight. We will fight.” This type of inflammatory rhetoric and willingness to go beyond the democratic rules of the game encapsulates many potential dangers to the democratic system.

The ANC ’s voter support has also declined. Its proportion of the voting-age population (VAP) [7] has steadily waned over the years, from 53.8% in 1994 to 38.8% in 2009 to 36.4% in 2014 (South African Institute for Race Relations 2014); 2014 was a particularly important election in the respect that it was the first time the “born-frees ” (those born since 1994) were eligible to vote. However, the highest percentage of those who did not vote was within the 18–19-year-old cohort, with only a third (32%) of this group registering to vote. Using survey data from Afrobarometer, Mattes and Richmond (2015: 13) found that young South African voting-age citizens were less likely to engage in conventional political participation, but more likely to participate in unconventional participation, including protests. This was particularly evident in the nation-wide student protests in 2015. Unfortunately, as opposed to civility, a requirement for a political culture conducive to democracy, many of South Africa ’s university campuses were characterized by violence and the destruction of property, becoming what the then rector of University of the Free State Jonathan Jansen (2015) referred to as “places that mimic rather than challenge the broader public culture of incivility and disdain.” In 2014, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) released set of possible future scenarios for South Africa in a book titled A Time Travellers Guide to Our Next 10 Years. The nature of the above-mentioned social movements is uncanny fulfilments of the IRR’s Rocky Road Scenario: “as unemployment and inequality increased so did the impatience of South Africa ’s young people which spurred a new brand of political and economic radicalism … accompanied by a virulent racial nationalism ” (Cronje 2015).

Similar to the national elections , though certainly more dramatic, in the 2016 local elections , the ANC ’s overall support declined to slightly over 55%, from approximately 65% in 2006. For the first time, the ANC’s support shrunk to under 60% of the vote, making these watershed elections for South African politics. There are a number of reasons for the declining voter support and the accompanying decline in voter turnout: disillusionment with politics and government , overpromising coupled with unfulfilled expectations, dissatisfaction with services and a lack of voter interest (which is common to most democracies ). The concern is that those who become disillusioned with the government do not “punish” it at the next elections , but rather opt out of the democratic system, or use extra-democratic measures to voice their discontent. While the right to peacefully assemble and demonstrate is endorsed in section 17 of the Bill of Rights, the number of so-called service delivery protests has significantly increased, especially between the period 2009 and 2014. More alarming, Municipal IQ’s Municipal Hotspots Monitor (2014) shows that up to 70% of these protests since 2014 have been violent and destructive in nature.

The other concern is the response of the incumbent government to its decline in social support. After the local election results were released, ANC Secretary-General, Gwede Mantashe acknowledged that: “The ANC views this outcome as a clarion call of the people to the liberation movement to urgently take steps to speed up the programmes of change and rectify many matters affecting its capacity to play a historic role. This has to start with a serious objective and robust introspection within the movement itself, starting with the leadership at all levels.” Mantashe described the ANC’s poor electoral performance as a “setback in the agenda for transformation” (Ngubeni and Bendile 2016). Unfortunately, the response appears to reveal an inability to see the electorate’s decision to punish the ANC at the polls for its poor governance, and in particular for the rampant corruption within its ranks, with President Zuma and his relationship with the Gupta family at the pinnacle of state capture. Mantashe’s remarks deflect responsibility by shifting the focus to the issue of racial transformation away from the real issue, which is poor quality of governance. It is a case of an unwillingness to accept responsibility for governance shortcomings, at a price of sacrificing the future stability and prosperity of South Africa at the altar of polarization .

The Contemporary Legitimacy Gap?

The increase in protest behaviour, and particularly violent protest behaviour, in South Africa over the last decade is symptomatic of a decline in popular support for the incumbent government . We utilize data from the last four waves of the WVS [8] in order to investigate the relationship between quality of governance, legitimacy and support for democratic regimes . We argue that a decline in quality of government and legitimacy has the potential to create a legitimacy gap , which can impact citizens’ support for a democratic regime type. More specifically, we want to determine whether declining popular perceptions of government (government performance) will lead to low(er) levels of confidence or trustworthiness that citizens have in state institutions, which, in turn, creates an environment conducive for radicalism to flourish (Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1  Relationship between quality of governance, legitimacy and support for democratic regimes

In order to gauge perceptions of government performance (quality of governance), respondents in the 2006 and 2013 waves of the WVS in South Africa were asked to indicate the extent to which they believe the current government is handling various matters very well, fairly well, fairly badly or very badly. Table 6.1 indicates how well (very well and fairly well) respondents believe government is performing along 19 performance indicators.

Table 6.1  Assessment of government performance, 2006 and 2013

Performance indicators

2006

2013

Diff.

Managing the economy

73.0

38.3

−34.7

Addressing educational needs

72.2

44.3

−27.9

Controlling inflation

58.1

32.4

−25.7

Improving basic health services

67.9

44.0

−23.9

Promoting access to land

61.5

39.3

−22.2

Resolving conflicts between communities

58.3

38.4

−19.9

Delivering household water

61.3

43.1

−18.2

Fighting corruption in government

46.8

30.8

−16.0

Keeping skilled people in the country (stopping the brain drain)

46.0

32.4

−13.6

Keeping prices stable

39.2

27.0

−12.2

Combating HIV/AIDS

62.9

51.9

−11.0

Creating jobs/reducing unemployment

37.5

27.9

−9.6

Narrowing the gap between rich and poor

39.2

30.5

−8.7

Ensuring everyone has enough to eat

42.5

33.8

−8.7

Reducing crime

32.4

31.1

−1.3

Providing a reliable supply of electricity

42.0

Empowering women

46.5

Uniting all South African into one nation

40.9

Managing immigration

27.8

Percentages include those who indicated “very well” and “fairly well”

From the data in Table 6.1, it is evident that perceptions of government ’s ability to handle key performance areas have declined markedly between 2006 and 2013. In 2006, the then government received positive (more than 50%) reviews on the majority of indicators; these included (in order of rating): managing the economy, addressing education needs, improving basic health services, combating HIV /AIDS , promoting access to land, delivering household water, resolving conflicts between communities and controlling inflation. By 2013, the government received a positive review on only one (of 19) performance indicators: combating HIV /AIDS . South Africans rated government performance lowest with regard to reducing crime (32.4%), creating jobs/reducing unemployment (37.5%), keeping prices stable and narrowing the gap between rich and poor (39.2%) in 2006. In 2013, keeping prices stable (27.0%), managing immigration (27.8%) and creating jobs/reducing unemployment (27.9%) were the worst performers identified by respondents.

Of equal significance is the extent of the decline on each performance indicator. Of the 15 indicators for which there are data in 2006 and 2013, the performance of 11 indicators declined by more than 10%. The most notable decline was the managing the economy indicator (−34.7%), followed by addressing educational needs (−27.9%), controlling inflation (−25.7%), improving basic health services (−23.9%) and promoting access to land (−22.2%).

Overall, popular support for the incumbent government , as measured through their perceived performance of the delivering of predominantly economic goods (economic assets, jobs and basic social services), is low and declining in South Africa . This is hardly surprising given that the developmental needs of society since democratic transition have yet to be met. Unlike many industrialized countries, the value orientations and priorities of South Africans remain, for the most part, pre-materialist and materialist in nature, while the importance of post-materialist values is marginal (Kotze and Lombard 2002). Thus, South Africans place higher value on basic (pre-materialist) needs being met; these include the provision of land, shelter, food, clothing and water as well as access to education. According to Inglehart (1985: 103), only once these needs are met will the next hierarchical category (materialist values ) take precedence. Examples of these materialist values , as measured in the WVS , include maintaining law and order, high rate of economic growth and a strong defence force, fighting crime and rising prices, and employment. We hypothesize that low levels of government performance (quality of governance) will have a direct impact on citizens’ levels of confidence or trust (legitimacy) in the state institutions responsible for the delivery of basic services and political and economic goods.

Democratic consolidation to a large extent involves the institutionalization or legitimization of the institutions at the state’s disposal. Citizens must have confidence in the way institutions operate. Declining or low levels of confidence serve as indicators of potential legitimacy problems. As a result of the ANC ’s overwhelming majority in parliament to date, the governing party has been able to transform state institutions at a rapid pace. In line with its ideology, state institutions have become more representative of the, mainly black, citizenry and the transformation of the private sector has been enforced through legislation. However, institutions cannot be redesigned and changed at will to suit the government ’s design. Institutions such as the legal system, police and civil service are not insulated from political and social life, and confidence in these institutions depends heavily upon the ability of these institutions to solve the problems they are designed to address.

Confidence in state institutions therefore depends on their performance and effectiveness, not necessarily their “transformation.” These elements are intimately linked with the public’s perceptions of these institutions. Respondents in the last four waves of the WVS were provided with a list of various state institutions and asked to indicate the extent to which they had a great deal of confidence , quite a lot of confidence , not very much confidence or no confidence at all in each. Table 6.2 illustrates the levels of institutional trust in South Africa from 1995 to 2013.

Table 6.2  Levels of institutional trust, 1995–2013

State institutions

1995

2001

2006

2013

Diff.

Parliament

68.8

61.3

65.6

45.0

−23.8

The courts

74.8

61.6

66.4

51.8

−23.0

The Constitutional Court

70.3

47.3

−23.0

The South African government

68.7

58.5

70.3

47.9

−20.8

The President

60.4

74.8

43.6

−16.8

The civil service

58.7

59.5

55.9

44.8

−13.9

Political parties

46.9

42.4

43.8

38.1

−8.8

Armed forces

56.7

56.7

63.8

50.1

−6.6

The police

43.6

54.3

61.9

47.0

3.4

Percentages include those who indicated a “great deal” and “quite a lot” of confidence

There are a number of significant findings from the data presented in Table 6.2. First, the levels of confidence in state institutions have declined across all institutions, with the exception of the police. Second, the sharpest decline in confidence took place between the 2006 and 2013 waves. Third, only two institutions (political parties and the police) fell below 50% confidence level in 2006; conversely, only two institutions (the courts and the armed forces) have more than 50% confidence in 2013. Lastly, the most significant declines were experienced by parliament (−23.8%), the courts (−23.0%), the Constitutional Court (−23.0%) and the South African government (20.8%).

These results support our hypothesis that the low and declining levels of government performance and effectiveness negatively impact levels of confidence in state institutions (Fig. 6.1), which creates a legitimacy gap . Although we do not have performance data dating back to 1995, Table 6.1 illustrates a marked decline in perceptions of government performance between 2006 and 2013, which corresponds with the levels of decline in institutional confidence during the same period (Table 6.2). Given these findings, and in line with Jou’s (2016) research of new democracies , we expect that support for democracy as a regime type will also decline.

In order to measure changes in regime support, respondents in all four waves were asked to indicate whether the following regime types are very good, good, bad or very bad ways of governing South Africa :

1. 1.
Having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections .

2. 2.
Having experts, not government , make decisions according to what they think is best for the country.

3. 3.
Having the army rule.

4. 4.
Having a democratic political system .

From these political systems, we are able to gauge popular support for democracy as well as non-democratic sentiments (support for a dictatorship, technocracy and military rule) and the extent to which this support has increased or decreased over time. We understand regime support to encompass both support for a democratic political system (variable 4) and a rejection of non-democratic alternatives (composite variable created from variables 1 to 3 above). Our hypothesis is that levels of support for a democratic regime will decline, as a result of the perceptions of poor government performance and subsequent loss of confidence in state institutions. Figure 6.2 illustrates the levels of support for democratic and non-democratic rule between 1995 and 2013.

Fig. 6.2  Levels of support for regime type

Similar to perceptions of government performance and levels of institutional trust, support for a democratic regime type has declined quite dramatically in South Africa since 1995, albeit from a very high level. In fact, support for democracy remained high and stable between 1995 (90.9%) and 2006 (90.2%), but experienced a decline of 18.2% between 2006 and 2013. The result is that support for democracy is at its lowest level (72.0%) since the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule in 1994. More alarming, however, is the increase in support for non-democratic rule during the same period. Less than a third of South Africans supported non-democratic rule in 1995 and 2001; this was followed by an increase of 12.7% in 2006 and an 18.6% increase between 2006 and 2013. For the first time since the transition , the majority of South Africans (61.0%) indicated that they support various forms of non-democratic rule. The gap between support for democratic rule and non-democratic rule has closed from 61.2% in 1995 to only 11.0% in 2013.

From the data presented in this chapter, it is clear that perceptions of quality of governance and trust in political institutions (in other words legitimacy) have significant consequences for the prospects of democratic consolidation in South Africa . The data highlight the decline over time in government performance , levels of institutional trust and support for a democratic regime —a clear indication of increasing radicalism as a response to a legitimacy crisis . Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán’s findings in Latin America —that democratic survival was dependent on strong support for democracy and avoiding radicalism—provide a clarion call to the ruling party to urgently address governance issues.

Conclusion

In the late 1940s, there were indications that South Africa was on the threshold of reform, moving towards a more racially inclusive state and pragmatic policies. The rise of Afrikaner nationalism and the political entrepreneurship of the NP to channel those sentiments for its own political purposes put an end to such expectations. Instead, 1948 ushered in radicalism and an exclusive form of nationalism , which alienated and suppressed the black majority. The NP and its policies left a morally and economically bereft state.

In the 1990s, South Africa would come to enjoy the fruits of the decisions and actions of moderation . Moderate elites came to the fore from within both the ANC and the NP to lead the country through its heady transition and into the euphoria of Nelson Mandela’s pursuit of moderation and racial reconciliation. The starting block for a new dispensation had been laid with the potential for a democratic political culture characterized by accommodation, moderation , compromise and civility to develop.

Twenty years later, South Africa ’s democratic dispensation and the provisions of the 1996 Constitution for impartiality, along with its endowment of a South Africa “for all who live in it, united in our diversity” are being threatened. Perceptions of declining government performance and a decay in trust of government institutions have created a legitimacy gap in South Africa . This legitimacy gap has made the country vulnerable to the rise of radicalism. Our analysis of data from the WVS between 1995 and 2013 confirmed our hypothesis that levels of support for a democratic regime will decline, as a result of the perceptions of poor government performance and subsequent loss of confidence in state institutions. The findings highlight the urgent need to address the legitimacy gap in South Africa through improving the quality of governance so as to quell the rise in radicalism.

Notes

1. 1.
See the EFF website, where they refer to themselves, “radical” and “militant,” http://effighters.org.za/about-us/.

2. 2.
Today known as the Afrikaners.

3. 3.
The Afrikaner Broederbond was a secret society, founded in 1918, with the aim of promoting the cultural interests of Afrikaners. It sought to encourage Afrikaner unity and the promotion of Afrikaners into key positions.

4. 4.
Even though the ANC persists with its policy of cadre deployment, it has also begun to acknowledge its detrimental effects as is evidenced in the Municipal Systems Amendment Act No. 7 of 2011, which calls for “competency criteria” to be utilized for appointments of municipal managers and managers at the local government . It also prohibits such persons from simultaneously holding political office in political parties. See, http://us-cdn.creamermedia.co.za/assets/articles/attachments/34405_a7_2011.pdf.

5. 5.
As part of the ANC’s national project, the National Democratic Revolution (NDR)—a leftover from Soviet theory, the ANC commits to controlling all centres of power, see point 140 in its Strategy & Tactics document, http://www.anc.org.za/sites/default/files/National%20Policy%20Conference%202017%20Stratey%20and%20Tactics.pdf.

6. 6.
State capture occurs when formal procedures (such as laws and social norms) and the government bureaucracy are manipulated by private individuals and firms so as to influence these policies and laws to their own advantage. In the case of South Africa , the Gupta family’s ties with President Jacob Zuma have led to Gupta’s private interests trumping that of the public interest. They have captured the South African state (ignoring, changing or transgressing formal procedures), using it for their personal, financial gain. See the Public Affairs Research Report (PARI) on state capture, http://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Betrayal-of-the-Promise-25052017.pdf.

7. 7.
In South Africa , the VAP refers to citizens over the age of 18 years who are eligible to vote. To participate in South Africa ’s elections , members of the VAP are required to register before the elections .

8. 8.
The WVS is conducted by means of face-to-face interviews in the language of preference of respondents. Probability samples are drawn, with all adult citizens having an equal chance of being selected. The samples are also stratified into homogenous subgroups defined by various demographic attributes. Since the samples are weighted to the full population and within a statistical margin of error of less than two per cent at the 95% confidence level, they are representative of the adult population of South Africa . Data from the last four waves—1995, 2001, 2006 and 2013—were available and applicable to this chapter.

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Part III

Regional Aspects

© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_7

7. Democratization in Chile: A Long-Run and Comparative Perspective

Laurence Whitehead1

(1)

Nuffield College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

Laurence Whitehead

Email: Laurence.whitehead@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

This chapter reviews the re-democratization of Chile since the end of the Cold War from the perspective of the four temporal models presented in the theoretical part of this book. Since the models are general and the Chilean case is highly country-specific, the discussion also aims to situate Chile both comparatively in relation to the other countries of main interest to this volume (Fig. 7.1) and as it has evolved between 1990 and 2014 (Fig. 7.2).

Fig. 7.1  Liberal democracy index for the TRU countries 1980–2014 (V-Dem Data: Version 7)

Fig. 7.2  Dimensions of liberal democracy in Chile 1990, 2008, 2014 (V-Dem Data: Version 7) (Dimensions of Liberal Democracy (anti-clockwise on diagram): V2xlg_legcon = Legislative constraints on the executive index; V2x_jugcon = Judicial constraints on the executive index; V2xcl_rol = Equality before the law and individual liberty index; V2xel_frefair = Clean elections index; V2x_suffr = Share of population with suffrage; V2xme_altinf = Alternative sources of information index; and V2x_freep_thick = Expanded freedom of expression index)

While these two sources provide a good starting point to situate the country study, they require cross-checking against alternative estimates of the same kind (see Figs. 7.3, 7.4, and 7.5). Given the discrepancies that arise, it is clearly essential to look beyond these data sources to the underlying comparative and long-run historical narratives that are also summarized below. While a central objective of this chapter is to characterize the democratization trajectory of Chile, the aim is equally to situate this specific case within a framework permitting the systematic comparison of the other Transformation Research Unit (TRU) cases and also to place the quality and legitimacy of contemporary Chilean democracy within its regional context. The conclusion reverts to the more general issue of temporal models and how best to use them in such comparative exercises.

Fig. 7.3  Governance in Chile 1996–2015 (World Bank: Worldwide Governance Indicators)

Fig. 7.4  Web of democratic qualities: Latin America (selected countries) (Morlino 2011: 257)

Fig. 7.5  Control of corruption in Chile and the other TRU countries—Evolution from 1996 to 2015 (World Bank: Worldwide Governance Indicators)

For the first couple of decades after the 1988 plebiscite, Chile was presented as a model worthy of emulation by other new democracies. President Barack Obama even provided a blurb for the book by Ricardo Lagos “Southern Tiger,” describing “Chile’s transformation from dictatorship to a thriving open society” as “a model for the region and the world” (New Statesman 2012). [1]

But over the past decade, its claims to such a status have been cast into doubt, both internally and internationally. The conclusion to this chapter revisits that issue and suggests that while the Chilean process may still have something to teach other comparably placed countries, these are not the overstated and lopsided lessons that used to be drawn.

Chile and the Four Temporal Models

The four temporal models of democratic development under consideration here are analytical rather than prescriptive. As reviewed in the earlier chapter, they include step-change; unilinear; degenerative; and oscillatory types. The first two are common currency in the literature on Chile; the last two are minority assessments. Nevertheless, there are good grounds for considering the merits of all four, and for evaluating how they might be combined, reconciled or placed in order of preference.

Chile is a significant and complex hard case to test these wider issues, which are present in more visible form in neighbouring South American republics (and indeed in various TRU countries outside the Western hemisphere). This section examines the relevance of each model for Chile, after which a broader array of cases is considered. It concludes with some observations on the utility of the alternative models in contemporary conditions.

A Step-Change Model

In 1973, the Chilean military under the recently appointed army commander General Augusto Pinochet seized power by force, closed Congress, dissolved all political parties, burnt the electoral rolls and launched a fierce and prolonged repression. Pinochet ruled as President and military dictator for almost 17 years. The eventual transition back to democracy was preceded by informal elite negotiations which led to the holding of a referendum, under the rules laid down by the unilaterally imposed authoritarian constitution of 1980. In formal terms, the step-change began when by 56 to 44% Pinochet lost that 1988 plebiscite (which would have extended his presidency by a further 8 years), and—after some hesitation—was induced to abide by the result. Although he left the Presidency the illegitimate constitution left him in charge of the politically autonomous military for a further 8 years, after which it made him an unelected life senator. Even so, the restoration of an elected civilian president was hailed as a real democratic transition, in that multiparty elections were restored. 1990 saw the first of an unbroken succession of democratically elected civilian presidents (governing in conjunction with a reopened Congress mainly composed of two rival multiparty coalitions elected under a restrictively designed binomial electoral system). At one level, therefore, a post-Franco Spanish-style step-change model was fully operationalized between 1988 and 1990. That was how official Chile (both left and right) presented itself to the world, and it is probably still the dominant view of the matter. According to Fig. 7.2, the liberal dimensions of Chilean democracy were already well developed as early as 1990, and have slightly expanded since then.

The two most significant restrictions were on access to alternative sources of information, and freedom of expression, but according to the sources consulted both of these deficiencies have been significantly reduced over the past quarter century.

There are, however, various difficulties which this schematic account overlooks. A parallel exercise measuring the evolution of governance in Chile between 1996 and 2015 also shows a positive course of development, but conveys a patchier picture of performance, as Fig. 7.3 indicates.

There are also some striking contrasts between post-Pinochet Chile and post-Franco Spain. In the Spanish case, Franco died, and the anti-democratic veto power of his followers and the armed forces was rapidly curbed by the incoming head of state and supreme commander, King Juan Carlos. In the Chilean case, by contrast, Pinochet remained the supreme military leader with considerable legal and financial autonomy, until his 1998 arrest in London for human rights violations. Shortly before his arrest the 82-year-old had stood down from his military role, but was instead serving as an unelected lifetime Senator with immunity from prosecution under the imposed 1980 constitution. Unelected life Senators were not abolished until 2006. Full civilian control over the military was therefore delayed by almost a generation beyond the short period of the transition. Moreover, in the Spanish case the short step-change culminated in the popular ratification of a new fully democratic constitution (1978), which in broad terms provided a level playing field for inclusive rules of the game concerning political representation.

In Chile, on the other hand, the elite pact that precipitated the re-democratization rested on a much narrower base of popular legitimacy. It was a top-down arrangement that restored the old political parties to office, but not with full backing from below, either on the right or on the left. Although some of the most clearly anti-democratic provisions of the authoritarian 1980 constitution were eventually amended, the basic (electorally illegitimate) charter remains in place, even today. For example, the elected Congress was relocated from Santiago (where it had been at the heart of the pre-coup democratic process) to the coastal port of Valparaiso, reflecting its reduced status. As regards equality before the law, the protection of human rights, and the rectification of injustices committed during the dictatorship, there was no abrupt step-change in Chile (and in Spain, these were also matters of controversy). Although the head of Pinochet’s police force, the DINA, was first convicted by a Chilean court in 1993, the full catalogue of his crimes was only slowly exposed and punished, and it took about a generation to forge a broad agreement on recognition and repudiation. In short, it is clearer when the transition began (1988) than when it ended. For some, the amendments of 2005 might qualify. But there is also a significant current of opinion that a new constitutional democratic ratification vote will be required. So perhaps this step-change lasted 17 years rather than two, or perhaps it even now is still incomplete, three decades later.

In general, there is still no social consensus on the nature and timescale of the transition in Chile. Even today, there are still some pinochetistas liable to date the start from the promulgation of the 1980 constitution and the end from just after the 1988 plebiscite. From their standpoint, that was when the anti-system opposition became reconciled to the prevailing rules of the game. In that version, their side won, and the losers took time to recognize their defeat. Centrists would be more inclined to start the transition with the “No” vote in that plebiscite, and end it with the second competitive presidential election of 1994, won by Christian Democrat leader Eduardo Frei Tagle, who then announced that the transition was over. In this version, the return of the Frei family and its party to la Moneda closed the cycle of undemocratic interruption that had opened with the aberrant election of the Marxists in 1970, and had begun to close when the latter rallied back to democracy under the Christian democratic leadership of Patricio Aylwin in the 1988 “No” campaign. The Socialists still differed with the PDC over the Allende issue, and they naturally claimed greater protagonism in the transition process, but under the leadership of Ricardo Lagos, their view of the transition was fairly similar to that of the PDC. However, the left more broadly (including some voices within the PS) resisted the idea that 1988 represented a solid framework for transition, and came to view the transition of the 1990s as seriously “incomplete” (Garreton 2003), given the persistence of the 1980 institutions, the neoliberal economic model, and the unresolved human rights legacies.

Over time, as the left gained ground within the electorally dominant Concertacion alliance, and as fear of the dictatorship faded with generational change, the third view gained increasing traction. But these differing interpretations of the democratization process have never been fully settled, and therefore within Chile, there is still no consensus over what the transition involved, or when it occurred. Most external classifications convey a simplified and decontested image of the Chilean case that may serve as a convenient international heuristic, but that fails to reflect the continuing internal debate, and that therefore mis-specifies the country’s contemporary political dynamics.

In contrast, to Franco’s Spain (where the 1978 referendum freely approved the new democratic constitution by 92 to 8%, on a high turnout) Chile’s authoritarian 1980 constitution was drafted by an unrepresentative group of dictatorship nominees, and was ratified under questionable electoral conditions, by only 67% of the votes cast. It legitimized Pinochet’s seizure of power and entrenched his prerogatives, including through the binomial electoral system, the Senators for life, and a variety of other legal provisions that were not generally accepted as legitimate. This charter has been repeatedly amended (most notably in 1989 and 2005), but still lacks full legitimacy, resulting in widespread but so far unsatisfied demands for the summoning of a constitutional convention to rewrite the whole document.

In his recent and thoroughly documented review of Chilean political development since the 1988 plebiscite Carlos Huneeus (2014) highlights four main singularities of Chile’s democratization process: the restrictions on majority rule derived from the 1980 constitution; the persistence of the ex-dictator as head of the Army for eight years after the defeat of his bid for the Presidency; the continuity of the pre-1988 economic model (a decision for which the incoming Concertacion was co-responsible); and the continuity of the political elite, which he characterizes as exercising only “semi-sovereign” power given both these legal and institutional constraints, and the Concertacion’s embrace of “expertise” at the expense of societal engagement in self-government (ibid. 2014: 43/65). Huneeus also notes that there was no consensus on human rights issues, nor on state–labour relations, nor on progressive taxation, all issues requiring active state management. He adds that one unreformed legacy of the authoritarian regime was a failure to modernize the state: “this weakness of the Chilean public administration marked a great contrast with the other successful economic modernization achieved by an authoritarian regime- that of Spain, under the Franco regime (which) …from the beginning of the 1950s…. together with liberalizing and drastically opening the economy, also modernized the state bureaucracy in order to promote economic development” (ibid. 2014: 339). [2] In short, Chile’s was an incomplete transition to democracy dominated by the priority of building up a free market economy, and barring the return of social market (let alone more radical) policy alternatives. Rather than constituting a stand-out model of how to replace authoritarian rule with full democracy, in comparative terms it seems more distinctive as a successful multi-decade experiment in redefining the Chilean political agenda to preclude challenges to the dictatorship’s neoliberal economic legacy. On this view of the matter the relevant temporal frame is not that of a step-change, but rather that of a long-term linear progression from left to right.

Unilinear Models

Most step-change analysis is quite narrowly focused on electoral and constitutional considerations. However, the case for the positive directionality of Chilean democratization typically adds (or mixes in) a wider range of socio-structural trends that derive more from the modernization approach than from short-term strategic interactionism. Inspired by Hayek’s take on liberal constitutionalism, and by “Chicago Boy” ideas about economic development, the still prevailing 1980 constitution was designed to guarantee a long-term redirection of Chilean politics. In essence, the new rules of the game were intended to depoliticize the society, to entrench individual rights to private property and market-based resource allocation, and to outlaw Marxist, or even social-democratic alternatives to a market-driven (in shorthand a neoliberal) policy framework. Accordingly, political parties were downgraded, trade unions were marginalized, and private wealth was granted additional legal protection. Despite some major upsets long-run economic performance under this dispensation has proved a stellar improvement on what had gone before. So when the transition took place under the aegis of this 1980 rule-book, the democratic opposition came into office basically committed to the maintenance of these socio-economic principles. Hence, democratization meant also marketization and the exclusion of state interventions in the economy to the benefit of a revived and politically assertive private sector.

From a modernization perspective, this policy framework (which elicited massive external support from both Western governments and foreign investors) generated unilinear results that progressively reinforced the society’s potential for long-run democratization. Thus, as economic growth cumulated, Chile graduated to developed country status, and in 2010 it became the first in South America to be admitted to the ‘rich country club’, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Over the same three decades its poverty rate shrivelled to a residual level, its “middle class” expanded to a dominant place, tertiary education exploded, urbanization became overwhelming, and traditional social sectors were replaced by an ultra-modern consumer society. According to the predictions of the modernization approach, as this structural transformation proceeded, residual legacies of authoritarian rule would give way to modern democratic practices, all supervised by a rational administration and governed by an effective rule of law. On the modernization view it was these long-run changes that underpinned and reinforced cumulative progress to full democracy, as confirmed by many international rankings (Freedom House (FH), Polity IV, etc.) [3] and as demonstrated by the election of a socialist woman as President in 2006, followed in 2014 by her re-election on a more inclusionary electoral platform, and this time with a congressional majority as well.

Nevertheless, as with the first model, there are also difficulties attached to this second positive schematic account. In general, there are both conceptual and empirical problems associated with this sanitized macro-historical view of political development, which disregards power conflicts and ideational factors, and in consequence displays major blind-spots when applied to specific cases. Such omissions are very apparent in the case of Chile. At the heart of modernization theory in general, the fundamental drivers of socio-political change (forces such as urbanization, literacy, and the rise of a middle class) are conceived of as universal, primordial- and essentially pre-political. For ineluctable reasons traditional society will necessarily give way, and an assured system of modernity (which should eventually require liberal democracy) will take its place. Forces such as colonialism, distributional conflict, nationalism, or the clash of worldviews are at best marginal to this picture. In the very long run, they can all be brushed aside or homogenized by the deeper logic of modernization. Here, the fundamental direction of world history is linear and progressive, and therefore neutral as between competing ideologies and interests. But there is a sharp contrast between any such underlying liberal assumptions and the basics of Chilean-or indeed any Latin American-political history. Thus, such unilinear liberalism had to be imposed on Chile through repression, for it was out of line with national traditions of socio-economic and ideological contestation. Chile before Pinochet was politically troubled by various problems, including the continuing power and prestige of a set of oligarchical families. But it was far from being a traditional society. [4] Indeed, it had some of the most well-developed modern (and democratic) institutions in Latin America, a substantial welfare state, good educational provision, a highly organized and longstanding labour and popular movement, etc. Indeed, by some significant yardsticks of social integration, it is less modern today than it was then. In any case, some of its traditional social pillars remain intact even now (e.g. the church, the army, the judiciary). So what were the main drivers of long-term political (and regime) change? Literacy and urbanization played their part, but in combination with distributional conflicts, for example over land reform and the nationalization of the foreign-owned copper mines. If Chilean politics presented the world with a model in the 1970s, it was one of ideological conflict between a peaceful road to socialism and a Hayekian “constitution of liberty.” Related questions of principle continue to inform political developments to this day. Which version of modernity, and of democracy, is desirable, and available, under contemporary conditions? Thus, for example, there is current ideational struggle between those who view health care, pension provision and access to university level education as citizenship entitlements in a modern democracy, and those who would have them allocated as individual rewards for market success.

If Chilean democratization under the 1980 constitution offered any kind of model to the world, it stood for the triumph of one side in these debates, and the imposition of that worldview against the resistance, and to the detriment, of a rival modern sector wedded to an alternative outlook. Even after the shock treatment of the 1970s, to stabilize a long-term settlement of these disputes required a firm hand—at best a guided variant of democracy—not one based on full pluralism and inclusionary consent. Far from operating as a neutral instrument of modernization, the Chilean political system was organized over several decades to shift the balance of social power firmly in one direction and to suppress the re-emergence of competitive projects. Only very recently has this effect begun to fade.

When re-democratization reopened space for greater freedom of expression, it was still under these lopsided incentives. Whether from necessity or conviction the returning civilian politicians decided to accept the main features of the inherited (loosely neoliberal) economic model. So modernization continued under democracy much along the lines designed and imposed by the military regime. In consequence, despite a remarkable three decades of high growth since 1988, and the near elimination of traditional forms of poverty, economic inequality remains stubbornly very high. [5] In accordance with neoliberal principles, the explosion of tertiary education was financed through a comprehensive system of student fees and loans, which in many cases became a crushing burden for those with only modest earning power in a highly deregulated labour market. The privatized pension system has also generated very weak provision for many retirees. All this became more acute after 2010, when the economy decelerated sharply.

Huneeus (2014: 355) summarizes the survey research tracking Chilean public perceptions of the results of economic growth. Between 1996 and 2010 over two-thirds of respondents endorsed the view that “businessmen are only interested in profits; they only care about their own interests and seek to impose their will, without caring if they harm the rest of us.” Both young and old have therefore felt themselves at risk from the rigidities of the neoliberal legal framework, which the inherited authoritarian constitution enshrines beyond the reach of conventional electoral remedies. Recently, in the absence of strong collective vehicles of political expression (e.g. with weak trade unions, discredited political parties) mass protest movements have tended to erupt in an extra-institutional manner (Donoso and von Bulow 2017).

So, despite the modernity of the country’s political and economic elites, and the sophistication of its technocrats, it was one of the country’s richest businessmen (an entrepreneur who prospered from the privatization of the state-owned airline) who eventually took the presidency back from the Concertacion in 2010, with the support of the still vibrant parties of the right (Luna 2014). [6] The personalization of presidential power and the concentrated influence of money on political campaigns facilitated this outcome which signalled a continuation of the unilinear modernization project, despite growing protests against it. The 2014 election raised both hopes and fears of a sharp change in policy direction, (and indeed in 2017 a new education law did provide for free university entry by 2020), but for the most part critics of the dominant formula have been disappointed, at least so far. Checks and balances from the political system remain underdeveloped—although public financing of elections and a more proportional system of congressional representation will be trialled at the end of 2017, and the legal system is now more vigilant against corruption. Some recent reforms have already produced negative consequences. For example, once compulsory voting was abolished, abstentionism rose to alarming levels, raising fears that a “populist” or “outsider” candidate might topple the creaking party system. A proposed constitutional convention might rejuvenate the legitimacy of the system (Soto and Welp 2017), but if—as seems likely—it is blocked this will reinforce disaffection with the present institutional system.

Degenerative Models

As explained in the theoretical chapter, there is also a third, more pessimistic, set of temporal models of political change. The most relevant for Chile is the two-generation approach first sketched by Polybius. The rationale for all political regimes needs to be re-taught to successive generations of subjects. No matter how compelling the case for a particular form of government may seem to a given generation, their children will not automatically inherit the same set of predispositions. They will need to be socialized into the outlook of their parents, and they can be expected to express doubts, raise questions, and judge the prevailing justificatory assertions from the different perspective that arises from their own political experiences, and from the then prevailing zeitgeist. Polybius applied this general standpoint to the specific case of changing responses over three generations to an experience of despotic government. The first generation might comply wholeheartedly with democratic disciplines, because they all had shared and vivid direct experience of the evils of tyranny, and were therefore committed to making a success of self-government. By the second generation these commitments would be weaker, because derived from second-hand accounts, so that the ethos of democracy would slacken, but still prevail. However, Polybius hypothesized that by the third generation the benefits of democracy might well be taken for granted; the attractions of abusing the system could prove irresistible; and aspiring tyrants could be expected to take advantage of the forgetfulness of the masses, and to use the laxity of the system to undermine it from within. Here, then, was a classical exposition of a process of degeneration or decay.

In accordance with the Polybius thesis, almost two generations after the 1988 plebiscite the Chilean political climate today is much altered, and eagerness to defend the current system is accordingly reduced. Three decades ago a clear majority were steeled to face collective sacrifice if needed to guarantee popular rule. As already noted, recent high abstentionism is a striking contrast with the exceptional levels of turnout that once prevailed (Huneeus 2014: 35). [7] Huneeus reports that confidence in Congress fell from 63% in 1990 to 17% in 2011, by which time confidence in the political parties had fallen to only 9% (2014: 433).

Beginning in 2008 the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Santiago has also conducted four successive surveys of public opinion, focusing on citizen satisfaction with Chilean democracy. The fourth one was conducted in May/June 2016, and the results were published that September. According to this Fourth Encuesta Auditoria, “The perception that at present Chilean democracy is functioning “badly” or “very badly” rose from 20% in 2012 to 40% in 2016.” There was also a rise in the perception of corruption in all institutions (public and private) from 23% in 2010 to 47% in 2016, and the distance between elites and citizens has widened. “Those who do not identify with any political party have risen from 53% in 2008 to 83% in 2016, and 9 out 10 consider that the Congress and the political parties perform “badly” or “very badly” at representing the interests of the citizenry.” This is, of course, a relatively short period of time, but there is at least enough evidence here to indicate that the degeneration model remains worthy of consideration. Again, however, as with the two previous models, there are serious counter-arguments. As before, these concern both the conceptual foundations of the model and its application to current Chilean circumstances. In its original formulation, Polybius presented the sequence as a precise and necessarily two generational cycles. Abundant experience since then teaches both that democratic regimes can last longer than that, and that intervening variables (including the crafting of democratic institutions and even the nature of the tyrant’s legacy) can accelerate or delay the pace of events. In general terms, and with reference to all regime types, generational change is only one out of a series of factors that determine a system’s stability and capacity to reproduce itself over time. External shocks may also intervene, and not just elite bargains but other interests/values (and even illusions) can play their part. The most important contribution of degenerative models, at the conceptual level, is to remind us that political developments need not be either progressive or stabilizing, and that all regimes need a capacity for reinvention if they are to persist over time.

As already indicated, the two-generation model has a bearing on the contemporary Chilean case. But we also need to consider the sources of resilience available to the existing regime beyond that time frame. In today’s Chile, civilian control over the military is not in doubt, elections are free and fair and non-violent, the administrative and justice systems are high quality, there are no great subnational variations in the quality of democracy, and the external environment is supportive and respectful. The latest UNDP Encuesta does not indicate popular rejection of the merits of democracy as a system, only growing discontent with its practical manifestations. This dissatisfaction comes during a period of sharp and unfamiliar economic deceleration, which may prove temporary. The 2018 election might even provide a positive shock that would re-engage the currently disillusioned citizenry. There also remains open the option of re-legitimizing the democracy by re-founding its constitution on much more fully democratic lines. In contrast with, say, the overwhelming nature of the corruption shaking the party system and the Congress in Brazil, reports of Chilean political and financial misconduct seem very minor. Taking into account these and other sources of democratic resilience in Chile, the challenges facing the regime after two generations do not correspond at all closely to those predicted in the degenerative model.

Even so, the regime is facing major new challenges, and the generational mechanisms postulated by Polybius do help to explain that dynamic. Where the major difference lies in the initial starting point. Democracy in Chile did not arise from a united rejection of an intolerable tyranny and all its works. On the contrary, 1988 was the start of a re-democratization—an attempt to return to a system already well-entrenched before 1973. [8] But in the 1988 plebiscite 44% of the electorate and a strong majority of the rich and powerful initially preferred a continuation of the old regime to the risks of democratic innovation. The first generation of civilian democrats were united not by a determination to bar all manifestations of the despotic order, but rather by the fear of disorder and backlash if they democratized too much. It took another generation to erode the controls and self-censorship inherited from the era of repression, and even now, with the coming second generation that can take for granted a freedom and security beyond the reach of their predecessors, the exclusionary tilt of the system is only partially being dismantled. If all regimes face degenerative tendencies then the Concertacion regime provides a vivid illustration of the thesis (Huneeus 2014: 455). [9] But what decayed was not Chilean democracy so much as the neoliberal institutional settlement enshrined in the imposed 1980 constitution. Where does that leave Chilean democracy today? To address that issue we need a model of political development that assumes neither ascent nor decline. So that brings us to the fourth and final alternative.

Oscillatory Models

This section concerns oscillations within a democratic regime, and should not be confused with switches back and forth between regime types (such as occurred in Chile in 1973 and 1990, as well as on earlier occasions). It explores aspects of both the long-run political development of Chile and the post-1989 trajectory in search of evidence supporting an oscillation perspective.

One very long-run historical oscillation refers to the extension of the suffrage. It is sometimes believed that in all modern democracies this follows a unilinear rather than a cyclical path. But that assumption needs empirical confirmation. For example, in Chile the long-run pattern is somewhat oscillatory. Consider the following: In 1914 “the administration of suffrage was turned over to a Committee of the Largest Taxpayers…The effect of these measures was dramatic. It ended and indeed reversed the democratization trend which had begun in 1891 and was impelled by the expansion of the party system. Voting turnout was reduced substantially. Whereas in 1912 the number of registered voters had been 598,000, in 1915 the number was reduced to 185,000. Valid votes were cut in half during the same period…until the 1940s the percentage of the population registered to vote after 1912 barely exceeded the figure of 1879” (Valenzuela 1977: 213–214). It was not until 1949 that female suffrage was granted, or until 1970 that illiterates were enfranchized (at a time when 31% of rural males were still illiterate), and then only four years later the electoral roll was destroyed by the Pinochet dictatorship. Universal suffrage, compulsory voting and the desire for a return to democracy produced record electoral participation rates between 1988 and 1990, but they have fallen dramatically since then (from 86.3% in the first democratic presidential election to 49.3% in the fifth), only in part because of the abolition of compulsory voting. In short, the long-run history of electoral turnout in Chile indicates more of a cyclical rather than just a linear progression.

A related empirically testable political oscillation concerns left/right identifications of both voters and political activists. This can also be expressed in more ideological terms as the fluctuating appeal of socialist versus capitalist ideas or expectations for the future. Thus, on a long-run view, between the 1870s and the 1920s, Chile developed an export-oriented market economy that underpinned its politically liberal constitutional system. But the world depression of the early 1930s hit the country exceptionally hard, and Chile’s first socialist government held office—very temporarily—at the start of a period when confidence in capitalism was at a nadir. A generation later, the Communist Party was outlawed for a decade during the early Cold War period, when anti-socialist ideas regained considerable traction. This reversed in the early 1970s as a substantial electoral base supported Allende’s “peaceful road to socialism.” By the 1980s, the hardline neoliberal doctrines espoused by the military regime had won wider support, to such an extent that when the Concertacion took office in 1990 it also pursued a determinedly pro-capitalist agenda. Since 2010, however, there are various signs of the growth of a more critical outlook, even including some tentative revival of cautiously socialist ideas. In short, the long-run evidence on left/right placement issues lends some support to an oscillatory, rather than a straightforwardly unilinear ideational trajectory.

This long history may seem a side issue to those who think of democratization as a quick step-change affair, but it takes centre stage in an oscillatory model of political change. Just as rival political projects defied/dominated/vetoed each other throughout the first century and a half of republican government, so even after the middle of the last century their more sophisticated successor parties also stretched the rules of the political game to (or beyond) breaking point in the pursuit of partisan ascendancy. It is true that after 1989 the democratic parties controlled/suppressed such differences in order to roll back the excesses of Pinochetista authoritarianism. So historically destabilizing battles were postponed or finessed, and in that way, progressive democratization has prevailed for three decades. But arguably the country’s long history was not repealed, merely buried, and as unifying memories of the dictatorship fade older divisions have shown some signs of resurfacing. [10] It could hardly be otherwise, given the radical strait-jacket imposed on political life by the 1980 constitution. Those forced to swallow that medicine then make poor advocates for its continuance once a more modern and less fearful generation begin to question its inequitable consequences. In summary, while such powerful and deep-rooted clashes of outlook may no longer place the entire political order in jeopardy, they can generate substantial further oscillations over basic questions, and these may well be strong enough to damage the quality (rather than to threaten the existence) of contemporary Chilean democracy.

Chile in Comparative Perspective

Turning to the present day, Leonardo Morlino’s work provides another way of developing the oscillatory perspective measuring the eight different qualities of democracy that he distilled from the theoretical literature, and then mapped them on a web diagram similar to the liberal democracy series shown in Fig. 7.2. But his qualities are constructed synchronically rather than diachronically, so that instead of showing how Chile progressed over time Fig. 7.3 shows how Chile compares with three other Latin American republics at the same recent point in time.

The ratings are mostly derived from expert surveys and refer to about 2010. In general, Chile qualifies as a fairly solid democracy, but in contrast to the very positive picture of liberal democracy, on two dimensions out of Morlino’s eight it scores poorly. These are “equality and solidarity” and “political competition.” Chile also has a mediocre rating on “political participation.” These findings match points made above by Manuel Antonio Garreton, Carlos Huneeus, and the UNDP Encuestas. What this comparative mapping demonstrates is that each country has specific areas of weakness (e.g. rule of law in Mexico, electoral accountability in Argentina, inequality in Brazil). In consequence pressures for political reform may be most likely to accumulate around the dimension where the deficiencies are most pronounced. Oscillations between dimensions might then help to generate kaleidoscopic shifts of emphasis to and fro as different broadly democratic regimes attempted to address shifting public concerns. Over time this would produce changing maps of quality distribution for each country, as it focuses first on one deficiency, later on another.

Synchronic evidence of this kind takes us beyond the single case of Chile. It provides a basis for comparison between contemporary democracies throughout Latin America. On its own such synchronic comparisons cannot arbitrate between temporal models, but there is also diachronic evidence concerning the comparative performance of Chile and the other TRU countries as regards specific dimensions of “governance.” See, for example, the corruption control estimates in Fig. 7.5.

According to this evidence, over the past two decades, there has been a very slight deterioration in the level of corruption control in Chile, although its comparative performance has been middling throughout the post-Cold War period. Whereas Sweden and Germany have both maintained strong controls over that period Korea and Poland have recorded persistently worse levels than Chile. The most striking results come from Turkey—uniformly very poor performance, and South Africa, which started low and has worsened significantly over time.

Both the TRU and the Latin American comparisons confirm that contemporary Chile belongs somewhere in the medium-to-high range of our comparative cases, and that—notwithstanding the country’s turbulent long-term development, or the current dissatisfactions—its democratic profile is in relative terms both strong and stable.

At the same time, careful inspection of its recent record also indicates that Chile also displays many of the same problems that are obstructing the progress of democratization across Latin America, and more widely. So care should be taken in using Chile as a model for others to envy or to imitate. A more balanced approach would weigh up the relative applicability of the four temporal models under discussion here. Taking the degeneration model as an illustration, in the case of contemporary Venezuela, or in Turkey, it seems clear that this pattern currently overwhelms the other three alternatives, and jeopardizes both countries’ status as any variety of democracy. It is also possible to detect some mildly degenerative features in Chile, but they remain quite secondary, at least for now. In between, there were marked degenerative tendencies in Argentina for a while, but it may be that they are being checked. After all, earlier generations of Argentine citizens have had repeated experience of where such trajectories may lead if left unresisted. Brazil seemed for quite a long period to be following a fairly successful, if sui generis, democratization trajectory driven in part by the institution-building features usually associated with a democratic step-change—the 1988 constitution and the 1994 Real Plan—and in part by a long-term logic of the modernization type. Over the past few years, however, the extraordinary explosion of corruption scandals driven mainly by the huge demands of electoral campaign financing has produced what some consider to be a fundamental degenerative setback. In truth, it is still too early to know whether the Lava Jato crisis and its sequels (which contaminate democratic credibility in about a dozen Latin American republics) will prove destructive or restorative. The comparative applicability of the degenerative and oscillatory models remains in play here, and both analytical tools are equally needed. As a final shadow case, we should also mention Mexico, stronger than Chile on a couple of Morlino’s dimensions, but far more vulnerable on others, and especially the destructive momentum of deeply entrenched organized crime and violence.

As previously noted, Latin American regimes that are now broadly democratic at the aggregate national level may nevertheless display very unequal performance on specific quality dimensions such as corruption control, the protection of citizen security, or the capacity to engage voter participation. Oscillatory models could be particularly appropriate in cases where it has become imperative to overcome the most marked quality deficiency, even at the risk of reducing commitment to the other more satisfactory areas of performance. In Brazil, corruption control has acquired just such a priority, with unpredictable consequences for the rest of the political system, and Mexico could prove similarly driven by the need to tackle out of control criminality. An attempt is now underway to extend Morlino-type assessments to the subnational level, first of all in Mexico, an extension that might deepen our understanding of one key source of oscillatory pressures. There has been a strong capital-city bias in many of the standard regime classification indicators, whereas in order to assess unstable political dynamics in (say) Mexico it is now clear that other locations (Chiapas in 1994, Michoacan in 2006, Estado de Mexico today) require their own calibrations. Since ideally theory and measurement tend to co-evolve it may be that increased interest in oscillatory models of political change could elicit additional efforts at calibration, which in turn could sharpen model specifications.

In consequence, the notion of kaleidoscopic political outcomes can be documented by reference to these divergent national patterns in Latin American democracy over the past two decades. But such aggregate synchronic turbulence is only one manifestation of a reality that also deserves exploration in its diachronic and disaggregated dimensions. Turning to the disaggregation issue, one major aspect concerns territorial divisions, such as coast versus highlands in Ecuador, tierras indias and ladino lands in Guatemala, not to mention the huge divergences that have long separated the North-East of Brazil from the South-Centre; or the “many Mexicos” that clash (from Chiapas to Tamaulipas) with that federal republic. There are also other deep divides that can underpin oscillatory patterns of politics—left and right; foreign exchange earners versus the import dependent; legal enterprises versus informality and so on. In short, both the long-run and historical background and the unequal distribution of demographic and organizational resources still work to generate conflictual and oscillatory patterns of political representation (as the literature on populism attempts to demonstrate) rather than stable and consensual progressions towards a single and conventional model of consolidated democracy.

The concept of kaleidoscopic outcomes determined by oscillatory dynamics is necessarily range bound. Beyond its scope, at the top of the range, are more stable, consensual and better institutionalized regimes which approximate to the conditions of consolidation. In the Western hemisphere, a number of small Caribbean island nations are often classified in this way, and among the Spanish-speaking republics, the strongest case is Uruguay. Given the external vulnerabilities of these small nations, and some features of their internal political histories, they may not be completely immune from oscillatory tendencies, but these are secondary. At least in principle, therefore, some LAC countries now fall outside the range of kaleidoscopic cases. But the next best cases after Uruguay—Chile and Costa Rica—can be included here, as section three below will attempt to demonstrate for the Chilean case. At the other end of the range, a similar exclusion applies where a clear breakdown of democracy has occurred. If these upper and lower bounds are accepted then the great majority of countries and citizens in the LAC region would still currently fall within the scope of the kaleidoscopic interpretation, that is, the directionality of their regime trajectories would be classed as erratic and contested.

But even if such oscillatory patterns are currently prevalent in much of contemporary Latin America, how far (if at all) does that differentiate this region from most of the rest of the world? On this issue, others in the TRU team, and in our edited volume, are invited to judge the transferability of this concept to Sub-Saharan Africa, post-communist Eastern Europe , etc. It should be added that southern Europe (especially, but not exclusively, Greece and Turkey) seems to be displaying some parallel features. On a more ambitious but speculative scale one might also reflect on the recent rise of so-called populism in the old Western democracies . Post-1989 confidence about the underlying expansive and progressive direction of democratic change in the world as a whole no longer seems so well grounded either in the evidence or indeed strongly based in theory.

Justifications for the oscillatory model can take two basic forms. The weaker approach is to point out the deficiencies of the other three alternatives, and therefore to argue for it by a process of elimination. However, this section has tried to show that the oscillatory model is not merely a last resort option. Instead, the model has positive arguments in its favour. On presently available evidence, it is unlikely that the kaleidoscopic and relatively directionless patterns of regime change currently observable in much of Latin America is a merely fleeting phenomenon. Oscillatory democratization may not be an exclusively regional phenomenon, but could rather prove of wider international and even global pattern.

Contemporary democracies come under pressure from a multiplicity of sources, so that in addition to socio-structural variants of oscillation one could also construct more institutional models—for example, focusing on the escalating expenses involved in fighting an election campaign, and the over-reach that can be involved (the Workers Marty (PT) in Brazil); or the hollowing out of traditional political parties, and the ensuing creation of space for new types of challenger (Berlusconi or Trump). But although we can sketch possible oscillatory models that may prove applicable to contemporary conditions, it is not possible to assess how strongly they apply before more time has elapsed. That is why relatively long periods of history must be consulted whenever the oscillation hypothesis is explored. It also points to the advantages of examining really long-run historical sequences from the same standpoint. For example, pre-coup Chile operated a highly politicized system of resource allocation, whereas post-coup Chile was resolutely market-based (neoliberal). Those who believe that authoritarian barriers against the earlier version of democracy still need to be dismantled argue that full democratization involves allowing the electorate to decide how much scope to grant to politicians over distributional matters. On this view, the system will continue to oscillate between two competing views on this matter until the rules of the game are made fully consensual. But more time is needed before anyone can adjudicate on this thesis.

Conclusion: Chile and the Four Models

In short, the oscillatory model is not merely a last resort option but has some positive arguments in its favour. However, as with the three previous headings, there are also some major qualifications. However, it is not the aim of this chapter to press the claims of any one of these four models of political development to the exclusion of the other three, either in the case of Chile or more generally. Instead, the idea has been to examine a specific and highly distinctive national political trajectory in the light of all four possible temporal frameworks, thus demonstrating the pertinence of each to at least some crucial aspects of Chile’s democratization experience, and to that of its neighbours, while also underscoring the inadequacy of any single model when taken too far. If the test of a good historical explanation is whether it provides enough clarity to compensate for its inevitable simplifications, then it is best to consider all four models taken together, both for the respects in which they may supplement and reinforce each other and also as mutual reality checks. The utility and limitations of each model vary across time and place, as can be seen both in the longer-run historical analysis of Chile and in the more synchronic comparisons with its Latin American and TRU counterparts. As stressed in the earlier chapter, these are no more than tools, to be used when helpful, and discarded when a better alternative meets the case.

Comparing the five Figures on Chile in this chapter, it becomes clear that although summative quantified indicators can provide an approximate sense of both the relative standing of a particular case and its direction of travel, this is only the beginning of the story, and by no means the full reality. Much of the evidence presented here indicates a substantial mismatch between objective measures of Chilean political development, and the subjective perceptions held by most Chileans. On most of the standard comparative criteria (institutional quality, electoral integrity, party alternation, civil and political rights, international reputation) contemporary Chile rates as a clearly legitimate democracy. Nevertheless, as we have seen, at the attitudinal and behavioural levels there are still some significant reservations concerning some still not fully resolved memory issues, in particular those relating to the legitimacy of the 1980 constitution and the economic priorities it has underpinned. In such conditions, it is foolhardy to embrace any one of the directional models discussed here to the exclusion of their rivals. The unresolved tension between competing assessments ensures that however much momentum may favour one directional trajectory at time t, by t + 1 one or other of the alternative temporal models may demand renewed consideration.

Notes

1. 1.
Advert in London’s New Statesman (2012: 51).

2. 2.
Author’s free translation.

3. 3.
FH rated Chile favourably ever since 1990, and in 2003, it reached top scores for both political and civil rights, a level it has always retained since then. Similarly, Polity IV gave very high and rising ratings from 1990 onwards, reaching the maximum from 2010 onwards.

4. 4.
See, e.g., Arturo Valenzuela’s (1977: 165–168) reservations about any sharp distinction between tradition and modernity, at least as applied to pre-coup Chile.

5. 5.
The best data come from the OECD, which measures income inequalities after allowing for taxation and transfers, and which tracks trends over time. Of the 34 member states considered only Turkey was marginally more unequal than Chile. For Chile this gini coefficient in the mid-1990s was 0.427, falling to 0.403 a decade later, with 0.394 as the most recent data point. Rougher single year pre-tax comparisons from the CIA and the World Bank cover many more countries. The CIA series places Chile in 2009 as the 13th most unequal out of 143 countries considered (five of the worst cases are in southern Africa). In Latin America only Haiti, Honduras, Colombia and Paraguay were more unequal than Chile. Separate World Bank data produce the same highly negative ranking.

6. 6.
On low income support for the Pinochetista UDI see Juan Pablo Luna (2014).

7. 7.
See Table 1.1 (in Huneeus 2014: 35) which shows how deviant Chile’s turnout progression has been compared to its neighbours, and for more detail, UNDP.

8. 8.
In Russell Fitzgibbon’s 1960s surveys of the state of democracy in Latin America Chile was consistently placed among the two or three “most democratic” polities (Froman 1967), and in an American Sociological Review study of 77 countries (Cutright 1963: 258) Chile rated among the top five in terms of “political development” (ibid. 1963: 258).

9. 9.
In the terminology of Huneeus the “semi-sovereign” democracy ended with the defeat of the Concertacion in 2009, and the social protests that erupted after 2011.

10. 10.
This view can be detected, for example, in the work of Manuel Antonio Garreton (2012).

References

Advert. 2012. New Statesman: London, April 30, 51.

Cutright, Phillips. 1963. National Political Development: Measurement and Analysis. American Sociological Review 28 (2): 253–264.

Crossref

Donoso, Sofia, and Marisa von Bulow. 2017. Social Movements: Organization, Trajectories, and Political Consequences. Santiago: COES/Espacio Publico.

Froman, Lewis A. 1967. An Analysis of Public Policies in Cities. The Journal of Politics 29 (1): 94–108.

Crossref

Garreton, Manuel Antonio. 2003. Incomplete Democracy: Political Democratization in Chile and Latin America. North Carolina: Chapel Hill.

Garreton, Manuel Antonio. 2012. Neoliberalismo Corregido y Progresismo Limitado: los Gobiernos de la Concertacion en Chile, 1990–2010. Santiago: Arcis.

Huneeus, Carlos. 2014. La Democracia Semisoberana: Chile Despues de Pinochet. Santiago: Taurus.

Luna, Juan P. 2014. Segmented Representation: Political Party Strategies in Unequal Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crossref

Morlino, Leonardo. 2011. Changes for Democracy: Actors, Structures, Processes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crossref

Soto, Francisco, and Yanina Welp. 2017. Los ‘Dialogos Ciudadanos’: Chile Ante el Giro Deliberative. Santiago: LOM.

Valenzuela, Arturo. 1977. Political Brokers in Chile: Local Government in a Centralized Polity. Durham: Duke University Press.

V-Dem Data. https://www.v-dem.net/en/data/data-version-7-1/. Accessed November 2, 2016.

World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators. http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?Report_Name=WGI-Table&Id=ceea4d8b#. Accessed November 2, 2016.

© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_8

8. Democratic Resilience in South Korea and Taiwan

Joseph Wong1

(1)

University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Joseph Wong

Email: joe.wong@utoronto.ca

Larry Diamond (2015) in his influential article “Facing up to the Democratic Recession” contended that by the early 2010s, the once-unwavering march to the “end of history” was slowing down and, in fact, appeared to be coming to an end. Even democratic East Asia, where South Korea and Taiwan were once thought to be unshakably consolidated democracies, was not immune to the so-called global democratic recession. Cracks in East Asia’s democracies had begun to show. Prior to that, in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, the vast majority of people living in Korea and Taiwan “desired democracy” and believed in the “suitability” of democracy for their societies. Furthermore, around 80% of those surveyed in Korea and Taiwan also believed that democracy would persist into the future. In Taiwan, less than three per cent of those surveyed foresaw a reversal to authoritarianism; in Korea, this figure stood at just 0.3%. At the turn of the century, citizens in both countries expected their future regimes to become more, not less, democratic (Chu et al. 2008).

But as Diamond points out, though East Asians continue to value elections, political rights and civil liberties, they are nonetheless feeling increasingly short changed when it comes to the effective rule of law and government transparency. In spring 2014, the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan during which student protestors occupied the Executive Yuan in Taipei in opposition to the purportedly secret government negotiations over Cross-Strait economic agreements with China, reflected the growing dissatisfaction with the lack of government transparency and the weakening of the rule of law. Likewise, the more recent political scandals surrounding the Korean President Park Geun-Hye, which forced her removal from office in 2016, are further examples of corruption at the highest levels of government. In other words, democracy in East Asia has not fared as well as was expected a decade earlier. And though the prospects of democratic reversals remain unlikely in both South Korea and Taiwan, at least in the near and medium term, the quality of democracy as understood by citizens themselves appears to be in decline.

The first part of this chapter reviews the factors that are often attributed to East Asia’s democratic deterioration. These are: global trends in democratic decline; the onset and consequences of the financial crisis along with the challenges of economic adjustment; and the growing attractiveness of the “China Model” of development, a model that is resolutely anti-democratic though economically successful.

The rest of the chapter argues, however, that despite the many factors that seem to be contributing to democratic deterioration in the region, the fact is that Korea and Taiwan are tremendously resilient democracies. Much as was the case a decade earlier, the threat of democratic reversals remains weak. Turnovers in power, in both the presidency and the legislature, continue to be regular and are accepted by both voters and outgoing administrations. Losing elections has become a consistent feature of democracy in Korea and Taiwan. Furthermore, civil societies in both countries remain robust and are an effective check on government. The factors that supposedly militate against democracy have not proven to be overwhelmingly strong. Simply put, claims of democratic deterioration are overstated.

The core argument made in this chapter is that democratic resilience in Korea and Taiwan is a function of how the two countries transitioned to democracy decades earlier. In other words, democratic resilience today is due largely to the extraordinary foundation laid at the time of transition. Specifically, in Korea and Taiwan the former authoritarian ruling parties—the Democratic Justice Party (DJP) in Korea, and the Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan—conceded democratic reforms from a position of relative strength, allowing them to lead the transition process. In both cases, the ruling parties at the time of democratic transition were strong and to a certain degree even popular and legitimate. They were not parties in crisis, even though serious opposition was on the rise. Not surprisingly then, both of the incumbent ruling parties won their respective founding elections, and in the case of Taiwan by a significant margin. As one observer of Taiwan’s democratization put it, Taiwan’s political system transitioned from a “one-party dictatorship” to a “one-party dominant” democracy (Tien 1989: 64).

Significantly, conceding with strength did not result in the perpetuation of authoritarian dictatorship. The incumbent ruling parties did not become democratic spoilers, nor did their defeated oppositions defect from democracy. Several reasons account for this. First, the ruling DJP in Korea and the KMT in Taiwan moderated their political economic reform agendas as they transitioned from authoritarian parties to democratic ones. Both parties moderated their policies because the rules of the game had changed. Above all, the parties could no longer rely on repression to stamp out opposition, but needed to win political support instead. By moderating their agendas, and in effect expanding the spectrum of political and economic cleavages, the dominant parties neutralized the prevailing anti-regime cleavage, which in turn contributed to political stability and consolidation. In other known democratizing scenarios, a persistent anti-regime cleavage exacerbated by a ruling party unwilling to reform can potentially undermine the processes of democratic consolidation. Finally, the fact that the former authoritarian parties in Korea and Taiwan confronted early electoral defeats, though importantly not crippling ones, was critical to safeguarding against the potential rise of democratic spoilers. The authoritarian-turned democratic parties have quickly “learned to lose.”

Democratic Recession in East Asia?

Evidence of Democratic Decline

The notion that democracy is under threat in East Asia has arisen against a backdrop of a global democratic recession. Since the end of the high tide of democratization during the “Third Wave,” growth in the number of new democracies has stalled. Since 2006, the number of democracies worldwide has remained steady, with neither a large drop nor an increase in the total number of regimes classified as democratic. Considering that the “quality” of democracy has been also in decline as various indices show, one could characterize, as Diamond does, the “last decade as a period of at least incipient decline in democracy” (Diamond 2015: 142). Since the start of the 2000s, the number of democratic breakdowns and authoritarian reversals also has been on the rise, especially as one-time borderline cases (such as Russia) have become indisputably non-democratic. In many regions, especially in Africa and Central Asia, there has been a decline in measures of civil and political rights. Perceptions of good governance and transparency have become increasingly negative in democracies, including in East Asia. According to the World Bank’s scores for governance, South Korea and Taiwan perform quite poorly when it comes the “rule of law” and “control of corruption,” scoring below their other OECD comparators. Observers of Korean and Taiwanese democratic politics have long noted the challenges of combating corruption. In the case of Taiwan, there is quite explicit electoral corruption (Chin 2003); in Korea, the recent impeachment of President Park highlights the legacies of government and business collusion.

The sense that democracy is in decline in East Asia is compounded by the recent economic slowdowns in Korea and Taiwan. During the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, for instance, Koreans expressed nostalgia for the autocratic Park Chung-Hee era, remembered as Korea’s golden age of growth and economic development. Since the early 2000s, industrial East Asian economies experienced an overall slowdown in terms of economic growth. As mature industrial economies, rather than “take-off” economies, Korea and Taiwan are currently dealing with the challenges of transitioning towards new knowledge-intensive industrial sectors as well as a more robust value-added tertiary economy. The imperatives of this transition have been amplified as lower-priced manufacturers in late-late developing countries have started to outpace Korean and Taiwanese firms in both price and quality (Wong 2011). As a result, sunset industries are fading faster than sunrise industries emerge. Unemployment rates are also rising in Korea and Taiwan, especially among the young, better educated and skilled workers. Consumer prices have risen more quickly than wages, leading to distressing levels of consumption inequality (Chui and Kwon 2012). Income inequality across social classes and inter-generationally is on the rise as well, contributing to new political pressures, especially given that Korea and Taiwan were once paragons of “growth with equity” (Ka and Selden 1986; Kuo et al. 1981). Demographic shifts and a rapidly ageing society also are putting pressure on the social security systems in health care, old-age income security (pensions) and long-term care for the elderly (Peng and Wong 2008).

A more sanguine interpretation of Korea’s and Taiwan’s current economic challenges is that they are characteristics of mature post-industrial economies. Korea and Taiwan are both rich countries where eight to ten per cent growth rates are neither sustainable nor should be expected to continue. The two countries’ economies are diversified. They can no longer focus solely on manufacturing and assembling within global production networks. Unemployment and the segmentation or dualization of labour markets between formal and informal sectors especially for younger workers are on the rise in every OECD country (Rueda 2007), just as strains on the welfare state and the redistributive capacity of governments are constrained in every advanced economy (Emmenegger et al. 2012).

Still, many in East Asia understand the current economic slowdown and the challenges of adjustment to be a function of the demise of the post-war developmental state. As Chalmers Johnson (1999; see also Wade 1990) points out, the developmental state in East Asia benefited from a “hard state,” or an authoritarian state. Critics contend that democratization in East Asia has undermined the coordinative capacity of the government. Intense legislative contestation and regular political turnovers during the democratic era have contributed to policy paralysis where once the developmental state was able to “lead” economic growth through decisive policy actions and uncontested continuity of the state. At the same time, the proliferation of interest groups and an emboldened civil society have resulted in a less autonomous, even captured, state apparatus (Wu 2007). Hence, whereas the developmental state was the model of state autonomy and technocratic capacity (Skocpol 1985; Amsden 1989) responsible for post-war growth, democratization has contributed to the economic malaise both countries currently face. The authoritarian nostalgia that came about soon after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis has re-emerged.

Larry Diamond highlights that one of the drivers of the “democratic recession” is the “authoritarian resurgence” in recent years. As he points out, this resurgence is not only a result of failed democracies around the globe but also of the strengthening of existing autocratic regimes, most notably in China. The so-called “China Model” (Bell 2016) is hailed by some as an alternative to liberal capitalism and democracy. China’s economic development strategy with its combination of economic openness and state-led capitalism managed by a single party is increasingly celebrated as an effective model for late-late development. As Daniel Bell (2016) and others argue, the China Model hinges on the rejection of liberal democratic practices. Bell contends that democracies are not the only legitimate form of government and that elections are not necessarily the most effective way to choose a nation’s leaders. In fact, he contends elections can often result in poor governance and the selection of unskilled leaders. In this regard, the rise of the China Model substantiated by China’s unprecedented economic growth and development is an implicit endorsement of authoritarianism and an explicit critique of liberal democracy.

Yet China explicitly maintains that it does not seek to propagate its political economic system and that contrary to the hubris of America’s democracy promotion efforts China does not mean to present itself as a model to be emulated by other countries (Williamson 2012). Still, China recognizes the power of attraction of its model. Autocratic regimes, such as China’s, “are pushing back against democratic norms by also using the instruments of soft power – international media, China’s Confucius Institutes, lavish conferences and exchange programs – to try to discredit Western democracies and democracy in general, while promoting their own models and norms” (Diamond 2015: 151). The authoritarian system is propagated through the extension of China’s economic might. The announcement of the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative, which will entail billions of dollars of infrastructural investment westward through Central and Southeast Asia to north Africa and into Europe, is seen as China’s attempt to establish its leadership in regions that welcome Chinese investment and are trending away from democracy. Massive amounts of foreign direct investment and development aid to African countries are endearing autocratic regimes on that continent to China and to its regional leadership, and the recent creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is viewed as an extension of China’s economic influence in the region and as a challenge to the Western-dominated UN system. Simply put, what was once a democratic Japan-dominated (and by extension Korea and Taiwan) region, is becoming a more China-centred Asia.

Evidence of Democratic Resilience

Despite what appear to be distressing trends in democratic recession in South Korea and Taiwan, the fact of the matter is that both polities remain resolutely democratic in practice. Freedom House scores in the two democracies have remained steady. In terms of “political rights” —comprising measures of the electoral process, political participation and government—Korea and Taiwan scored 36 (of 40) in 2005 and again in 2010. With respect to “civil liberties” scores, Korea improved from 49 (of 60) in 2005 to 50 in 2010. Taiwan, on the other hand, regressed somewhat from a very high score of 55 in 2005 (which was the highest among all East Asian democracies) to 51 in 2010, with slight drops in measures of freedom of expression (16–14), rights of association (11–10) and rule of law (15–14). Only Japan, Asia’s oldest democracy, ranked slightly higher than Korea and Taiwan, with scores of 37 for political rights and 51 for civil liberties.

Compared to the region’s non-democracies, however, the contrast is stark. On political rights, in 2010 Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand scored between 12 and 20 (out of 40), and in civil liberties between 29 and 31 (out of 60). China, the region’s largest autocracy, scored just 3 out of 40 in measures of political rights and 15 out of 60 in terms of civil liberties. Despite perceptions of democratic decline in East Asia’s young democracies, South Korea and Taiwan have not only demonstrated high levels of democratic resilience over time, but are in practice considerably more democratic than their autocratic neighbours.

Samuel Huntington famously noted that a transitional democracy is consolidated when it successfully achieves two turnovers in power (Huntington 1991). Both South Korea and Taiwan have passed this two-turnover test. In December 1992, Kim Young-Sam won the Korean presidential elections, marking the handover of power from former General Roh Tae-Woo to a civilian politician and former dissident. One term later, in 1997, opposition leader Kim Dae-Jung won the presidency and the opposition National Congress for New Politics (NCNP) took power. A decade later the conservative Grand National Party (GNP) and its candidate Lee Myung-Bak won the presidency in December 2007. Similarly in Taiwan, administrative turnovers have been common since democratization. Though the ruling KMT retained power in the early stages of Taiwan’s democratic transition, opposition leader Chen Shui-Bian won the presidency in 2000 and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) held executive power. After serving two terms, in 2008 the DPP’s candidate was defeated by the KMT’s Ma Ying-Jeou, who governed as Taiwan’s president until 2016 when the DPP’s Tsai Ing-Wen won back the presidency. Administrative turnovers have been not only common and regular in democratic Korea and Taiwan, but they also have been relatively peaceful. Importantly, the outgoing governments have accepted election results. In other words, incumbent dominant parties and politicians have “learned to lose,” which is a fundamental though often underappreciated characteristic of democracy (Friedman and Wong 2006; see also Przeworski 1991).

The two democracies have also persisted despite severe and constant existential threats. The North Korean dictatorship poses a continual threat to South Korea, which is compounded by the former regime’s efforts to strengthen its nuclear capabilities. Meanwhile in Taiwan, mainland China has mobilized a considerable military arsenal poised to attack the island in the event Taiwan unilaterally declares any moves towards de jure independence. The 2005 Anti-Secession law passed by the Chinese government gives that regime a legal basis to launch such an attack. In other words, both Korea and Taiwan confront constant existential threats that under some circumstances could lead to instability or a more assertive military. We know of cases where the military gained extraordinary influence, and even took over the reins of political power, when their country was under such threat. And yet in Korea and Taiwan, the military has remained firmly under the control of the elected civilian government.

Finally, Korea and Taiwan feature robust civil societies and a free media. The media and a free press have proliferated in both countries with media outlets increasingly commercialized and free from state control. Civil society, and specifically the spread of social movements and interest-based groups, became a foundation for political participation in Korea and Taiwan. Public policy initiatives—from social to environmental to economic policies—are increasingly shaped through bottom-up societal input. In a study of health policy reform in Korea and Taiwan, for example, bureaucrats and legislators reported increased contact with societal groups and increasing levels of policy expertise and influence from civil society organizations (Wong 2004). In addition to scrutinizing policymaking institutions, social movement groups in both Korea and Taiwan are playing important roles in public protests against some government initiatives, and have assumed the roles of public watchdogs of legislative performance and corruption. Civil society mobilization in recent years, such as the Sunflower movement in Taiwan and the anti-Park demonstrations in Korea, reflect a commitment to democratic accountability rather than being a symptom of democratic decline as is popularly depicted. Civil society mobilization is a good thing for democracy.

There are several proximate reasons why democracy is resilient in Korea and Taiwan. For one, Korea’s and Taiwan’s democracy are no longer young democracies, having initiated their transitions several decades ago. The Roh Tae-Woo regime in Korea, for example, initiated democratic transition when it called for presidential elections in the summer of 1987, thirty years ago. Soon thereafter former dissidents Kim Young-Sam and Kim Dae-Jung competed against Roh in a three-way contest for the presidency. In Taiwan, the opposition DPP was formed in 1986, and the KMT regime lifted martial law the following year, paving the way for legislative elections in 1992.

In other words, in both places democratization started more than a generation ago. Studies of national identity and attitudes about democracy in Korea and Taiwan show that the current middle-aged generation identifies with liberal democracy and civic identity, rather than with authoritarianism and ethnic-based identities. For example, cohort survey data in South Korea show a generational pattern in terms of political attitudes, with younger generations manifesting a deeper commitment to democracy. For many people in Korea and Taiwan who did not live through the authoritarian period, or have limited memories of it, democracy is no longer exceptional. The norms of democracy have taken root.

Contrary to the appeal of the China Model in other parts of the developing world, the China “effect” has been relatively muted in the region, reflecting the history of enmity between China and its northeast Asian neighbours. In the case of Taiwan, the persistently dangerous tensions across the Strait have strained relations between the island and mainland China. The appeal of the authoritarian model is understandably weak in Taiwan whose identity is rooted in being the “anti-China” and priding itself on being democratic, pluralist, non-communist, and allied with USA. South Korea has had a similarly strained historical relationship with China, despite a very robust economic interdependence between the two countries. The Korean War, for instance, saw the peninsula fought over by the US and the communist allies. And though China has recently begun to shun the North Korean regime, it was only a few years ago that the Beijing government continued to refer to the Pyongyang regime as its “little brother.” Whereas North Korea is viewed to be within China’s sphere of influence, the Seoul regime is allied with the US. Understandably, the soft power attraction to the China model among South Koreans is weak.

China does not seek to propagate its authoritarian model to other countries (Williamson 2012). Given the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Maoist-Leninist origins the Beijing regime is sensitive, at least rhetorically, to overstepping bounds when it comes to national sovereignty. China positions itself as the leader of the developing world much as it did during the Maoist-era, even today. In its foreign policy proclamations, the Chinese government emphasizes that its foreign investment and development assistance initiatives, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the One Belt, One Road program, are not intended to export the Chinese model of development. In this respect, East Asia’s democracies such as Korea and Taiwan have been inured to the Chinese political system and immune to its model of development.

Conceding from Strength

Notwithstanding these proximate factors of democratic resilience in Korea and Taiwan, there are historically contingent factors that have, over time, contributed to democratic consolidation and persistence even in the face of the so-called global democratic recession. To phrase it differently, today’s democratic resilience in Korea and Taiwan rests upon a particular democratic foundation established during the transition period in the late 1980s. Contrary to conventional political science theory (see, e.g., Geddes 1999) democratic transition in Korea and Taiwan did not result from the collapse of their authoritarian regimes. Instead, the pathway to democracy in Korea and Taiwan was opened by the respective former authoritarian parties, which led the transition process and managed to maintain power in the new democratic era. This “democracy through strength” it is argued (Slater and Wong 2013), is a process that (counter-intuitively) transformed former authoritarian parties into normal democratic competitors, showing that “authoritarian successor parties” are not necessarily inimical to normalizing democracy (Slater and Wong, forthcoming); in fact, conceding democracy from strength has been critical for the resilience of democracy in Korea and Taiwan.

The DJP in Korea and Taiwan’s KMT were powerful political parties when they initiated democratic reform. The parties did, however, confront growing opposition signalling their hold on power, while likely unassailable, was nevertheless waning. Opposition-led street protests erupted during the summer of 1987 in Seoul. Hundreds of thousands of citizens mobilized as part of the minjung movement against the authoritarian regime. The outgoing President Chun Doo-Hwan chose General Roh Tae-Woo as his successor who was expected to continue the authoritarian regime. Surprisingly, in June of that year Roh announced that competitive elections for the presidency were to be held in December and would be followed by National Assembly elections in the spring of 1988. Korea’s democratization process thus commenced. Political prisoners were freed, civil society actors were mobilized, and former dissidents, Kim Young-Sam and Kim Dae-Jung, contested Korea’s founding election in 1987.

A similar kind of democratic opening was witnessed in Taiwan. During the fall of 1986 Taiwan’s opposition activists, who organized the tangwai movement, gathered at the Grand Hotel in Taipei to announce the formation of the DPP. Though the KMT had allowed independent candidates to run in local elections since the 1970s, opposition parties were not tolerated under the Martial Law then in force. Taiwan watchers reasonably figured that President Chiang would clamp down on the newly established DPP. The ruling party was expected to repress the opposition, as it had done before. But this time was different. Chiang chose not to repress, but to allow the DPP to form. The regime then lifted the Martial Law in 1987 and allowed the DPP to run candidates in local elections starting in 1989, followed by full legislative elections in 1992.

In both cases, the authoritarian incumbent regimes confronted growing opposition, domestically and internationally. In addition to the minjung and tangwai movements, Korea and Taiwan faced pressure from their main foreign patron and ally, the USA, to politically liberalize their political systems. The US state department, for instance, encouraged the DJP government in Korea to refrain from clamping down on opposition protestors in the summer of 1987. Taiwan’s government, meanwhile, found itself increasingly isolated as the USA and China began their rapprochement during the 1970s. In other words, the authoritarian regimes in Korea and Taiwan had arguably passed their “apex of power” and were experiencing a slow decline in terms of popular legitimacy.

It is important to stress, however, that neither regime was in any kind of crisis at the time, and that both conceded democratic reforms not from a position of weakness, but from a position of strength. Both the DJP and KMT governments held the military firmly in check. The economies of the two countries were growing at the time, and their industrial bases were diversifying during the 1980s. The fiscal capacity of each state was strong as well, as government spending was on the rise, while the aspirations of the middle classes were tied to the respective regimes. The two governments were able to take credit for steering the developmental state throughout the post-war period. The fact that economic growth in Korea and Taiwan remained relatively equitable, even into the 1980s, broadened the legitimacy and appeal of the authoritarian developmental state. In other words, democracy came about in relatively “good times” (Haggard and Kaufman 1995).

Both authoritarian parties were popular among voters prior to the democratic transition. During the 1985 legislative elections in Korea, the ruling DJP managed to gain the majority of legislative seats, while the KMT in Taiwan won nearly 70% of the popular vote in 1986. At the time of transition, the two regimes were not hanging on by a thread, did not concede democracy out of weakness, nor had they run out of options. By conceding democracy the respective regimes did not intend to give up power. Instead, they saw democratic competition as a means by which to retain their political dominance. The incumbent regimes were confident because they enjoyed a significant advantage over the emerging opposition; the DJP and KMT were not only strong in an absolute sense, they were stronger than the opposition in a relative sense. They enjoyed what has been termed as “victory confidence” (Slater and Wong 2013, 2017).

At the time of transition, the KMT was among the richest political parties in the world and controlled extensive clientelistic networks throughout the island. The party had created an electoral machine that dated back to the 1970s and was unlikely to be rivalled by a newly formed opposition party (Rigger 1999; Chao and Myers 1998). The KMT also retained the multi-member electoral district system, which gave the incumbent party an extraordinary advantage over the opposition, especially in the countryside where the party was historically popular. In other words, the KMT by conceding democracy had no intention of giving up power. The KMT took 59% of the seats in the 1992 Legislative Yuan election, and the KMT’s Lee Teng-Hui won the presidency in 1996 with 54% of the popular vote. The opposition won around one-third of the votes. The DJP in Korea was less well-endowed than the KMT at the time, but was nonetheless fairly confident that voters for the opposition would split electoral support for Kim Young-Sam and Kim Dae-Jung. The DJP government in Korea held onto power after the founding elections in 1987 and 1988, winning just over one-third of the vote. As expected, opposition voters split their support between the two Kims, giving the incumbent party and Roh Tae-Woo control over the executive branch, as well as a plurality of seats in the National Assembly. In both these cases, as it turned out, victory confidence was not unfounded.

Resisting Democratic Spoilers

The political logic of conceding with strength highlights several important counter-intuitive paradoxes. For one, strong dominant and authoritarian parties possess the power to resist democratization, but when faced with an emerging opposition it is precisely that strength which makes it most likely to successfully lead democratic transition. Both the DJP and KMT conceded democratic reform though it was never their intention to concede power. Conceding with strength means the incumbent ruling party does not expect to lose, and paradoxically, that is why the authoritarian successor party is more likely to adhere to the democratic rules of the game.

A second paradox emerges when we consider the possibility that the same incumbent ruling party might eventually become a democratic spoiler, a potential threat to democratic consolidation. We might expect such an outcome for three reasons. First, the incumbent ruling party, having won the founding election, may revert to authoritarian means of consolidating its power. Authoritarian creep is common in many cases where the authoritarian-turned-democratic ruling party continues to dominate after an initial democratic breakthrough is achieved. Second, the continued dominance of the former authoritarian party can exacerbate, rather than mitigate, the prevailing anti-regime cleavage that had mobilized the opposition in the first place. Democracies are more likely to be consolidated when the basis of electoral competition between the ruling and opposition parties shifts from questions that strike at the heart of the regime’s legitimacy, to other political and economic cleavages. And third, incumbent ruling parties will eventually be defeated if democracy is to be tested and institutionalized. Former authoritarian parties can become democratic spoilers if they are unwilling to accept their electoral defeat. Put another way, democracy is threatened if the incumbent ruling parties do not “learn to lose.”

Despite the many reasons for victory confidence, Korea’s DJP and, even more surprisingly, the dominant KMT in Taiwan, did not eventually become democratic spoilers. Once they survived their initial democratic contests, the two parties did not start backsliding towards authoritarianism. As will be argued below, the two former authoritarian parties moderated their political economic agendas soon after democratic breakthrough in order to win political support. They eschewed past practices in authoritarian repression in favour of democratic practices to win elections. In doing so, the ruling and opposition parties in Korea and Taiwan broadened the spectrum of contested political economic issues. Partisan re-alignment shifted the basis of political competition away from the regime cleavage towards other electoral cleavages, thus normalizing democratic competition. And finally, both the DJP (and its successor, the Democratic Liberal Party or DLP) in Korea and Taiwan’s KMT were eventually defeated in national elections. In both cases, the former ruling parties accepted their respective defeats. They were forced to learn to lose, but with the expectation that they could win again. These three democratic developments—moderation, partisan re-alignment, and learning to lose—were not only critical in mitigating the risks of democratic reversal during the early years of democratic reform in Korea and Taiwan, but were vitally important in establishing a democratic foundation for democratic resilience today. In short, the DJP and KMT became normal democratic parties competing in normal democracies.

Political Economic Moderation

The DJP and KMT became normal parties by moderating their political economic agendas, strengthening their reform credentials and adapting to the electoral game. Moderation by the ruling party was clearer in Taiwan. Soon after Chiang Ching-Kuo’s death in 1988, Vice-President and party leader Lee Teng-Hui was made President. Though he was an ally of Chiang’s, Lee was not a Chinese mainlander, but ethnic Taiwanese. Hence, the conservative mainland Chinese wing of the KMT, known as the “non-mainstream” faction, was deeply suspicious of Lee and sought to depose him for fear his “local” (i.e. Taiwanese) origins would compromise the leading role of the KMT. The threat of the KMT becoming a democratic spoiler hinged on the fortunes of the non-mainstream faction.

In 1990, Lee, in what proved a shrewd political move, convened the National Affairs Conference (NAC) by bringing together opposition politicians, scholars and civil society actors to reform the political system. During the NAC political elites from across the political spectrum drew up a blueprint for political reform putting into place democratic measures such as the direct election of the President; constitutional reform; and a timeline for the elimination of institutional vestiges of the mainland Republic of China regime. The NAC therefore became the foundation for Taiwan’s democracy, and the KMT, under Lee’s leadership, positioned itself at the helm of the democratic reform process (Chao and Myers 1998). Importantly, Lee used the NAC to marginalize the non-mainstream faction, the hard-line holdovers within the KMT who opposed democratic reform.

The KMT not only moderated its political agenda, but it also broadened its electoral appeal by legislating more inclusive social and economic policies. The KMT deepened Taiwan’s welfare system, even though the ruling party was notionally an economically conservative and fiscally lean party when it came to social policies and government spending in the past. Yet soon after the democratic transition began, government spending on social policies increased markedly. Existing social programs, such as labour insurance and old-age income security schemes, quickly expanded their benefits coverage to larger segments of the population, including self-employed workers and farmers. New labour laws were gradually introduced by the KMT. In a political about-face, the KMT announced the creation of a National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme in 1988, just a few years after the same KMT regime had rejected similar proposals for comprehensive medical insurance reform. The NHI was implemented in 1995, as promised by the KMT government, expanding health insurance benefits to self-employed urban and rural workers and their dependents, including non-employed children and retired persons. The NHI was a tremendous success that won the KMT government popular support (Chiang and Cheng 1997).

A similar pattern of moderation evolved within the Korean ruling party after the start of democratic transition, especially in terms of economic policies. Opposition activists in Korea demanded not only political change but also economic reform (Lee 2007). The DJP government responded quickly. Soon after Roh’s historic pronouncements in the summer of 1987, the Korean government immediately expanded its medical insurance schemes. In 1988 health insurance was extended to those living in rural areas. That year the government announced legislation for a national pensions program. After the founding Assembly elections in 1988, the DJP government universalized the NHI system by extending coverage to all urban self-employed workers in 1989 (Wong 2004). Like the KMT, the former Korean conservative party transformed into a more socially and economically moderate one.

The two authoritarian successor parties won their founding elections in Korea and Taiwan. Democratic competition compelled those parties to adapt and respond to new political incentives. The rules of the game changed. Specifically, the democratic rules of the game, such as electoral competition, forced the KMT and DJP to win electoral support. In the past, the authoritarian logic of maintaining power was the suppression of dissent; democracy, on the other hand, required the KMT and DJP to adapt to a new logic of maintaining political power through winning political support. Therefore the ruling parties were forced to broaden their appeal by reforming the political system and moderating their socio-economic programs. They became normal democratic parties.

Normalizing Democratic Competition

Soon after the KMT conceded democratic reforms in 1986, the conservative “non-mainstream” faction emerged in opposition to KMT leader Lee Teng-Hui’s reform initiatives. The “non-mainstream” faction sought to re-establish KMT dominance by opposing the dismantling of—even revitalizing—many authoritarian institutions inherited by the party. Had Lee not convened the NAC, which allowed him to politically marginalize the hardliners within the party, the conservative faction may have emerged a potential democratic spoiler. The Lee-led mainstream faction ultimately prevailed, however, and the KMT, as outlined above, moderated its political and economic agendas soon after the democratization process began.

The political transition in Korea was considerably more uncertain and the threat of a re-consolidated authoritarian party was more likely at the outset of democratic transition. The DJP was narrowly elected when Roh Tae-Woo won the presidential election in 1987 with just over one-third of the vote, and the DJP controlled only a plurality of National Assembly seats after 1988. The DJP conceded from strength, but its win was nowhere as near decisive as that of the KMT. To be sure, democratic reform in Korea was in danger of de-railing in 1990 when Roh created a “grand conservative coalition” by merging the DJP, Kim Young-Sam’s Reunification Democratic Party (RDP) and the ultra-conservative National Democratic Republican Party (NRDP), to form the DLP. After the party merger, the DLP controlled the majority of seats in the legislature.

Kim Dae-Jung described the merger as a “coup d’état against democracy.” The new ruling party looked to be a potential democratic spoiler. However, the DLP suffered an electoral setback during the 1992 presidential and legislative elections. DLP leader Kim Young-Sam managed to win the presidency with 42% of the popular vote, more than Roh gained in 1987, but still well short of the majority Kim expected. The party fared worse in the Assembly contests as well. The DLP, which had controlled nearly three-quarters of the Assembly’s seats after the 1990 merger, won 39% of the legislature, a plurality but still a crushing blow for the ruling party. Meanwhile, Kim Dae-Jung’s opposition Party for Peace and Democracy (PPD) grew its share of legislative seats from 19% in 1988 to 29% in 1992.

In both Korea and Taiwan there were moments in the democratization process during which the threat of democratic spoilers emerged. And yet in both those countries, the threat of a return to authoritarianism was short-lived. Moreover, despite expectations that dominance by the former authoritarian parties would lead to a persistent anti-regime cleavage—a source of potential instability in a young democracy—in Korea and Taiwan both the ruling parties and the opposition adhered instead to the new democratic rules of the game. Neither party became a democratic spoiler. The anti-regime cleavage that mobilized the minjung opposition in Korea and the tangwai movement in Taiwan did not persist into the democratic era. Rather, democratic competition was quickly normalized.

Moderation by the DJP and KMT not only made the ruling parties more electable but it broadened the spectrum of contestable issues in democratic competition, thus shifting the bases of contestation away from the anti-regime cleavage towards new sources of competition. Issues such as national and regional identity, social welfare expansion, economic policy, industrial policy and restructuring, education, and so on, became new bases of democratic competition in Korea and Taiwan (Wong 2013; Steinberg and Shin 2006). Political parties, both governing and in opposition, structured their electoral campaigns around these cleavages. In Taiwan, for example, nuclear energy became a contested issue that differentiated the KMT from the DPP. In South Korea, heated debates surrounding its relationship with North Korea emerged as an important source of partisan competition. In both Korea and Taiwan, the emergence of new contestable issues prompted partisan re-alignment away from the anti-regime cleavage towards a broader spectrum of contestable issues and political, social and economic cleavages.

Learning to Lose

Both the incumbent ruling parties in Korea and Taiwan were forced to learn to lose. Although both the DJP and the KMT won their founding elections, they both faced electoral challenges early on. Roh Tae-Woo narrowly won the presidency with 34% of the popular vote in 1987, and the DJP won a plurality (as opposed to a majority) of National Assembly seats in 1988. Even the KMT, which easily won a majority in the 1992 Legislative Yuan elections, confronted the well-mobilized DPP opposition that consistently polled nearly 30% of the popular vote. The KMT’s Lee Teng-Hui, who is credited as being Taiwan’s champion of democratic reform, won the presidency in 1996 with 54% of the vote. The opposition mounted a significant challenge.

Electoral challenges to the ruling parties’ hold on power intensified in the 1990s. In Taiwan, Lee’s efforts to marginalize the non-mainstream faction hastened an eventual split within the KMT. In 1993 the New Party, made up primarily by Chinese mainlanders within the KMT, splintered off and weakened the ruling party’s dominance in Taiwan. Similarly in Korea, the DLP’s short-lived ascendancy after the coalition’s formation in 1990 came to an end in 1992 when the three-party coalition failed to regain its legislative dominance, as the opposition party, led by Kim Dae-Jung, gained a 10% boost in the number of seats won in the National Assembly.

Had the ruling parties won their founding elections in Korea and Taiwan by a landslide, virtually uncontested, then they might have become democratic spoilers. Conversely, if the ruling parties had been defeated by a landslide, their defeat could pave the way for an unchecked opposition to take hold of power. Neither outcome would have been a fortuitous starting point for democracy to eventually take root.

What happened in Korea and Taiwan instead, was that the respective ruling parties were forced early on to learn to compete and, more importantly, learn to lose. In Korea, the ruling DLP lost power to Kim Dae-Jung and his party in 1997; in Taiwan, the KMT candidate lost the 2000 presidential election to the DPP’s Chen Shui-Bian. In both countries, there was an alternation in power not long after they transited to democracy. However, it is significant that the former ruling parties having lost power soon after democratization were not defeated badly and remained competitive (Slater and Wong, forthcoming). They have thus learnt to lose because they were able to “stay in the game” despite their electoral defeat and expected to re-capture power in subsequent contests; they may have lost, but they were never out. Korea’s conservative party regained the presidency and National Assembly in the 2000s. The KMT’s Ma Ying-Jeou was elected President in 2008, after the DPP’s Chen had served two terms. During the DPP presidency, the KMT never lost control of the legislature. By learning to lose in order to win again, the former ruling parties did not have an incentive to be democratic spoilers, but instead had every incentive to become democratic competitors.

Conclusions

Larry Diamond was right to highlight the global trends working against the deepening of democracy around the world. Contrary to the optimism surrounding the Third Wave of democratization, we are in the midst of a global democratic recession. Against this backdrop of widespread democratic scepticism, it is understandable that democratic deficiencies in places such as Korea and Taiwan are emerging. In those two cases, however, the threat of democratic reversal has been exaggerated. The evidence suggests that democracy remains strong in Korea and Taiwan, and that there is little empirical reason to conclude these democracies are deconsolidating.

The resilience of democracy in Korea and Taiwan is not merely a function of their refusal to succumb to the current pressures for an authoritarian alternative. Their resilience is due in a large part to the paths the two places took to democratization decades earlier. Contrary to political science theories of democratization, the authoritarian regimes in Korea and Taiwan did not collapse, nor were the incumbent parties in an irreversible crisis at the time. What stands out in East Asia’s democratization is that the former authoritarian parties conceded democratic reform not because they had become so discredited they had no other choice but to give into an overwhelming democratic opposition, but because they were strong parties that could preserve their power better through democracy. As argued elsewhere (Slater and Wong 2013, forthcoming), the authoritarian regimes in Korea and Taiwan conceded democracy but they did not concede defeat; the DJP and KMT continued to govern even after democratic elections took place, and both ruling parties retained their power.

Democracy proceeded in relatively “good times” and the DJP and KMT remained powerful parties that ensured both political stability and democratic transitions that were not nearly as tumultuous as witnessed in other democratizing societies. What is remarkable, however, is that continuities in ruling party dominance did not result in the re-emergence of authoritarianism. Democracy through strength did not produce democratic spoilers. The winners and the losers of democracy in Korea and Taiwan stayed the course of democratic reform and have remained committed to the democratic rules the game.

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© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_9

9. Globalization and Political Legitimacy in Western Europe

Dieter Fuchs1   and Edeltraud Roller^2

(1)

Department of Social Sciences, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

(2)

Department of Political Science, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany

Dieter Fuchs

Email: dieter.fuchs@sowi.uni-stuttgart.de

Is there a legitimacy crisis in contemporary democracies? This question, asked since the beginning of the 1970s, has been currently undergoing a revival (Kriesi 2013; Fuchs and Escher 2015; Merkel 2015; Wessels 2016; Van Ham et al. 2017). For a long time, the question has been raised with reference to Western democracies only. Now, it is increasingly being posed for all democracies in the world. Larry Diamond (2015) claims a democratic recession is in progress; Arch Puddington and Tyler Roylance (2017) suggest that contemporary democracies face the dual threat of populists and autocrats; and Robert Foa and Joshua Mounk (2016, 2017) see signs of deconsolidation even in established democracies.

There are several reasons for the renaissance of this question. However, the most important one refers to globalization and its negative consequences (Kriesi 2013: 1–2). It is argued that globalization leads to an increasingly interdependent global society and is thereby undermining the autonomous problem-solving capacity of democratic nation states (Held et al. 1999; Habermas 2011). The resulting poorer performance serves as a rallying point for populist parties and politicians who propose simple solutions for complex societal problems. According to Erica Frantz (2017), populists are particularly responsible for undermining democracy worldwide. Yet the economic success of autocratic regimes like China and Singapore is another important factor. Through authoritarian politics and revitalization of own cultural traditions, these countries present themselves aggressively as an alternative to the West.

Ultimately, the question of whether and to what extent there is a legitimacy crisis in contemporary democracies has to be examined empirically. In the following, this question is examined for Western European democracies by drawing on Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk’s (2016, 2017) hypothesis suggesting signs of deconsolidation even for established Western democracies . Foa and Mounk refer to a decrease in citizens’ support for democracy since the mid-1990s, and they observe this decrease above all among young citizens, the so-called millennials (born between 1982 and 2000). If a legitimacy crisis exists even in the established Western democracies , then we can speak of a legitimacy crisis of democracy in general.

In the following, the legitimacy of Western European democracies is studied in the context of globalization. Three questions are examined: (1) Are there signs of fundamental legitimacy problems of liberal democracy in Western Europe? (2) Is citizens’ dissatisfaction with democracy in their country increasing in Western Europe? and (3) Can citizens’ dissatisfaction with democracy in their country be explained by factors related to globalization? In order to check whether a withdrawal from democracy is much more pronounced in the youngest cohort, these three questions are studied not only for the general citizenry but also for different age cohorts.

The analysis proceeds in several steps. First, the relationship between globalization and democracy is discussed. The discussion includes the issue of whether populism can be interpreted as a negative consequence of globalization and whether it constitutes a threat to democracy. Second, a conceptualization and measurement of legitimacy are suggested. The following steps are empirical and examine, respectively, the level and development of the legitimacy of democracy in general, and the level and development of citizens’ satisfaction with democracy in their country. The final (causal) question is examined by means of a regression analysis where satisfaction with democracy is the dependent variable and several factors related to globalization build the independent variables.

The concluding section of the chapter addresses the key question of whether there is a legitimacy crisis in Western European countries. In addition, the empirical findings for Germany and Sweden are highlighted and discussed as the two countries along with Chile, South Korea, South Africa, Turkey and Poland, constitute the core of the research project “Democracy under Threat: A Crisis of Legitimacy?” on which this book reports.

The empirical analyses include seventeen Western European countries, i.e. all Western member states of the European Union (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden) as well as Norway and Switzerland. It covers the time period from the turn of the millennium to 2014. The database includes three waves of the European Values Survey/World Values Survey (1999–2004, 2005–2009, 2010–2014) and seven waves of the European Social Survey (2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014).

Globalization and Democracy

The concept of globalization and the consequences of globalization for democratic nation states have been discussed at length in the theoretical introduction to this volume (Fuchs and Klingemann 2018). In the following, we will take up only those assumptions that are of relevance for our research questions, i.e. we will discuss the potential consequences of globalization for the legitimacy of Western European democracies.

Globalization is leading to an increasingly interdependent global society characterized by more and more intensive relationships, which are crossing the borders of nation states (Held 2006; Habermas 2011). Several dimensions of globalization are relevant for the legitimacy of democracy. Global economic competition is the most important one and involves at least two consequences for Western countries. On the one hand, the competition for increasingly scarce capital investments results in retrenchments of the welfare state. On the other hand, the economies of the Western countries are forced to concentrate on the production of knowledge-intensive goods and services (Spruyt et al. 2016). Consequently, globalization produces winners and losers at the individual level. While the winners of globalization have what it takes to engage in economic competition, such as cognitive, informational and professional resources, the losers of globalization, who are primarily individuals with low levels of education and qualifications, have either none or only a few such resources. In addition, the growing gap between the winners and the losers of globalization is increasing the levels of economic inequality in individual countries. These negative consequences of economic globalization are involving social and economic risks for a considerable part of the population and generate feelings of alienation from established politics on the part of the losers of globalization.

A second dimension of globalization of relevance to legitimacy is the increasing complexity of problems and the growing lack of transparency of the decision-making processes. The increasing complexity relates to the many problem areas that arise outside the nation states but nonetheless have repercussions within the nation states. This is especially true for ecological problems, international crime and terrorism, but also for problems related to the regulation of the globalized economy and the financial markets. In trying to solve these problems, or at least address them, significant decisions are taken by international organizations and committees, but the decision-making processes are not transparent to the citizens. Both, the complexity and the lack of transparency, lead to a cognitive and emotional overload for citizens who desire to reduce the complexity.

A third dimension of globalization refers to the flow of immigrants and refugees into Western European democracies from poor countries and from countries at war. The great number of immigrants and refugees arriving over a short period of time generate a feeling of a loss of control of own borders in several Western European countries. At the same time, the non-Western culture of the immigrants and refugees is often seen as a threat to one’s own national identity. In recent years, this dimension of globalization has become one of the most important issues of the political debate in Western European countries.

The above mentioned consequences of globalization serve as a point of reference for populist parties in Western Europe, and they are one of the reasons for the electoral successes of these parties in several Western European countries. What characterizes populism and to what extent does it draw on these consequences of globalization? Even though populism is an essentially contested concept, the following definition by Cas Mudde (2004) has now become largely established: “Populism is a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017: 6). By constructing an antagonism between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite” and by referring to the “general will,” populism pursues two goals. First, it puts forward the idea that the will of the people is simply not represented by the established elite. Second, it ascribes blame for political shortcomings to the “corrupt elite.” This rhetoric appeals especially to the losers of globalization; the European Union (EU) is another institution populist parties like to blame. They argue that the EU no longer takes into account the interests of one’s own nation and is undermining the sovereignty of the national demos. By pretending to express the general will of the people, populist parties thus promote the will of the losers of globalization.

These characteristics are valid for both left-wing populist parties (e.g. Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain) and right-wing populist parties (e.g. Front National in France, Party for Freedom in the Netherlands). However, right-wing populist parties are the more successful in Western Europe. They can be distinguished from left-wing populist parties by drawing a sharp boundary between the in-group and the out-group as they confront the homogeneity of their own nation with the otherness of immigrants and refugees of a different cultural origin (Mudde 2007).

The solutions offered by the populist parties are relatively simple. The first solution is to take up and enforce the general will of the people. The institutionalization of popular referenda is one way of doing this. The second solution is to adopt a position critical towards the EU and support a return to an autonomous nation state. The third solution is to demand a strict limitation of immigration and the assimilation of the “others” to the values and customs of the homogenous nation.

The pivotal question here is whether populist parties undermine the legitimacy of Western European democracies and, ultimately, whether they constitute a threat to these democracies. There are different positions taken on this issue. Frantz (2017) as well as Puddington and Roylance (2017) assume that such a threat does exist. Christóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (2012) suggests negative as well as positive consequences of populist parties for democracies. In his view, populists might even represent a corrective in Western European democracies as they include hitherto excluded groups and issues. Mudde (2013) dismisses the idea that populists are potentially dangerous to democracy by pointing out that populists support both the sovereignty of the people and majority rule, and that they act within party systems.

The negative consequences of globalization sketched above and the rise of populist parties who draw on these consequences for their own ends might give cause for concern that these phenomena lead to a legitimacy crisis in Western European democracies. This concern is reinforced by the analysis of Foa and Mounk (2016, 2017) who claim decreasing citizens’ support for democracy, above all among the youth. The following analysis will examine whether Foa and Mounk’s hypothesis is valid and whether a crisis of legitimacy, or at least an erosion of legitimacy, can be observed in Western European democracies.

Legitimacy of Democracy: Concepts and Indicators

The discussion about the legitimacy crisis of democracy has been attracting a lot of attention because of the supposed functions of legitimacy. The stability and the functioning of democracy are depending largely on the legitimacy of democracy. Therefore, it is important to determine how to conceptualize and how to measure legitimacy. In this chapter, the conceptualization proceeds in two steps. First, a distinction is made between objective legitimacy and subjective legitimacy. Second, legitimacy is located in a hierarchical model of support for democracy. Conceptualizing legitimacy is a prerequisite for its valid measurement and for the empirical analysis of the question whether there is a legitimacy crisis in Western European democracies.

The core meaning of legitimacy is the justification of a political regime with normative reasons. The legitimacy of a democracy can be assessed in two ways. First, theorists determine the criteria to define democracy and apply these criteria for evaluating the legitimacy of a democracy. This form can be called objective legitimacy. It is distinguished from a second form called subjective legitimacy, where citizens determine their own criteria for evaluating the legitimacy of a regime. Above all, subjective legitimacy is of relevance for the supposed functions of legitimacy because only if the citizens no longer judge a democratic regime as legitimate, its stability will be threatened. In conceptualizing subjective legitimacy, most authors refer to David Easton (Fuchs et al. 1995; Dalton 2004; Norris 2011; Wessels 2016; Van Ham et al. 2017). According to Easton (1965, 1975), the persistence of a regime depends on the diffuse support of citizens, and legitimacy is one type of a diffuse support. Easton (1975: 451) defines legitimacy as follows: “Legitimacy reflects the fact that in some vague or explicit way [a person] sees these objects as conforming to his own moral principles, his own sense what is right and proper in the political sphere.” A crucial attribute of this concept of legitimacy is its independence from outputs, i.e. the democratic regime is supported for its own sake because the citizens view the regime as conforming to his or her own value orientations. The often used notion of input legitimacy and output legitimacy (Scharpf 2009) does not make any sense with regard to Easton’s definition.

Easton’s general theory of the political system is applicable not only to democracies but also to autocracies. This includes the possibility that individuals are not committed to democratic values but to autocratic ones. Consequently, four different constellations of the relationship between political culture (value orientations of the citizens) and institutional structure can be distinguished (Fig. 9.1). When a democratic culture and a democratic regime are present in a country, then the regime is legitimate. When a democratic culture and an autocratic regime exist, the regime is illegitimate. When an autocratic culture is present in an autocratic regime, the regime is legitimate. And finally, when an autocratic culture exists in a democratic regime, the regime is illegitimate from the citizens’ perspective.

Fig. 9.1  Institutional structure and political culture

(Source Own depiction)

Our study asks for the legitimacy of democratic regimes in Western European countries. For a more precise determination of legitimacy, we rely on a hierarchical model of support for democracy (Fig. 9.2). The model distinguishes between three hierarchically ordered levels of a democratic system. The highest level refers to culture, the second level refers to the regime, and the lowest level is constituted by actors. Attitudinal constructs are assigned to all three levels. In the case of culture, this refers to a commitment to democratic values. Democratic values include the value of democracy (rule of the people) as well as values that are closely linked to democracy such as freedom and equality of citizens. The first definition of legitimacy can be made at the cultural level. [1] It holds that the more citizens of a country are committed to democratic values, the higher the legitimacy of democracy as a rule of government. In this case, legitimacy does not refer to the democracy of one’s own country. Hence, at the cultural level the preference for democracy and the legitimacy of democracy are identical.

Fig. 9.2  Hierarchical model of support for democracy

(Source Based on Fuchs 2007: 166)

A further definition of legitimacy, which is located at the level of the regime and is labelled legitimacy of the democratic regime of one’s own country, follows directly from Easton: The more citizens of a country see congruence between their democratic values and the democratic regime of their own country, the higher the legitimacy of this democratic regime. The second attitudinal construct located at the level of regime, which is the evaluation of the performance of the democratic regime of one’s own country, also stems from Easton. He postulates a second type of diffuse support, which he names “trust.” Trust is defined as a generalized evaluation of the performance of the regime of one’s own country: “Trust will be stimulated by the experiences that members have of the authorities over time” (Easton 1975: 484). This generalization over time and for several actors results in an evaluation of performance that decouples from the actors and is attributed to the regime. In contrast to this generalized evaluation of performance or effectiveness (to use Lipset’s term 1960), satisfaction with the specific political actors and their everyday outputs refers to the actors at the lowest level of the hierarchical model. Easton (1965) named this attitude “specific support.”

Two directions of influence are possible between these different attitudes. A transfer of value orientations, or an overflow of values, from top to bottom as well as a generalization of experience from bottom to top. Notably, the level of consolidation of democracy determines which of those two directions dominates. When a democratic culture with the corresponding values is deeply rooted in the majority of citizens, an overflow from top to bottom is likely. Conversely, when democratic values are not deeply rooted in a new democracy, a generalization of experience from bottom to top is probable.

Indicators of legitimacy for both levels of culture and the regime are required for our empirical analysis. An empirical analysis of attitudes located at the level of actors is not necessary to answer our research questions. In principle, satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the political actors could be absorbed either by re-election or voting them out of office.

In order to measure legitimacy of democracy as a rule of government (level of culture), the following two indicators from the European Values Survey/World Values Survey are used:

I’m going to describe various types of political systems and ask what you think about each as a way of governing this country. For each one, would you say it is a very good, fairly good, fairly bad or very bad way of governing this country? 1. Having a democratic political system; 2. Having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections.

The first indicator “having a democratic political system” measures democracy as the normatively preferred type of government, independently from the specific type of democracy implemented in one’s own country. The second indicator “having a strong leader” measures approval of democracy in general when the statement is rejected. On the other hand, it measures a preference for autocracy when the statement is approved.

The available comparative studies do not include any indicators measuring the legitimacy of the democratic regime of one’s own country (level of regime). [2] The most commonly used indicator asks for satisfaction with the functioning of democracy. The following empirical analysis is based on the indicator from European Social Survey: “And on the whole, how satisfied are you with the way democracy works in [country]? 0 = extremely dissatisfied … 10 = extremely satisfied.” This indicator does not refer explicitly to the legitimacy of the institutional structure of democracy. Instead, it refers to the performance or effectiveness of the democratic regime. Nevertheless, the indicator is of relevance for the question of legitimacy. In the long run, enduring dissatisfaction with the performance of democracy in one’s own country might result in negative repercussions for the legitimacy of this democracy and, ultimately, for the legitimacy of democracy in general. Hence, satisfaction with democracy can be viewed as a kind of early warning indicator.

Legitimacy of Democracy in Western Europe

The empirical analysis starts with the first question of whether there are signs of fundamental legitimacy problems of liberal democracies in Western Europe. At the level of culture, democracy itself is a core value of a democratic system. The commitment to this value can be measured by the question asking whether democracy is preferred as a rule of government. As shown in Fig. 9.3, in almost all Western European countries the preference for democracy is at 90% and higher. Only in Great Britain in 1999 and 2005/2009 and in Ireland in 2008 the values are slightly lower (for the dates of the surveys, see Table 9.2 in the Appendix). If the negative consequences of globalization have had repercussions on the preference for democracy, then a decrease in this preference would have to be observed over time. However, in almost all countries such a decrease cannot be determined at all or only to a very small extent. And in some countries, there is even an increase in the preference for democracy over time.

Fig. 9.3  Preference for democracy (Response categories “very good” and “fairly good”)

(Source European Values Survey/World Values Survey 1999–2004, 2005–2009, 2010–2014)

Signs of a possible authoritarian challenge of democracy would be indicated by an increase in preference for a strong leader (Fig. 9.4). In this case, the differences between the countries are much larger than in the case of the preference for democracy. More than 30% of the citizens in Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain prefer a strong leader. In Portugal in 2008, the figure was even higher than 50%, and in Spain in 2011, it reached almost 50%. Both countries were particularly affected by the financial crisis. It is interesting, however, that in Greece and Italy, the two other countries affected badly by the crisis, the percentage of preference for autocracy was very low and has not increased in the course of time. An increase in the preference for a strong leader can be observed in a total of six countries: Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden and Spain. The increase is very clear in Portugal and Spain, two of the countries frequently referred to as the “crisis countries” during the financial crisis (17 and 20 percentage points, respectively).

Fig. 9.4  Preference for autocracy (strong leader) (Response categories “very good” and “fairly good”)

(Source European Values Survey/World Values Survey 1999–2004, 2005–2009, 2010–2014)

In some countries, a substantial majority prefers democracy as a rule of government, but at the same time a considerable number of citizens favour the authoritarian alternative of a strong leader. An unambiguous support of democracy exists when democracy is preferred and at the same time a strong leader is rejected. Figure 9.5 depicts the percentages of respondents for this combination. With one exception, in all Western European countries the percentage is above the 50% threshold, i.e. a relative majority of citizens fully supports democracy. [3] The exception is Portugal in 2008, where the value is just over 40%. Over the course of time, a clear decrease was recorded in the three “crisis countries”: Ireland, Portugal and Spain (13 or 15 and 20 percentage points, respectively). In three other countries—Austria, Belgium and Sweden—a moderate decrease can be observed (8 percentage points). These are all the six countries for which an increase in the preference for a strong leader was noted.

Fig. 9.5  Unambiguous support of democracy (difference between democracy and autocracy i.e. proportion of citizens who prefer democracy as rule of government (“very good” and “fairly good”) and at the same time reject a strong leader (“fairly bad” and “very bad”)

(Source European Values Survey/World Values Survey 1999–2004, 2005–2009, 2010–2014))

One of the confounding findings of the Foa and Mounk study (2016, 2017) is that especially the younger cohorts show a decline in preference for democracy and an increase in preference for autocracy in both the USA and some European countries. These findings can be checked against the latest available data from the European Values Survey/World Values Survey for four countries: Germany (2013), the Netherlands (2012), Sweden (2011) and Spain (2011). As shown in Fig. 9.6, no linear trend of a diminishing preference for democracy can be observed for any of the five age cohorts (the classification of the cohorts is based on Grasso 2014). However, in all four countries the relatively lowest preference for democracy is indeed found in the youngest cohort of the so-called millennials (those born between 1982 and 2000). Nevertheless, compared to the other cohorts the difference is small and the preference for democracy still stands at 90%, or more, even among the youngest cohort.

Fig. 9.6  Preference for democracy for different age cohorts (2010–2014) (response categories “very good” and “fairly good”; definition of age cohorts: before/after WWII (1885–1945), 1960s–1970s (1946–1957), 1980s (1958–1968), 1990s (1969–1981), 2000s (1982–2000))

(Source European Values Survey/World Values Survey 2010–2014)

There are also clear results for the preference for autocracy (Fig. 9.7). In all four countries, this preference is highest for the oldest cohort. In Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, the youngest cohort differs only insignificantly from the others. In Sweden, however, the preference for a strong leader is much more pronounced in the youngest cohort than in the older ones. In contrast to the results presented in the Foa and Mounk study (2016, 2017), there is no clear trend of an increasing preference for a strong leader in the four Western European countries.

Fig. 9.7  Preference for autocracy (strong leader) for different age cohorts (2010–2014) (response categories “very good” and “fairly good”; definition of age cohorts: before/after WWII (1885–1945), 1960s–1970s (1946–1957), 1980s (1958–1968), 1990s (1969–1981), 2000s (1982–2000))

(Source European Values Survey/World Values Survey 2010–2014)

Since the overwhelming majority of citizens in the seventeen Western European countries examined show a preference for democracy and in most countries only a minority expresses a preference for a strong leader, one cannot speak of a legitimacy crisis of democracy. However, signs of erosion of the legitimacy of democracy can be found especially in the three “crisis countries” of Ireland, Portugal and Spain, where a preference for a strong leader has increased significantly over time. In a somewhat weaker form, this preference also applies to Belgium, Austria and Sweden. But what about satisfaction with democracy in one’s own country?

Satisfaction with Democracy in Western Europe

The second research question in this chapter asks whether citizens’ dissatisfaction with democracy in their country is increasing in Western European countries. The empirical analysis of this question relies on an indicator asking for satisfaction with the functioning of democracy in one’s own country, which measures the evaluation of performance of this democracy. Citizens can draw on different criteria for such an assessment. One criterion is the factual functioning of the institutions of democracy in one’s own country, such as equality before the law, guaranteeing fundamental rights, fairness of elections and political equality. Another criterion is tackling fundamental problems in the country, such as securing economic growth, combating unemployment and ensuring internal security. These different criteria can be conceptualized as democratic and systemic performance (Roller 2015). It can be assumed that the systemic performance compared to the democratic performance is a more important criterion of assessment in countries suffering from major economic and political problems than in countries without such serious problems.

In contrast to support for democracy in general, there are considerable differences between the Western European countries in satisfaction with democracy in own country (Fig. 9.8). In seven cases—Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland—between 60 and 80% of citizens are satisfied with the functioning of their democracy. Conversely, in Portugal satisfaction with democracy is very low with the percentage of satisfied citizens less than 30%. Since the indicator is highly sensitive to current circumstances, there are fluctuations over time in all the countries. Drastic changes in the direction of a diminishing satisfaction can be observed in three “crisis countries”: Greece, Italy and Spain.

Fig. 9.8  Satisfaction with the functioning of democracy (codes 6–10; scale 0 = extremely dissatisfied … 10 = extremely satisfied)

(Source European Social Survey 2002–2014)

How satisfied are the different age cohorts with the functioning of democracy in their country? In none of the countries studied any significant differences have been noted between the younger and the older cohorts in the course of time (Fig. 9.9). All cohorts follow the general trend of the respective country. Thus, the hypothesis of an increasing dissatisfaction of the younger generations cannot be confirmed.

Fig. 9.9  Satisfaction with the functioning of democracy for different age cohorts (codes 6–10; scale 0 = extremely dissatisfied … 10 = extremely satisfied)

(Source European Social Survey 2002–2014)

Globalization and Satisfaction with Democracy in Western Europe

The third research question refers to the extent to which factors that can be attributed to globalization processes have a systematic effect on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy in their country. The empirical analysis is based on data from the latest wave of the European Social Survey from 2014, which are available for a total of fourteen of the seventeen countries investigated (with Greece, Italy and Luxembourg missing). An OLS regression has been computed. The dependent variable is satisfaction with the functioning of democracy, and some of the factors discussed in the section “Globalization and Democracy” are taken into account as determinants.

One of the most frequently mentioned consequence of globalization is a decreasing capacity of the nation states to control their own society. Yet the citizens still tend to blame the national government for this lack of control and for the subsequent deficits in policy outcomes. Therefore, satisfaction with government is specified as a determinant (for the question formulations and codes, see Table 9.3 in the Appendix). Furthermore, the financial and economic crisis of recent years can be interpreted as a consequence of globalization. Accordingly, both the national and personal economic situations are taken into account as determinants. The evaluation of the national economic situation can be measured by the common indicator asking for satisfaction with the present state of the economy in one’s own country; the personal economic situation can only be measured by an indicator asking whether the respondent is living comfortably on his or her present income or is finding it rather difficult to cope.

A further negative consequence of globalization is the rise in economic inequality (OECD 2015: 42ff). This factor can only be taken into account in the regression analysis by an indicator asking for assigning governmental responsibility to reduce income inequality. If economic inequality is critically assessed, then this governmental responsibility should have a negative effect on satisfaction with democracy. A significant problem in recent years, which is also linked to globalization, is the flow of immigration into Western European countries. This factor is included in the model as citizens’ attitude towards immigration. The respondents were asked to indicate whether in their opinion immigration has negative or positive effects on the economy, cultural life and the country as a whole. And finally, one of the central hypotheses on the negative effects of globalization is that lower strata are more negatively affected by globalization than upper strata. This dimension is covered by an indicator measuring the level of education.

In addition to the determinants associated with globalization, age cohorts are distinguished in order to examine again the hypothesis proposed by Foa and Mounk (2016, 2017), claiming that it is above all the younger cohort, which is more dissatisfied with democracy than older cohorts. This is done by including a dichotomous variable that differentiates between the younger and the other cohorts. Finally, gender as a classic control variable is added.

The results of the regression analysis show a clear pattern (Table 9.1). In the aggregate of all countries (pooled analysis with an equal weighting of countries) and in most of the individual countries, three determinants have a significant and notable effect: satisfaction with government, satisfaction with the national economic situation and attitude towards immigration. In addition, the explained variance is very high as it varies by .30 and even exceeds .40 in a number of countries. In both the aggregate of all countries and the individual countries, satisfaction with government is the relatively strongest predictor, followed by satisfaction with the national economy (with the exception of the Netherlands) (see beta coefficients).

Table 9.1  Determinants of satisfaction with democracy 2014 (OLS regression)

All countriesa

Austria

Belgium

Denmark

b

Beta

b

Beta

b

Beta

b

Beta

Government satisfaction

0.42***

0.41

0.51***

0.46

0.50***

0.48

0.28***

0.29

Economy: Nation

0.25***

0.25

0.22***

0.20

0.14***

0.13

0.20***

0.19

Economy: Ego

0.14***

0.045

0.056

0.016

−0.068

−0.026

0.20*

0.060

Resp. equality of income

−0.096***

−0.041

−0.027

−0.010

−0.015

−0.0075

−0.16***

−0.086

Immigration

0.17***

0.14

0.14***

0.12

0.20***

0.18

0.21***

0.21

Education

0.059***

0.032

0.042

0.017

0.055

0.035

0.026

0.016

Youngest cohort

−0.0035

−0.00054

−0.066

−0.011

0.072

0.014

0.11

0.021

Gender

−0.046

−0.0091

0.087

0.018

−0.11

−0.024

−0.074

−0.017

Constant

1.36***

1.24**

1.54***

3.05***

Adj. R 2

0.483

0.433

0.421

0.316

N

22,158

1460

1495

1285

Finland

France

Germany

Great Britain

Government satisfaction

0.48***

0.48

0.40***

0.34

0.51***

0.46

0.53***

0.50

Economy: Nation

0.11***

0.10

0.24***

0.18

0.24***

0.21

0.17***

0.15

Economy: Ego

0.043

0.014

0.38***

0.12

0.11*

0.034

−0.00085

−0.00028

Resp. equality of income

−0.037

−0.018

−0.13***

−0.066

−0.043

−0.019

0.0034

0.0014

Immigration

0.25***

0.22

0.18***

0.17

0.23***

0.19

0.19***

0.18

Education

0.092**

0.061

0.13**

0.071

−0.077*

−0.035

0.056

0.035

Youngest cohort

−0.047

−0.0088

−0.13

−0.020

−0.029

−0.0047

−0.27*

−0.040

Gender

−0.48***

−0.12

−0.092

−0.019

0.057

0.012

−0.016

−0.0033

Constant

2.21***

0.49

0.58*

0.46

0.99***

Adj. R 2

0.451

0.385

0.490

0.482

N

1867

1684

2638

1865

Ireland

The Netherlands

Norway

Portugal

Government satisfaction

0.49***

0.48

0.55***

0.56

0.28***

0.31

0.36***

0.38

Economy: Nation

0.13***

0.12

0.028

0.026

0.29***

0.27

0.28***

0.25

Economy: Ego

0.19***

0.066

0.045

0.018

−0.024

−0.0084

0.089

0.031

Resp. equality of income

−0.011

−0.0045

0.0093

0.0054

0.12*

0.065

0.075

0.025

Immigration

0.0073

0.0066

0.19***

0.16

0.22***

0.22

0.15***

0.13

Education

0.095**

0.057

0.12***

0.088

0.063

0.039

−0.086*

−0.053

Youngest cohort

0.33**

0.056

−0.18*

−0.038

0.20

0.043

−0.051

−0.0083

Gender

−0.20*

−0.043

−0.11

−0.029

0.076

0.020

0.13

0.028

Constant

1.75***

1.62***

1.45***

0.31

Adj. R 2

0.359

0.458

0.302

0.376

N

1860

1669

1216

1056

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Government satisfaction

0.48***

0.46

0.29***

0.32

0.51***

0.52

Economy: Nation

0.13***

0.11

0.21***

0.20

0.15***

0.13

Economy: Ego

0.055

0.018

−0.091

−0.030

0.10

0.038

Resp. equality of income

−0.054

−0.019

0.013

0.0059

−0.083*

−0.050

Immigration

0.11***

0.093

0.24***

0.23

0.066*

0.063

Education

−0.075

−0.045

0.073

0.046

0.0043

0.0026

Youngest cohort

−0.45***

−0.076

−0.13

−0.026

0.15

0.033

Gender

0.086

0.017

0.058

0.014

−0.097

−0.026

Constant

2.16***

2.22***

2.62***

Adj. R^2

0.299

0.304

0.386

N

1510

1449

1104

Source European Social Survey 2014

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001

aEqual weighting of countries

Both, satisfaction with government and with the national economic situation, were among the two central determinants of satisfaction with democracy even before globalization has accelerated to the present levels. Therefore, these two effects can only be partially attributed to globalization processes. Of the three main determinants, the attitude towards immigration is thus the factor most directly related to globalization. There is a positive relationship in all countries, i.e. perceived negative consequences of immigration reduce satisfaction with democracy. The effect of this variable is only insignificant in Ireland and is weakly significant in Switzerland. In all other countries, the variable is highly significant; the regression coefficient b varies from .11 (Spain) to .25 (Finland). Considering the relative importance of this predictor within countries (beta), it is—after government satisfaction—the predictor with the strongest explanatory capacity in a number of countries: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden.

The three other determinants related to globalization, namely personal economic situation, governmental responsibility for the reduction of income equality and education, show significant effects only in some countries, sometimes even with theoretically unpredicted signs. Personal economic situation has a significant effect in France and Ireland; governmental responsibility for the reduction of income equality has a significant effect in Denmark, France and Switzerland (and with unpredicted positive signs in Norway) and education in Finland, France, Ireland and the Netherlands (and with an unpredicted negative sign in Germany and in Portugal). Hence, for these three factors the postulated negative consequences of globalization on satisfaction with democracy exist only in a few countries.

Finally, what about the hypothesis that the youngest cohort born after 1980 is more dissatisfied with democracy in their country compared to the older cohorts? There is a highly significant negative effect on satisfaction with democracy only in the crisis-ridden Spain and a weakly significant effect in the Netherlands (there is a significant unpredicted positive effect in Ireland).

As already mentioned before, not all determinants included in the regression analysis can be interpreted as a direct consequence of globalization processes. Nevertheless, there are signs of a negative impact of globalization on the evaluation of performance of democracy in one’s own country.

Summary and Conclusions for Western European Democracies

Is there a legitimacy crisis of democracy? We have analysed this question for the countries of Western Europe on the basis of comparative survey data from the turn of the millennium up until 2014. The empirical analysis consisted of three parts examining: first, the level and development of the legitimacy of democracy; second, the level and development of satisfaction with democracy in one’s own country; and, third, the determinants of satisfaction with democracy that can be traced back to globalization.

In the following, we first summarize and discuss the results for all the Western European countries. We then move on to review the findings on Germany and Sweden, two of the seven countries of core interest to the research project Democracy under Threat: A Crisis of Legitimacy ?

The analysis in the first part was based on an indicator measuring the legitimacy of democracy in general and asking the question whether democracy is preferred as a rule of government. Missing from democracy research is the theoretical criterion specifying the (low) level of preference that has to be given in order to speak of a legitimacy crisis. However, the findings are so clear that such a criterion becomes superfluous. In all Western European countries, more than 80% of the citizens show a preference for democracy as a rule of government, and in the majority of these countries the preference exceeds 90%. Nor is there an erosion of legitimacy to be noted in Western European countries in terms of a diminishing preference for democracy in the period from 2000 to 2014.

However, this highly positive finding has to be qualified somewhat when the results for the indicator measuring preference for a strong leader are taken into account. On the one hand, over 30% of citizens in seven Western European countries indicated a preference for a strong leader, and in six countries this preference has increased over time (2000–2014). On the other hand, an unambiguous support of democracy, where democracy is preferred as a rule of government and at the same time a strong leader is rejected, is lower than a mere preference for democracy. Nevertheless, with the exception of Portugal in 2008, the 50% threshold for an unambiguous support of democracy has been exceeded in all Western European countries. Finally, an erosion of this unambiguous support can be observed over time for six countries. This decrease is most pronounced in the three “crisis countries”: Ireland, Portugal and Spain and can be interpreted as a globalization effect. With regard to these three countries, in particular, the question arises whether this is a temporary setback or a permanent state of affairs. In other words, whether levels of support will recover in the event that the economic situation improves or whether the negative consequences of globalization will persist with a considerable proportion of citizens of these countries permanently preferring a strong leader when confronted with the increasing complexity of problems and the limited problem-solving capacity of the nation states. Based on the empirical evidence, it can be concluded that in some Western European countries the potential for an authoritarian challenge does exist and could feasibly be exploited by populist parties.

The second part of our analysis examined satisfaction with the functioning of democracy in one’s own country, which above all is an indicator measuring the evaluation of performance of this democracy. Although this indicator does not capture directly the legitimacy of one’s own country’s democracy, i.e. the congruence of citizens’ democratic values with the institutional structure of their democracy, the indicator is nevertheless of relevance for the problem of legitimacy. Continued dissatisfaction with the performance of democracy in one’s own country can have long-term negative repercussions for the legitimacy of this democracy and, ultimately, it can also have a negative effect on the legitimacy of democracy as a rule of government. In this sense, satisfaction with democracy can serve as an early warning indicator. Our findings point to large country differences in both the level and the development of this indicator. In seven countries, the proportion of satisfied persons is 60% and higher. Thus, one cannot speak of a performance crisis in Western Europe as a whole. Very low levels of satisfaction with the functioning of democracy can be seen in Portugal. Drastic changes in the direction of a diminishing satisfaction can be seen in three “crisis countries”: Greece, Italy and Spain. However, this pattern does not necessarily involve legitimacy problems for democracy in general as can be seen in Greece and Italy where, in both cases, the percentage of preference for democracy is above average and the percentage for a strong leader is below average.

In the third part, a regression analysis was used to examine the possible effects of globalization on satisfaction with the functioning of democracy in one’s own country. Of the variables studied, significant negative effects could be identified for satisfaction with government, satisfaction with the national economic situation and attitudes towards immigration. Since immigration can be clearly understood as a consequence of globalization and because satisfaction with government and with the national economic situation are partly a negative consequence of globalization, the findings can be interpreted as an indication for more or less pronounced negative effects of globalization on satisfaction with democracy.

For the future development of Western European democracies, it is particularly important what the younger cohorts think of democracy both in general and in their own country. Foa and Mounk (2016, 2017) found a below-average preference for democracy and an above-average preference for autocracy for the so-called millennials. We cannot confirm this finding. [4] In Western European countries, the younger cohorts are not systematically different from older cohorts in either their preference for democracy or autocracy, or in their satisfaction with the functioning of democracy in their own country.

All in all, based on the presented empirical findings, it can be concluded that there was no legitimacy crisis of democracy in Western European countries, and no serious legitimacy problems have been identified, at least until 2014. Only in six of the seventeen countries a modest erosion of legitimacy has been observed; the erosion has been most pronounced in the three “crisis countries”: Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

However, there have been several developments since 2014 that could have negative effects on legitimacy. The first is the influx of refugees into Western Europe that has increased significantly since 2014. The second factor is the increased number of terrorist attacks in Western European countries. These powerful negative consequences of globalization could not be captured by our analysis. Another factor relevant for legitimacy, which could not be included in our analysis, is the growing success in recent years of right-wing populist parties. These parties, which among other things, are characterized by strong “charismatic” leaders and by offering simple solutions to complex problems can conceivably encourage further the authoritarian challenge.

The Cases of Germany and Sweden

Of the seven countries of core interest to this book, Germany and Sweden reveal the most similarities with regard to their respective levels of socio-economic modernization, the structure of the democratic regime, as well as political culture and long-term cultural traditions. They both belong to countries with the highest level of socio-economic modernization even in a global perspective. For decades, they have had a stable and functioning liberal democracy and a highly developed welfare state. Both are member states of the European Union and are committed to liberal democratic values. In addition, according to Transparency International, they are among countries with a relatively low degree of corruption among political elites. Altogether, the prerequisites for a high level of legitimacy of democracy and for a successful mastering of the negative effects of globalization are very good.

Therefore, the considerably high preference for democracy as a rule of government is not surprising. Over the whole period from 1999 to 2014 over 90% of citizens in both countries showed preference for democracy (Fig. 9.3). This high level of support applied to all Western European countries. By contrast, preference for a strong leader in Germany and Sweden was below average during the same period when compared to the other Western European countries. The preference for a strong leader in Germany was on average just under 20% and in Sweden just over 20% (Fig. 9.4). However, these figures also show that even in those two countries there is a potential for strong populist leaders, even if only a relatively small minority of citizens shows such preference. With regard to the age cohorts, in Germany the cohorts hardly differ in their respective preference for democracy and for a strong leader (Figs. 9.6 and 9.7). Unexpectedly, in Sweden the youngest age cohort shows a slightly lower preference for democracy and a slightly greater preference for a strong leader compared to the other cohorts.

The evaluation of performance of the democratic regime of one’s own country, measured by satisfaction with the functioning of democracy, strongly fluctuates in the course of time in Germany and Sweden as in all Western European countries (Fig. 9.8). Here, situational factors and the politicization of specific issues may play a role. On the whole, in Germany and Sweden satisfaction with the functioning of democracy in one’s own country is relatively high in comparison with the other Western European countries, and this is particularly true for Sweden. Since 2010, more than 80% of Swedish citizens are satisfied with the functioning of their democracy; the figure for Germany is about 60%.

As for determinants of satisfaction with democracy, the attitude towards immigration can be most clearly related to globalization. It shows a significant and strong effect on satisfaction with democracy in both countries (Table 9.1). This finding has been based on investigating a sample from 2014. Since then, the immigration and refugee issue has become much more important and the negative effect on satisfaction with democracy may thus have become stronger.

Overall, based on the empirical findings, it can be concluded that in Germany and Sweden there is neither a legitimacy crisis nor an erosion of legitimacy. Both countries have comparatively higher values of preference for democracy and lower values of preference for a strong leader than the other Western European countries. In both countries, favourable socio-economic and cultural conditions seem to have a positive effect on the legitimacy of democracy.

Notes

1. 1.
In the tradition established by Almond and Verba (1963), political culture is more broadly defined by referring to subjective orientations towards political objects. The hierarchical model of support for democracy follows the common sociological definition of culture by limiting it to basic value orientations (Hofstede 1980; Schwartz 1992; Gerhards 2006). In this way, the concept of culture gets a more precise meaning and subjective legitimacy in terms of Easton, which is based on a differentiation between values and regime, becomes more plausible.

2. 2.
An example for such a question referring to the institutional structure is the following: “Do you believe that the democracy that we have in (country) is the best form or is another form of government better?” (Fuchs and Roller 2006: 87). For an alternative measurement, see Wessels (2016).

3. 3.
For a discussion of different thresholds, see Wessels (2016: 248–250).

4. 4.
However, Foa and Mounk (2016, 2017) pursue a slightly different approach, taking into account only the respondents who choose the highest value on the scale of preference for democracy from 0 to 10, whereas our analysis, based on a dichotomization of a four-point scale, did not rely only on the highest value. In contrast to our analysis, Foa and Mounk have thus identified a decline in the intensity of democracy support. A replication of the Foa and Mounk approach has yielded no other results for the Western European countries (data not shown).

Appendix

See Table 9.2 and 9.3.

Table 9.2  Date of European Value Surveys/World Value Surveys

Austria 1999, 2008

Great Britain 1999, 2005, 2009

Norway 2007, 2008

Belgium 1999, 2009

Greece 1999, 2008

Portugal 1999, 2008

Denmark 1999, 2008

Ireland 1999, 2008

Spain 1999, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2011

Finland 2000, 2005, 2009

Italy 1999, 2005, 2009

Sweden 1999, 2006, 2009, 2011

France 1999, 2006, 2008

Luxembourg 1999, 2008

Switzerland 2007, 2008

Germany 1999, 2006, 2008, 2013

The Netherlands 1999, 2006, 2008, 2012

Table 9.3  Constructs and indicators

Constructs

Indicators

Satisfaction with democracy

And on the whole, how satisfied are you with the way democracy works in [country]? 0 = extremely dissatisfied … 10 = extremely satisfied

Satisfaction with government

Now thinking about the [country] government, how satisfied are you with the way it is doing its job? 0 = extremely dissatisfied … 10 = extremely satisfied

Economy: Nation

On the whole how satisfied are you with the present state of the economy in [country]? 0 = extremely dissatisfied … 10 = extremely satisfied

Economy: Ego

Which of the descriptions on this card comes closest to how you feel about your household’s income nowadays? 1 = finding it very difficult on present income, 2 = finding it difficult on present income, 3 = coping on present income, 4 = living comfortably on present income

Governmental responsibility: Equality of income

The government should take measures to reduce differences in income levels. 1 = disagree strongly, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = agree strongly

Immigration

Mean of the following three questions:

–Would you say it is generally bad or good for [country]’s economy that people come to live here from other countries? 0 = bad for the economy … 10 = good for the economy

–Would you say that [country]’s cultural life is generally undermined or enriched by people coming to live here from other countries? 0 = cultural life undermined … 10 = cultural life enriched

–Is [country] made a worse or a better place to live by people coming to live here from other countries? 0 = worse place to live … 10 = better place to live

Education

What is the highest level of education you have achieved? 1 = less than lower secondary education (ISCED 0–1), 2 = lower secondary education completed (ISCED 2), 3 = upper secondary education completed (ISCED 3), 4 = post-secondary non-tertiary education completed (ISCED 4), 5 = tertiary education completed (ISCED 5–6)

Youngest cohort

0 = year of birth 1885–1981, 1 = year of birth 1982–2000

Gender

1 = male, 2 = female

Source European Social Survey 2014

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Part IV

Global Aspects

© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_10

10. Globalization and Social Protection: An Economic Perspective

Krige Siebrits1

(1)

Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Krige Siebrits

Email: krigesiebrits@sun.ac.za

The ongoing globalization of the world economy is said to have major economic and political implications for democracies . In their opening chapter to this volume, Dieter Fuchs and Hans-Dieter Klingemann draw on analyses by Jürgen Habermas and David Held to identify four possible consequences of globalization. Fuchs and Klingemann then formulate four hypotheses that summarize how these effects might undermine the legitimacy of democracies .

This chapter discusses one of these hypotheses, namely the conjecture that globalization has exposed the citizens of high-income democracies to more severe economic and social risks via labour market effects and by inducing contractions in the scope and generosity of social protection systems. As such, the theme of the chapter is restricted to the effects of the economic dimension of globalization, which entail the “integration of economies throughout the world through trade, financial flows, the exchange of technology and information, and the movement of people” (Ouattara 1997: 177). [1]

The notion of “economic and social risks” can be defined and understood in various ways. Hence, this chapter uses the more precisely defined concept of “job insecurity” as a proxy for such risks. [2] Christopher Anderson and Jonas Pontusson’s (2007: 213–214) discussion of this concept rests on the distinction between cognitive job insecurity (“an individual’s estimate of the probability that he or she will lose their job in the near future”) and affective job insecurity (“worry or anxiety about losing one’s job”). Cognitive job insecurity depends on three sets of factors: labour market conditions, individual attributes that determine employability (e.g. education), and the institutions that provide employment protection (labour relations practices and government regulation of conditions of employment) (Anderson and Pontusson 2007: 214). Thus defined, cognitive job insecurity is one of the two sets of determinants of affective job insecurity. The other set of determinants are the perceived consequences of losing one’s job, which are functions of the prospects of finding a roughly equivalent alternative job and the extent of access to income from sources other than wage employment (Anderson and Pontusson 2007: 214).

This chapter first comments on the claim that globalization has disrupted labour market outcomes in OECD countries . It presents salient labour market trends in these countries and discusses their relationship with effects of the globalization process. The chapter then turns to examine the claim that globalization should be blamed for the scaling back of social protection systems in OECD countries . The discussion concerns the extent of retrenchment that has taken place in social protection systems and the degree to which globalization has influenced attempts at retrenchment. In closing, the effects of globalization are linked to the legitimacy of democratic systems in OECD countries and the resurgence of populism in some of these countries.

Because some of the trends discussed in this chapter have originated in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the data analyses are limited to countries for which consistent data exist from 1980 onwards. However, the argument also applies to other high-income economies with extensive social protection programmes, including the countries in Central and Eastern Europe that have emerged from economic systems based on central planning.

Labour Market Outcomes, Job Insecurity and Globalization

Widespread concern about job insecurity has become a prominent feature of OECD countries in recent decades. In an early discussion of this phenomenon, the OECD (1997: 129) notes:

Recently, the issue of job insecurity has come to the fore of the policy debate in a number of OECD countries … In the past, most jobs were perceived as being stable and secure… A widespread and, in some countries, very sharp increase in the number of individuals perceiving employment insecurity took place between the 1980s and the 1990s.

When workers were asked in 1989 to agree or disagree with the statement “my job is secure,” the unweighted average of the percentages in nine OECD countries who disagreed was 68% (OECD 1997: 132). [3] The weighted average of the percentages in 15 countries who disagreed with a similar statement in the Eurobarometer 44.3 survey in 1996 was 70.2% (OECD 1997: 132). [4] Anderson and Pontusson (2007: 218) report large differences in the percentages of respondents from 15 OECD countries who indicated in 1997 that they worry “a great deal” and “to some extent” about losing their jobs (these percentages ranged from slightly more than 10% in Norway to well over 50% in Spain ). It was notable, however, that job security was a significant concern to more than 20% of the respondents in nine of the 15 countries. More recent data of this nature are not available. [5]

Changes in the availability of job opportunities have contributed to the high levels of job insecurity. Figure 10.1 shows that unemployment rates increased markedly in OECD countries in the 1970s and early 1980s as the post-war “golden age of capitalism ” gave way to an era of slower economic and employment growth (cf. Glyn et al. 1988). [6] The extent of joblessness decreased gradually during the next two decades, but remained high compared to that in the “golden age.” The financial crisis in 2007–2008 and the subsequent Great Recession reversed the downward trend, however, and contributed to new peaks in unemployment rates. By 2015, these rates remained well above those in 2007. One of the features of unemployment in OECD countries is the relatively high incidence of long spells of joblessness. For example, data from recent years in the Employment and Labour Market Statistics Database (OECD 2017c) show that roughly 30% of the unemployed in the 15 countries represented in Fig. 10.1 have been out of jobs for longer than a year and a further 15% for six to twelve months.

Fig. 10.1  Harmonised unemployment rates in OECD countries, 1970–2015 (percentages of the labour forces of 15 countries)

(Source Information in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2017a). Countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden, USA)

Yet levels of and trends in unemployment rates cannot fully explain the high incidence of job insecurity in OECD countries . In fact, the OECD (1997: 130) notes that unemployment rates did not correlate well with the reported levels of job insecurity. High levels of job insecurity were evident among workers in some countries with relatively low unemployment rates and countries in which such rates had been decreasing for a number of years. At least two other developments also contributed to job insecurity.

The first has been labour market polarization, that is a growing bifurcation of employment opportunities into high-skill jobs that pay high wages and low-skill jobs that pay low wages. According to Koen Breemersch et al. (2017: 11), the employment share of middle-paying jobs (e.g. clerical support workers, plant and machine operators, and craft and related trades workers) fell by 11.7 percentage points in twelve European countries from 1995 to 2010. In the same period, the employment shares of low-paying jobs (e.g. elementary occupations and service and sales workers) and high-paying jobs (e.g. technicians and associate professionals, professionals and legislators, senior officials and managers) increased by 3.8 percentage points and 7.9 percentage points, respectively. The USA experienced the same phenomenon (Breemersch et al. 2017: 7, 11).

The second tendency has been the growth of less secure forms of employment. One of these is depicted in Fig. 10.2: in 2015, fully one-fifth of all workers in the 14 countries represented in the figure were in part-time jobs. [7] A significant and growing portion of these workers would have preferred either full-time jobs or more hours of part-time work. As pointed out by the OECD (2015: 15–16), the proliferation of part-time employment and other non-standard forms of work (such as temporary work, fixed-term contracting and subcontracting) has been a major cause of job creation as well as growing earnings inequality in high-income economies :

Fig. 10.2  Part-time employment in OECD countries, 1990–2015 (percentages of total employment in 14 countries)

(Source Information in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2017c). Countries: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, UK)

Since the mid-1990s, more than half of all job creation was in the form of non-standard work. Many non-standard workers are worse off in many aspects of job quality, such as earnings, job security or access to training. In particular, low-skilled temporary workers face substantial wage penalties, earnings instability and slower wage growth.

The results of these trends have included increases in poverty and income inequality in most OECD countries in recent decades—albeit from low bases and to levels that remain low to moderate by international standards. The poverty rates and Gini coefficients in Table 10.1 confirm these trends (for a more detailed presentation and discussion of relevant statistics, see OECD 2015: 20–25). [8] The Gini coefficients in the table are for disposable household incomes (i.e. household incomes adjusted to include taxes paid and transfers received from the government ); as such, they reflect the outcomes of budgetary programmes to reduce the extent of inequality in primary or market incomes.

Table 10.1  Poverty and income inequality in OECD countries , mid-1980s to recent years (poverty rates and Gini coefficients for 13 countries)

Country

Poverty rates

Gini coefficients

Mid-1980s

Mid-1990s

2012 or latest

Mid-1980s

Mid-1990s

2012 or latest

Australia

–

11.4

14.0

–

0.309

0.326

Canada

11.8

10.7

11.8

0.293

0.289

0.315

Denmark

6.0

4.7

5.4

0.221

0.215

0.249

Finland

–

4.1

6.5

–

0.220

0.260

Germany

5.6

7.2

8.4

0.251

0.266

0.289

Italy

–

14.6

12.7

–

0.327

0.327

Japan

12.0

13.7

16.0

0.304

0.323

0.340

The Netherlands

3.4

6.9

7.7

0.272

0.297

0.281

New Zealand

6.2

8.4

9.9

0.271

0.335

0.333

Norway

–

7.1

8.1

–

0.243

0.253

Sweden

–

3.7

9.0

–

0.211

0.274

UK

6.7

–

10.5

0.309

–

0.351

USA

17.7

16.7

17.9

0.340

0.361

0.390

Source OECD (2017b: 55, 57)

There are grounds for surmising that globalization has contributed to some of these trends. For example, mainstream theories imply that international trade enhances welfare in net terms, but has strong redistributive effects: it brings opportunities that enable some sectors and workers to thrive as well as competitive pressure that accelerates the decline of inefficient ones (cf. Rodrik 2017: 4–8). Hence, it is not surprising that empirical studies have linked labour market polarization in OECD countries to globalization-related factors such as import competition from China and other developing countries (e.g. Autor et al. 2013; Keller and Utar 2016; Konings and Vandenbussche 1995) and the growth in offshoring of elements of global value chains to low-wage developing countries (e.g. Kirkegaard 2008; Oldenski 2014). [9] Estimates of these effects vary in size and significance, though (Breemersch et al. 2017: 7–8). Several studies (e.g. Autor et al. 2013; Konings and Vandenbussche 1995) show that import competition from China has had material negative effects on employment in the USA and European countries. By contrast, Jacob Kirkegaard (2008) reported that offshoring to Asian developing countries has had a limited impact in the USA, Europe and Japan.

The existence of other explanations for worrying labour market trends in OECD countries also suggests that caution should be exercised when inferences are made about the influence of globalization. Some writers (e.g. Autor 2015; Bresnahan et al. 2002) ascribe labour market polarization (and, hence, growing inequality in market incomes) to automation, information technology and other forms of technological innovation. The argument is that these phenomena have raised the demand for skilled labour while lowering the demand for and weakening the wage-bargaining power of low-skilled workers. Globalization- and technology-related explanations of labour market polarization are not mutually exclusive. Maarten Goos et al. (2014) find support for both explanations in a study of 16 Western European countries , but add that the influence of skill-biased technological change overwhelmed that of offshoring. Breemersch et al. (2017) reach the same conclusion.

Other economists argue that the main causes of the stubbornly high unemployment rates in many OECD countries are labour market institutions that discourage job creation and worker effort (cf. Nickell et al. 2005). Such institutions include powerful trade unions, high labour taxes, generous unemployment benefit systems and strong job security laws. Globalization clearly has made it easier for corporations to move to countries that impose fewer regulations on the hiring, firing and remuneration of workers. Critics believe that this outcome of globalization has provided firms with credible exit threats that pressurize governments into weakening worker-protecting labour market institutions . Claims that governments have been engaged in “races to the bottom” involving widespread weakening of labour market regulations are manifestations of this belief (cf. Olney 2013: 193). Whether valid or not (an issue to which the next section of this chapter returns), claims about the salience of labour market institutions underscore that it might well be particularly difficult to identify and assess the unique effects of globalization on labour market outcomes in OECD countries and elsewhere.

Globalization, Job Insecurity and Social Protection Systems

In what follows the term “social protection ” refers to the gamut of public programmes to protect the living standards of individuals and families in high-income countries. Such programmes, supplemented by extensive government provision of education and health care services, are core elements of modern welfare states. Contemporary social protection systems rely on three types of policy instruments (cf. Tanzi 2005: 26). The first of these are government expenditure programmes that provide cash benefits or public services to vulnerable individuals and families. This chapter presents statistics from the OECD ’s Social Expenditure Database (OECD 2017c) to illustrate trends in the scope of such programmes. The statistics reflect public outlays on the following types of programmes: old-age benefits, survivors benefits, family benefits, housing benefits, incapacity-related benefits, unemployment benefits, active labour market programmes, income maintenance benefits, social assistance benefits, and other cash and in-kind benefits. The only education and health care expenditures included in these statistics are programmes targeted at vulnerable groups (e.g. rehabilitation services for the disabled). Second, OECD countries use provisions in their tax systems to create incentives for private spending on items such as retirement provision. Provisions of this nature are known as “tax expenditures.” The third set of instruments are regulations that influence labour market outcomes and the availability and prices of housing, inter alia.

The social protection systems in modern welfare states have their roots in the nineteenth century, but assumed their present forms in the decades after the Second World War (Tanzi 2005: 25–26). These systems have markedly enhanced income security and human capital accumulation in OECD countries . Tanzi (2005: 28–30) lists several positive effects: relatively low levels of inequality in disposable incomes, relatively high rates of labour force participation (especially for women), low levels of absolute poverty , highly educated and relatively healthy populations, and low crime rates. Despite these achievements, the sustainability of such social protection systems has been questioned from the 1970s onwards. One source of apprehensiveness has been the costliness of such systems and their contributions to persistent budget deficits and large public debt burdens in OECD countries (cf. Masson and Mussa 1995).

Concern has also stemmed from a consideration closely linked to the hypothesis discussed in this chapter, namely the fear that globalization will inevitably impose contractions in the scope and generosity of the social protection systems in high-income countries. The source of this fear has been the belief that economic integration undermines governments’ capacity to mobilize tax revenue and regulate economic activity. Philipp Genschel (2004: 623) summarizes the tax aspect of the argument as follows: “The integration of markets makes it easier to move human, real and financial capital across borders and, consequently, more difficult to subject them to national taxation.” An intuitive mechanism underpins the argument: countries have been competing to attract and retain capital in the globalized world economy . The reality that high tax rates would have induced capital flight put downward pressure on tax rates and total tax burdens, and it is claimed that this has impaired the ability of countries to finance social protection programmes (Genschel 2004: 623). Tanzi (2005: 42) adds that the constricting effects of globalization may also have affected the other policy instruments in governments’ arsenals. If tax rates drop as a result of globalization, government would have less scope to use tax expenditures and the effectiveness of such measures would be reduced. Furthermore, the previous section hinted at the possibility that the intensified international competition and greater mobility of production factors associated with globalization had pressurized governments into deregulating labour and other markets. Such liberalization would have reduced the scope for using regulations to pursue social protection aims.

Proponents of this argument maintain that the effects of OECD countries ’ impaired ability to afford social protection systems and undertake regulatory actions have been worsened by other ramifications of globalization that have strained the capacity of these programmes (Lindbeck 2006: 305–307). They claim that these ramifications have included the labour market effects identified in the previous section as well the growth in immigration to OECD countries of individuals with low skills and relatively low propensities to work or to seek work.

Warnings of a crisis in welfare states and attempts to cut back social protection programmes intensified as these concerns escalated from the 1980s onwards (cf. Castles 2002; Levy 2010). Nonetheless, the notion that globalization has undermined social protection systems has remained controversial. Genschel (2004: 615–616) points out that this notion has been criticized by “sceptics” (who deny that globalization has markedly affected social protection systems) and “revisionists” (who argue that globalization have forced states to embark upon reforms that served the longer term fiscal sustainability of such systems).

Two points underpin the argument of the “sceptics.” The first is that social protection arrangements have been remarkably resilient ever since the 1970s despite the strong pressure for cutbacks and deregulation (see, for example, Pierson 1996, 2011). Most attempts to downplay the extent of retrenchment have cited trends in social protection -related government expenditure programmes as supporting evidence. In addition, the “sceptics” reject the claim that globalization per se has been the driving force behind the attempts to downscale social protection systems (cf. Lindert 2016). Instead, they have ascribed such attempts to the following domestic factors that have pushed up the costs of such systems (Lindbeck 2006: 304–319):

- The phenomenon known as “Baumol’s cost disease ” steadily increased the unit cost of providing human services such as education, childcare and old-age care: while the wages paid to the providers of such services increased at rates roughly similar to those elsewhere in the economy, productivity growth lagged that in other sector because less scope existed for the adoption of efficiency-enhancing machines and technologies.

- Social spending has been boosted strongly by the effects of population ageing on the demand for pensions and health care; at the same time, the increase in dependency rates has constrained the growth of the income tax base.

- The relatively high unemployment rates in OECD countries since the late 1970s have compounded the pressure on public spending programmes and tax bases.

- The existence of generous income protection systems may have undermined work effort and labour market participation in OECD countries , in part because subsistence on welfare programme benefits might have become more acceptable over time.

The “revisionists” also emphasize domestic impulses for welfare state reform (cf. Rieger and Leibfried 1998). Some of them have argued that social spending programmes boost countries’ international competitiveness by raising the productivity of workers and making production more efficient (Chen et al. 2014). This claim implies that social protection arrangements are important determinants of countries’ ability to benefit from the opportunities associated with international economic integration .

Figure 10.3 shows that an important claim of “sceptics” such as Paul Pierson (1996, 2011) remains valid: on balance, public social expenditure has not declined as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) in OECD countries since 1980. In fact, public social expenditure to GDP ratios increased between 1980 and 2015 in 18 of the 19 OECD countries for which consistent data are available, and the unweighted average of these ratios increased from 16.8 to 23.9%. This trend was the outcome of increases in the ratios of both components of public social spending. Cash benefits increased, on balance, from 10.8% of GDP in 1980 to 13.9% in 2012; over the same period, benefits in kind increased from 5.8% of GDP to 9.5% (at the time of writing, 2012 is the last year for which disaggregated data are available for a sufficiently large number of countries). These numbers, however, should be interpreted with caution. The bulk of the increases occurred before 1995 and after 2005; in fact, the average ratios for total benefits and cash benefits decreased from 1992 to 2001.

Fig. 10.3  Public social expenditure in OECD countries, 1980–2015 (percentages of GDP, unweighted averages for 19 countries)

(Source Information in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2017c). Countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA)

When interpreting the upward trends from 2007 onwards, it should be also kept in mind that the ratios were boosted artificially by the decreases in the levels of GDP during the financial crisis and the Great Recession and slow recoveries in these aggregates from 2010 to 2015. Tae Kim and Karen Zurlo (2009) point out that the downward trend in the average ratio for total benefits between 1992 and 2001 reflected decreases in social expenditure-to-GDP ratios in two of the three types of welfare states distinguished by Gosta Esping-Andersen (1990), namely social democratic and liberal welfare states. On balance, such ratios were stable in conservative welfare states. [10]

According to Richard Clayton and Jonas Pontusson (1998: 70), social expenditure ratios may be misleading indicators of welfare state retrenchment because the adequacy of social spending should be assessed in relation to the actual needs of the population instead of the level of GDP. This is an important consideration given that the persistence of relatively high rates of unemployment and proliferation of non-standard forms of work in all likelihood have raised the demand for social protection programmes in a number of OECD countries . Table 10.2, which contains indices of real per capita public social expenditures for the same 19 countries, partially addresses this concern. It is clear that such spending grew markedly in each of the countries from 1980 to 2013 and that the increases slowed, but did not end, in the turbulent period after 2007. While labour market outcomes suggested that the numbers of individuals in need of social protection measures may well have grown more rapidly than the populations of these countries since 1980, the resources that were made available to meet these needs clearly grew significantly as well. In fact, some writers have claimed that the labour market effects of globalization have forced government to mobilize additional tax revenue to finance expanded social protection programmes.

Table 10.2   Per capita public social expenditure in OECD countries at constant 2010 prices, 1980–2013 (indices for 19 countries, selected years)

Country

Indices (1980 = 100)

1980

1995

2007

2013

Australia

100.0

211.8

264.0

314.8

Belgium

100.0

140.1

177.1

205.3

Canada

100.0

162.1

184.5

195.4

Denmark

100.0

169.5

206.2

225.1

Finland

100.0

203.1

247.2

296.0

France

100.0

176.9

213.2

237.9

Germany

100.0

136.2

158.2

169.2

Greece

100.0

177.0

331.5

–

Ireland

100.0

189.4

326.2

386.8

Italy

100.0

161.9

220.9

226.6

Luxembourg

100.0

179.3

273.7

296.8

The Netherlands

100.0

122.7

146.6

162.9

New Zealand

100.0

125.8

165.8

182.0

Portugal

100.0

248.1

425.6

463.8

Spain

100.0

190.0

261.7

296.7

Sweden

100.0

149.1

176.3

186.9

Switzerland

100.0

142.0

181.2

209.8

UK

100.0

166.9

236.2

260.5

USA

100.0

157.0

213.9

253.2

Source Calculated from information in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2017c)

Clayton and Pontusson (1998) identify another shortcoming of changes in social expenditure ratios as measures of reforms to social protection systems: such changes might mask major reforms of programme characteristics (e.g. service delivery modes, benefit levels and eligibility criteria). This implies that a proper assessment of the claim that downscaling has taken place in OECD countries in recent times requires an analysis of the details of social protection systems. In lieu of such an assessment, which falls outside the scope of this chapter, Table 10.3 contains measures of recent changes in the generosity, adequacy and possible incentive effects of social protection systems in OECD countries . The respective proxies for these dimensions of social protection systems are the long-term net income replacement rate for unemployed workers; the ratio between net minimum income benefits and median incomes; and the fractions of earnings lost to forfeited state benefits, taxes and social security contributions when an unemployed individual takes up a job with the same salary as that received before becoming unemployed. The table shows large differences in the values of the measures and a lack of uniformity in the changes. Nonetheless, the data confirm the validity of Clayton and Pontusson’s (1998) warning about the inadequacy of an exclusive focus on social expenditure ratios by showing that a considerable number of OECD countries have been affecting reductions in the scope and generosity of social protection programmes, as well as reforms to counter disincentives to work effort and labour market participation (e.g. by making it more attractive to return to work after spells of unemployment ). Long-term net income replacement rates decreased in twelve of the 20 countries for which data are available, net minimum income benefits decreased relative to median incomes in nine out of 23 countries, and participation tax rates when moving into work increased in eleven out of 22 countries. Such changes are consistent with the objectives of the European Employment Strategy of 1997, which “… helped to redefine the European employment problem away from managing unemployment towards the promotion of employment, fostering the diffusion and acceptance of the overriding objective of increasing labour market participation” (Hemerijck 2013: 76).

Table 10.3  Measures of the generosity, adequacy and incentive effects of social protection programmes in OECD countries , 2001–2015 (percentages for 23 countries)

Country

Measures for members of a household consisting of a

married couple with 2 children

Long-term net

income replacement

ratesa

Adequacy of

minimum benefitsb

Participation tax

rates when moving

into workc

2001

2015

2005

2015

2001

2015

Australia

62.5

55.4

48.9

40.0

66.6

60.7

Austria

63.2

61.0

34.9

42.5

72.6

72.8

Belgium

58.0

52.9

36.4

37.9

66.3

72.0

Canada

18.6

31.0

32.7

37.1

77.4

84.9

Denmark

10.5

9.3

58.8

59.9

75.9

73.5

Finland

35.8

33.7

33.0

32.4

74.4

79.0

France

26.6

25.9

30.3

30.9

73.6

73.3

Germany

62.7

39.9

33.6

35.0

77.0

75.8

Greece

1.9

7.9

3.0

8.0

36.0

46.7

Iceland

45.0

10.6

41.3

47.5

52.1

70.6

Ireland

53.7

64.9

39.8

52.9

53.5

64.8

Italy

–

–

–

–

71.0

78.2

Japan

2.7

5.6

47.0

47.4

47.4

40.2

Luxembourg

11.8

14.3

40.0

47.2

87.6

89.8

The Netherlands

5.5

10.7

36.4

42.6

76.3

85.7

New Zealand

61.7

50.4

39.4

35.2

67.2

53.6

Norway

69.0

5.5

26.7

24.6

75.3

75.9

Portugal

5.8

5.9

40.2

29.2

79.9

79.6

Spain

3.7

2.6

24.7

22.9

78.6

72.8

Sweden

10.8

8.0

29.0

25.2

76.7

56.1

Switzerland

–

–

25.3

23.8

89.4

88.7

UK

39.5

47.0

35.0

38.0

50.6

56.4

USA

–

–

20.7

20.4

58.5

49.4

Source Information in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2017c)

Notes aThe fraction of net income in work that is maintained when unemployed. Figures shown for the 60th month of benefit receipts for someone who earns 100% of the average wage

bNet minimum income benefits as a percentage of the country median income

cThe fraction of earnings lost (via taxes, social insurance contributions and losses of state benefits) if an unemployed person finds a job with a salary similar to that earned before becoming unemployment

Brief comments follow on trends in the usage of the other two types of social protection instruments identified earlier in this section, namely regulations and tax expenditures. Any attempt to devise a summary measure of changes in all regulatory components of the social protection systems of a group of countries faces formidable obstacles. Hence, Table 10.4 only summarizes changes in indicators of employment protection regulations governing regular and temporary contracts in 20 OECD countries . This choice reflects the inherent importance of such regulations as social protection instruments and the prominence of labour market institutions in debates about unemployment and job creation in high-income countries (as pointed out in the previous section).

Table 10.4  The strictness of employment protection regulations in OECD countries , 1985–2013 (indices for 20 countries)

Country

Regular contracts

Temporary contracts

1985

2000

2013

1985

2000

2013

Australia

1.167

1.417

1.667

0.875

0.875

0.875

Austria

2.750

2.750

2.369

1.313

1.313

1.313

Belgium

1.845

1.845

1.893

4.625

2.375

2.375

Canada

0.921

0.921

0.921

0.250

0.250

0.250

Denmark

2.183

2.135

2.198

3.125

1.375

1.375

Finland

2.786

2.310

2.167

1.250

1.563

1.563

France

2.591

2.341

2.385

3.063

3.625

3.625

Germany

2.583

2.679

2.679

5.000

2.000

1.125

Greece

2.849

2.802

2.119

4.750

4.750

2.250

Ireland

1.437

1.437

1.397

0.250

0.250

0.625

Italy

2.762

2.762

2.679

5.250

3.250

2.000

Japan

1.702

1.702

1.369

1.688

0.875

0.875

The Netherlands

3.068

2.885

2.821

1.375

0.938

0.938

Norway

2.333

2.333

2.333

3.125

3.000

3.000

Portugal

5.000

4.583

3.185

3.375

2.813

1.813

Spain

3.548

2.357

2.048

3.750

3.250

2.563

Sweden

2.798

2.655

2.607

4.083

1.438

0.813

Switzerland

1.595

1.595

1.595

1.125

1.125

1.125

UK

1.095

1.262

1.095

0.250

0.250

0.375

USA

0.257

0.257

0.257

0.250

0.250

0.250

Source Compiled from information in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2017c)

The changes in the values of the indices show that several, but by no means all, OECD countries relaxed employment protection regulations from the mid-1980s onwards (cf. also Hemerijck 2013: 180–195). [11] The 2013 values of the indices for regulations governing regular contracts were lower than the 1985 values in eleven countries, higher in three countries and the same in the remaining six. Measures of the strictness of regulations on temporary employment contracts exhibited similar patterns of change: the 2013 index values were lower than the 1985 ones in ten countries, the same in five countries and higher in the other five. These numbers, too, confirm that assessments of changes in the scope and adequacy of social protection systems should not be limited to trends in the size of social expenditure programmes.

Time series data on tax expenditure programmes in OECD countries remain limited. Such programmes are fairly small components of social protection systems ; however, the latest year figures for personal income tax-related tax expenditures in a study of seven OECD countries ranged from 0.21% of GDP in Germany in 2006 to 4.11% in the UK in the same year (OECD 2010: 224). [12]

In conclusion, some of the reforms that took place in recent decades have weakened the social protection systems of several OECD countries . This becomes apparent when the attention shifts from aggregated social expenditure data to details of social protection programmes. The question is whether globalization-related pressures drove such reforms. The diversity of experiences among OECD countries precludes reaching any general conclusions. Two other reasons make this a difficult question to answer. On the one hand, globalization might have induced developments that have negated some of its predicted effects; on the other hand, globalization might have been blamed sometimes for developments that could have had other roots. Figures 10.4 and 10.5 provide examples.

Fig. 10.4  Selected components of tax revenues in OECD countries, 1980–2015 (percentages of GDP, unweighted averages for 20 countries)

(Source Information in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2017c). Countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA)

Fig. 10.5  Convergence in the strictness of employment protection regulation in OECD countries, 1985–2013 (standard deviations of indices for 20 countries)

(Source Information in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2017c). Countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA)

The claim that globalization is likely to induce retrenchment of social protection programmes in high-income countries because it puts downward pressure on governments’ tax revenues was introduced earlier. Relatively mobile tax bases (e.g. corporate taxes) and tax bases affected by international agreements (e.g. trade taxes) are believed to be particularly prone to such pressure. From 1980 to 2015, government revenue from taxes on international trade (e.g. export taxes and customs duties) decreased from an average of 0.7% of GDP to an average of 0.1% in the 20 OECD countries represented in Fig. 10.4. While the average of the share of GDP of taxes on the income, profits and capital gains of corporations increased from 2.3% of GDP in 1980 to 2.7% in 2015, revenues from such taxes have been edging downwards since peaking at 3.8% of GDP in 2006. These trends match predicted effects of globalization. However, OECD countries have been able to recoup lost revenues from larger tax bases such as social security contributions (which increased, on average, from 8.4% of GDP in 1980 to 9.8% in 2015), value-added tax, and taxes on income, wealth and capital gains of individuals. Hence, total tax burdens in the 20 countries increased from an average of 33.0% of GDP in 1980 to 36.9% in 2015. As was hinted at earlier in this section, adherents of the so-called compensation hypothesis claim that the globalization process itself gave rise to such compensatory increases in tax revenues. Kim and Zurlo (2009: 131) summarize this hypothesis as follows: “Internationalisation of economies is related to a high demand for social security, which in turn facilitates an upward shift of taxation and social spending levels.” Dani Rodrik (1998), for example, presents empirical evidence of a link between the degree of openness of an economy and the extent of social expenditure in that country. The resilience of tax revenues during the globalization era partly explains why the predicted large drops in social protection outlays are yet to materialize (cf. Genschel 2004: 623–625; Lindbeck 2006: 307).

Empirical evidence consistent with the notion of globalization-linked “races to the bottom” in labour regulations in OECD countries has emerged in recent years (Davies and Vadlamannati 2013; Fischer and Somogyi 2012; Olney 2013). [13] Figure 10.5 shows that indices of the strictness of employment protection regulations in OECD countries have been converging towards lower levels since the mid-1980s (the trend has been most pronounced for—but not limited to—regulations governing temporary employment contracts). This development, too, is consistent with the “races to the bottom” argument. It is difficult, however, to disentangle labour market reforms induced by globalization from those undertaken to combat structural unemployment —as was pointed out earlier. Some economists have long blamed labour market institutions that discourage job creation and worker effort for the persistence of relatively high levels of joblessness in some OECD countries (for a discussion of this argument, see, Nickell 1997). Hence, one should be careful not to ascribe labour market policy changes caused by domestic factors to pressures emanating from globalization.

The reality that it is difficult to unravel the causes explains the two contrasting appraisals of labour market policy reforms in OECD countries identified by Olney (2013: 203). Those who regard strong labour regulations as indispensable for protecting the quantity and quality of jobs deplore positive evidence of deregulation. On the other hand, those who hold the view that such regulations have prevented the achievement of full employment regard the relaxation of labour standards as a prerequisite for sustainable reductions in unemployment rates.

Implications for the Legitimacy of Democratic Regimes

What are the implications of these complex ramifications of globalization for the legitimacy of democratic regimes ? As was stated earlier, many economists believe that the economic aspects of globalization have positive net benefits, but involve some job and income losses. In theory, governments can avoid the “no pain, no gain” scenario by redistributing some of the winners’ gains to the losers. Rodrik (2017: 11–12), however, points out that such compensation schemes are rare in practice as they tend to be very costly, especially if all the economic effects of the taxes and other financing mechanisms are taken into account. In addition, potential losers are distrustful of the schemes because governments can usually backtrack on commitments to provide compensation after securing agreement for trade deals. Hence, episodes of globalization usually have readily identifiable groups of winners and losers and often give rise to political backlashes (cf. Rodrik 2017: 3–4).

The current bout of globalization in high-income democracies has benefitted high-skilled individuals while hurting low-skilled ones (Walter 2017). This chapter has argued that the adverse effects of globalization on members of the latter group have merely augmented—and may even have been eclipsed by—other forces contributing to the heightened risks associated with job insecurity and instances of retrenchment in social protection programmes and weakening of worker-protecting regulations. However, the fine distinctions between the effects of globalization, technological and demographic change and other factors might not matter much for the legitimacy of democratic regimes . As Fuchs and Klingemann point out in the introduction to this volume, the “consequences of globalization impact legitimacy not on an immediate level, but on one mediated via the perceptions and evaluations of the citizens.” The perceptions and evaluations of the affected have not been influenced by debates about causes but by outcomes, such as the heightened risks discussed in the chapter and the drastic effects of the financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession , the largest negative shocks to the world’s economy since the Great Depression in the 1930s (Gorton and Metrick 2012: 133).

These perceived effects of globalization have been linked to two political developments. First, an empirical study by Justina Fischer (2012) suggests that globalization has contributed to an erosion of citizens’ trust in the political institutions of their countries via its perceived economic consequences and limiting effects on the policy space of national governments. Second, Rodrik (2017) argues that the political backlash to the current bout of globalization has taken the form of the rise of right-wing and left-wing variants of populism . According to Rodrik (2017: 10–11, 24), the well-developed social protection systems of the majority of European countries have effectively shielded most citizens against adverse economic effects of globalization. Hence, the backlash mainly has assumed the form of a right-wing variant of populism that has targeted refugees and immigrants whose presence is thought to threaten the sustainability of social protection systems. The exceptions have been Spain and Greece, which have experienced the emergence of left-wing variants of populism targeted directly at the economic aspects of globalization (e.g. effects of trade liberalization and entry of large foreign corporations) and at domestic high-income groups. [14] In the USA, by contrast, both variants of populism found firm footholds (cf. Rodrik 2017: 26). Immigration , the threat of radical terrorism, and the labour market effects of trade liberalization in the context of a less well-developed social protection system coalesced into a fertile breeding-ground for the right-wing populism of Donald Trump, while the left-wing populism of Bernie Sanders exploited anger about the effects of the financial crisis (including the perceived roles of the banks and financial elites ).

Notes

1. 1.
Integration of this nature is not a new phenomenon. Michael Bordo (2017) points out that the current round of economic globalization follows an earlier one that lasted from the 1870s to the end of the First World War, but has surpassed it in scope.

2. 2.
This statement refers to precision in the academic usage of the term-the concept is subjective when viewed from the perspectives of workers. This is clear from the following statement by Anderson and Pontusson (2007: 214): “In contrast to ‘job loss’, which is an objective state of affairs, ‘job insecurity’ is a product of people’s interpretations of signals in the environment.”

3. 3.
The countries were Austria, Germany , Hungary, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, the UK and the USA.

4. 4.
The countries were Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany , Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain , Sweden and the UK.

5. 5.
The OECD Job Quality data set contains objective measures of labour market insecurity for the years from 2006 to 2013 (cf. OECD 2017c). These are not necessarily compatible with the perception-based ones obtained from surveys. Be that as it may, Hijzen and Menyhert (2016) point out that the values of the measures varied considerable from country to country and from year to year.

6. 6.
The unemployment rate is the percentage of the members of the labour force that are economically active yet unemployed.

7. 7.
The OECD defines part-time employment as employees and self-employed individuals who usually work fewer than 30 hours per week in their main job.

8. 8.
The poverty rate shows the percentage of a country’s population whose income falls below the poverty line. The poverty line is defined in the OECD context as half the median household income of the total population. The Gini coefficient is a popular summary measure of the distribution of income. Its value can vary from zero (perfect equality in the distribution of income) to one (perfect inequality in the distribution of income).

9. 9.
Offshoring is the practice of moving the production of goods and services to other countries to take advantage of lower labour and other costs.

10. 10.
Esping-Andersen (1990) classified Austria, Belgium, Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden as social democratic welfare states; Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the USA as liberal welfare states; and Finland, France, Germany , Japan, Italy and Switzerland as conservative welfare states.

11. 11.
The indices in Table 10.4 are composite measures that quantify the procedures for hiring workers on fixed-term or temporary work agency contracts, the procedures and costs of dismissing individuals or groups of workers, and the procedures involved in hiring regular workers.

12. 12.
The seven countries are Canada, Germany , Korea , The Netherlands, Spain , the UK and the USA. The quoted numbers for each country are the sums of the following items: general tax relief; low-income non-work-related tax expenditures; work-related tax expenditures; and tax expenditures related to education, health and housing and programmes to “make work pay.”

13. 13.
“Races to the bottom” take place when governments reduce tax rates and scrap or weaken regulations to compete with each other to attract firms to their jurisdictions and to retain them.

14. 14.
Rodrik (2017: 25) argues that the underlying economic issues and the form of the populist backlashes in Spain and Greece have been very similar to those in Latin American countries.

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© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_11

11. Global Electronic Screen Culture: Legitimacy at Stake?

Pierre du Toit1

(1)

Department of Political Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Pierre du Toit

Email: pdt@sun.ac.za

An earlier draft of this chapter benefitted from the comments by Barend Lutz, Nicola de Jager and Cindy Steenekamp, and is gratefully acknowledged. The end product, however, is the responsibility of the author alone.

The rise in support for alternatives to democracy is but one indicator of the challenge to the legitimacy of this regime type. Another indicator lies in the measured declines in trust in public institutions, declines in voting and civic engagement and even declines in the support for the importance of the idea of living in a democracy. In short, citizens of even the most secure, stable and consolidated democracies such as Australia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the USA are not only becoming more disenchanted with democracy, but also more indifferent to it. Research shows that while this is a global trend, it is especially notable among the youth, the so-called millennials (Foa and Mounk 2016, 2017).

Generally, democracies have achieved legitimacy by persuading voters that democracy offered the most viable way to stability and prosperity. Declines in regime performance in the management of national economies have been shown to be one source of disenchantment with democracy, but what can account for the increasing disengagement and indifference? For a plausible answer to this question, one salient aspect of the present global context will be considered, that aspect is technology.

The aim of this chapter is to examine the impact of global electronic screen culture on the legitimacy of democracy. The aspect of legitimacy considered here is centred on the personal autonomy of the citizen. One of the central tenets of democracy is freedom for the ruled to exercise choice in selecting those by whom they are to be ruled. This freedom of choice entails an absence of overt manipulation of voters and privacy for voters at the ballot box, so as to prevent undue pressure, blackmail and extortion of voters by outside forces.

The machine technology within which global electronic screen culture is embedded consists of Television and the Internet, which is the site of the World Wide Web. Global electronic screen culture refers to popular culture , which is primarily focused on entertainment and amusement. This study examines the potential impact on the legitimacy of democracy by considering the way in which engagement with screen-based popular culture can lead to a decline in personal autonomy through the release (deliberate or inadvertent) of personal information into the domain of the World Wide Web.

The significance of this phenomenon as a threat to the legitimacy of democracy will be considered by way of the insights that can be gained from the futuristic novels by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. These two works will serve as metaphors. The correspondence between the futuristic dystopian worlds they describe and the actual conditions we experience daily does not take the form of an empirically testable hypothesis. The correspondence requirement of a metaphor is lower than that (in ascending order) of analogies, models, theories and paradigms. Metaphors are nonetheless powerful and evocative cognitive constructs: “The power of the metaphor rests on its loose and open-ended nature. It invites us to speculate and engages us in creative conjecture…an implied comparison of two entities is used to infer further properties or conclusions from one to the other” (Snidal 1985: 29).

An example is the (in)famous claim by Karl Marx that “religion is the opium of the people” (Partington 1996: 452). This is not a statement claiming that people who attend places of worship stagger from the premises in a condition of ecstatic intoxication identical to that induced by the consumption of opium. It is a metaphorical comparison telling the reader that there is something about the impact of religion on society that can be better understood by considering the relevant aspects of the impact of opium on the human mind. In his case, Marx saw that religion can be used as a mechanism of social control by the ruling class of capitalist societies in a way that opium can also be used. In both cases, such control is achieved in a subject through a dulling of the sense of his/her immediate environment, and a concomitant escape into a sense of other-worldly elation that accompanies consumption. This chapter therefore does not provide hypotheses, or present data with which to track correlations or causation; such an approach is appropriate to models and theories but not to metaphors and analogies. Rather, the chapter aims to generate propositions appropriate to the correspondence requirements set for metaphors, which can possibly lead to further elaboration.

Other delimitations also apply. First, the chapter does not consider the loss of personal autonomy via the Internet that is the result of surveillance by governments, (both democratic and authoritarian) through actions that are either covert or overt. Neither does it consider the release of private information that results from the actions of (mostly unidentified) hackers. Nor does it consider other dangers to democracy, at the scale of global existential threats, which may also emerge from the Internet (Yudkowsky 2008; Bostrom 2014).

The Democratic Process: Do Artefacts Have Politics?

One framework for considering the impact of technology on democracy is to reflect on the question posed by Langdon Winner: Do artefacts have politics? (Winner 1986: 19–39). Restated, do certain kinds of technology require certain specific social and political arrangements from societies. Winner identifies three answers, none of which excludes any of the others. The first is that technological devices, and the systems they are embedded in, are essentially neutral, with no determinate outcomes requiring a corresponding specific political organization. Technology can be used for either good or bad ends and for either democratic or undemocratic purposes; a view similar to the one held by some of the supporters of the pro-gun lobby in the USA who maintain that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

The second view is that certain kinds of technologies, by virtue of their inherent properties, or inherent operating procedures , compel a particular set of actions by people—those operating the technology first and foremost. Certain social and environmental conditions have to be met if the product of the (new) technology is to function effectively. According to Langdon, such technology invariably produces social and power relations with implications for broader society. He briefly mentions the development of nuclear power as an example. This interpretation is also at the core of Eric Schlosser’s book Command and Control, which analyses in the greatest detail the maintenance (and at times lack of maintenance) of the USA’s nuclear weapons systems (Schlosser 2013). According to both authors, the destructive power of bombs primed with nuclear grade plutonium is so high, that the acquisition thereof by terrorists or criminal syndicates, or even lone-wolf operators, is unthinkable. Therefore, to maintain nuclear weaponry as viable defences states have no choice but to do their utmost to prevent proliferation, and to establish highly secretive authoritarian safety organizational procedures and mechanisms for securing these weapons systems .

The third view is that certain kinds of technology do not necessarily require a particular form of social and political organization, but are highly amenable to and compatible with particular social, cultural and political organization and use. Winner argues, for example, that the technology of solar energy is more compatible than coal, nuclear power or oil for decentralized electricity generation, and is therefore more suitable for, and compatible with, democratic regimes than centralized authoritarian regimes.

Television and Internet

The technology of both Television and the Internet can be viewed through all three lenses. The first lens sees Television as a neutral technology that can be, and has been, used for propaganda purposes by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes . Television can also be used, and still is used, as a channel of information for democratic citizens, and as a medium for interest articulation and democratic contestation within the public sphere of contemporary democracies .

The same can be said of the Internet. It can be considered a virtuous technology to the extent that it allows for global cooperative networks of communication in the fields of business, scientific research, education, culture and governance; for innocuous social networks between like-minded people to flourish; for crucial dispersal of information during natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes; and for extending the reach of the public sphere to members of civil society.

One of the early promises the technology of the Internet and the World Wide Web held was that it would serve as a device to help spread democracy. Early examples of such use were found in the role it played in the Orange Revolution that led to the downfall of the authoritarian regime in the Ukraine during late 2004, and the 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon which mobilized more than one million citizens to demand the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country (Diamond 2010). Even more promising was the initial impetus this technology gave to the so-called Arab Spring, a series of uprisings against authoritarian rulers in the Arab world. It started in Tunisia in January 2011 with public protests against the dictatorship of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, when the self-immolation of a student, Mohamed Bouazizi was recorded on cell phone videos and released on the Internet. Through the multiplier effect of social media this and other incidents came to be vastly amplified into the global public sphere. Public revolt escalated within Tunisia, and when the army took sides with the citizenry, Ben Ali fled into exile, which was the final tipping point for regime change. To this day, Tunisia is the one and only case where public mobilization against authoritarian rule with the help of the World Wide Web has succeeded in securing democratic rule in the Arab world.

With the success of the Tunisian revolt as an inspiring example, similar uprisings against the dictatorships of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Bashar Al Assad in Syria took off. Not one proved successful in the long term. Libya remains, at the time of writing, in a state of civil war, with one militarized formation holding most of the eastern part of the country, and another rival group operating in the western region. Egypt returned to an elected autocracy , comprising former military officers who gained electoral victories under questionable circumstances. Syria is deeply mired in an exceptionally complex civil war: the initial pro-democracy movements established military wings, gave rise of the so-called Islamic state and invited support to rival groups by Turkey , Iran and the USA and a major intervention by Russia.

A more promising avenue for mobilization via social media has been their deployment by social movements. One of the most prominent examples thus far has been the Occupy Wall Street movement, which started in New York in August 2011 and rapidly spread to some 900 cities in 80 countries. As is the general trend with social movements, this one also faded away after some months, but its enduring contribution has been to establish an agenda within the global public sphere by highlighting some of the gross inequalities produced by globalization, and proposing an alternative set of values to those of globalized capitalism (Castells 2008).

The general appraisal appears to be that the overall contribution of social media in spreading democracy is its superb ability to articulate demands by citizens against authoritarian ruler (so-called swarm advocacy) and in that way widen the public sphere in those societies (Albrecht 2014). But social media has yet to succeed in converting these popular social movements into durable new imagined communities, able to translate ephemeral demands into stable policy positions (Schmidt and Cohen 2013; Lutz and Du Toit 2014). The most useful application of social media to democratic processes thus far has been by established political parties who use them to mobilize support during election campaigns, with the Obama presidential campaign of 2008 seen as the early leading example.

On the negative side, the Internet has shown itself to be a nefarious vehicle for establishing and organizing criminal and terror groups, for transacting illegal trade and for serving as a platform for hate speech within the public sphere with uncivil communication flows (Stein 2016). It has also helped to polarize societies into echo chambers where group-based animosity is expressed and mobilized. The Internet has also been a resource for the many “super-empowered angry men” who enact so-called lone-wolf acts of terror, a number of whom reportedly found inspiration for their actions from Internet sources.

The second view, mentioned in the preceding section, is that the Internet is a technology that, not unlike nuclear weapons, has internal properties that require certain concomitant forms of social and political organization. The key properties of network effects that can be created by linking people who want to communicate with one another, and the economies of scale that are possible with the global reach of the Internet, have been shown to be decisive in the concentration of commercial power: the Internet has come to be dominated by a few giant corporations (Taplin 2017: 76, 77). In 2006, there was only one Internet firm among the ten largest global corporations, Microsoft, listed as the fourth largest. Ten years later, in 2016, Apple was listed at number one, and Alphabet (the parent company of Google) was second largest, followed by Microsoft in third place. Amazon occupied sixth position and Facebook the seventh (The Economist 2016a, b). In a list of the ten wealthiest individuals in the Forbes 400, only three (Warren Buffet and the brothers David and Charles Koch) do not derive their wealth from technology firms. What is also important for the argument presented here is that according to author Jonathan Taplin many (but certainly not all) of the leading figures in the Internet industry subscribe to an ideology that can be described as acute libertarianism. They find their inspiration in the works of the novelist Ayn Rand who holds that for any individual the “…achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life” (Rand, cited in Taplin 2017: 27). In such an ideological framework, the concept of a public good finds hardly any support.

Another property inherent to some Internet platforms is that their use by individuals entails the unavoidable loss of personal autonomy through the release of private information to these corporations. This holds inevitable social consequences for the democratic process premised on the notion of the autonomous citizen exercising choice free from undue influence. The threat to democracy derives, in part, from the scale of some of these firms. Google’s Android operating system has an 80% global market share in its field; Amazon has a 70% market share in the field of e-book sales; and Facebook a 77% share in mobile social media. This puts Google and Facebook in a near monopolistic position. Amazon, as one buyer interacting with many potential sellers, is in turn a monopsony. Another aspect of the threat to democracy is found in the business model of these firms. The primary product all three of them sell is the personal preferences of billions of individual users of their platforms. The buyers are mostly firms who use this information to tailor advertisements to potential consumers, but also to contenders in democratic elections , and in the USA, both Google and Facebook have agreed to turn over their data to the National Security Agency (NSA) (Taplin 2017: 14, 15, 21, 157–160).

The third view is that the technology of Television and the Internet does not dictate or require but is highly compatible with, certain social arrangements, once again with power implications. One such social compatibility is that the Internet and its technological predecessor, Television, are highly efficient conveyor belts of a certain kind entertainment (here labelled as global screen culture ) which has a debilitating effect on the viewer’s capacity for critical thinking.

This much is claimed about Television by Neil Postman in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. The gist of his argument is that public discourse in American society has moved from an Age of Typography, which allowed for an Age of Reason and of Exposition, into the Age of Television, which brought a concomitant Age of Show Business, in which politics has become a form of performing art. His central point of departure is the “the medium is the metaphor” (and not “the medium is the message” as famously claimed by Marshall McLuhan). By this, he meant that every technology of communication has an inherent bias towards how information is sent and how it is received and understood. The Age of Reason thrived in the medium of printed text, with a bias towards exposition: “a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response” (Postman 1985: 63). Television, by contrast, is a different technology. The combined impact of an electronically lit screen and moving images draws the human eye and attention in a way unlike any form of printed text. This physical form is predisposed to being used in certain ways, and away from other modes, and hence on Television “…discourse is conducted largely through visual imagery, which is to say that Television gives us a conversation in images, not words. ….. You cannot do political philosophy on Television. Its form works against the content” (Postman 1985: 7).

The most successful way of holding the attention to matters of public interest (i.e. newscasts) in a commercially competitive environment is to present it as entertainment. Postman quotes a former Television executive’s advice: “The idea, is to keep everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through novelty, action, and movement…pay attention to no concept, no character, and no problem for more than a few seconds at a time.” The guidelines for news presentation are “that bite-sized is best, that complexity must be avoided, that nuances are dispensable, that qualifications impede the simple message, that visual stimulation is a substitute for thought, and that verbal precision is an anachronism” (Postman 1985: 107).

The overall effect is that the electronically lit screen overwhelms the printed text through its production of entertainment. Postman concludes: “what we are confronted with now is the problem posed by the economic and symbolic structure of Television. Those who run Television do not limit our access to information but widen it… [they do] everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, non-substantive, non-historical and non-contextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment” (Postman 1985: 141). Postman was writing about Television in 1985. Technology has moved on and the Internet is the latest form of screen technology. Given the range and scope of entertainment available on thousands of websites and opportunities for distraction provided by complimentary devices such as video games and online movies, the presence of popular screen culture has been amplified even more.

Huxley and Orwell

The significance of the above for the legitimacy of democracy can be gauged by revisiting the contrasting views on the future presented by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. These are found in Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, first published in 1932, and Orwell’s equally disturbing novel Nineteen Eighty-four, first published in 1949. Both novels have been reprinted many times and the books, their titles, and even the names of both authors have achieved the status of metaphor in public discourse. Both novels depict a future world order with totalitarian regimes having displaced democracies completely. In Orwell’s work, total social control is achieved in a system not unlike that produced by Stalin in the then USSR, and probably that of Kim Jong-un in contemporary North Korea . The state asserts power through coercion, or the threat of coercion, using secret police forces. War is constant. Public information is controlled rigorously, distorted and falsified so as to constantly rewrite history. At the apex of this oppressive totalitarian order is the unseen figure of Big Brother, who is not somebody’s elder sibling, but is a metaphor for an ostensibly benign, yet sinister and malevolent force experienced in being both omnipresent and omnipotent (Orwell 1949).

Huxley offers a very different future. The totalitarian state is a world state, a benevolent dictatorship that is unseen but also present within every sphere of public and private life. Society is stable. The family is abolished, children are produced in factory-like assembly lines, raised and educated in dormitories under state supervision and conditioned to fit into society according to caste. Critical thinking is discouraged, and initiative is disapproved of. With the family and children out of the way, emotional relationships are obsolete, and marriage, natural birth and fidelity are themes that are frowned upon. Social control is maintained by free sex (“everybody belongs to everybody else”) and a freely available psychotic drug soma, which induces sensations of pleasure and well-being (Huxley 1932/2006a).

Neil Postman contrasts these two dystopias as follows: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture . Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture …In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure” (Postman 1985: vii, viii).

In reflecting on his own work in 1958, Huxley considered the modern world to be moving significantly if not yet decisively towards the future he imagined (Huxley 1958/2006b). In an earlier correspondence with Orwell in 1949, Huxley argued that his own vision was more likely to prevail, than that of Orwell on the grounds of being more efficient, less costly and less wasteful (letter reprinted in Huxley 1932/2006a). Postman tends to agree, and considers modern Television in America as the metaphorical equivalent of Brave New World’s hallucinogenic drug soma. He concludes “What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture -death is a clear possibility” (Postman 1985: 155, 156).

Postman is not implying that popular screen culture is about to induce a drug-like haze of delirium in the minds of the consumers thereof. The metaphor is one that draws attention to—and highlights a particular aspect of—the effect of the world of entertainment via the electronically lit-up screen on people, which corresponds to a metaphorical equivalent in soma. In Brave New World, the drug acts as a mechanism of social control by virtue of its influence on the human mind to elicit pleasurable sensations, which in turn, acts as a sedative, a pacifier and a device for subduing any resentment against the pervasive system of government .

Popular screen culture has a comparable effect of pacification as does the fictional drug. Both produce powerful effects through a presence in the “normal” world that is subtle, unobtrusive and apparently innocuous, but therefore also more insidious (Cowan 2013: 229–259). In both instances, the users are drawn to these products through an increasing psychological dependence, the one produced by chemistry, the other by digital electronic technology (Avent 2017; Greenfield 2008; McGonigal 2011). And both offer an alternative reality, filled with intensely vivid experiences of a pleasurable nature. Popular screen culture on the Internet then becomes the new Danegeld, the mechanism for buying off social resentment and aggression. The metaphor thus illuminates the proposition that some attributes of current democracies may be described as being Huxleyan, without intending to mean that current democracies are at the point of morphing into all the systemic features of Brave New World.

Likewise, Orwell anticipates a totalitarian world which probably has its closest current approximation in Kim Jong-un’s North Korea . But the comparison can be made between aspects of the world of Nineteen Eighty-four and some of the features found in current democratic societies, which in a metaphorical sense can then be described as Orwellian.

Propositions

Metaphors do not set correspondence requirements to the observed phenomena to which they are compared that would enable hypotheses to be formulated. But they do allow for propositions that are amenable to further explication and elaboration. Seven propositions are presented here.

The first proposition, in part consistent with the Huxleyan metaphor, is that the loss of legitimacy as measured in the decline in support for democracy, in the loss of interest in—and in the rising indifference to—politics in the stable, affluent high technology democracies is in part a function of the escalating pull of global popular screen culture . Democratic politics is just too boring, too bland and too ordinary to hold the attention of viewers/consumers who with the click of a button have a myriad of other more attractive, more gripping and more pleasurable viewing sites at their disposal, unless democratic politics can also be repackaged into the wrappings of popular entertainment that can compete effectively with the other content in popular screen culture .

A second proposition, and one ensuing from the first, is that increasingly, democratic politics will come under pressure to succumb to this competition by trying to become more entertaining, at the risk of becoming more trivial. From this, it follows that politicians who succeed in democratic politics will increasingly have to be professionals at show business, at public entertainment, and become past masters at grabbing and holding the electronic digital centre stage by, however, outrageous proclamations they make. Current examples are individuals such as Donald Trump in the 2016 American presidential election, and the likes of professional clowns, such as Beppe Grillo in Italy. The star in this cast is probably professional Television comedian Jimmy Morales in Guatemala. He stood for the Presidency in 2015 on the ticket of being “neither corrupt, nor a thief,” and won the election on the second ballot with 70% of the vote! (The Economist 2015).

A third proposition is that modern electronically screen-based digital platforms (both Television and Internet) are more amenable to populist discourse that is the print technology, which facilitates the discourse of exposition. Information aiming to elicit emotional responses can be easily communicated through short, sharp messages, aptly dubbed “clickbait” (Persily 2017). This technological shift is part of the wider electronic and digital wave of innovation, often dubbed as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

A fourth proposition is that this digital wave—with its vast potential for the disruption of established practices in the world of work, concomitant job losses through technological redundancy and the attendant social dislocations—tends to favour populist politicians bent on mobilizing a disaffected mass of voters. Populists excel in casting the political arena as being polarized, with themselves standing up for the losers in this technological jungle, who are up against the perceived winners, that is those who produce, command, sell and profit hugely from this new technology. In an electoral playing field tilted to this side, liberal values presented through measured public discourse are less persuasive and more easily drowned out. The corollary of this is the fifth proposition that these very same conditions created by the Fourth Industrial Revolution will, however, make it less likely that populist promises of jobs, social security, etc. can be met.

The sixth proposition is that this new technology will present increasing opportunities for external forces (whether states or private corporations acting on behalf of political clients, such as electoral candidates) to deploy devices that are either of an Orwellian nature, and/or of a Huxleyan nature. Both can be located within the standard institutions and procedures of established democracies such as elections , and constitute the new generation of Hidden Persuaders (Packard 1957).

The Huxleyan process starts with the release of huge amounts of personal information by individuals during the process of recreation and entertainment made available by the Internet, mostly through social media. Two of the biggest private firms actively receiving this information are Google (with 1.16 billion users by December 2016) and Facebook (with 1.86 billion subscribers as of April 2017). With Facebook users’ intent on establishing and nurturing personal networks, the release of such information is inherent to the process of self-presentation, and is part of the fun. People enjoy telling others what they do, and enjoy viewing information from other like-minded individuals, which contributes to a pleasant sense of engagement. With Google, the search engine does not explicitly require or demand personal information, but provides a service, and through its very use individuals are (sometimes unknowingly) presenting data as to their own preferences, interests and activities to the firm (Stephens-Davidowitz 2017). On many other Internet platforms such as Amazon, data transfer, like that of Google, takes place by mere use of their particular Internet sites.

These data sets remain the property of these Internet firms and such personal information, once released by consumers, cannot be withdrawn. The information can be used by whoever gains hold of it, for whatever purposes. One such firm is Cambridge Analytica in the business of campaigning for candidates who compete to win elections . They were hired by the Trump campaign to help with the 2016 American presidential election. In order to tailor their televised political advertisements with more precision, the firm is reported to have said that they draw on “psychographic” profiles of 220 million Americans, where each profile is built up from up to 5000 data points per person. These are then merged into five main individual traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (Kranish 2016). Another report has it that this firm was able, with this database, to create 40–50 thousand variations of a single Television advertisement every day of the campaign, adapting the content and format according to the ongoing responses received. We have no way of knowing whether such political marketing was decisive in the election result, and Cambridge Analytica makes no claims to that effect. Added to that is the recognition that Google can build bias into the algorithms driving its search engine, which led one analyst to conclude that “We are talking about the most powerful mind-control machine ever invented in the history of the human race. And people don’t even notice it” (Cadwalladr 2016; see also Taggart 2017). With technology of this scale and precision, one of the basic tenets of democracy, namely that the individual voter is autonomous in choosing who to vote for without undue influence, becomes deeply compromised. What then starts as a Huxleyan pursuit of pleasure can through the technology of the Internet be converted into an Orwellian mechanism of social control.

Building and holding a presence in the electronic public sphere has become a standard requirement for political candidates competing for the popular vote. One of the leading exponents of this craft is the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, who, by the latest count, has 39 million followers on Facebook and 27 million on Twitter. In the USA, on election day, candidate Trump registered 23 million followers on Twitter, compared to candidate Clinton’s 10 million. Trump gained a further edge in having his tweets retweeted by followers thrice more often than did Hillary Clinton’s followers (Persily 2017).

At first, the digital landscape created by the social media appeared to be the authentic expression of sentiment within that part of the public sphere created by the Internet. But the Orwellian metaphor of thought control through the falsification of information has now also come to apply to some of the mechanisms used on the Internet to distort, falsify, reshape and recast this landscape. The capacity for modern media to produce visual material that represents misinformation (i.e. lies) became already well-established with the development of photography. With modern digital techniques, the capacity for the manipulation of visual material has become vastly more sophisticated. The dissemination of disinformation (i.e. misleading information, either misplaced, non-relevant, superficial, stripped of context and/or fragmented) is an almost inevitable result when news is packaged as entertainment (The Economist 2016a, b).

Misinformation and disinformation have now merged into a category called “fake news ,” which can be, and has been, released with various motives—whether for profit, satire, propaganda or just plain poor reporting (Persily 2017). One of the more drastic mechanisms through which fake news is now being inserted into the public sphere is with Botnets. Bots are computers programmed to automatically post, tweet or message on specific cues. Botnets would then comprise of networks of such computers, linked to one another and activated from the same source. While thematically constrained, bots may be individualized, so as to appear to be authentic postings. The rise of Botnets has distorted and polluted the electronic public sphere severely, turning social media platforms such as Twitter into but another terrain of contestation, rather than a public domain with face validity from where public sentiment can be gauged. [1] One study found that just before the third presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, the pro-Trump bots outnumbered the pro-Clinton ones by 7:1 (Kollanyi et al. 2016). Through a mechanically contrived process, then, the Trump campaign managed to falsify the social media domain in such a way as to amplify his presence over Clinton’s in the public sphere.

The Way Out

Open societies have self-correcting mechanisms with which to address potential or emerging systemic failures. Some of the major stakeholders on the Internet, Twitter, Facebook and Google quickly introduced new rules following the 2016 US presidential election. Google and Facebook brought in rules to discourage “fake-news-for-profit” by prohibiting such sites from carrying advertisements. Facebook also took steps to filter the factual basis of news items, outsourcing this function to a number of other firms. When an item is deemed to be false, it is not removed, but flagged with the label “Disputed by 3rd Party Factcheckers.” Twitter moved to contain hate speech bringing in rules to combat online verbal abuse (Persily 2017). A few weeks before the UK General Election of 9 June 2017, Facebook also placed advertisements in major newspapers on how to identify false news items on the Internet (Scott 2017).

The effectiveness of these and (future) policies remains to be seen. For a start, these are private firms operating in a competitive market. They do not see themselves as media companies, but rather as technology firms using algorithms as their platform. Their business models are focused on gaining customers and market share, not discouraging them. They act to earn profit for shareholders. Popularity is the first criterion for any information posted, and as Persily notes, “The ‘search for truth’ is necessarily far down the list of priorities for the social network, just as it is for users, who will often find false, negative, bigoted or other outrageous speech to be more meaningful and engaging” (Persily 2017). Internet firms make no claim to serve the public good, as political parties do, and are not geared to do so. However, Persily concludes that these firms have become the new intermediaries between the citizen and the outside world, and are displacing political parties, the printed media and interest groups from this role very rapidly.

Given the above, the importance of non-profit organizations working towards securing individual privacy must be stressed. One example is the World Wide Web Foundation established by the illustrious Sir Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the Internet (World Wide Web Foundation 2017), with the objective to “re-decentralize” the web. Parallel to this is the call by the European Union to make available the technology that will give every individual the power to completely delete every item of their personal data, which is currently being sold by the Internet firms for targeted advertising (Taplin 2017: 256).

Conclusion

The gist of this chapter is that while institutions in the mature, stable democracies are not under immediate threat of decay, the democratic processes in these regimes may be losing some of their key attributes. The established democratic processes of public persuasion are being disrupted in a fundamental way by the Internet, insomuch as some of the core requirements of democracy, such as the privacy of the individual and the autonomy of the voter, are becoming increasingly difficult to meet. While the democratic processes of electioneering may still prevail, the democratic substance of these procedures is under threat of being hollowed out.

Can the technology of the Internet that allows for the above conclusion be contained, or constrained? Are the self-correcting mechanisms of democratic and open societies nimble enough to counter these threats to its legitimacy? Democratic optimists will have to fall back on past experience in the containment of technology with a global reach to find inspiration. Attempts at limiting the technology of warfare, for instance, have a long history, with some notable failures, but also with notable successes, and some with yet to be determined outcomes. Arguably the most impressive success thus far has been the prevention of nuclear war. Less successful has been the prevention of proliferation of states with nuclear warheads, and banning the use of lethal chemical weapons such as poison gas.

To avoid a Huxleyan future, we will need education, vigilance and a new set of global rules for the Internet. The essential challenge presented by the Internet is ably summarized by Erich Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google, and his co-author Jared Cohen: “The Internet is among the few things humans built that they don’t truly understand……it is at once intangible and in a constant state of mutation, growing larger and more complex with each passing second…The Internet is the largest experiment involving anarchy in history…the world’s largest ungoverned space” (Schmidt and Cohen 2013).

Containing this ungoverned technology to prevent it from eroding the legitimacy of democracies will require the building of institutions and rules with a reach that matches and outmatches the range and depth of the technology itself. Whether governments will be able to construct such a highly sophisticated architecture is open to question, given the exceedingly complex and intricate digital technology with which the Internet is constructed, and given that governments themselves are not the builders of this technology. The seventh and last proposition then is that if the technology of the Internet is going to be regulated in this way, the nature of the technology itself requires that it be regulated from within by those who are its ongoing creators, and therefore that the virtues of this technology itself be used to secure the legitimacy of democracy. This would require, as a starting point, that the ideology of extreme libertarianism held by some of the leading entrepreneurs in this field be rolled back, and for the concept of a public good to regain salience.

Note

1. 1.
Researchers have sophisticated procedures through which such bots can be isolated from valid posts, but these are not readily available to members of the tweeting public

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Persily, Nathaniel. 2017. Can Democracy Survive the Internet? Journal of Democracy 28 (2): 63–76.

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© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_12

12. Lessons for Democracy: Diplomacy to the Rescue?

Christer Jönsson1

(1)

Lund University, Lund, Sweden

Christer Jönsson

Email: christer.jonsson@svet.lu.se

International institutions are often portrayed as suffering from a “democratic deficit.” This expression first arose in reference to the European Union in the early 1990s, but has since spread to other international institutions, including the core bodies of the United Nations . This chapter turns the tables around to explore the “diplomatic deficit ” of contemporary democracy.

Democracy and diplomacy are old institutions that show us how political discourse has been organized within and between political units. Diplomacy is the older institution of the two: diplomatic activity has been already documented in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures some 4000 years ago. [1] The birth of democracy is usually traced back to ancient Greece in around the fifth century BC yet, somewhat paradoxically, the older institution has received considerably less academic attention. While democratic theory has a long and rich tradition and occupies a central position in political science and philosophy, diplomacy has received scant consideration among theoretically oriented social scientists (Jönsson 2012).

To conceive of diplomacy and democracy as institutions means understanding them broadly as relatively stable collections of social practices consisting of easily recognizable roles coupled with underlying norms and a set of rules or conventions defining appropriate behaviour for, and governing relations among, occupants of these roles (Young 1989: 32; March and Olsen 1998: 948). These norms and rules shape expectations as to how diplomatic and democratic actors should behave.

This chapter proceeds from the observation that those who study or practise either democracy or diplomacy all too seldom enter into a dialogue or mutual learning. Yet diplomacy and democracy are not worlds apart but are institutions with certain comparable traits, obvious dissimilarities notwithstanding. This chapter attempts to build bridges between the two sets of practices and research fields. At a time when democracy is generally perceived to be under threat, it seems appropriate to explore whether there are ideas and experiences in the realm of diplomacy that might be profitably applied to contemporary democracy.

Six specific aspects of possible cross-fertilization will be discussed. They include:

- Basic norms of coexistence

- Representation as a problem

- Bargaining as an instrument

- The role of communication

- Challenges from other actors

- Legitimacy vs. distrust .

The above inventory should be seen as suggestive rather than exhaustive.

Norms: Coexistence and Raison de Système

Diplomacy as an institution represents a response to “a common problem of living separately and wanting to do so, while having to conduct relations with others” (Sharp 1999: 51). Similarly, democracy institutionalizes the existence of, and relations between, differing interests and political views in society. Both democracy and diplomacy rest on a norm of coexistence , allowing polities and political parties “to live and let live.” Diplomatic historian Garrett Mattingly argued that “unless people realize that they have to live together, indefinitely, in spite of their differences, diplomats have no place to stand” (Mattingly 1955: 196). This applies to democracy as well. Democracy and diplomacy alike regard differences and disagreements as inevitable, yet provide institutional arrangements that encourage consultation, negotiation, the exploration of alternatives and the search for mutually beneficial solutions.

This means that diplomats and parliamentarians are not only committed to their primary roles as representatives of states and political parties, respectively, but also have an obligation to uphold the diplomatic and democratic system. Diplomat-cum-scholar Adam Watson, for example, argues that diplomats throughout history have been guided not only by raison d’état, but also by raison de système (Watson 1982 passim). Commonly described as representing peace or international order, diplomats are said to be “conscious of world interests superior to immediate national interests” (Nicolson 1959: xi). Similarly, parliamentarians are expected to look beyond their immediate party interests and serve as guardians of the democratic system.

Ideally, a commitment to pluralism and the mediation between universalism and particularism should be the hallmarks of diplomacy as well as democracy. However, in contemporary democracy there are tendencies away from this ideal. Religious as well as secular varieties of fundamentalism or absolutism are emerging. The common denominator is the attitude of “I am absolutely right, and you are absolutely wrong.” If the standpoints of different parties are perceived as totally incompatible and irreconcilable, raison de système will be overshadowed or even ruled out, endangering democracy as an institution. Diplomatic history offers parallels. Religious wars in the sixteenth century nearly wrecked the European diplomatic institutions.

Instead, as Garrett Mattingly put it:

Successful diplomatic negotiations require that the parties involved can at least imagine a mutually successful settlement, that neither assumes that the only permanent solution is the total destruction of the other. As long as conflicts between states are about prestige or profit or power, grounds of agreement are always accessible to sane men. But the clash of ideological absolutes drives diplomacy from the field. (1955: 195–196)

Similarly, absolutist political ideologies wrecked democratic institutions in several countries during the first half of the twentieth century. We need to remind ourselves of these past experiences of diplomacy and democracy at a time when irreconcilable rhetoric and unyielding standpoints reappear in democratic arenas. To be a politician in a democratic system includes serving as an “ambassador” for democracy.

Political parties and individual politicians who foment the “us-against-them” attitudes and who claim to represent the only right way are becoming increasingly successful in several democracies . They see themselves fighting an existential battle for whatever they consider sacred and which they see as being threatened by political opponents whom they regard as ignorant or evil. Politicians in a democracy could learn a lesson from the “diplomatic theory” Paul Sharp (2009) developed to elucidate the diplomat’s perspective on international relations. Diplomats occupy positions between human communities, between “us” and “them.” They are, as it were, professional strangers who feel at home neither in their own country nor in the country in which they are posted. They are located at the “outer edge of the inside,” embedded in their own organization yet not prone to groupthink, as they are working at the borders, bridges and entry points (Brooks 2016). Their role is not only to represent their own country vis-à-vis others, but also to represent others vis-à-vis domestic policymakers. To acquaint oneself with, and try to understand, the arguments of others and take up a relativistic rather than absolutistic attitude ought to be as self-evident for politicians in a democracy as it is for diplomats.

Representation

Representation is a core function of both diplomacy and democracy. Elected politicians as well as diplomatic emissaries are representatives. Representation is not a simple, unequivocal concept. Scholars of such diverse disciplines as philosophy, theology, art history, literature, psychology, anthropology, semiotics and political science have been pondering the meaning of the term. This implies that representation is a central yet multifaceted and ambiguous term.

The breadth and ambiguity of the concept has to do with its etymology. The term is of Latin origin. The verb repraesentare means “to make present or manifest” or “to present again.” The Romans used it to mean the bringing into presence of something previously absent, or the embodiment of an abstraction in an object (e.g. the representation of various virtues in fragments of a sculpture). Its use was largely confined to inanimate objects, and the term was not applied to human beings acting for others. In fact, neither the Greeks nor the Romans, who had a number of political institutions and practices we would today label “representative,” had any corresponding word or concept (Pitkin 1972: 241). Only in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries did the Latin verb repraesentare come to be applied to human beings acting on behalf of others (Pitkin 1972). The word repraesentatio was first used in connection with the medieval Christian Councils, the forerunners of modern parliaments (Redner 1994).

Today “representation ” in this interpersonal sense is a central concept in the political science vocabulary. In broad terms, representation can then be understood as “a relation between two persons, the representative and the represented or constituent, with the representative holding the authority to perform various actions that incorporate the agreement of the represented.” (De Grazia 1968: 461). A literature search using representation as a keyword yields a plethora of works focusing on representative democracy and representative government . Although “democracy has no intrinsic link with representation , and representation has no intrinsic link with democracy” (Ankersmit 2002: 108), “representation ” has become a core term used in contemporary academia. Diplomatic representation is frequently mentioned but is seldom elaborated upon in some of the more generic treatises on the concept.

Principal–agent (P-A) theory is one branch of social science that has been preoccupied with relationships between representatives and represented, and hence can be applied to diplomacy as well as democracy. Principal–agent relations arise whenever one party (principal) delegates certain tasks to another party (agent). Diplomats and elected politicians are obviously agents , who have been entrusted with certain tasks from their principals (governments/voters). Because of conflicting preferences and information asymmetry, agents may pursue other interests than those of the principal (“shirking” in the P-A vernacular). Delegation is therefore usually combined with control mechanisms. P-A theory was originally developed in the so-called new institutional economics tradition and was applied to relations between shareholders and corporate executives, managers and employees, retailers and suppliers, and the like. In the hands of political scientists, P-A theory has been used to analyse voter–parliamentarian and politician–bureaucrat relationships. [2] Problems of delegation and control are of equal relevance to diplomacy .

Compared to diplomats, elected politicians have a considerably more diffuse principal. To be sure, the interests of the electorate are continually monitored in public opinion polls, but the “popular will” remains elusive, as several recent democratic elections have demonstrated. Moreover, citizen control of the agents is exercised primarily in general elections with several years’ intervals. Their own political party constitutes yet another principal for parliamentarians . Differing interpretations of the “popular will” between individual parliamentarians and the party leadership may lead to an open conflict, engaging party whips. Diplomats , like elected politicians , cannot act on their own behest, but their P-A relations and control mechanisms are considerably more palpable. Deviations from the line of the government and foreign ministry are not tolerated and may entail discharge.

A distinction can be made between “imperative” and “free” mandates (Sobolewski 1968: 96). The distinction refers to whether representatives, bound by mandates or instructions, must do what their constituents or principals want them to do, or whether that are free to act as they see fit in pursuit of the principals’ interests and welfare as they themselves see them. This implies an appraisal of whether accountability or authorisation is the key term to characterize the relationship between representatives and principals.

Can it then be said that diplomats have an “imperative” mandate and politicians have a “free” mandate? Of course not. Elected politicians have a general and not very detailed mandate from the electorate and a somewhat narrower mandate from their own parties. Parliamentarians can neither move too far from their voters, nor slavishly follow every shift in public opinion. Medieval diplomatic emissaries, or nuncii, were prime examples of restricted or “imperative” diplomatic mandates. These envoys deviated at their peril from the literal interpretation of their prince’s instructions. Distances and the waste of time during negotiations —the nuncii were required to go constantly back-and-forth between their principals and their foreign counterparts—eventually led to the emergence of procurators. They were agents who could speak in their personal capacity, and who could negotiate and conclude treaties without consulting the principal. The procurator, in turn, was the forerunner of the ambassador plenipotentiary. Instead of explicit instructions, thirteenth-century procurators were often provided with blanks sealed in advance by the principal and left to be filled out by the agents, giving the latter immense freedom and power of discretion (Queller 1967). The instructions and bargaining mandates of contemporary diplomats vary in restrictions but, as a rule, they also allow room for initiative within the given frames.

Representation is not a static but a dynamic concept. It is best understood as a process of mutual interaction between principals and agents (Sobolewski 1968). Rather than connoting a static relationship, diplomatic representation entails varying combinations of imperative and free mandates, accountability and authorization. The relationship between principal and agent rests on a two-way communication and mutual influence. Agents rarely represent principals whose interests are fixed and static. Instead, interests are constructed in interactions between representatives and those they represent.

Using their diplomatic talent in interaction with their own foreign ministry, diplomats have influence over the instructions they receive that gives them considerable leeway. The reports diplomats send to their foreign ministries and the policies they propose, or imply, can have a decisive influence on government foreign policy. Their representative role, in short, includes an important educational assignment. Their professional knowledge about the world needs to be made available to their principals and the broader public.

The notion that the agent’s information advantage implies an educational responsibility vis-à-vis their principals is something politicians ought to consider. Democratic representation does not mean a mechanical reproduction of objectively given interests and identities. Principals (foreign ministries/voters) respond to initiatives and new ideas from agents (diplomats/elected politicians ). Passing information has become all the more pressing in view of the disregard and contempt for knowledge that underlie the populist tendencies in contemporary democracies . It is worth emphasizing that the representative role also includes a responsibility to educate the electorate about the provisions and rules of the democratic process. Not least, this responsibility involves reminding oneself and others that democracy (like diplomacy ) is not only about convincing people about the superior qualities of one’s own standpoint, but more often than not, it requires negotiations and a search for compromise solutions. Voters who are not well informed about the conditions of the political game may have unrealistic expectations and may therefore experience disappointments and discontent which, in the long run, can hurt democracy as an institution.

In sum, representation is a complex and problematic concept that calls for reflection on the part of every representative. The difference may appear great between the parliamentarian’s relatively free mandate and the diplomat ’s relatively bound mandate, but at a closer look they act in similar grey zones. Parliamentarians and diplomats alike perform a delicate balancing act. The main lessons that politicians may draw from the realm of diplomacy are, first, to regard the delegated authority as a bargaining mandate rather than an entirely free or totally bound mandate; and, second, never to neglect the educational responsibility associated with representation .

Bargaining

Bargaining is one identifiable mode of joint decision-making, to be distinguished from coalition, where the choice is made by numerical aggregation (such as voting) and adjudication, where the choice is made hierarchically by a judge who aggregates conflicting values and interests into a single decision. In bargaining , the parties are left to themselves to combine their conflicting points of view into a single decision (Zartman 1977). In diplomacy , there is virtually no alternative to bargaining and negotiation, which are commonly seen as the core of diplomacy , or “the ultimate form of diplomatic communication ” (Stearns 1996: 132). In fact, several authors define diplomacy in terms of negotiations .

Voting, on the other hand, is often seen as the essence of democracy. Elections are a necessary but not a sufficient condition to uphold the central principles of liberal democracy. We need to remind ourselves that Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Viktor Orbán, Bashar al-Assad and other autocratic leaders came to power by winning general elections . Apart from elections , other necessary components, such as rule of law, respect for human rights and freedom of expression, need to be present for us to speak of a functioning democracy. And whereas voting is seen as the most prominent mode of joint decision-making in democratic systems, it is often forgotten that bargaining plays a crucial role in the democratic process as well. Democracy cannot guarantee either stable or quick solutions. Like diplomacy , it typically rests on “gray” compromises, representing the least undesirable solution. This model is seldom questioned during good times but comes under attack in times of upheavals and crises.

One may speak of “bargaining democracy” as a complement to “voting democracy” (Katzenstein 1985: 235). The degree to which bargaining takes place within a parliamentary framework varies among different democratic systems: whereas parliamentary negotiations occur relatively seldom in the majoritarian Westminster model, they are frequent in the Nordic multiparty systems and in several European countries with a tradition of governing party coalitions. In the US Congress negotiations are equally common, albeit between ad hoc coalitions rather than between political parties (Stenelo and Jerneck 1996).

A bargaining situation is characterized by the confluence of cooperative and conflictual elements (common and opposed interests) as well as interdependent decisions (Jönsson 1980): “Without common interest there is nothing to negotiate for, without conflict nothing to negotiate about” (Iklé 1964: 2). In short, bargaining situations can be associated with the norm of coexistence and the notion of raison de système that diplomacy and democracy have in common. If the respective parties do not recognize any common interests whatsoever and/or each side considers itself to be self-sufficient, no genuine negotiations can be conducted. Examples of ensuing deadlocks can readily be found in the diplomatic world and national parliaments alike. The unsuccessful efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the Syrian imbroglio and the unproductive bickering in the US Congress are current cases in point.

Successful bargaining requires not only the skill in presenting one’s own arguments so as to persuade or convince the opponent, but it also presupposes an ability to listen and admit that the opponent may also have a point. Otherwise negotiations turn into a dialogue de sourdes. The ability to put oneself in the shoes of the opponents by trying to understand their reasoning and priorities is crucial to the search for a common ground and possible compromises. Among today’s democratic politicians the ability to listen and try to understand the opponents’ viewpoints seems less developed than the ability to propagate policies of their own party and to formulate catchy sound bites. Here, parliamentarians have something to learn from diplomats .

Diplomats and parliamentarians are typically engaged in “two-level games,” to use Robert Putnam’s oft-quoted label (1988). External bargaining between states, on the one hand, and between political parties, on the other, is often preceded by, or coincides with, internal bargaining concerning standpoints, tactics and desired results. To coordinate internal and external bargaining processes and to identify “win-sets,” that is, outcomes acceptable at both levels, require a pragmatic and relativistic mindset rather than a dogmatic and absolutistic one.

Communication

Communication plays a vital role in diplomacy . In fact, diplomacy is often defined in terms of communication —as “a regulated process of communication ” (Constantinou 1996: 25) or “the commu-ni-cation system of the international society” (James 1980: 942), to mention but two examples. Similarly, democracy is seen to require deliberation , not mere voting. Theories of deliberative democracy hold that for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by deliberation that is free from distortions of unequal power. [3]

We need to be reminded that the very word “communication ” derives from the Latin verb communicare, which means to make shared or common. An essential aspect of diplomacy has been to develop a common language, in the sociological sense, which allows communication and deliberation with a minimum of unnecessary misunderstandings. Similarly, the idea of deliberative democracy rests on a rational dialogue with shared understanding of the meaning of words. Unfortunately, contemporary political parleys do not always live up to this ideal. Ideologically tainted and deliberately fuzzy expressions, combined with tactically motivated readiness to misunderstand and discredit the opponent, often lead to failed communication in the original sense. The proliferating use of irreconcilable language in contemporary political deliberations turns forums of discussion into forums of obstruction and entails deadlocks rather than creating new openings.

Courtesy is a prominent feature of diplomatic language . The salience of courteous, non-dramatic phrases led the American writer Caskie Stinnett to characterize a diplomat as “a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.” [4] Courtesy may have characterized democratic debates in the past, but there is a current trend of using increasingly rude language, and turning some democratic forums into echo chambers of insults. In this sense, politicians have much to learn from diplomats. Diplomats have developed a series of conventional expressions and idioms that, however amiable they may seem, convey a message their counterparts can clearly understand. If a diplomat says “my government feels obliged to express reservations with regard to …,” it means that “my government will not allow …”; and “I may have misunderstood the distinguished representative of …” translates into “The representative of … has been talking nonsense” (Kaufmann 1996: 162). Even if political debates may require more liveliness and spice, especially during election campaigns, there is a need to weed out blunt attacks and abusive language. Politicians can learn a lesson from diplomats’ mastery of saying controversial things without unnecessary provocation, and yet get their messages across.

The diplomatic language is more fastidious than the incessant flow of words in politics that today inundates voters through various channels. Diplomats are careful to say neither too much nor too little because they know that every word and every nuance or omission will be meticulously studied for different shades of meaning. One ironic characterization of a diplomat is “a person who thinks twice before saying nothing” (James 1980: 942). To carefully weigh one’s choice of words and trying to envision how one’s expressions may be interpreted by others should not be restricted to diplomats but ought to apply to democratic politicians as well.

In 2016, the neologism “post-truth ” was declared the international word of the year by the OED. The background to that entry was that some electoral campaigns—with the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election as leading examples—were characterized by a reckless treatment of truth. Brexit supporters as well as Donald Trump consciously disregarded whether a statement was true or not. “Post-truth ” is not synonymous with outright lies, but denotes statements aimed at affecting public opinion by appealing to the feelings, suspicions or personal beliefs of citizens, rather than to rationality, facts and knowledge. The significant impact of “post-truth ” had to do with the enhanced role of social media in the campaigns. Celebrated for their democratic potential social media have, at the same time, a fundamental weakness that can be disastrous for democracy: the lack of accountability for content. Thus, social media have become hothouses of “fake news ” and “post-truths.”

At first sight, it seems that diplomacy cannot be portrayed as an example to follow as far as handling of the truth is concerned. Sir Henry Wotton’s 1604 characterization of a diplomat as “an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country” has gained notoriety. And, to be sure, there have been elements of deception and dishonesty in diplomacy through the ages. But there are also clear restrictions for lying in diplomatic communication . Considerations for future relations with the recipient of the message usually preclude “post-truth .” Similarly, contemporary democratic politicians would profit by considering future relations more than immediate vote gains.

Challenges from Other Actors

Traditionally, the fundament of democracy has been the relationship between voters and parliamentarians , while diplomacy has been based on the relationship between rulers (today represented by foreign ministries) and diplomats . Both binary sets of actors face challenges in today’s world.

The traditional diplomatic actors confront challenges at different levels. In particular, in Europe and America, foreign ministries and diplomats have lost their former monopoly of government contacts across national borders. Supranational, sub-national, trans-governmental and transnational actors have entered the diplomatic arena (Jönsson 2016). The new “foreign minister” of the European Union (the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) and the European External Action Service (EEAS) are unique diplomatic actors at the supranational level, existing in parallel with member-states’ foreign services. At the sub-national level, there are cities and federal states that engage in diplomatic activity and have representations abroad. The fact that a growing number of specialized government departments and agencies have interests and contacts across national borders constitutes the trans-governmental challenge. This is particularly evident in the EU , where officials from domestic ministries comprise the majority of permanent representations. Transnational actors are individuals and groups who act beyond national borders yet are not controlled by their governments. These include NGOs or civil society organization, advocacy networks, party associations, philanthropic foundations, multinational corporations, eminent persons and the like. These bodies have begun to claim and are increasingly granted, access to various diplomatic forums (Tallberg et al. 2013).

As principal actors in democracies , political parties face similar challenges. There is a general trend of diminishing popular support for, and individual membership in, political parties. Citizens find other outlets for their interest in political issues, be they NGOs, social movements or extra-parliamentary actions. At the same time, lobby groups and other non-elected actors play an increasingly significant role in democratic systems. Thus, the original principal actors in both diplomacy and democracy find themselves in a similar predicament: their leading role is no longer self-evident, and they are challenged by actors with diffuse mandates.

How can democratic representatives draw lessons from the way the diplomatic establishment has handled the new situation? The diplomatic recipe has been to establish relatively restrictive rules of accreditation for the access and participation by other actors, aiming at countering “uncivil” society, while giving voice to civil society without granting them either a vote or a veto. The democratic political space, on the other hand, rests on the principle that all views that exist in society are to be represented, without quality control or screening. Yet diplomats and elected politicians alike have a duty not to abdicate from the mandate and responsibility they have acquired from their principals, governments and voters. This means not giving a free rein to those forces that threaten the very institution of diplomacy and democracy, respectively, and see to it that the democratic and diplomatic discussions and actions proceed from their own premises rather than those of the challenging actors.

Legitimacy vs. Distrust

Social institutions like democracy and diplomacy need to be perceived as legitimate in order to function effectively. This implies that the norms and procedures the institutions are based on and the results they produce are viewed as appropriate and justified. The other side of the coin is that distrust of the institution can threaten its continued existence. Distrust may be based on perceptions that the institution serves the purpose of other, objectionable forces.

Diplomacy has experienced several episodes of distrust and questioned legitimacy. Since its independence and well into the twentieth century the USA minimized its involvement in the diplomatic system, which was perceived to be fashioned and developed at European courts. In 1906, there were only nine US embassies abroad. The revelation of secret diplomatic pacts, which were considered to have contributed to the outbreak of World War I, discredited traditional diplomacy among many, not only in the USA. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Soviet Union distanced itself from the bourgeois, capitalist diplomacy . The expected world revolution was to render diplomacy superfluous and eventually cause it to disappear. The new states resulting from decolonization initially also distrusted the diplomatic establishment seeing it as an instrument of the former colonial powers.

The lesson from these episodes is that distrust has proved to be limited in time and that the institution has regained its legitimacy. Since the end of World War II the USA participated fully in the diplomatic game. After just a few years, when it had become obvious that the world revolution remained a remote vision, Leon Trotsky’s successor as Foreign Commissar, Georgi Chicherin, had to organize a new diplomatic service from scratch, and within a short time the Soviet Union appropriated the practices and titles formulated in aristocratic Europe in earlier centuries. Similarly, the new states that earned the epithet of the Third World soon became assimilated into the diplomatic system and today, with few exceptions, embrace its fundamental norms and rules.

Several democracies are now in a phase where populist leaders and parties exploit growing mistrust and suspicion among voters. Targeted at diffuse and undefined forces, such as “the establishment” or “experts” who have ostensibly undermined the democratic system, this feeds distrust of elected assemblies and, by extension, of democracy as an institution itself. Already Plato put forth theories of democracy’s transformation into tyranny pointing out that when the traditional authorities are weakened and the elites are held in contempt, one representative of these elites may articulate the contempt of his “corrupt” peers and may nominate himself as the true spokesperson of the people.

Populists claim to represent “the real people” or “the silent majority.” By implication, those who do not share the populists’ views and the notion of “the people” are not legitimate members of society. Populism is essentially anti-pluralist, which stands in contradiction to the norm of coexistence on which both diplomacy and democracy rest.

Distrust often emanates from a feeling of powerlessness. More and more people feel that neither they themselves nor their elected representatives are capable of controlling future developments. Political power may be easier to acquire today: through social media anyone can reach millions of people, yet power is much more difficult to exercise and easier to lose (Naim 2014). Power is readily perceived to rest elsewhere than with the democratic institutions . Widespread feelings of powerlessness entail a tendency to put the blame on anonymous structures, such as globalization , global finance, imperialism and the like. In several democracies, we can witness today how populist demagogues exploit this sense of powerlessness and mistrust by distancing themselves from the established structures or the ostensibly failed systems as they promise to exterminate the faceless dragons. Conspiracy theories flourish and are effectively disseminated via the Internet. The collapse of the great utopias has entailed, as Zygmunt Bauman (2017) put it, a widespread “retrotopia ,” that is, perceptions that the road to a better world leads via the resurrection of an imaginary historic golden age that has been betrayed by the elites . Attitudes of this kind tend to grow especially strong in periods after economic crises and in the midst of great waves of migrations.

The lesson democracy may learn from diplomacy is not to give up confidence in an established institution—we return to the notion of raison de système. By demonstrating in practice the indispensability of the diplomatic apparatus, diplomats have time and again brought sceptical actors back into the international intercourse. In the same way, democracy constantly needs to be reclaimed, to use a worn out cliché. In times of mistrust and questioned legitimacy, it is more important than ever to stand up for the norms and institutional architecture of democracy, rather than giving in to the demagogy of destruction.

Conclusion

The conclusion is that democracy may indeed learn something from diplomacy ; that there is in fact a “diplomatic deficit ,” which might be alleviated by taking into consideration ideas and experiences from the long history of diplomacy . These lessons boil down to a series of imperatives:

- Stand up for the basic norm of coexistence and emphasize the importance of raison de système !

- Adopt a relativistic rather than absolutistic approach!

- Consider the representative mandate as a bargaining mandate rather than an entirely free or bound one!

- Note that representation not only implies following voters’ preferences, but also includes an educational responsibility!

- Strengthen the element of bargaining in the democratic process!

- Use language with great care and refrain from invectives, insults or “post-truths”!

- Create rules of the game that give voice to civil society but exclude “uncivil” society!

- Take the distrust of democracy seriously, but try to regain its threatened legitimacy through practical action and through a forthright and unfailing defence of the institution!

As a researcher, one may draw the conclusion from this chapter that it is sometimes fruitful to bring together two previously unrelated matrices of thought. Arthur Koestler coined the term “bisociation” to denote the creative act that “uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, skills,” reminding us that the Latin verb cogito, “to think,” etymologically means “to shake together.” (Koestler 1975: 35, 120). If the cocktail I have shaken together can contribute, however modestly, to an intensified dialogue between scholars who study democracy and diplomacy respectively, there may be hope for additional fruitful “bisociations” in the future.

Notes

1. 1.
For a richly varied treatment of ancient Near Eastern diplomacy , see Cohen and Westbrook (2000).

2. 2.
For a concise overview of principal–agent theory, see Lapuente (2011).

3. 3.
See, e.g. Fishkin (1991), an early work that is often cited in subsequent contributions.

4. 4.
Quoted in Jönsson and Hall (2005: 72).

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Part V

Conclusions

© The Author(s) 2019

Ursula van Beek (ed.)Democracy under ThreatChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_13

13. The Question of Legitimacy in Contemporary Democracies

Ursula van Beek1  , Dieter Fuchs2   and Hans-Dieter Klingemann^3

(1)

Transformation Research Unit (TRU), Department of Political Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

(2)

Department of Social Sciences, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

(3)

Berlin International—University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany

Ursula van Beek (Corresponding author)

Email: uvb@sun.ac.za

Dieter Fuchs

Email: dieter.fuchs@sowi.uni-stuttgart.de

Is democracy under threat? Is there a legitimacy crisis in contemporary democracies ? This book contributes to the ongoing debate on these questions. The volume is the latest in a series of research projects conducted by Transformation Research Unit (TRU) focused on seven countries from different regions of the world. The countries include South Korea (East Asia [1] ), Chile (Latin America ), Republic of South Africa (Southern Africa), Turkey (Middle East), Poland (East-Central Europe ), Germany and Sweden (both in Western Europe ). Initially, all these countries had good prospects for democratization in their respective regions. It is therefore of particular interest to establish how the relatively favourable starting conditions have helped those countries deal with the problems of globalization, and to ascertain whether or not the legitimacy of their democracies is in crisis .

What is the argumentative basis for supposing there is a threat to democracy or a legitimacy crisis in the first place? The problem has been considered in detail by Dieter Fuchs and Hans-Dieter Klingemann in the theoretical framework of this volume. The key aspects of their argument are summarized below.

The theoretical debate on the subject, along with some empirical studies, indicates that legitimacy problems of democracies arise due to globalization. Globalization alters the operating conditions for democracies primarily through a contradictory set of developments . On the one hand, globalization leads to a considerable increase in the complexity of economic and political problems but, on the other hand, it reduces the nation state governments’ scope of action for solving these problems. Two aspects arising from globalization are particularly relevant for legitimacy. First, global economic competition—as the theory goes—leads to reduced welfare-state services and to greater job insecurities. Those primarily affected are the so-called globalization losers who have relatively low educational and vocational qualifications for competition within the nation state and are thus subject to disproportionately high economic and social risks. Second, the open borders associated with globalization give rise to greater movements of immigrants and refugees , which can threaten established national identities. Among other consequences, this state of affairs generates the impression among many citizens that the political elites do not sufficiently take into account their concerns and hardships and are unable to solve these problems.

Such perceptions, in turn, play into the hands of populist parties and leaders who portray the established political elites as unwilling and unable to take up and implement the will of the people. The populists place the “the pure people” on the opposite pole from “the corrupt elite ” (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017: 6). They claim to know and represent the will of the people and offer simple solutions that create the impression of their ability to handle the complexity of a globalized world. The populist challenge is thus seen by Erica Frantz (2017) and others as a threat to liberal democracy.

In addition to today’s challenges to democracies arising from globalization and populism , there is the challenge posed by autocracies such as China , Singapore, but also Russia. China and Singapore, in particular, are economically successful but politically repressive; they present themselves as alternatives to Western democracies by propagating a different kind of political regime and different value orientations that are supposedly more able to handle basic societal problems, including those arising from globalization. Arch Puddington and Tyler Roylance (2017), in the title of their study, offer the pithy formulation “The dual threat of populists and autocrats.”

What do the empirical findings have to say against this background of theoretically supposed challenges to contemporary democracies ? To answer this question, the findings on democratic regime and democratic culture will be brought together and discussed first. This will be followed by a review of the conducive and impeding factors for democratization that have been brought to light in the various contributions to this volume. Finally, some conclusions on the research questions of the volume will be drawn.

Democratic Regime

Given that the debate on democratic recession or democratic backsliding has been conducted from a global perspective, a number of important empirical findings at a global level will first be presented here. A frame of reference will thus be established for processing the empirical results for our seven countries.

The study by Larry Diamond, entitled “Facing up the democratic recession ” (2015), has generated a particularly controversial discussion. Drawing on Freedom House indices, Diamond (2015: 143, 149) argued that the expansion of democracy and freedom up until about 2006 was followed by a drop in the global share of electoral and liberal democracies , as well as civil liberties and the rule of law. On that basis, Diamond concluded that “Democracy has been in a global recession for most of the last decade, and there is a growing danger that the recession could deepen and tip over into something much worse” (2015: 153).

This assessment has been challenged by Steven Levitsky and Lucian Way (2015: 46), who quoting the “empirical record” of four democracy indices for the period from 1990 to 2013 claimed there was no democratic recession , while conceding that a very slight decline took place from 2005 to 2013. Overall, they refer to Diamond’s thesis as “the myth of democratic recession .”

In a more recent contribution, Puddington and Roylance (2017: 106) using the Freedom House indices came to the conclusion that in the 11 years before 2016, the proportion of countries showing an improvement in political rights and civil liberties was much lower than the proportion of countries with a decline in these areas. This provided support for the democratic recession thesis.

Thus, the Freedom House indices yield different empirical findings or at least different interpretations. One possibility of resolving this ambivalence somewhat is to draw on the empirical findings of the Varieties of Democracy project or V-Dem (Lindberg et al. 2014). V-Dem represents the most comprehensive database of empirical assessments of 174 countries based on a number of indicators that measure the different aspects and dimensions of democracy. These indicators have been developed in a theory-driven manner and the data thus generated are characterized by very high validity and reliability in comparison with other democracy measurements. Drawing on this resource, Valeriya Mechkova, Anna Lührmann and Staffan I. Lindberg have recently presented an analysis that takes up and answers the question of interest here: “How much democratic backsliding ?”

In their analysis, they distinguish between four regime categories: closed autocracy , electoral autocracy , electoral democracy and liberal democracy. In order for a political regime to be classified as an electoral democracy, a number of conditions must be met: “de facto free and fair multiparty elections , including for the executive” must be given; “universal suffrage and considerable freedom of association and expression” must be guaranteed; and “rule of law as well as effective judicial and legislative constraints on executive power” must be present. In an electoral autocracy , there are multiparty elections for choosing the chief of executive, but also significant restrictions and impediments on party competition. In a closed autocracy , there are no multiparty elections for the chief of executive (Mechkova et al. 2017: 162–163).

Mechkova et al. analyse the development of all four regime types for the period from 1972 to 2016. For our line of inquiry, the findings for the electoral and liberal democracies are especially relevant. In terms of the timeframe, the period from 2006 to 2016 is meaningful insofar as the consequences of globalization became particularly noticeable and the financial and economiccrisis —which can also be considered as a consequence of globalization—occurred during this period. According to their analysis, there was a continuous increase in the number of liberal democracies until 2013, but a decrease has been noted in the three years leading up to 2016 (Mechkova et al. 2017: 164). There was, however, a slight increase in electoral democracies in these last three years.

When the entire period from 2006 to 2016 is examined more closely, a trend towards the weakening of the liberal character of liberal democracy can be identified, which leads to lower scores in the liberal democracy index and, in some cases, the regression of liberal democracy into electoral democracy. Examples given for the latter phenomenon include Hungary and Poland (Mechkova et al. 2017: 165). According to Mechkova et al. (2017: 167), there are no “alarmist reports of a global demise or crisis of democracy.” At the same time, there is an alarming inclination in that “Among the countries that were liberal democracies in 2006, the main trend has been a weakening of their liberal democratic character, leading to lower scores and in some cases even to downgrading to electoral democracy status” (Mechkova et al. 2017: 165). The authors also add at the end of their analysis: “There are indeed worrisome trends and cases. In many established democracies , there is the rise of intolerance and right-wing -populist calls for various forms of more “illiberal” democracy. In some newer democracies , there is the gradual erosion of democratic rights and institutions” (Mechkova et al. 2017: 168). Within the aggregated measures for the regime types, there are considerable variations across individual countries.

The most important results for the countries of interest to our study are presented in Table 13.1. In six of the eight countries, there is no significant variation in the scores for the liberal democracy index between 2006 and 2016. It is possible, then, to speak of stability in these cases. In the scores for Poland and Turkey , there are significant differences between 2006 and 2016; these two countries can be classified as “backsliders.” Yet the scores that measure the manifestations of liberal democracy vary greatly across the stable liberal democracies as well: the highest 2016 scores belong to Sweden (0.873) and Germany (0.808), whereas Chile (0.752) is mid-table, and Taiwan , South Korea and South Africa range from 0.685 (Taiwan ) to 0.625 (South Africa ).

Table 13.1  V-Dem liberal democracy index and regime type, 2006–2016

Country

Score 2016a

Rankb

Change (2006–2016)

Regime typec

2006

2016

Sweden

0.873

2

Stability

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy

Germany

0.808

12

Stability

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy

Chile

0.752

24

Stability

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy

Taiwan

0.685

33

Stability

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy

South Korea

0.669

37

Stability

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy

South Africa

0.625

45

Stability

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy-

Poland

0.574

55

Backslider

Liberal democracy

Electoral democracy+

Turkey

0.159

138

Backslider

Electoral democracy+

Electoral autocracy

Source Compiled on the basis of Mechkova, Lührmann and Lindberg (2017)

aScale ranging from 0 (not democratic) to 1 (fully democratic); threshold 0.50

bNumber of countries: 174

c-/+ There is some evidence that the country belongs to the lower/higher regime category (liberal democracy, electoral democracy, electoral autocracy, closed autocracy)

V-Dem has a threshold of 0.500 for classifying a country as a liberal democracy. Poland (0.574) thus remains slightly above the cut-off mark for 2016, whereas Turkey (0.159) falls well short. In the ranking of countries in the liberal democracy index for 2016, Poland is 55th, whereas Turkey ranks 138th out of the 172 countries. In terms of the classification into different regime types, Poland has been downgraded from a liberal democracy to an electoral democracy and Turkey from an electoral democracy to an electoral autocracy . For Poland , the designation “electoral democracy+” indicates that the country could have also been classified as a liberal democracy for 2016, though there was ultimately more evidence for classifying it as an electoral democracy. For Taiwan and South Africa , the designation “liberal democracy–” indicates that both countries could have also been classified as electoral democracies . The negative developments in Poland and Turkey are examined in empirical, political and historical contexts in the contributions by Ursula van Beek (Poland ) and Yilmaz Esmer (Turkey ) to this volume.

Democratic Culture

From a functional perspective, subjective legitimacy—i.e. how citizens perceive the legitimacy of democracy—is crucial for the functioning and stability of democracy. According to the hierarchical model of support for democracy, it is possible to distinguish between two levels of legitimacy (see Fig. 1.1 in Fuchs and Klingemann in this volume). The first and higher level refers to democracy as such and thus also the value of democracy. The more value the citizens see in democracy, the greater is the fundamental legitimacy of democracy. If the majority of the citizens do not show a commitment to democracy and simultaneously advocate an alternative to it, then there is a legitimacy crisis of democracy as well as pressure for the institutionalization of this alternative. For many decades, the alternative to the liberal democracy of the West was the communist system; this alternative became obsolete with the collapse of communism . The key challenges confronting liberal democracy today are the twin populist and the authoritarian challenges (Frantz 2017; Puddington and Roylance 2017).

The second level does not refer to democracy as such, but rather to the democracy of the country in question. The more the citizens do not support democracy in their own country, the more legitimacy problems this democracy faces. From here, transformation pressure can result in very different ways. In one case, the pressure can be aimed at the improvement of the democratic regime in the country; this is the case when the citizens do not support the regime in their own country but express a preference for democracy as such. Klingemann (1999, 2014) refers to this phenomenon as “critical citizens” or “dissatisfied democrats.” If the democratic regime of one’s own country does not find support and the authoritarian alternative is preferred over democracy as such, the result is transformation pressure in the direction of the authoritarian alternative.

What is the situation, empirically speaking, with the subjective legitimacy of democracy in the countries under examination in this volume?

To answer this question, we can draw on the numerous waves of the World Values Survey that feature indicators for preference for democracy as well as for preference for autocracy . The contribution by Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Ursula Hoffmann-Lange features an index combining the preferences for democracy and autocracy . In this index, the empirical preference value for an autocratic system of rule (strong leader and military regime ) is subtracted from the value for democracy, yielding the proportion of respondents who prefer democracy more strongly than the two forms of autocracy (see Berg-Schlosser and Hoffmann-Lange, Fig. 3.8).

For the final period from 2010 to 2014, a clear picture emerges. The highest proportions of preference for democracy can be found in Germany and Sweden , with over 80% of respondents in both countries displaying a preference for democracy over autocracy . Using a somewhat different measurement, Dieter Fuchs and Edeltraud Roller demonstrate elsewhere in this volume that Germany and Sweden also show high levels of unambiguous support for democracy, i.e. a preference for democracy coupled with a rejection of autocracy , where this support is higher than the average for the other 15 Western European countries examined. Germany and Sweden are followed by Chile and Poland , with the lowest proportions of preference for democracy in Turkey , South Korea and South Africa . The greatest deviation is found in South Africa , where less than 30% of respondents have a strong preference for democracy over autocracy . The overall development is relatively stable in all countries from 2005 to 2007 and from 2010 to 2014 with the exception of South Africa , where the proportion of respondents who prefer democracy over autocracy dramatically declined. The contrary development of decreasing support for democracy and increasing support for non-democratic regimes from 1995 to 2013 in South Africa is well illustrated in Fig. 6.2 in the contribution by Nicola de Jager and Cindy Steenekamp to this volume.

The index of preference for democracy only measures whether a majority of respondents prefer democracy over autocracy , whereby the levels of preference for autocracy can vary greatly. This becomes clear in the case of South Africa , where preference for autocracy was nearly as high as that for democracy during the period from 2010 to 2014 (Berg-Schlosser and Hoffmann-Lange, Fig. 3.18).

It has already been noted that citizens’ assessments of the legitimacy of democracy as such and of the legitimacy of democracy in their own countries can differ considerably. The legitimacy of democracy in one’s own country is defined as the concurrence, as perceived by the citizens, of their preferred democratic values with the institutional structure of the regime in the country. The WVS does not feature indicators for measuring this form of legitimacy, but it does provide indicators that measure support for the regime in one’s own country, i.e. in the form of trust in the institutions of the democratic regime . These indicators measure not so much the attitudes towards the institutions as such, but rather the assessments of the reality of these institutions as constituted by the actors operating in them. In the hierarchical model of support for democracy, these indicators can be understood to measure the performance of the democratic regime of one’s own country (Fuchs and Klingemann, Fig. 1.1).

Berg-Schlosser and Hoffmann-Lange have come up with a mean value for trust in four institutions , namely national government , national parliament , civil service and police. The authors’ rationale for incorporating civil service and police into the index—i.e. institutions whose incumbents are not elected and are thus not subject to political competition—is the result of a factor analysis in which trust in these four institutions loads on one factor. Figure 3.12 in their contribution shows the values of this index for the seven countries across time. The relatively high trust in these governmental institutions is in line with expectations for Sweden and Germany . Even with a different measure for how citizens assess democratic performance in their own countries—namely, in terms of satisfaction with the functioning of democracy—levels of satisfaction are very high in Germany and Sweden for 2012 and 2014 (Fuchs and Roller in this volume, Fig. 9.8). A very surprising finding is that the lowest institutional trust by far in Poland and the highest institutional trust in Turkey both occurred in the period from 2010 to 2013. In South Africa , the steepest drops in trust occurred from 2005 to 2007 and from 2010 to 2013. If the timeframe is extended, it can be seen that an increase in trust has occurred in Turkey since 1999–2001 and a substantial and continuous decrease in trust has occurred in Poland since 1989–1990. A fall in trust can also be seen from 1990 to 2001 and from 2010 to 2013 in Chile , which is also the country with the second lowest institutional trust after Poland for the period from 2010 to 2013.

Putting together the empirical findings on preference for democracy and institutional trust for all the countries in question yields the following basic, if simplified, picture. Germany and Sweden top the ranking of countries on both counts, i.e. a high preference for democracy as well as high trust in governmental institutions . Moreover, the scores remain stable for both countries across time. The case that clearly stands in contrast to these two countries is South Africa , where preference for democracy is by far the lowest and where institutional trust is also low. In South Africa , preference for democracy is only marginally higher than preference for autocracy ; in addition, there is a steep decline across time in both attitudinal measures. This finding is confirmed in the analysis by de Jager and Steenekamp in this volume. The empirical results for Poland , on the other hand, are inconsistent. While a relatively high proportion of respondents express a preference for democracy, trust in governmental institutions is rather low for the period from 2010 to 2013. In Turkey , by contrast, preference for democracy is relatively low but trust in governmental institutions is the highest among the countries examined. A rise in trust in governmental institutions can be identified since 2002 in particular, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections .

Positive and Negative Factors Impacting Democratization

A number of contributions to this volume have identified important factors for the democratization of a country, which will be briefly discussed here.

De Jager and Steenekamp (in this volume, Figs. 6.1 and 6.2; Tables 6.1 and 6.2) postulate a causal chain that leads from negative assessments of government policies to a decline in institutional trust, which in turn leads to support for non-democratic type of regime . This corresponds to the direction of influence that is assumed in the hierarchical model of support for democracy in the case of new democracies (Fuchs and Klingemann in this volume, Fig. 1.1).

In the chapter on Poland , van Beek (in this volume) emphasizes that the rise of populism and the loss of liberal democracy associated with it is especially tied to the fact that the liberal features of democracy are seen by many Poles as an import from the West that is not anchored in Poland ’s national cultural tradition. The restrictions on the liberal elements of democracy resulting, in particular, from the election of the populist Law and Justice Party in 2015, are reflected in the V-Dem classification of Poland in 2016 as an electoral democracy and no longer as a liberal democracy (see Table 13.1).

Joseph Wong, in his contribution to this volume, emphasizes that neither Taiwan nor South Korea is a young democracy, with the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime having already taken place in both countries decades ago. In contrast to the global democratic recession , both countries have exhibited remarkable democratic resilience . Wong ascribes this resilience primarily to the fact that the political parties who initiated the transformation process in both countries have introduced democratic reforms from a position of strength and have learned over the course of the democratization process not only to compete electorally, but also to lose.

According to Lawrence Whitehead (in this volume), the development of Chile after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship has been characterized by a number of distinctive features. First, it was a process of re-democratization, since a democracy had already existed before having been abolished by Pinochet’s military coup in 1973. Second, the former dictator remained head of the army for eight years after his defeat. Third, there is a continuity in the old political elites and parties. Fourth, the neoliberal economic policies introduced during the dictatorship continued to be pursued in the subsequent democracy, which led—among other consequences—to a sharp rise in economic inequality . These factors , in particular, led to a “substantial mismatch between objective measures of the Chilean political development, and the subjective perceptions held by most Chileans.” According to the V-Dem liberal democracy index, Chile has the highest score after Sweden and Germany among the countries under examination and was classified as a liberal democracy in 2006 and again in 2016 (see Fig. 1.1). Yet Whitehead cites opinion polls that illustrate the deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the reality of democracy in Chile : in 2016, 40% of respondents stated that democracy in Chile functions poorly or very poorly, while 83% did not identify with any political party. This negative assessment, however, refers to the political elites , with the preference for democracy as a system of rule not affected as a result. According to Whitehead, this negative assessment of political elites is an expression of the lack of “social consensus on the nature and timescale of the transition in Chile ” and points to the fact that many citizens have significant reservations about the 1980 constitution as well as the neoliberal economy.

Summary and Perspectives

The analyses by Foa and Mounk (2016, 2017a) are so unsettling precisely because they point to a decline in support for democracy among the citizens of the established democracies of the West, in general, and among the youngest age cohort, in particular. If erosion in support for democracy is taking place in these democracies , it is indeed possible to speak of a democratic recession . Foa and Mounk (2017b: 3), in their response to criticisms of their analysis, have reaffirmed their findings and even postulated an “end of the consolidation paradigm.” They formulated the core of this paradigm thus: “Once a country qualified for the status of a consolidated democracy, it was supposed to be safe from democratic backsliding ” (Foa and Mounk 2017b: 4). A democracy is consolidated if a clear majority of the citizens support democracy and reject autocracy . The consolidation paradigm, then, is disproven once a country that had a consolidated liberal democracy subsequently regressed into an electoral autocracy . According to the V-Dem data, this is not the case for any of the consolidated democracies of the West (Mechkova et al. 2017). Foa and Mounk (2016, 2017a), however, make the argument not in terms of a collapse of democracies , but rather with reference to “signs of deconsolidation .” This is relatively weak empirical support for a relatively strong thesis. Yet are these signs of deconsolidation present in the first place?

In a replication of the analyses by Foa and Mounk, Amy Alexander and Christian Welzel (2017: 2) demonstrated that indeed there has been a decline in support for democracy among the citizens of Western democracies overall as well as among the youngest age cohort during the period 2011–2014 in comparison with 1995–1998, but that this decline was very slight and took place at a very high level of support for democracy. For this reason, the authors came to the conclusion that there was a “negligible decline.” According to the empirical results presented by Fuchs and Roller in this volume, not even this slight decline has taken place; rather, a clear preference for democracy has been shown by an overwhelming majority of citizens and the youngest age cohort in Sweden and Germany , as well as in 15 other Western European democracies , and the preference has remained stable across time.

Nonetheless, it is possible to argue that the electoral success of populist parties in some Western European countries could be a sign of deconsolidation that could threaten the stability of these democracies creating the possibility of an authoritarian alternative to emerge in the long run. This, however, would only be the case if the populist parties in question pursued anti-democratic goals, which is not the case in Western European countries . These parties take part in political competition within the framework of the existing party systems, with some populist parties even calling for a strengthening of democracy through referendums. Moreover, as one author suggested (Kaltwasser 2012), the populist parties could even become a democratic corrective to the established parties by putting largely neglected issues back on the political agenda.

Overall, there is hardly any empirical evidence for the claim that Western European democracies have entered a phase of deconsolidation and are in danger of democratic backsliding . This not the case for Poland and Turkey . In these two countries, there are populist challenges with far-reaching consequences. Turkey is an example of how a populist leader and a populist party can transform an electoral democracy into an electoral autocracy (see Table 13.1). In Poland , a populist party has won the elections and subsequently either restricted or abolished a number of features of a liberal democracy, with the result that Poland has been classified by V-Dem as a backslider from a liberal democracy to an electoral democracy (see Table 13.1). Both Poland and Turkey are listed by Frantz (2017) as examples for the thesis of a populist challenge to contemporary democracies . One of the preconditions for a successful populist challenge is the predominance of a corresponding political culture . In Turkey , there is an authoritarian tradition, whereas in Poland , a liberal tradition is more weakly developed than in the Western European democracies according to van Beek (in this volume). While an illiberalization is currently taking shape in Poland , it is doubtful that it will lead to an electoral autocracy as in the Turkish case; democracy is strongly anchored among Polish citizens as well as being embedded in a context of liberal democratic countries through a membership in the European Union .

One example showing that the performance deficits of a democracy as perceived by the citizens do not necessarily lead to a questioning of democracy as such is that of Chile , where trust in governmental institutions has declined continuously and substantially over time, yet preference for democracy has simultaneously increased and preference for autocracy has decreased.

An authoritarian challenge can be posited in the cases of South Africa and, to a lesser extent, South Korea . In South Africa , preference for a democracy has strongly declined over time while, at the same time, preference for an authoritarian alternative has substantially risen—with the result that for the period from 2011 to 2014, the levels of preference for democracy and autocracy are practically the same. In South Korea , there has also been a decrease in preference for democracy and an increase in preference for autocracy , but neither trend is particularly strong.

The analyses presented in this volume make at least two things clear. First, the thesis that there is a global democratic recession and democratic backsliding cannot be verified. At least for the established democracies of the West, there is neither a crisis nor an erosion of legitimacy. Second, this can be traced back to the fact that country-specific factors for the development of the democracies in question and their capacity to handle problems arising from globalization play a role. These factors include, apart from economic resources, the actions of political elites , the specific history of the country and the anchoring of a democratic political culture among the citizens. These differences across countries, in turn , are slightly obscured in quantitative analyses and aggregate measurements.

Note

1. 1.
The contribution by Joseph Wong also features Taiwan .

References

Alexander, Amy C., and Christian Welzel. 2017. The Myth of Deconsolidation: Rising Liberalism and the Populist Reaction. Journal of Democracy. Online Exchange on “Democratic Deconsolidation”.

Diamond, Larry. 2015. Facing Up the Democratic Recession. Journal of Democracy 26: 141–155.

Crossref

Foa, Roberto Stefan, and Yascha Mounk. 2016. The Democratic Disconnect. Journal of Democracy 27: 5–17.

Crossref

Foa, Roberto Stefan, and Yascha Mounk. 2017a. The Signs of Deconsolidation. Journal of Democracy 28: 5–15.

Crossref

Foa, Roberto Stefan, and Yascha Mounk. 2017b. The End of the Consolidation Paradigm. A Response to Our Critics. Journal of Democracy. Online Exchange on “Democratic Deconsolidation”.

Frantz, Erica. 2017. How Today’s Populism Dismantles Democracy Worldwide. SSN-Scholars Strategy Network: Basic Facts. http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/brief/how-todays-populism-dismantles-democracy-worldwide. Accessed August 27, 2017.

Kaltwasser, Christóbal Rovira. 2012. The Ambivalence of Populism: Threat and Corrective for Democracy. Democratization 19: 184–208.

Crossref

Klingemann, Hans-Dieter. 1999. Mapping Political Support in the 1990s: A Global Analysis. In Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Government, ed. Pippa Norris, 31–56. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crossref

Klingemann, Hans-Dieter. 2014. Dissatisfied Democrats. Democratic Maturation in Old and New Democracies. In The Civic Culture Revisited: From Allegiant to Assertive Citizens, eds. Russell J. Dalton and Christian Welzel, 116–157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Levitsky, Steven, and Lucian Way. 2015. The Myth of Democratic Recession. Journal of Democracy 26: 45–58.

Crossref

Lindberg, Staffan I., Michael Coppedge, John Gerring, Jan Teorell, et al. 2014. V-Dem: A New Way to Measure Democracy. Journal of Democracy 25: 159–169.

Crossref

Mechkova, Valeriya, Anna Lührmann, and Staffan Lindberg. 2017. How Much Democratic Backsliding? Journal of Democracy 28: 162–169.

Crossref

Mudde, Cas, and Christóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2017. Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crossref

Puddington, Arch, and Tyler Roylance. 2017. The Dual Threat of Populists and Autocrats. The Freedom House Survey for 2016. Journal of Democracy 28: 105–119.

Crossref

Index

A

Afrikaner(s)

Agent(s)

Anglo-Boer War

Apartheid

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)

Attitudes

Authoritarian

challenge

dictatorship

regime

rule

system

Autocracy/Authoritarianism

B

Bargaining

Baumol’s Cost Disease

Born-frees

Botswana

C

Capitalism

Catholic Church

Chile

China

China Model

Christianity

Coexistence

Cold War

Communication

Communism/Communist

Confidence

Consolidation

Constitution

Constitutional Tribunal

Crisis countries

Culture/Cultural

D

Deconsolidation

Degenerative model

Deliberation

Democracy/Democracies

backsliding

established

liberal

new

third Wave

young

Democratic

backsliding

breakdown

consolidation

culture

deficit

dispensation

institutions

legitimacy

orientations

performance

policies

political system

politicians

procedures

quality

recession

regime

resilience

survival

transition(s)

values

Democratisation

process

Diffuse support

Diplomacy

Diplomat(s)

Diplomatic

actors

communication

deficit

establishment

history

language

negotiations

Distrusts

E

East Asia

Eastern Europe

Economic

crisis/crises

development

effectiveness

factor(s)

inequality

integration

progress

slowdown

system(s)

Elections

Elite/elites

survey/surveys

Europe

European Social Survey

European Union (EU)

member states

European Values Survey (EVS)

F

Fake news

First World War

Freedom House (FH)

G

Germany

East

unified

West

Globalisation

Globalized

economy

financial markets

regulation

Good governance

Government/Governmental

action

effectiveness

institutions

performance

Great Depression

Great Recession

H

High-income democracies

High-income economies

HIV/AIDS

Human Development Index (HDI)

I

Identity

politics

Immigrants

Immigration

Income inequality

K

Kaleidoscopic pattern/shift

Korea

L

Latin America

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

Left-Right axis

Legitimacy

crisis

gap

Levels of poverty

Liberation movement(s)

M

Macro-level

analyses

development

indicators

Migration

Moderates

Moderation

N

National Affairs Conference (NAC)

National

Assembly

elections

ethos

Nationalism/nationalists

Nation state(s)

Negotiations

Neo-liberal/liberalism

North Korea

O

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

countries

Social Expenditure Database

Oscillatory model

P

Parliament/Parliamentarians

Poland

Polarisation

Political

beliefs

culture

dissatisfaction

ideology/ideologies

leadership

legitimacy

orientation(s)

power

protest(s)

radicalism

reform

rights

stability

Political Parties

African National Congress (ANC)

Chinese Communist Party (CCP)

Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska

PO)

Concertacion

Congress of the People (COPE)

Conservative Alliance

Democratic Alliance (DA)

Democratic Justice Party (DJP)

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)

Front National

Justice and Development (AKP)

Kuomintang (KMT)

Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc-PiS)

Motherland Party (ANAP)

National Party (NP)

Party for Freedom

Republican People’s Party (CHP)

Social Democrat Populist Party (SHP)

Syriza

Politicians

Polity IV

Populism

Populist

extremism

parties

right-wing

takeovers

Post-truth

Poverty rate(s)

Presidentialism

R

Radicals

Raison de système

Re-democratisation

Refugee/Refugees

Regime

military

political

structure

Representation

Retrotopia

S

Social protection

Socioeconomic

development

factors

modernisation

South Africa

South Korea

Spain

Specific support

Step-change Model

Sweden

T

Taiwan

Tolerance

Transformation Research Unit (TRU)

Transition

negotiated

Turkey

U

Unemployment

Unilinear Model

United Nations

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

V

Value orientations

Values

Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)

W

Western democracies

Western European countries/democracies

World Bank (WB)

World Values Survey (WVS)

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

1. Theoretical Aspects and Overview

1. Globalization, Populism and Legitimacy in Contemporary Democracy

2. Temporal Models of Political Development: In General and of Democratization in Particular

3. Democratic Quality and Legitimacy in the TRU Countries

2. Critical Cases

4. The Return of Nationalist Ethos: The Loss of Liberal Democracy in Poland?

5. Identity Politics: Extreme Polarization and the Loss of Capacity to Compromise in Turkey

6. Political Radicalism: Responding to the Legitimacy Gap in South Africa

3. Regional Aspects

7. Democratization in Chile: A Long-Run and Comparative Perspective

8. Democratic Resilience in South Korea and Taiwan

9. Globalization and Political Legitimacy in Western Europe

4. Global Aspects

10. Globalization and Social Protection: An Economic Perspective

11. Global Electronic Screen Culture: Legitimacy at Stake?

12. Lessons for Democracy: Diplomacy to the Rescue?

5. Conclusions

13. The Question of Legitimacy in Contemporary Democracies

Backmatter