Political Development and Democratic Theory by Hood Steven J.;

Author:Hood, Steven J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2004-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The above three points speak to consolidation as a phenomenon that contains principles that go far beyond mere elections. They speak to the existence of a civil society akin to the notion of civil society common to the established Western democracies of North America and West Europe. A consolidated democracy is free of authoritarian thinking and the trappings of authoritarianism. It is an acknowledgement that democracy is the only acceptable regime. Civil life operates autonomously, and the economic sector is free to operate without government interference. Indeed, all kinds of institutions—religious, interest-based, civic, and economic—function freely. To a great extent, civil life enables citizens to create their own rales of conduct and to act as the conscience of democratic society. In a consolidated society, civil and political societies merge, and citizens find they have multiple interests and identities, be they ethnic, religious, economic, political, or interest-based. Arid because political society must answer the demands of civil society and provide political policy, it establishes constitutional limits to both empower and limit government in a democratic society. Laws come to embody democratic philosophy and provide a template for acceptable democratic behavior in addition to legitimizing government through administrative rules and responsibilities.37 Political institutions like political parties, representative bodies, electoral processes, and government ministries are respected. Liberal freedoms based on political rights for all people are constitutionally guaranteed.38 By this standard, we see the real strength of Taiwan compared to Peru. A vibrant civil society has emerged in Taiwan, and the method of measuring government performance and quality of private life in Taiwan is by democratic criteria. Sadly, civil society in Peru is poorly developed. People still look to government for answers to most of their problems without being able to build and rely upon institutions of their own making to improve life in Peru. This presents President Toledo with a formidable task—to develop democracy in Peru behaviorally, attitudinally, and constitutionally in hopes of building not only a democratic government, but also a civil society.

The differences between the definitions given by Linz and Stepan and Prezworski and others are readily apparent. To date, Linz and Stepan's understanding of consolidation has found widespread acceptance. It is notable that recent scholarship on consolidation focuses more on political attitudes, thinking about democracy, and the concerns of democratic political philosophy rather than simply the procedural functions of democracy. This is apparent from the criteria used above to define consolidation. It is a scholarly trend that is a vast improvement over earlier efforts to understand what lends to democratic stability because we consider more of what day-to-day life is like in a democratic regime rather than focusing on a single criterion like elections. There are philosophical and practical concerns that must be addressed in studying consolidation. Recent scholarship has given us ambitious criteria to meet, so we now ask the question: How does a democracy consolidate? What are the conditions, factors, and forces that have proven useful and dangerous in the process of consolidation?

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