Rethinking the Value of Democracy by Renske Doorenspleet

Author:Renske Doorenspleet
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783319916569
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

How to explain the fact that particularly hybrid systems are at risk? Already in the 1980s, sociologists and political scientists started to think about this question. Edward Muller, for example, observed in a 1985 article that ‘it is under a regime structure of intermediate repressiveness that collective political violence should be most likely’ and that rebels, opposition and dissident groups working in such semi-repressive circumstances ‘may regard civil disobedience and violence as both a feasible and necessary strategy for pressing their claims for a share of influence over political decisions’ (1985: 47–48).

While scholars such as Muller focused on the motivation of rebels, which is likely to be high in hybrid systems , other scholars focused on the opportunity for rebels to use violence. Ted Gurr , for example, argued that there is no opportunity in dictatorships but that extension of democracy in such contexts ‘should give formerly excluded groups and suppressed class challengers the possibility to change the political and distributive order by mobilization of numbers’ (1986: 45). Therefore, rebels may resort to violence in hybrid systems . In other words, hybrid systems may affect both the opportunity and the willingness of the rebels to use violence for political purposes (see also Gleditsch et al. 2007: 6, 2009: 155).

In hybrid systems , not only the motivations and opportunities of rebels matter, but also those of the leaders. In democracies, leaders are expected to have higher respect for ‘life-integrity’, and laws make it difficult for them to repress their people (cf. Fein 1995). The situation is different in semi-democracies (hybrid systems ) though, with leaders who often have both the motivation and opportunity to use violence. As Fein convincingly argued, ‘by opening up the possibility of greater class and group conflict, the expansion of democracy actually increases the motives for repression among elites’ (Fein 1995: 173). Rebels who threaten the legitimacy of the current social order impel the governing elite to resort to repression and violence, particularly in systems which are neither dictatorships nor democracies, but which fall right ‘in the middle’ (Fein 1995).

In addition, scholars have relied on the work by Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder who argued that democratization can lead to violence and war as political elites need to mobilize enfranchised citizens. Leaders in hybrid systems are not afraid to play the ethnic card. To the contrary, they try to gain popular support by reinforcing ethnic divisions and regaining power by politics of ‘divide and rule’ (Mansfield and Snyder 1995, 2005a, b; see also Montalvo and Reynal-Querol 2005; Cederman et al. 2008, 2010). When a dictator decides to organize democratic elections, for example after a time of national and/or international pressure, suddenly ‘the masses have the power of the vote, yet because the democratized dictator wishes to retain authority, (…) voter fraud, miscounts, and lost ballots become commonplace’ (Collier 2009: 30). At the same time, the leader is not able to commit purges on a massive scale from the outset, and ‘the democratized dictator momentarily loses his or her totalitarian source of power: fear’ (Collier 2009: 18).

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