The Consolidation of Democracy: Comparing Europe and Latin America by Carsten Q. Schneider

Author:Carsten Q. Schneider [Schneider, Carsten Q.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: International Relations, Science, Physics, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781134033560
Google: gXF8AgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17475014
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2008-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

7 Choosing institutions – some notes on how to study the impact of transition modes on CoD

According to the ‘natural’ model used by practitioners (Carothers 2002a) and the ‘theoretical’ model developed by academics, liberalization and democratization are not related to each other in a linear or inevitable fashion. Between the two ‘phases’ of LoA and CoD, with their different actors and processes, lies the period of transition. Virtually all observers of regime change agree that this involves a more or less lengthy period of exceptional politics, the outcome of which is more or less uncertain. They also agree that there is no one way by which the transition from one regime to another is accomplished – if it is accomplished at all. Labeled as the mode of transition (MoT), lively debates are fought over which specific MoT – pact, reform, revolution, etc. – has which kind of impact, not only on the structure of the nascent democracy, but also on its likelihood to survive. Many of the debates around transition modes are still unresolved.1 Whether a transition mode matters or not is anything but just another purely academic dispute. Finding out more about this question has important practical repercussions, too. External and internal actors in autocracies could adapt their strategies for promoting democracy based on this knowledge.

The distinction between remote societal and proximate political institutional factors and the idea that the choice of appropriate institutions fosters CoD opens a new perspective on the role of the mode of transition (MoT) as a crucial intervening variable for explaining CoD. MoT is a critical juncture during which choices about the design of democratic institutions are made and a country’s political development is put on a different path. Thus, a more appropriate question to be asked about transition modes is: given a certain context, which mode of transition enables the actors to choose the appropriate institutional configuration, such that the type of democracy implemented is likely to consolidate? Within the broad transition literature, this chapter focuses on pacts as one specific transition mode. Since the mid-1980s, the hypothesis has been put forward that pacts represent the most appropriate mode of transition in order to arrive at a consolidated democracy (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Karl 1990, 2006; Karl and Schmitter 1991, 2002; or Encarnación 2005). This claim has been contested ever since (e.g. Bratton and Van de Walle 1994; Bunce 1995a,1995b; Bermeo 1997; or McFaul 2002).

The major aim of this chapter, however, is not to provide a conclusive empirically based answer to this crucial question but, more modestly, to outline how to design a medium-size N comparative research such that it is appropriate for correctly testing this hypothesis. This is a crucial issue because much of the disagreement over the effect of pacts rests on the fact that the complexity of the pact hypothesis is under-estimated. This, in turn, leads to an erroneous selection of relevant cases and the choice of the wrong dependent variable. This chapter should thus be read as a reaction

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.