14 - How Do Transitions to Democracy Get Stuck, and Where?

Summary

THE PROBLEM

As we all may still remember, the early 1990s was a unique period of almost universal “democratic optimism.” Indeed, this was an apogee of the “third wave” of democratization. In the political discourse, there was near dominance of a linear, kind of “vectorial” perception of global political trends: from the breakdown of various forms of autocracy to liberal democracy and market economy. It was as if, with the collapse of Communism, only one universal political goal and one anticipated political end result of global dynamic remained on the agenda – liberal democracy and free market economy.

There seemed to be only one dominant political trajectory of democratization that should be pursued by all nations of the world: Karl Marx “upside down,” or Communist Manifesto per contra: all nations sooner or later will become liberal democracies – some earlier, others later.

The world was perceived as flexible and “plastic” – you can “craft” (not “breed”!) democracy (Di Palma 1991) as you know “the” proper institutional design and can master appropriate political engineering. Democracy was perceived as a universal value and model with a specific invariant (though maybe not the concrete form) that would fit all nations despite all their differences in history, culture, levels of development, and so on (Sen 1999).

However, twenty years since then, the world looks very different. As if after a global political “big bang,” we can see and experience an incredible multiplicity of political trajectories – kinds of “receding political galaxies” rushing in all possible directions and defying traditional regime typologies. Hopes or illusions about one single, uniform vector of global political development – from authoritarianism to democracy – are practically forgotten.

There is much talk nowadays about the “democratic rollback” (Diamond 2008a), “authoritarian diffusion” (Ambrosio 2010), “democratic stagnation,” “postdemocracy” (Crouch 2003), threats of degeneration into ochlocracy, and “audience democracy” (Manin 1997). Democratic accomplishments of previous decades are considered as “lexical victories” of democracy (Dunn 2010).