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The Contribution of Democracy to Rebuilding Postconflict Societies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2017

Samuel H. Barnes
Samuel H. Barnes*
Affiliation:
BMW Center for German and European Studies, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
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Extract

The central question of postconflict societies remains political: how to construct a stable form of domestic power sharing and governance. Adversaries mutually exhausted by conflict will still set an adequate degree of influence and voice in future political arrangements as the price of terminating the conflict. Where adversarial identities have become all-encompassing or the war has gone on for too long, the only available solutions may be more radical, including autonomy or partition.

The task of international mediators is to help the parties assess the available forms of sharing power. In the dominant view of the United Nations community and international financial institutions, the available choice set is the various forms of representative government—for both idealistic and practical reasons. Democracy has become the dominant political philosophy of the multilateral community, even where it is not always observed in practice, and its breadth of participation may be likeliest to placate former adversaries. But any social engineer or planner must also take into account the practical problems that democracy will probably encounter in the aftermath of conflict, including the conditions necessary for its stability and prestige. In addition, the portfolio of democracy has varied structures that may give greater confidence to both sides and persuade the combatants to lay down their arms.

Type
Symposium: State Reconstruction After Civil Conflict
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 95 , Issue 1 , January 2001 , pp. 86 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 2001

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References

1 In surveys of the 1990s, residents of 50 countries were asked to react to statements about democratic political systems. The statement that” [d]emocracy may have problems but it’s better than any other form of government” gained agreement or strong agreement from 73% or more of the population in 49 countries. (In Russia, 57% agreed or strongly agreed.) See Ronald Inglehart, Political Culture and Democratic Institutions: Russia in Global Perspective, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, table 2, at 23 (Aug. 31-Sept. 3, 2000) [hereinafter Inglehart, Political Culture]. Inglehart concludes that “democracy has become virtually the only model with global appeal.” Id. at 3; see also Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (1997).

2 In his study of East German mass and elite opinions, Robert Rohrschneider points out that this former Communist country’s citizens quickly adopted the “easy” aspects of democratic ideology—freedom and rights— though they were slower to develop concern for toleration and restraint in dealing with others. Robert Rohrschneider, Learning Democracy: Democratic and Economic Values in Unified Germany (1999). 3 See, e.g., Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Supplement to Reports on Democratization (Agenda for Democratization), UN Doc. A/51/761, annex (1996).

4 The case of India reminds us that national wealth is not always a necessary ingredient for democracy. The relationship between per capita income and the strength of democracy has generated a long scholarly discussion. Seymour Martin Lipset argued in 1959 that democracy is possible only when societies reach a certain level of prosperity. Seymour M. Lipset, Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy, 53 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 69 (1959). Lipset modified his view of this relationship in 1994. Martin Lipset, Seymour, The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited: 1993 Presidential Address, 59 Am. Soc Rev. 1 (1994)Google Scholar.

5 See Gerson, Allan, Peace Building: The Private Sector’s Role, 95 AJIL 102 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See id.; see also International Crisis Group, Why Will No One Invest in Bosnia and Herzegovina? (1999), obtainable from <http://www.crisisweb.brg>.

7 Jack Snyder, From Voting To Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict 310 (2000). Snyder argues, perhaps controversially, that the international aid community is oblivious to this “harsh reality.” “[Democratization,” he argues, “is likely to spark nationalist conflict in countries that have an underdeveloped economy; a population with both poor civic skills and underdeveloped representative and journalistic institutions; and elites who are threatened by democratic change.” Id at 305. At a minimum, in Snyder’s view, old elites may need to be “cushioned as they f[a]ll from power.” Id. at 308.

8 The same qualification has been offered by social scientists in regard to the “democratic peace” hypothesis. Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder have noted that the box score of mature democracies in declining to fight wars against each other does not determine what the dangers are in growing a new democracy. See ,Mansfield, Edward D. & Snyder, Jack, Democratization and the Danger of War, Int’l Security, Summer 1995, at 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mansfield, Edward D. & Snyder, Jack, Democratization and War, Foreign Aff., May/June 1995, at 79 Google Scholar. More recently, Professor Snyder has extended his work to argue that formal democratic mechanisms may be exploited by transitional elites who seek to use exclusionary nationalism as a means of retaining power, especially where the institutions of civil society and a free press are underdeveloped. See Snyder, Jack, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (2000)Google Scholar.

9 See Przeworski, Adam & Teune, Henry, The Logic of Comparatrve Social Inquiry 17–30 (1970)Google Scholar.

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11 The continued existence of contestation presumes the maintenance of the rights and institutions necessary to protect and implement it.

12 Definitions of modern democracy are found in Dahl, Robert A., Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (1971)Google Scholar, and Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942)Google Scholar.

13 The social science literature on political culture is vast, and the subject of culture is much wider. Much of the general literature on culture is “soft” and humanistic in approach, which makes discussions of, for example, the compatibility of some religious beliefs and democracy hopelessly confusing. For a discussion of political culture as a topic for empirical analysis, see Barnes, Samuel H., Political Culture, Political Structure, and Democracy: The Case of Legitimation and Opposition Structure, in Political Culture and Political Structure: Theoretical and Empirical Studies 45 (Weil, Frederick D. & Gautier, Mary eds., 1994)Google Scholar. For an empirical exploration of the role of culture in democratization of a single country, see McDonough, Peter, Barnes, Samuel H., & López Pina, Antonio, with Shin, Doh C. & Alvaro Moisés, José, The Cultural Dynamics of Democratization in Spain (1998)Google Scholar.

14 As Payam Akhavan accurately observes:

Contrary to the simplistic myths of primordial “tribal” hatred, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda were not expressions of spontaneous blood lust or inevitable historical cataclysms. Both conflicts resulted from the deliberate incitement of ethnic hatred and violence by which ruthless demagogues and warlords elevated themselves to positions of absolute power.

Akhavan, Payam, Beyond Impunity: Can International Criminal Justice Prevent Future Atrocities? 95 AJIL 7, 7 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Horowitz, Donald L., The Ethnic Riot Google Scholar (forthcoming).

15 See Horowitz, Donald L., Structure and Strategy in Ethnic Conflict: A Few Steps Toward Synthesis, in Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1998, at 345 (Pleskovic, Boris & Stiglitz, Joseph E. eds.,1999)Google Scholar.

16 In an important study of interethnic cooperation, James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin have noted the rarity of ethnic violence between the many ethnic groups living in close contact with one another. Fearon, James D. & Laitin, David D., Explaining Interethnic Cooperation, 90 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 715 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. M. Steven Fish, a student of post-Communist democratization, finds that ethnic homogeneity is unrelated to democratic achievement in those countries. Steven Fish, M., Democratization’s Requisites: The Postcommunist Experience, 14 Post-Sov. Aff. 212 (1998)Google Scholar.

17 For a study that traces these changes through longitudinal analyses of German public opinion, see Baker, Kendall L., Dalton, Russell J., & Hildebrandt, Kai, Germany Transformed: Political Culture and the New Politics (1981)Google Scholar.

18 Huntington, Samuel P., The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century 298–311 (1991)Google Scholar.

19 See Stepan, Alfred, Religion, Democracy, and the “Twin Tolerations,”]. Democracy, Oct. 2000, at 37 Google Scholar.

20 Inglehart, Political Culture, supra note 1, at 3. Inglehart labeled these as “survival values” vs. “self-expression values.” The level of economic development in each society was measured by 1980 GNP/capita. Its degree of democracy was measured by the sum of Freedom House ratings, 1981-1998. Id. 21 Mat 10-11.

22 Elster, Jon, Offe, Claus, & Preuss, Ulrich K., with Frankboenker, Goetting, Ulrike, & Rueb, Friedbert W., Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies: Rebuilding The Ship At Sea 307–08 (1998)Google Scholar.

23 Robert Bates provides a classic illustration of how knowledgeable and democratically elected politicians may pursue policies obviously destructive of their countries’ economic well-being, because of their own need to survive politically. Robert H. Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies (1981). In rational-choice theory as such, a rational actor, strictly defined, will not work for collective benefits because he will receive the benefits regardless of his own efforts and one individual will almost never determine the outcome. See Olson, Mancur Jr., The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and The Theory of Groups (1965)Google Scholar.

24 See Widner, Jennifer, Courts and Democracy in Postconflict Transitions: A Social Scientist’s Perspective on the African Case, 95 AJIL 64 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 There has been wide discussion of a decline in aspects of political participation in advanced democracies, though the evidence is still inconclusive. See Kaase, Max & Newton, Kenneth, 5 Beliefs in Government (1995)Google Scholar.

26 Today’s models of the institutions of democracy evolved slowly and in only a few countries. In the British case, the power of the Crown was gradually shared with the nobility, the gentry, and the rising bourgeoisie. Through the creation of modern parties and other structures of mass mobilization, power was later shared with the adult population and finally vested in a prime minister and cabinet, drawn from the dominant party in the Commons. Although the British Constitution is only partially a written one, and though—historically—the power of Parliament is in principle unlimited, the British system is highly institutionalized. Those in power do not act arbitrarily, the courts operate independently without political interference, and the opposition flourishes.

27 The many varieties of proportional representation demonstrate that the number of parties can be reduced or expanded by design. There are also many examples of single-member districts’ giving rise to multiparty systems, so the relationship between electoral systems and number of parties is not a strong one. The number of parties reflects the number of dimensions of conflict in the society, as well as the electoral laws.

28 There are other patterns of executive-legislative relationships. For example, amendments to the Israeli Constitution now provide for the independent and direct election of the prime minister by the electorate.

29 For an introduction to the large literature on this debate, see The Failure of Presidential Democracy (Juan J. Linz & Arturo Valenzuelaeds., 1994) (Vol. 1: Comparative Perspectives; Vol. 2: The Case of Latin America); Juan J. Linz, The Perils of Presidentialism, J. Democracy, Winter 1990, at 51; Juan J. Linz, The Virtues of Parliamentarism,]. Democracy, Fall 1990, at 84. But see Sartori, Giovanni, Comparative Constitutional Engineering: an Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes 97 (1994)Google Scholar (stating: “That presidential systems perform poorly—as Linz maintains... —in countries with deep cleavages and with a fragmented party system, is very true. But could they perform better—these conditions remaining equal—under parliamentary forms? Ceteris paribus I think not.”).

30 Nagle, John D. & Mahr, Alison, Democracy and Democratization: Post-Communist Europe in Comparative Perspective 207 (1999)Google Scholar.

31 Lijphart, Arend, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (1999)Google Scholar; Lijphart, Arend, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (1977)Google Scholar.

32 Horowitz, Donald L., Comparing Democratic Systems, in Parliamentary versus Presidential Government 203 (Lijphart, Arend ed., 1992)Google Scholar.

33 This issue is particularly applicable to consociational regimes, which are discussed below.

34 Const. Art. 5(2) (d) (Bosn. & Herz.), translated in35 ILM117 (1996),<http://www.ohr.int/gfa/gfa-an4.htm>; see also Remarks of Rae, Douglas, Nationalism and the Liberal State, in After Dayton: Lessons of The Bosnian Peace 51, 52—53 (Wedgwood, Ruth ed., 1999)Google Scholar (mutual vetoes are workable only where two conditions are met: where “all relevant parties [are] more or less satisfied with the status quo, so that none is seized by an urgent need to use government as a mechanism of change,” and where “the environment is stable so that no external shocks demand the attention of government as a steering mechanism”; id. at 53), <http://www.cfr.org/public/pubs/AfterDay.pdf>.

35 Similar agonies of policymaking and coalition maintenance in France’s Third and Fourth Republics led to the transition to the semipresidential Fifth Republic in 1958. Analogous problems of governmental stability in postwar Italy led to repeated calls for strengthening the executive, as well as a partial switch from proportional representation to a system currently consisting of three-quarters single-member districts and one-quarter proportional representation.

36 To be sure, no electoral system is unbiased; no matter what choice is made, it will advantage one party and one group over another. It is virtually a rule of politics that those who design electoral systems do so with a clear eye as to what they want to achieve in partisan terms.

37 Horowitz, supra note 15.

38 As Horowitz notes, “There are . . . bottom-up reasons for ethnically based parties once constituencies are homogeneous.” Id. at 363. Horowitz records that some countries experimented with electoral laws requiring that “candidates secure secondary support from differently composed constituencies adjacent to theirs.” Id. In 1978 Nigeria required that a successful presidential candidate obtain a plurality and, in addition, a minimal level of geographic distribution among states.

39 The literature is voluminous on this topic. For an important literature review and empirical analysis of the consequences of partition, see Sambanis, Nicholas, Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An Empirical Critique of the Theoretical Literature, 52 World Pol. 437 (2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Id. at 439.

41 Consociationalism has been explored in the many publications of Arend Lijphart: Typologies of Democratic Systems, 1 Comp. Pol. Stub. 32 (1968); The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (1968); and Democracy in Plural Societies, supra note 31. For a critique of Lijphart’s views, see Sartori, supra note 29, at 69-75.

42 The segments, called verzuiling, were both religious and political in nature, with separate segments for Catholics, Protestants, Socialists, and Liberals.

43 Protestants were concentrated in the north of the Netherlands, and Catholics in the south. Socialists and Liberals were overrepresented in the most economically advanced provinces, North and South Holland.

44 Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, supra note 31, at 142-76.

45 See Hudson, Michael C., Democracy and Social Mobilization in Lebanese Politics, 1 Comp. Pol. 245 (1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lijphart notes that economist Arthur Lewis endorsed essentially consociational political structures as most suitable for the plural societies of West African states. See Arthur Lewis, W., Politics in West Africa, ch. 3 (1965)Google Scholar.

46 Horowitz, Donald L., Ethnic Groups in Conflict (1985)Google Scholar; Horowitz, Donald L., A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in A Divided Society (1991)Google Scholar. For a more recent summary, see Donald L. Horowitz, Constitutional Design: An Oxymoron? Paper Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (Sept. 3-6, 1998) (corrected version). See also Wippman, David, Practical and Legal Constraints on Internal Power Sharing, in International Law and Ethnic Conflict 211 (Wippman, David ed., 1998)Google Scholar. Arguing from a rational-choice perspective, Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth A. Shepsle reach a far more pessimistic conclusion concerning the potential for democratic stability under any institutional arrangement in multiethnic societies. They view ethnic conflict as a Hobbesian zero-sum game, where there are no win-win solutions. Rabushka, Alvin & Shepsle, Kenneth, Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability (1972)Google Scholar.

47 A seminal article on corporatism is Schmitter, Philippe C., Still the Century of Corporatism ? 36 Rev. Pol. 85 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Schmitter distinguishes state corporatism from societal corporatism. The former is a “top-down” version inspired by 19th-century Catholic social doctrine and used as the basis for Mussolini’s construction of a “corporate” state in Italy, with functional representation through compulsory trade unions and other organizations in a “Chamber of Corporations” that replaced the Chamber of Deputies. It inspired copies with varying degrees of surface credibility in Francoist Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Perón’s Argentina, and other authoritarian regimes. Societal corporatism is “bottom up.” Membership is voluntary (though pressures to join the dominant organizations are compelling) and is based on independent trade unions and business organizations.

48 Issues have included income, taxation, health care, education and training, and unemployment and retirement benefits. Trade union and business associations have been convened in “peak” organizations and have met with representatives of the government cabinet to discuss issues and negotiate implementing actions, which they have then recommended both to their constituent organizations and to the parliament. Much of the debate has been held among sectoral professional staffs, largely economists. These representatives speak the same professional language, and yet have been able to integrate political and economic considerations based on experience with their own organizations and the opposing side. Decisions reached were adopted by the constituent organizations and used by the government as the basis for the legislation and policy implementation.

49 The corporatist system was really a device for implementing an implicit accord between European social democracy and capitalism (i.e., the owners and managers of industrial and financial institutions). Social democrats renounced any ambitions for nationalization or public ownership and control of industry, and in return gained the guarantee of a substantial share for employees (in the form of both wages and welfare-state benefits) of the increased income achieved through capitalism’s productivity and efficiency. See Maier, Charles S., Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in The Decade After World War I (1975)Google Scholar.

50 For example, corporatist models have had great appeal among the equality-minded new democrats of central and Eastern Europe. Anna Seleny argues that a “compromise-corporatist” model characterizes decision making in post-Communist Hungary, while a “confrontation-pluralist” model fits the Polish pattern. Seleny, Anna, Old Political Rationalities and New Democracies: Compromise and Confrontation in Hungary and Poland, 51 World Pol. 484 (1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 See De Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America (Bradley, Phillips ed., Knopf, Alfred A. 1951)Google Scholar (1835).

52 Putnam, Robert D., with Leonardi, Robert & Nanetti, Raffaella Y., Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993)Google Scholar.

53 See, e.g., Berman, Sheri, Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic, 49 World Pol. 401 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar (demonstrating how the rich associational life of Weimar Germany contributed to the discrediting of democracy and facilitated the rise of National Socialism).

54 This depoliticization was evident throughout Communist Europe and in Spain following the demise of Franco’s long reign. See Barnes, Samuel H., The Mobilization of Political Identity in New Democracies, in The Postcommunist Citizen 117 (Barnes, Samuel H. & Simon, Janos eds., 1998)Google Scholar; McDonough, Barnes, & López Pina, supra note 13.

55 Geddes, Barbara, Initiation of New Democratic Institutions in Eastern Europe and Latin America, in Institutional Design in New Democracies: Eastern Europe and Latin America 15 (Lijphart, Arend & Waisman, Carlos H. eds., 1996)Google Scholar. The one partial exception, Professor Geddes notes, is labor in Poland.

56 Id. at 30.

57 Employing data from 1990 and 1991, Bernhard Wessels and Hans-Dieter Klingemann explore the possible relationship between social differentiation and the developing party systems in the new democracies of central and Eastern Europe, concluding that there is no close connection. See Wessels, Bernhard & Hans-Dieter, Klingemann, Transformation and the Prerequisites of Democratic Opposition in Central and Eastern Europe, in The Postcommunist Citizen, supra note 54, at 1 Google Scholar.