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The National Identity Problem and Democratization: Rustow's Theory of Sequence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Baogang He
Baogang He*
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
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Extract

In The Early 1970S, Dankwart Rustow Stressed The Centrality of national identity as a background condition for democratization. A recently emerging body of literature has raised this important issue again, opening it up for further discussion. Mark Thompson, Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, for example, have highlighted the centrality of the national identity question (they use the term ‘stateness’) in their recent work. Henry Bienen and Jeffrey Herbst see the emergence of a sense of national identity as a prerequisite for democratization in Africa, thus confirming Rustow's idea of sequence. Ilter Turan supports Rustow's view on the role of national identity in his analysis of the cases of Iraq and the Central Asian republics, while James Putzel uses the macro variable of the national identity question to explain why democratic politics is more difficult in Indonesia, which faces the risk of disintegration, and in the ethnically-divided Malaysia, with its weak national identity, than in the Philippines where disintegration is not an issue.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 2001 , pp. 97 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2001

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Footnotes

*

I feel indebted to Stephen Bell, Jan Pakulski, David Martin Jones, Christine Standish, Jackie Hogan, Yingjie Guo and Eric Zhang for their comments and help. Especially I would like to express my sincere thanks to the anonymous referees of the journal for their valuable comments and suggestions.

References

1 Thompson, Mark R., ‘No Exit: “Nation-Stateness” and Democratization in the German Democratic Republic’, Political Studies , XLIV (1996), pp. 267–8.Google Scholar

2 See Linz, Juan J. and Stepan, Alfred, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, Baltimore and London, The John Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 16–19.Google Scholar

3 Bienen, Henry and Herbst, Jeffrey, ‘Authoritarianism and Democracy in Africa’, in Rustow, D. and Erickson, K. P. (eds), Comparative Political Dynamics: Global Research Perspectives, New York, Harper Collins Publishers, 1991, p. 222.Google Scholar

4 Turan, Ilter, ‘The Democratic Anomalies: Why Some Countries That Have Passed Vanhanen’s Democratic Threshold are not Democracies’, in Vanhanen, Tatu, Prospects of Democracy: A Study of 172 Countries, London, Routledge, 1997, pp. 289–92.Google Scholar

5 Putzel, James, ‘Why has Democratization been a Weaker Impulse in Indonesia and Malaysia than in the Philippines,’ in Potter, David (ed.), Democratization, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1997, pp. 240–63.Google Scholar

6 Dahl argues that agreement on the legitimate territorial structure of the state is a prerequisite for the establishment of viable democratic institutions. See Robert Dahl, A., Democracy and its Critics , New Haven, Yale University Press, 1989, p. 207.Google Scholar

7 Wachman, Alan M., Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization , New York, M. E. Sharpe, 1994, pp. 4–5, p. 261.Google Scholar

8 I acknowledge that Rustow’s theory of sequence is only one among a broad study of political issues such as security, leadership and development, and his research covers a wide area including Sweden, the Middle East, Japan and Turkey. I also acknowledge other theories of sequence. For example, Robert Dahl argues that the pattern of sequence where political competition precedes political participation is favourable to the development of polyarchy. See Dahl, Robert A., Polyarchy , New Haven, Yale University, 1971 Google Scholar. For a testing of Dahl’s sequence, see Dix, Robert H., ‘History and Democracy Revisited’, Comparative Politics , 27:1 (October, 1994), pp. 91–104 Google Scholar. Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman analyse the predictable consequences of three sequences: economic reform first; simultaneous economic and political liberalization; and democracy first. See The Politics of Economic Adjustment: International Constraints, Distributive Conflicts, and the State, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 332–41. Nance Bermeo contends that the consolidation of democracy preceded structural adjustment and economic reforms in Spain, Portugal and Argentina. See Bermeo, N., ‘Sacrifice, Sequence, and Strength in Successful Dual Transitions: Lessons from Spain’, The Journal of Politics , 56:3 (08 1994), pp. 601–27.Google Scholar

9 Binder et al., Leonard, Crises and Sequences in Political Development , Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1971.Google Scholar

10 See Kitschelt, Herbert, ‘Political Regime Changes: Structure and Process-Driven Explanations?’, American Political Science Review , 86:4 (1992), pp. 1028–34.Google Scholar

11 Rustow, Dankwart, ‘Transitions to Democracy: Towards a Dynamic Model’, Comparative Politics , 2 (1970), pp. 350–1.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 351.

13 Ibid., p. 360.

14 Ibid., p. 354.

15 Ibid., p. 351.

16 Ibid., pp. 350–1.

17 Rustow, Dankwart A., A World of Nations: Problems of Political Modernization , Washington DC, The Brookings Institute, 1967, pp. 123–6.Google Scholar

18 Rustow, ‘Transitions to Democracy’, p. 362.

19 However, the identity issue re-emerged at the end of the twentieth century; for example, the recent moves to devolve assemblies to Scotland and Wales.

20 See Moore, B., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World , Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1966.Google Scholar

21 Claus Offe, ‘Capitalism by Democratic Design? Democratic Theory Facing the Triple Transition in East Central Europe’, Social Research, 58:4 (1991), pp. 865–92.

22 Rustow, A World of Nations, pp. 126–9.

23 Ibid., pp. 131–2, esp. footnote no. 21.

24 The Table was compiled by the author. Sources: Denis Derbyshire, J. and Derbyshire, Ian, Political Systems of the World , New York, St Martin’s Press, 1996 Google Scholar; Krieger Krieger, Joel (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World , Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar

25 Offe, ‘Capitalism by Democratic Design’, pp. 865–92.

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28 Stepan, Alfred, ‘Toward a New Comparative Analysis of Democracy and Federalism’, pp. 50–51.Google Scholar

29 Rustow acknowledges this possibility in A World of Nations, p. 132.

30 Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, p. 89.

31 Clark, Robert P., ‘Spanish Democracy and Regional Autonomy: The Autonomous Community System and Self-government for the Ethnic Homelands’, in Rudolph, Joseph R. and Thompson, Robert J. (eds), Ethnoterritorial Politics, Policy, and the Western World , Boulder, Colo., Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989, p. 22.Google Scholar

32 For a detailed discussion of this, see Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, p. 105.

33 One may point out an exceptional case of Indonesia where Habibie offered autonomy to resolve the East Timor problem, but failed to maintain the unity of Indonesia in 1999. Nevertheless, others may argue that the autonomy proposal did not go far enough. For when Habibie offered autonomy, dialogue and negotiation, the East Timorese felt that it was too little, too late. If the autonomy proposal had been offered by Suharto, they would probably have been happy to accept it, but their sights were set higher — on full independence.

34 This is foreseen by Rustow in his equation of Authority-Equality-Identity (a hyphen denotes simultaneity).

35 For a comparative study of sequential development in Russia and China, see Pakulski, Jan and He, Baogang ‘National Integrity, Elites and Democracy, Russia and China Compared’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics , 15:2 (1999), pp. 69–87.Google Scholar

36 In an alternative interpretation, one may argue that the break-up of the former USSR confirms Rustow’s theory of sequence because such separation ‘solved’ the identity question, and then Russia and the newly independent countries could proceed in their own ways toward democracy.

37 Offe, ‘Capitalism by Democratic Design’, p. 673. Also see Elliott Armijo, Leslie, Biersteker, Thomas J. and Lowenthal, Abraham F., ‘The Problems of Simultaneous Transitions’, Journal of Democracy , 5:4 (10 1994), pp. 161–73.Google Scholar

38 White, Stephen, After Gorbachev , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 182–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Stephen, Gill, Graeme and Slider, Darrell, The Politics of Transition: Shaping a Post-Soviet Future , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Juviler, Peter, ‘Are Collective Rights Anti-human?’, Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights , 11:3 (1993), pp. 267–82,Google Scholar esp., p. 276.

40 Rustow put it as ‘Authority-Equality: Identity’ (a hyphen denotes simultaneity, and a colon sequence).

41 See Rustow, A World of Nations, p. 132.

42 I use Tatu Vanhanen’s measuring method and the data provided in his appendix 1. See Vanhanen, T., Prospects of Democracy: A Study of 172 Countries , London, Routledge, 1997, pp. 204–5.Google Scholar

43 McFaul, Michael, ‘Russia’s Rough Ride’. In Diamond, Larry, Plattner, Marc, Chu, Yunhan, and Tien, Hung-mao (eds), Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Regional Challenges , Baltimore, MD, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, p. 70.Google Scholar

44 There has even emerged the view that unification is no longer an urgent issue. This is illustrated by the names of the political parties. In the past, there was a Democratic Unification Party (1973 and 1978), a Reunification Democratic Party in 1988 and a Unification National Party in 1992. However, none of the names of the current three major parties — the Democratic Liberal Party, the Democratic Party, and United Liberal Democrats — contain the words ‘unification’ or ‘reunification’. When Kim Young-sam’s Reunification Democratic Party merged with the ruling party in 1990, it dropped the word ‘reunification’ from its new name. This may have been necessitated by the merger, but it may also ref lect the view that unification is a less urgent issue in Korean politics today.

45 Wachman, Taiwan, pp. 261–2.

46 In Irian Jaya, Mochtar Pakpahan’s Partai Buruh Nasional (PBN) endeavoured to win votes by promising to campaign for Irianese independence in the national parliament if it had representatives elected. The PBN, however, gained only two seats. By contrast, Golkar had a comfortable lead over other political parties, and won 36 per cent of the vote and 70 seats. Simon Philpott, ‘ “We are Rich but We are Dead”: Irian Jaya and the 1999 Indonesian General Election’, paper presented at the Indonesian Elections Workshop, Monash University, Australia, 25 June 1999.

47 Aspinall, Edward, ‘The 1999 General Elections in Aceh’, the paper presented at the Indonesian Elections workshop, Monash University, Australia, 25 06 1999.Google Scholar

48 In his presidential inaugural address in May 2000, the new President, Chen Shuibian, promised that he would not call for a referendum on independence unless China launched a war against Taiwan.

49 For detailed discussion on this matter, see Baogang He and Yingiie Goo, Nationalism, National Identity and Democratization in China, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000, ch. 7.