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Democracies Autocracies and Transitions Lecture Notes
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DAT Notes
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,Hoorcollege 1
DAT is situated within the subfield of comparative politics
comparative politics is methodologically eclectic and tries to incorporate various parts of the world
we are going to be assessing democracies, autocracies and theories about both
which part of cross national variance is explained by religion, culture, geography, etc.
longitudinal variance looks at differences across time
stable factors are going to be difficult to explain sudden cross national differences like regime changes
has to be something related more to the actors involved: short term strategic rather than long term structural
there is a continuous debate about direction of causality with regime type and other variables
amartya sen: “a country does not have to be deemed fit for democracy, rather, it has to
become fit through democracy”
looking at value of democracy 1. intrinsic: people are political actors
2. instrumental: democracy creates certain incentives for responsible elites
3. constructive: interest articulation, allow citizens to form an opinion
democracy as outcome vs democracy as a cause most of the course treats regime types as the outcome
looking at social structure, economic structure, social forces, international forces, etc.
but taking democracy as the cause you can look at economic growth, social protection, global health, etc.
the lee hypothesis = democracy is for later, economic development is for now
: authoritarian states are more succesfull at achieving economic growth
develops idea that democracy actually stunts economic growth because need to keep other opinions in mind
but argument doesnt hold up to empirical reality: every economic miracle has economic disaster
Knutson 2021: looking at an average proves that democracy actually causes more stable and predictable growth
“massive catastrophes do not happen in democratic systems”
7% of democracies experienced negative growth, while 30% of autocracies did
marshes et al. 2020 asked why do some developing countries spend more on social protection then others?
is it because of the democratic level in the country? used a regression analysis
bolleke et al. 2019 look at democracy and global health, does regime type matter in this instance?
comparison between 15 countries that underwent a succesfull transition to democracy and their life expectancy
used control group of authoritarian countries
povitkina 2018 showed that the co2 emissions in democratic countries are lower,
but still other factors that are more important, but regime type is one of the factors to climate change
there is a long standing debate about democracy as a ‘western’ concept
but there are plenty of western thinkers that are authoritarian, do not cherry pick in the evidence
argument is often used to support authoritarian regime authority
western countries have been very hypocritical in their acceptance of democracy implementation
Hoorcollege 2
there are a couple or countries that have ‘democracy’ in their name, most of them are autocratic
the way that democracy is measured is not in touch with the way citizens conceptualise democracy
democracy for a long time was associated with mob rule and was therefore bad
position taken by nearly all men of intelligence from the earliest historical times
, democracy and its values are universally seen as desirable
going back to ancient greece had the first type of group rule and only used select group of citizens
plato’s ship of state about who should govern, in his story it is the philosopher king
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this idea of letting the expert rule is still alive today
aristotle’s classification of regimes is based on number of rulers whether they rule in their own or common interest
democracy = many govern but at the expense of the common people
a maximalist or substantive view of democracy classifies political regimes in the outcomes that they produce
the problem is that too many attributes causes no empirical instances, no country that qualifies
it also limits analytical use because they measure some sort of ideal with other factors
a minimalist or procedural view of democracy classifies political regimes to their institutions and procedures
too few attributes causes all cases to become instances
democracy could both be a dichotomous variable and a continuous variable
robert dahl used ‘polyarchy’ but it hasn’t caught on (yet)
contestation for office and inclusion of the citizens
he came up with a list of requisites
anything against this is non-democratic
1. those who make decisions are elected officials
2. free, fair and frequent elections
3. freedom of expression
4. alternative sources of information
5. associational autonomy
6. inclusive citizenship
polyarchie are also called electoral democracy and qualify to all these requisites
subnational authoritarianism is also possible, for example when looking at taking away the right to vote
variaties of democracy based on the v-dem electoral democracy index
other popular measures are freedom housed (maximalist) and polity IV (minimalist)
different measures give different outcomes across time, across space lot of discrimination between countries
koelble & lipoma 2008 : the act of measuring democracy in us and europe is not taking into
account democratic practices elsewhere
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state formation is vastly different across both spaces
in colonial times the state was there to extract, in europe to create citizens
state capacity in the post colony is limited in delivering social welfare
:
western state derives part of legitimacy from the fact that it delivers while
post colonial states do not have this and lose legitimacy which derives conflict
national sovereignty is contained by global financial system
interest of individual and community are more intertwined in the postcolony
Hoorcollege 3
autocracy is the most common form of governance throughout human history, till 1990
it still includes nearly half of all states
svolik 2012 shows that the number and percentage of dictatorships goes down up until 2000
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