China, the West, and Democratization

The Struggle for the Local and the Global in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan

Luba von Hauff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781032400679
• eBook ISBN: 9780429670688
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Drawing upon insights from international socialization theory and social psychology, this book examines China's efforts to multipolarize – and hence potentially de-liberalize – the international system from the local perspective of a non-democratic (yet democratizing) nation and then applies these insights to Beijing's current global agency in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Specifically, the book scrutinizes Beijing's normative engagement in Kazakhstan, a nation that evolved from an enthusiastic supporter of the West's normative domination of international affairs into an overt critic – after having institutionalized relations with Beijing through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Tracing and juxtaposing the respective patterns of Kazakhstan's political identity development before the SCO entered the region and after, this book not only yields unexpected conclusions about the quality of post-Soviet democratization outcomes, but also about Beijing's local and global influence potentiality for the time to come – and its limits.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of China's normative power, democratization studies, post-Soviet studies, and International Relations.

1 Political systems and international relations after the Cold War

Introduction

During the course of the past century, democracy has become a sought-after political label.¹ Since 1945, and especially since the ostensibly ‘history-terminating’ end of the Cold War in 1991, the notion of democracy has come to represent ‘all normatively desirable aspects of political life’, and its achievement has indeed become not only a one-way street, but the only way of political development and, as Fareed Zakaria put it, a ‘part of the fashionable attire of modernity’ (Zakaria, 1997, p. 9; Fukuyama, 1989). However, the gradual transition to liberal democracy as promoted by Western states and institutions turned out to be uneven at best – even in those countries that seemed enthusiastic about embarking on democratization in the first place.

Indeed, only a decade after the outbreak of the post-Cold War ideological euphoria, democracy, especially in the Western understanding of the term, started to encounter increased resistance, in some cases even outright rejection. Today, the taken-for-granted movement toward Western-style democracy appears to have been reversed altogether – and with it, the West’s position as the world’s normative centre of gravitation. Instead, as the new, and not quite as democratic ‘emerging’ powers have been gaining international clout, the notions of political ‘neutrality’, national ‘sovereignty’, and ‘diversity’ have come to the fore, establishing themselves as the normative beacons of the twenty-first century. In the West, this new ideological relativity – the ‘diversification of the (international) normative order’ – was met with dismay, spawning not only a panic as regards the re-autocratization of the formerly democratizing world, but also the search for the culprits behind this new trend.

Against this background, the objective of this chapter is, on the one hand, to introduce the position of the West – the first (norm-making) protagonist of the analysis – and on the other hand to provide a definition of its core norm democracy, and also, finally, to address the development of this norm – its rise and its fall – in the aftermath of the Cold War. Building upon this, the other two protagonists of the analysis will be presented: the People’s Republic of China, the most significant emerging power of today’s multipolar order and the second norm-maker to be dealt with – as well as the post-Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, the actor at the receiving end of the Western and Chinese norm diffusion processes, and thus main subject of investigation. These empirics will prepare the ground for the following, theoretic, chapter, which will bridge the concept of democracy and that of socialization.

Democracy

Democracy is a system of governance that specifies how – through which methods and what means – and also to what end, political power can be accessed, distributed, and exercised in a state (Schmitter and Karl, 1991, p. 103). It is a system ‘for organizing relations between the rulers and the ruled’, and is conventionally defined as ‘government by and for the people’ (Lijphart, 2007, p. 111). The establishment of such ‘government’, in turn, depends on the presence of distinct procedures and processes, institutions and norms, along which a state’s political life can evolve. Despite the obligatoriness of certain institutions, however, there is no ‘one way’ en route to democracy, as there is no single model of democracy itself. Indeed, as will be demonstrated below, models of democracy may be influenced by diverse factors such as a country’s socioeconomic conditions and its ethnic fabric – and still be held together by one unassailable normative and procedural foundation (Schmitter, 1998, p. 33; Schmitter and Karl, 1991). The remainder of this section will elaborate on these negotiable and non-negotiable aspects of democracy. In particular, it will deal with the procedures and institutions that are associated with democratic governance; with the conditions necessary for its functioning; and, not least, with those principles, that, despite the plurality of eventual models, are indispensable to democracy’s establishment and consolidation.

The process of political competition, that is, the presence of public contestation between actors that promotes conflicting political visions and interests, is the sine qua non of a democracy (Przeworski et al., 2000, p. 15) The presence of competition, however, is preceded by the process of cooperation: in order to compete, actors must be able as well as willing to cooperate and collectively deliberate in the polity’s various institutions – ‘to select candidates, articulate preferences, petition authorities, and influence policies’ (Schmitter and Karl, 1991, p. 103). Throughout history, then, elections, as the symbiosis of political cooperation and competition, have been ascribed a pivotal, and defining, role in democratic governance. Schumpeter’s famous definition, for instance, put forward that democracy is ‘that institutional arrangement for arriving at political (i.e. administrative and legislative) decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’ (Schumpeter, 1976, p. 269). In this view, a democratic polity is constituted of a) a cooperative element – the emergence of distinct political parties promoting distinct political alternatives; b) a competitive element – contested elections between these parties; and c) a controlling element – the subsequent ‘production of government’ on the part of the electorate (ibid.; Held, 2006, pp. 146ff).

In contemporaneous democracies, then, these processes are at work outside the realm of political parties as well. Various other actors – interest and pressure groups, as well as social movements, among others – do also engage in competition and cooperation, and their interaction is just as indispensable to the functioning of today’s (Western) democratic states (Schumpeter, 1976).² These groups have distinct identities and are organized along different – social, local, ethnic – interests. What unites them, however, is the aspiration to safeguard the representation of their respective group vis-à-vis the government (Schmitter and Karl, 1991, p. 105). The activity of these groups is expected to increase the size and the voice of minorities in a state, enabling the ‘ordinary citizens (to) exert a … degree of control over leaders’ while remaining independent of the state themselves (ibid.). In addition to fostering the interaction between the state and society, such civil activity disposes of a structuring quality: it represents ‘an intermediate layer of governance between the individual and the state that is capable of resolving conflicts and controlling the behaviour of members without public coercion’ (ibid.).

These procedures – political cooperation and competition by way of elections and civil society activity – constitute significant elements of democratic governance. And yet, despite their significance, they are only necessary, but not sufficient conditions. For a democracy to function, indeed, these procedures need to be embedded into a certain normative framework. In this regard, Robert Dahl has formulated the probably most widely accepted set of rules: universal adult suffrage; secret balloting; free and fair elections; executive accountability; freedom of expression; associational freedom; access to alternative sources of information (Dahl, 1971, p. 3). Adam Przeworski, moreover, specified the rules that govern democratic – that is, contested – elections: first, ‘ex-ante uncertainty’, which puts forward that before the elections, their eventual outcome should be uncertain; second, ‘ex-post irreversibility’, which stipulates that all participants should respect the electoral outcome; and finally, ‘repeatability’, which sets forth that ‘whoever wins the current round of elections cannot use office to make it impossible for the competing political forces to win next time’ (Przeworski et al., 2000, p. 18).

What a democratic system of governance thus does, by way of specifying certain procedures and putting forward relatively straightforward rules of conduct, is to bring about an element of certainty and stability in the political activity of a state. This is particularly important as democracy entails a significant portion of uncertainty as well – being a ‘system, in which parties (unexpectedly) lose elections’ and thus power (ibid.). Therefore, in addition to institutionalizing the element of certainty – epitomized in the above mentioned procedures and norms – a democratic system also institutionalizes the element of uncertainty – epitomized in the ex-ante indeterminacy of electoral outcomes. It is for this reason that democracy may be understood as a system of ‘ruled open-endedness’ – thus, as a system, in which actors ‘know what is possible and likely (qua procedural and normative institutions) but not what will happen’ (ibid., p. 12). This uncertainty creates incentives for the participants to cooperate (that is, to organize in groups) and to compete (that is, to hold elections and seek power). As Przeworski points out: ‘if outcomes were either predetermined or completely indeterminate (lacking, for instance, guiding procedures and rules), there would be no reasons for groups to organize as participants. It is the uncertainty that draws them into the democratic interplay’ (ibid., p. 13).

In other words, it is the institutionalized uncertainty of outcomes that obliges a polity’s participants to cooperate and to compete, and thus to commit ex ante to compliance with post-electoral outcomes – that is, to subject their interests to the rules governing the competition process(es). This, in turn, inevitably transfers political power ‘from a group of people’ to ‘a system of rules and impersonal procedures’ – that is, to a stable, routinized framework of law that governs the interaction of a polity’s participants (Przeworski, 1991, p. 16). In this regard, the institutionalization of the rule of law is only a realistic endeavour if adherence to it is overseen by independent political institutions – usually, the legislature and the judiciary. Indeed, without an institutionalized system of separation of powers, that is, without checks and balances upon those exercising, or vying for, political power, the subjection of personal interests to impersonal rules is likely to be an inconsistent affair – as will, in turn, be, the quality of democratic governance (Linz and Stepan, 1998). Hence, while the rule of law has a central, stabilizing, position in a democracy, providing not only ‘a great deal of structural reassurance’ in the form of valid procedures, norms, and rules to both the rulers and the ruled, but also limiting the power of the state (respectively of those vying for political power) and thus protecting individuals from arbitrary (personified) rule, its presence represents merely a function, or a consequence, of the degree to which the principles of competition and separation of powers are institutionalized (Schmitter, 1998, p. 24).

Furthermore, while adherence to the rule of law is a necessary condition, it alone is not sufficient for a functioning democracy. This is because a democratic regime needs to be legitimate as well – that is, the legal framework needs to be socially accepted and respected (Habermas, 1998). Indeed, as Habermas pointed out, ‘the less a legal order is legitimate, or is at least considered such, the more other factors, such as intimidation, the force of circumstances, custom, and sheer habit, must step in to reinforce it’ (Habermas, 1998, p. 30). Hence, it is legitimacy – the conviction, or trust, that a system’s laws are justified and normatively valid – that distinguishes a coercive government from a democratic one, which is authorized ‘by the people’. The notion of legitimacy thus addresses the question of ‘social recognition’ of a state’s legal order and political organization, which, ideally, ‘all citizens should … find acceptable’ (Rehg, 1998, p. xxv). This, then, implies that democratic governance not only draws on an institutionalized framework of procedures and rules, but also on the condition that such a framework be collectively endorsed (O’Donnell and Schmitter, 2013, p. 69; Dahl, 1956, p. 132).

Such agreement – Schmitter refers to it as ‘contingent consensus’; Dahl conceptualized it as a ‘democratic bargain’ – may take different forms across different types of democracies depending on a state’s pre-existing political culture, on a society’s ‘inequalities and cleavage patterns, as well as on such subjective factors as the degree of mutual trust between the government and the citizens, the standards of fairness, the willingness to compromise, and the legitimacy of different decision-making rules’ (Schmitter, 1998, p. 24). The variety of possibilities notwithstanding, what is important is that such a consensus lays down a distinct regulatory framework according to which the regime in question will be organized and that this framework will be accepted by those exposed to it – the citizens. As Dahl explains:

what we ordinarily describe as democratic ‘politics’ is merely the chaff. It is the surface manifestation, representing superficial conflict. Prior to politics, beneath it, enveloping it, conditioning it, is the underlying consensus on policy that usually exists in the society … Without such a consensus no democratic system would long survive … With such a consensus the disputes over policy alternatives are nearly always disputes over a set of alternatives that have already been winnowed down to those within a broad area of basic agreement.

(Dahl, 1956, p. 132)

Finally, the last unassailable piece of democratic governance and a direct consequence of the above conditions, is citizenship. For any democracy to function, the above procedures and norms, each in their distinct shape, need to conform to the rights and obligations that are epitomized in this principle. Citizenship, as understood here, involves

both the right to be treated by fellow human beings as equal with respect to the making of collective choices and the obligation of those implementing such choices to be equally accountable and accessible to all members of the polity. Inversely, this principle imposes obligations on the ruled, that is, to respect the legitimacy of choices made by deliberation among equals (or their representatives), and rights on rulers, that is, to act with authority (and, therefore, to apply coercion where necessary) to promote the effectiveness of such choices, and to protect the polity from threats to its persistence.

(O’Donnell and Schmitter, 2013, p. 7)

At their core, thus, the non-negotiable elements of democratic governance revolve around certain procedures (such as contested elections and interest group interaction), the appending procedural norms, and the overarching st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: democracy and the global-local nexus of Western dominance
• 1 Political systems and international relations after the Cold War
• 2 Localizing the international: on similar pathways and variant outcomes of socialization in IR
• 3 Post-Soviet Kazakhstan’s democratization pathway (1991–2001): ‘failed’ socialization or ‘successful’ localization? How newly independent Kazakhstan became a ‘democracy with Soviet characteristics’
• 4 Kazakhstan’s continued democratization pathway (2002–2012): from ‘Soviet characteristics’ to the ‘Kazakh Way’
• 5 The ‘Kazakh Way’: a Chinese construct?
• 6 Strategic localization going global: the Belt and Road Initiative
• Conclusion: democracy and the global-local nexus of Western dominance in a multipolar world
• Index