Democratization Through the Looking-glass

Peter Burnell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138522183
• eBook ISBN: 9781351522786
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Democratization through the Looking-Glass, Peter Burnell provides a revealing image of how our knowledge and understanding of democratization could be improved by viewing the topic through a more multi- disciplinary lens and from the perspective of more broadly based comparative analyses. Burnell and his contributors encourage readers to both "look and think outside of the box," beyond the limited parameters that usually shape the study of democratization.

The goal of Democratization through the Looking-Glass is to pursue a more comprehensive understanding of democratization as a process taking many forms rather than just as a political phenomenon. With a viewpoint from a wider multi-disciplinary stance, and broader global geopolitical knowledge base, the contributors hope to get readers to better recognize and address gaps in the political science literature on the subject of democratization. The contributors seek to do this by specifically: explaining what democratization is while also making sense of the wide variety of experiences undergone by different societies at different times going through this very process; anticipating the wider effects of democratization's consequences for all human conditions at all levels; and critically assessing strategies for extending and deepening democracy by improving its positive qualities and chances of being sustained in societies into which it is introduced.

This volume takes readers in the direction of predicting and foretelling the future of democracy and democratization with greater accuracy. In all, Democratization through the Looking-Glass provides a wide-ranging review of themes, issues, and topics concisely written by leading experts in their fields while advancing its case for more inclusive comparative studies covering Europe and North America, as well as developing regions, showing precisely how multi-disciplinary approaches enhance a global vision and understanding of democratization.

1

Perspectives

Peter Burnell

The Looking-Glass for the Mind; or Intellectual Mirror (1792) (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, 1989)

In the last decade or so democratization has been the focus of a burgeoning political science literature. Democratization is multifaceted and multidimensional. As both an idea and a practical phenomenon it belongs exclusively to no single discipline or branch of academic learning, and to no one geographical area. The purpose of this book is to show how our knowledge and understanding of democratization are enriched by studying through the lens of multidisciplinarity (Part I) and from a broadly-based comparative analysis - one that is deeply informed by area studies that are themselves comparative at the regional level (Part II). The volume takes the form of authentic accounts by specialists of what their own subject brings to the study of democratization. They pose some distinctive questions, with the potential to uncover unique insights. Of course, some areas of interest are bound to overlap, and there will be points of convergence too: their identity will become clear also.

The book is addressed especially but not only to the political science community, being an invitation to each one of us to ‘think outside the box’ of the usual parameters that shape our study of democratization. It aims to demonstrate that by being receptive to multidisciplinarity and equipped with a broadly-based geopolitical knowledge we should be better placed to:

• address some of the gaps that political scientists recognize are present in the political science literature on democratization;
• pursue a more comprehensive understanding of democratization as a process that takes a variety of forms and is not solely a political phenomenon;
• provide explanations of democratization that will more easily satisfy the criteria of coherence, consistency, and plausibility while making sense of the variety of experiences undergone by different societies at different times;
• anticipate the wider compass of democratization’s consequences for the human condition at all levels;
• critically assess strategies for extending and ‘deepening’ democracy that have as their goal improvement in democracy’s quality and its chances of being sustained;
• move in the direction of foretelling the future of democracy and democratization with greater accuracy.

While the underlying claims about the value of multi-disciplinarity and broadly-based area studies might seem far from heretical, they do face resistance - as is borne out by the literature. For example, on the spread of democracy Remmer’s (1995: 105) view is that disciplinary traditions ‘have created major barriers to the development of theory capable of comprehending new international realities’, that is, theories fit for the purpose of ‘integrating data drawn from both national and systemic levels of analysis’. The situation Remmer described then has not changed greatly, notwithstanding a welcome increase of attention to the international dimensions of democratization. Mair (1996: 317) noted the ‘now virtual absence of comparative analyses with a global, or even cross-regional ambition’. More recently still it has been said ‘democratisation studies would greatly profit from expanding its disciplinary and geographical constraints’ (Kopecy and Mudde 2000: 517). This chapter, ‘Perspectives’, amplifies such sentiments, presenting reasons why students of politics should reject parochialism in their attempts to understand democratization.

Political studies as an open discipline

The proposition that comparative analysis will have most to offer when informed by a broadly-based knowledge of different regions hardly needs elaboration. For one thing there is Remmer’s (1995: 107) reminder that the ‘theoretical pay-off of research conceived within a traditional case study format has been limited’. For another, comparability ‘is a quality that is not inherent in any given set of objects; rather it is a quality imparted to them by the observer’s perspective’ (Rustow 1968: 47). By limiting comparative analysis to areas of close proximity we risk creating an appearance of inter-regional differences that owes too much to the way regions are defined and to regionally-specific research agendas - ‘an areal version of an old problem, that is, case selection determining the conclusions drawn’ (Bunce 2000a: 721). By comparison the case for multidisciplinarity, though not idiosyncratic,¹ might seem less obvious, and so receives greater elaboration here.

Disciplines can be differentiated in terms of what they study - their substantive concerns - and how they study it - their methodologies, as well as in some cases by special purpose and the development of a distinctive ‘jargon’ or technical vocabulary. There is a long-established view that although politics may be defined in terms of the activity studied, it is not definable in terms of a singular method of study, let alone a unique method that it can call its own. Instead, politics is what might be called an ‘open’ discipline: it relies, uniquely so, on the methods and the modes of explanation of other branches of knowledge, and what is more without obvious sense of embarrassment or the urge to pretend otherwise. Thus, in the words of a Professor of Political Theory and Government, ‘the suggestion that the student of politics is an eclectic is very well observed, for he draws on so many ways of analysis as seem to suit his purpose’ (Greenleaf 1968: 1-2). Political science ‘has always borrowed much more than it has lent’ (Dogan 1996: 102),² perhaps lending support to the view that politics should not be called an autonomous discipline, for that very reason (Wiseman 1969: 96).

However, if it is in respect of its principal choice of subject matter that the study of politics most clearly stands out, then the precise identity of that subject or its core has itself been much debated. For Duverger ‘the essence of politics, its real nature and true significance, is to be found in the fact that it is always and at all times ambivalent’ (Duverger 1966: xiii). For political analysts who find the institutions of government to be far too narrow a focus - and that now means the great majority - bounded disciplinary perspectives are considered unhelpful to the investigation of the problems they want to focus on. Some go further than others: for instance Leftwich (1984: 159) travels beyond multidisciplinarity to say ‘there is no contradiction (except in semantic terms) to say that the discipline of Politics must be interdisciplinary in its focus and its frameworks’.

Moreover, it is not just that the boundaries of the ‘political’ appear both porous and fuzzy once we have taken into account all the different views of what politics is; but that the different views each incline towards their own view of how politics should be studied. They generate different ideas about the relationships between politics and ‘sister disciplines’, and about which disciplines have the nearest blood ties and which ones have the most to offer the study of politics. For example there is Oakeshott’s (1991) conviction that politics is a ‘conversation with tradition’. This invites a particular kind of historical approach. Then there is the view that politics is essentially about reconciling interests, which leads towards rational choice theory and the statistical modelling of individual and group behaviour. In fact, although one implication shared by all the main ideas of what politics comprises is that democratic values and practices lie more or less close to the heart, they do this for different reasons. In consequence they give rise to their own questions and sense of priorities relevant to the range of issues that democratization is likely to provoke; and moreover they imply different ways of going about finding answers.

Among disciplines offering approaches that can be employed to advantage in the study of politics generally, and democratization specifically, the disagreements over method extend to arguments about what constitutes a satisfactory explanation. Thus in one corner lies the historians’ search for qualitative information to supply context and identify the reasons and intentions, to get at the meaning and significance of ideas and events for the actors themselves both individually and as rooted in specific social contexts. This is a world where human agency is potentially very significant. And there may be a place for historical accident or chance too. In a different corner social scientists sift quantitative information, looking for ‘forces’ that in the view of some are analogous to causes; they hope to subsume the explanandum under a covering law or law-like generalization. Disciplines impose their own canons of acceptable forms of evidence and offer different frameworks of analysis, in addition to their own choice of starting-points, lead questions and principal concerns. How did something happen? Why did it happen? What brought it about? What are the consequences and why do they matter? How will it end? What is it, anyway? Are these questions interdependent or can they be answered separately? And all the time politics in the real world is moving on, and with it the study of politics develops as well. To dismiss the contributions that some other specialisms might make to understanding something like democratization simply on the grounds that they do not happen to coincide with today’s fashions in political science would be short-sighted indeed.

Of course, the fruitfulness of applying several disciplines to the analysis of politics will vary across different kinds of political phenomena. But we should rule out any a priori assumption that mutually exclusive choices must be made. It is far more helpful to recognize that there can be different levels of explanation, some more immediate, some more ‘fundamental’. And that variations in the degree of completeness can be quite legitimate; they can all be judged in relation both to the specific point of the inquiry and the existing knowledge and understanding of the inquirer.

Looking-glass - a ‘mirror for looking at oneself

The construction of democratization as a unit of study will reflect the intellectual standpoint of the inquirer. Put simply, the understanding we are likely to gain will be affected by where we are coming from and what we bring to the table. This will be just as true for area and country specialists as for analysts whose main intellectual training and vocabulary of discourse are in some field other than politics. We would not expect, say, Europeanists writing abut eastern Europe and Africanists writing about southern Africa to make identical approaches to studying democratization; and regions differ in terms of which particular aspects of democratization they illuminate most sharply. Equally we would not expect the accounts by economists to duplicate those of, say, anthropologists - if not because of basic epistemological differences then because of variations in the conceptual lens and methodological apparatus they bring to bear. In principle, the contributors to this volume ask different questions, address different problems, will strike different emphases and offer their own concerns; but in practice there is also much to be gained from establishing where they touch at certain points and share similar observations and reflections.

However, there are caveats, which the following chapters will illustrate. First, we should not be surprised to find evidence of contestation over the precise nature of the preferred method or mode of explanation not just in political studies but in other disciplines and sub-disciplines as well. Like the study of politics, the other disciplines too are dynamic, and their approaches can even vary according to distinct national cultural and educational or professional institutional traditions. There are differences of time, place and circumstance that impact on the way political phenomena, including democracy, are viewed - and not just by political scientists. Second, even where there are shared convictions over a discipline’s main parameters and substantive concerns, the meaning and significance of democratization may still be the subject of lively dispute. Indeed, the disagreements over the meaning and significance of something like democratization could be more vigorously contested inside a single discipline such as sociology or within a distinct geopolitical region than are the divisions that appear most clearly to set the disciplines or regions apart. After all, neither Marxism and dependency theory nor social constructivism and post-modernism have any respect for national or disciplinary boundaries. Put starkly, it is feasible that political researchers interested in democratization could gain more by collaborating with colleagues from other disciplines than by engaging with specialists from certain other branches of political science (Dogan 1996: 123-4).

Studying democratization

In Britain the academic study of politics began half a century ago from foundations in constitutional law, philosophy and history. In the years since, the study of politics and law seem to have grown apart, comparatively speaking, with few notable exceptions, such as in politics the writings of Drewry, who sees (1996: 201) ‘a natural affinity between law and politics, which takes many forms’. Yet constitutional engineering in new democracies, the determination of procedures for institutionalizing the rule of law, and the pros and cons of judicial activism are but three notable areas where in principle political inquiries have much to learn from legal scholarship. Thus political scientists studying democratization appear much taken with the idea of judicial autonomy as part of the institutional architecture for ensuring the horizontal accountability of the executive - a seemingly necessary counterpart to the vertical accountability that legislatures and electorates seem only imperfectly to exact. But here (Chapter 7) McEldowney’s approach from the side of legal studies highlights instead a growing tension between the principle of democratic accountability and the increase of judicial power. If, as some observers believe, the world is moving inexorably towards the elaboration of a right to democratic rule in international law, then both Drewry’s point and McEldowney’s cautioning could both take on even greater import.

The last fifteen years or so have seen the rise of the so-called ‘new institutionalism’ in social sciences generally and political science specifically. This stresses the relative autonomy of institutions, and rejects earlier reductionist tendencies that made political phenomena the dependent variable of other primarily social or economic forces. The ‘new institutionalism’ encourages us to revisit the arrangements that embed political behaviour in rules, norms, expectations and traditions. One implication is that not only legal analysts, but possibly anthropologists too should be consulted for their insights into the complexities of ‘crafting’ democratic institutions appropriate to individual societies. Anthropological studies shed light on the world of informal practice of customs and conventions that can profoundly affect the working of formally democratic arrangements, especially at the ‘microphysical’ level. Traditionally, the way the embedded neo-patrimonial and clientelistic relationships of power complicate the transfer of Western-style democracy to Africa has been paradigmatic. In Africa Chabal and Daloz (1999: 9) say politics ‘is not functionally differentiated, or separated, from the socio-cultural considerations which govern everyday life … there is a constant and dynamic interpenetration of the different spheres of human experience, from the political to the religious’.³ But in Chapter 2, below, Gould goes further in examining the perspectives that recent anthropological thinking contributes, including fundamental reservations about democratization both as explanatory tool and (even more so) as normative ideal. On the other side, a political scientist’s view of the perspectives and dimensions of democratization found in Africa is explored in Chapter 9, by Southall.

In this context political sociologists too should come into their own, especially now that the idea of political culture - a concept whose validity or usefulness political analysts have often questioned in the past - has experienced major rehabilitation in the politics literature on democratization. There is a growing tendency to root variations in the success and failure of democratic experiments as much in the values and attitudes of the people as in qualities of formal institutional design. At the same time in the ‘third world’ Kamrava (1995: 699) judges a democratic polity to be requisite for forging what is still clearly lacking in some societies: a ‘nationally cohesive political culture’. These are perspectives that offer alternatives to those grounded in levels of economic development and the accompanying socioeconomic structure. That said, neither the contemporary standing of the ‘new institutionalism’ nor the rediscovery of political culture as a significant influence have diminished the amount of attention given to economic and socioeconomic factors in supporting long-term democratic trends. On the contrary, it is in regard to the interaction among all these variables and others besides that there is now the most pressing need to improve our understanding. To illustrate, from a feminist perspective Rai (Chapter 4) rightly raises the issue of the costs of participation, for women. Are the cultural impediments to political equality between men and women and to greater female political participation more resistant to all-round improvements in material circumstances in some societies than in others - and if so, why? Similarly, is the persistence of neo-patrimonialism more debilitating for democratic progress when supported by large inflows of conditionality-based international economic aid, or would it be better if the underlying scarcity of domestic resources was allowed to persist?

Economists, with their fondness for the rigorous application of statistical techniques t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• 1 Perspectives
• Part I DISCIPLINES
• 2 Anthropology
• 3 Economics
• 4 Gender Studies
• 5 History
• 6 International Political Economy
• 7 Law
• 8 Sociology
• Part II AREAS
• 9 Africa
• 10 Central and eastern Europe
• 11 East Asia
• 12 The European Union
• 13 Latin America
• 14 South Asia
• 15 The United States
• 16 Conclusion
• References
• Index