![]()
Chapter 1
Democracy at the Crossroads: The Case of South Africa
Daniel Silander and Oskar Malmgren
More than a quarter century ago, at the end of the Cold War, scholars in the social sciences proclaimed a global wave of democratization (Fukuyama, 1989, 1992; Huntington, 1991) as the triumph of democracy (Holden, 2000) was witnessed throughout the world. Then, common values such as democracy, human rights, freedom of the individual, and rule of law appeared to expand universally as the only game in town. The prospects for democratization without dividing lines across the globe seemed most promising (Diamond, 2000). In the early 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union in Europe, the end of authoritarian and military rule in Asia and Latin America, and the abolition of the apartheid regime in South Africa were all symbols of a global democratic upsurge. Democracy was perceived as good governance (Boutros-Ghali, 1995, 2000; Diamond, 2000), as the wave of democratization had shown the victory of democracy in most regions around the world, regardless of previous historical or cultural differences, geopolitical settings, political cultures, economic levels or religious systems. Democracy spread in poor and undeveloped countries, in countries with authoritarian legacies and military rule as well as in Muslim-oriented religious systems (Diamond, 2008; Harrison & McLaughlin Mitchell, 2014).
Today the situation is dramatically different (Diamond, Plattner, & Walker, 2016; Freedom House, 2020; Heldt & Schmidtke, 2019). The global democratic upsurge has halted with worrying tendencies of a reverse trend of authoritarianism, populism, nationalism, and fragile democracies. The previous global democratic upsurge has turned into a potential global democratic recession and a wave of autocratization (Lührmann, Grahn, Morgan, Pillai, & Lindberg, 2019; Lührmann & Lindberg, 2019; Maerz, Lührmann, Hellmeier, Grahn, & Lindberg, 2020). In 2020, democracy faced its most serious challenges in more than a decade with the 14th consecutive year of decline in political rights and civil liberties. Free and fair elections, the rule of law, minority rights, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech were under systematic attack around the globe to such an extent that, in 2020, states that saw democratic setbacks outnumbered states that saw democratic gains (Freedom House, 2020). Today, we stand at a crossroads between the consolidation of the previous democratic upsurge and a reverse wave of antidemocratic changes of authoritarianism in different shapes and forms (Carothers & Youngs, 2017; Diamond et al., 2016; Puddington & Tyler, 2017). As summarized by Cooley:
… rising new counter norms are threatening to straitjacket liberal democracy's power even as they chip away at its status as the most influential source of norms for global governance … Whatever the exact extent of worldwide democratic regression, it is clear that counter norms to liberal democracy have taken root and are helping authoritarians to retain power.
(Cooley, 2015, p. 60)
The current challenges to democracy around the world call for further improved studies on how to promote and protect the consolidation of democratic institutions. The consolidation of democracies would not only halt a potential reverse wave of authoritarianism but also uphold a liberal democratic order of solid, enduring, and sustainable democratic societies. In this study, consolidation of democracies is about strengthening and improving formal democratic institutions, but also about societal prodemocratic norms and values (Schedler, 2002; Selbin, 1993), to make democracy become the “only game in town” (Di Palma, 1990). The consolidation of democracies is not about the transition into fragile institutionalized electoral democracies, with free and fair elections, but about the continued societal transformation of political, economic, bureaucratic, judicial, social, and cultural conditions that are crucial for democratization. Without the consolidation of democracies, in institutionalization and socialization of prodemocratic institutions, states may end up in a condition of democratic fuzziness where democratic institutions are mixed with undemocratic ones and where the democratic society is hollowed out by societal crisis, injustices, and human rights abuses. In research, scholars on democratization have used different names to portray these challenged and fragile “democracies” (Collier & Levitsky, 1997) in manipulated democracy, illiberal democracy, poor democracy, empty democracy, low-intensity democracy, pseudo-democracy, limited democracy, and frozen democracy, among many other names. What combines these different types of fuzzy democracies is their lack of institutional and/or societal consolidation, leaving the democracy in a fragile, unstable nature.
In this study, the consolidation of democracies is theoretically developed and empirically used in terms of subsocieties. Based on Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan's classical study on Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation of 1996, it is argued that consolidation is about the political institutionalization of democratic norms and values in the political society, but also about socialization of democratic norms and values in the society at large beyond political institutions. The consolidation of democracy embeds complex interrelated prodemocratic changes in subsocieties to make democracy persistent, dynamic, and enduring. In full, it requires acknowledging more parts of a society beyond the five subsocieties identified by Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan in political, bureaucratic, judicial, economic, and civil society. The theoretical framework on consolidation of democracy in this study refers to nine interrelated subsocieties that should be taken into account when exploring the status of democracy – political society, bureaucratic society, judicial society, economic society, civil society, security and safety society, educational society, sports society, and international society.
If the political society is about the establishment of transparent, representative institutions, consolidation also requires a bureaucratic society of a rational-legal bureaucratic order, a judicial society of rule of law, an economic society of state-regulated market economy, and a civil society of self-organized activities. In addition, the consolidation of democracy must also take into account the importance of a security and safety society providing for personal safety and autonomy, educational society of citizen enlightenment and empowerment, a sports society focusing on the opportunities for national identity and societal integration, and finally an international society of regional and global democratic influences. These subsocieties are summarized below in Table 1.1 and further discussed in Chapter 2.
Table 1.1. Framework of Study on Consolidation of Democracy.
| Subsocieties | Content |
| Political | Subsociety where political actors compete for power over public policies and the state apparatus through free and fair elections; where the people participate and support democratic institutions, and institutions are transparent, representative, and with existing checks and balances all embedded in a constitutional arrangement. |
| Bureaucratic | Subsociety with useable and efficient bureaucracy to implement democratic governance and the rule of law and with power to perform in accordance with democratic norms and values, and to follow through on decisions taken within the political society. In addition, a subsociety to protect citizens' rights and liberties and to pull resources to the state to afford to deliver basic services demanded by the people. |
| Judicial | Subsociety based on independent rule of law with judicially institutions ensuring check and balances, democratic institutional performances and accountability as well as protection of citizens' rights and liberties against state abuse of power. |
| Economic | Subsociety with economic institutions of rules on how economic affairs are to be conducted, to some degree controlled by the political society to avoid pure market economic forces, but without the risk of state-controlled economy. A set of norms, values, and regulations that combines private and state interests to provide for market autonomy, ownership diversity as well as state regulations to uphold legal contracts, money, pricing, weights, tariffs, and property rights in addition to personal safety and wealth of all people through basic public services. |
| Civil | Subsociety of autonomous and self-organized groups and activities where citizens are mobilized into organizations, associations, and/or movements to articulate aggregated interests relatively independent from the political society. A platform between political institutions and private family life for socialization, articulation, and aggregation of opinions and values, and informal empowerment. |
| Security and Safety | Subsociety of individual privacy and integrity and social trust and security with civilian supreme authority over armed forces, functional policing and protection of individual and societal safety where citizens with different backgrounds and belongings have equal rights and liberties and are integrated as citizens in overlapping societal communities. |
| Educational | Subsociety of all levels of education providing know-how, formal empowerment and expertize, socialization of citizenship and democratic norms and values, and the preservation and promotion of universal norms and values encouraging critical citizenship, democratic ethos, global awareness, and the respect of human rights and liberties. |
| Sport | Subsociety for conflict resolution, reconciliation, and national unity to create social cohesiveness and sameness among different social groups as a path toward strengthening national integration and a collective identity providing for societal inclusiveness among citizens. |
| International | Subsociety embedding the international dimension to the democratization of regional and global influences on democracy in diffusion trends, structures, and relations that provides conditions that facilitate or constrain democratization. |
Based on this theoretical framework on the consolidation of democracy, this study expands previous research on how to understand and approach the complexity of the consolidation of democracy in states around the world. Some of these identified societies have previously not been defined and used and are therefore a theoretical contribution to how to approach studies on the consolidation of democracy. Each society is important and interesting as a single case analysis of consolidation, but is also interrelated to the other societies that together bring deepened insights on the consolidation of democracy. Previous research on consolidation has approached consolidation as foremost a political and judicial process of consolidating democratic political institutions and judicial institutions in the rule of law. This study departs from the notion that consolidation is a lengthy, complex, multifaceted, and never-ending political and societal transformation.
This study also provides an empirical contribution by focusing on one regionally important state that was part of the previous wave of democratization and that gave great hope of diffusion of democracy to the continent as a whole: South Africa. It has been argued that global democratization is based on regional democratization triggered by so-called swing states (Diamond, 2008; Piccone, 2012). Larry Diamond (2008) once argued that swing states are nonwestern politically, economically, and demographically major states that have a disproportionate impact on the future of democracy in their geographical regional settings. By exploring individual swing states' process of democratization, we may explore the prospect of democratization in the larger regional setting. In the case of South Africa, the prospects of democratization may have an important impact on neighboring states in Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe, but also with greater impact on the African continent at large.
Many African states are politically fragile (Harbeson & Rothchild, 2016). Based on the Fragile State Index (The Fund for Peace, 2020), consisting of annual measurements on the level of weakness among states in the world, the African continent includes numerous weakened and failing states. Among the most vulnerable and fragile states in the world, we may find Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Democratic Republic, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe (Fragile State Index, 2020). In addition, using the Freedom House Index, measuring the range of political rights and civil liberties in countries, it is shown how the ongoing global decline in democratic governance and respect of human rights embeds sub-Saharan Africa that is overall in a regional phase of backsliding. In 2020, Freedom House Index shows how 22 African states saw declining scores. Although many African states also saw progress in rights and liberties, sub-Saharan Africa had seven states among 12 that saw the most serious setbacks in freedom scores (Temin, 2020). The most obvious cases of s...
