Reflecting on his countryâs transmogrification in the opening decades of the twentieth century, the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci lamented how the âthe old [order] is dying and the new cannot be born,â warning how âin this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms [begin to] appear.â With the liberal bourgeoisie discredited, socialists and fascists fought for the soul of the Iberian nation throughout the first half of the century. As Gramsci (in Hoare, Quintin, & Nowell 1971: 178) observed in his home country, âincurable structural contradictions have revealed themselvesâŠand that, despite this, the political forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure,â as the establishment elite hopelessly makes âevery effort to cure them.â The upshot was a political deadlock, which paved the way for the rise of the most pernicious perversion of populism: fascism. It was not until the end of World War II, which led to the decisive defeat of fascism and morbid demise of its leadership (i.e., Benito Mussolini and his wife, Donna Rachele, in particular) that Italy began to reconstitute its foundations, and embark on a new phase of economic expansion and democratization (Anderson 2014). Almost exactly a century, Gramsciâs portrayal of his home country eerily resembles the zeitgeist among many troubled emerging as well as mature democracies in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Throughout out the world, recent years have seen the liberal elite suffering one electoral setback after the others, as demagogues and strongman populists dislodge the establishment in favor of a new brand of politics, which seems both familiar and new. The specter of what Fareed Zakaria calls âilliberal democracyâ is haunting the democratic world, as a distinct process of âauthoritarianizationâ puts into question the durability of democratic values in one nation after the other (Zakaria 1997, 2016; Taylor and Frantz 2016).
This is particularly true among the members of the so-called third democratic wave, which swept across the developing and post-Soviet world in the past four decades (Huntington 1991). In fact, as early as mid-1990s, Zakaria (1997) observed how, âjust as nations across the world have become comfortable with many variations of capitalism, they could well adopt and sustain varied forms of democracy.â This means, âWestern liberal democracy might prove to be not the final destination on the democratic road, but just one of many possible exits.â What Zakaria saw was the emergence of hybrid forms of regimes, which combine elements of electoral democracy with autocratic governance, characterized by limited respect for liberal constitutional values. âFar from being a temporary or transitional stage, it appears that many countries are settling into a form of government that mixes a substantial degree of democracy with a substantial degree of illiberalism,â Zakaria argued (Ibid.).
For long, the standard political science literature was found upon a teleological paradigm, purporting a linear progression of democracies across a continuum with a definite terminus in sight: liberal democratic capitalism. This was precisely what Francis Fukuyama (1989) foresaw in his âend of historyâ treatise, which Zakariaâs âilliberal democracyâ hypothesis sought to interrogate. The collapse of the Berlin Wall, which was followed by rapid spread of democracies across Eastern and Southern Europe, and the advent of the Arab spring, which saw the dislodging of autocratic regimes in one country after the other, initially reinforced both Fukuyamaâs Hegelian âend of historyâ thesis as well as dominant theories of democratization in political science. According to the conventional democratization theory, post-autocratic societies, particularly the third wave democracies, go through several stages, often in succession, though often far from smoothly. First comes the âopeningâ, a transition out of an ossified autocratic rule, which usually comes after a period of political liberalization. This is followed by a âbreakthroughâ, giving birth to minimalist-procedural democracy, which, at the very least, maintains fair, competitive and popular elections. Under this regime, all adults, regardless of gender, religion, and socioeconomic background, are allowed to vote in an exercise of universal suffrage. Ex ante uncertaintyânamely, that there is a significant chance for the incumbent to lose the electionsâis essential to the electoral process. The electoral contest is competitive, because, in the words of Adam Przeworski, the principle of âorganized uncertaintyâ is built into the fabric of democratic exercise. The incumbent doesnât enjoy an unfair access to resources that are crucial to self-entrenchment in elected office. Fairness is ensured by equal access by both opposition and incumbent to means of political organization, mobilization, and promotion. The integrity and independence of electoral watchdogs, namely the commission on elections, should also be secured. Ex post irreversibility, namely the ability of the opposition to smoothly take over in an event of victory without the fear of the losing partyâs coercive usurpation of elected office, must be guaranteed. The next stage of political evolution is democratic consolidation, as key political actors, including the military, accept that (fair, competitive, and popular) electoral competition is the only game in townânamely, the sole legitimate means for acquisition and transfer of state power. At this stage, there isnât only a strategic-instrumental acceptance of and compliance to democratic principles, but also an element of normative compliance and institutional internalization of democratic values by all pillars of the state and society. Democracies reach a level of maturity, or deepening, where there systemic internalization of civil liberties and political rights by both the state and civil society. Deepened democracies also tend to have robust welfare programs, with individual citizens enjoying a relatively high level of living standards, thanks to universal healthcare and education, progressive taxation, and median income rates than can support a âdignifiedâ living (Diamond 1999; Carothers 2002; Przeworski 2000).
In reality, however, only a few nations have gone through that linear process of progression. Empirical observation has revealed a less encouraging and more indeterminate trajectory for fledgling democracies of recent decades. As Thomas Carothers (2002: 9â10) notes, most third wave democracies, from the Philippines to Mexico and Ghana, âhave some attributes of democratic political life, including at least limited political space for opposition parties and independent civil society, as well as regular elections and democratic constitutions.â But once you scratch below the surface, Carothers observers, it is easy to notice how these transitional democracies âsuffer from serious democratic deficits.â Beyond the facade of lively democratic politics embodied by hotly contested elections among colorful politicians, Carothers (Ibid.) observes, there is âpoor representation of citizensâ interests, low levels of political participation beyond voting, frequent abuse of the law by government officials, elections of uncertain legitimacy, very low levels of public confidence in state institutions, and persistently poor institutional performance by the state.â Two decades after the advent of what Samuel Huntington classified as the third wave of democracy, beginning with the fall of the dictatorial regime in Portugal and reaching a crescendo with the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989, âthe majority of third wave countries has not achieved relatively well-functioning democracy or do not seem to be deepening or advancing whatever democratic progress they have madeâ (Carothers 2002: 9).
Joshua Kurlantzick , author of Democracy in Retreat, has made a similar observation: âWhile some countries in Africa, the Arab world, and Asia have opened slightly in the past two years, in other countries once held up as examples of political change democratic meltdowns have become depressingly common. In reality, democracy is going into reverse.â Often the culprit behind democratic decay and degenerative mutation is the absence of functioning state institutions, which have the capacity to discipline rapacious elite, enforce laws, and insulate the bureaucracy from the undue influence of interest groups from without (Fukuyama 2014). In fact, as Huntington (1968: 392) himself warned in the mid-twentieth century, â[i]nstead of a trend toward competitiveness and democracy, there has been an âerosion of democracyâ and a tendency to [lapse into] autocraticâŠregimes.â For Huntington (1968: 392), the fragility of democratic institutions had something to do with the âdecay of the administrative organization inherited from the colonial era and a weakening and disruption of the political organizations developed during the struggle for independence.â Almost half a century later, same issues bedevil third wave democracies the world over. As democratic degeneration sets in, the polity becomes ripe for the picking by demagogues and despots. This was precisely the milieu within which classical Greek thinkers, particularly Plato and Aristotle , developed their political theories, which exhi...