Imagine now that the citizens do not simply use their de facto political power today to obtain the policies they like now, but they also use their political power to change the political system from nondemocracy to democracy. If they do so, they will have effectively increased their de jure political power in the future. Instead of nondemocracy, we are now in a democratic regime where there will be voting by all. With their increased political power, the citizens are therefore more likely to secure the policies they like tomorrow as well.
We have now moved toward a richer theory of democratization: transition to democracy - or, more generally, a change in political institutions - emerges as a way of regulating the future allocation of political power. The citizens demand and perhaps obtain democracy so that they can have more political say and political power tomorrow. Returning to the beliefs of the Chartist J. R. Stephens (quoted in Briggs 1959), we can now see that he was correct in demanding universal suffrage as a means of securing the “right to a good coat ... a good hat ... a good roof... [and] a good dinner” for working men rather than directly demanding the coat, the roof, and the dinner. Those would have been only for today, whereas universal suffrage could secure them in the future as well.
Notice an important implicit element in the story: the transitory nature of de facto political power. The citizens are presumed to have political power today but uncertain about whether they will have similar power tomorrow. The balance between the elites and the citizens or, more generally, between various social groups is not permanent, is not set in stone, is not the same today as it will be tomorrow; it is transitory. This is reasonable in the dynamic and uncertain world in which we live. It will be even more compelling when we think of the sources of political power for the disenfranchised citizens in nondemocracy. First, let us try to understand why the transitory nature of political power matters. Suppose that the citizens have the same political power tomorrow as they have today. Why should they need political institutions to help them? If their political power is sufficient to obtain the policies they like (even to obtain the institutions they like) today, then it will be so in the future as well, and there will be no need to change the underlying political institutions. It is precisely the transitory nature of political power - that the citizens have it today and may not have it tomorrow- that creates a demand for change in political institutions. The citizens would like to lock in the political power they have today by changing political institutions- specifically, by introducing democracy and greater representation for them - selves - because without the institutional changes, their power today is unlikely to persist.
So why do the citizens have political power in nondemocracy? The answer is that they have de facto rather than de jure political power. In nondemocracy, the elites monopolize de jure political power but not necessarily de facto political power. The citizens are excluded from the political system in nondemocracy, but they are nonetheless the majority and they can sometimes challenge the system, create significant social unrest and turbulence, or even pose a serious revolutionary threat. What is there to stop the majority of the population overwhelming the elite, which constitutes a minority, and taking control of society and its wealth, even if the elites have access to better guns and hired soldiers? After all, the citizens successfully occupied Paris during the Paris Commune, overthrew the existing regime in the 1917 Russian Revolution, destroyed the dictatorship of Somoza in Nicaragua in 1979, and in many other instances created significant turbulence and real attempts at revolution. However, a real threat from the citizens requires the juxtaposition of many unlikely factors: the masses need to solve the collective-action problem necessary to organize themselves,3 they need to find the momentum to turn their organization into an effective force against the regime, and the elites - who are controlling the state apparatus-should be unable to use the military to effectively suppress the uprising. It is, therefore, reasonable that such a challenge against the system would only be transitory: in nondemocracy, if the citizens have political power today, they most likely will not have it tomorrow.
Imagine now that there is an effective revolutionary threat from the citizens against nondemocracy. They have the political power today to get what they want and even to overthrow the system. They can use their political power to obtain “the coat, the roof, and the dinner,” but why not use it to obtain more, the same things not only for today but also in the future? This is what they will get if they can force a change in political institutions. Society will make a transition to democracy and, from then on, policies will be determined by one-person-one-vote, and the citizens will have more political power, enabling them to obtain the policies they desire and the resulting coat, roof, and dinner.
In practice, however, changes in political institutions do not simply happen because the citizens demand them. Transitions to democracy typically take place when the elite controlling the existing regime extend voting rights. Why would they do so? After all, the transfer of political power to the majority typically leads to social choices that the elite doesn’t like - for instance, higher taxes and greater redistribution away from it in the future, precisely the outcomes it would like to prevent. Faced with the threat of a revolution, wouldn’t the elite like to try other types of concessions, even giving the citizens the policies they want, rather than give away its power? To answer this question, let us return to the period of effective revolutionary threat. Imagine that the citizens can overthrow the system and are willing to do so if they do not get some concessions, some policies that favor them and increase their incomes and welfare.
The first option for the elite is to give them what they want today: redistribute income and more generally adopt policies favorable to the majority. But, suppose that concessions today are not sufficient to dissuade the citizens from revolution. What can the elite do to prevent an imminent and, for itself, extremely costly revolution? Well, it can promise the same policies tomorrow. Not only a coat, a roof, and a dinner today but also tomorrow. Yet, these promises may not be credible. Changing policy in the direction preferred by the citizens is not in the immediate interest of the elite. Today, it is doing so to prevent a revolution. Tomorrow, the threat of revolution may be gone, so why should it do so again? Why should it keep its promises? No reason and, in fact, it is unlikely to do so. Hence, its promises are not necessarily credible. Noncredible promises are worth little and, unconvinced by these promises, the citizens would carry out a revolution. If it wants to save its skin, the elite has to make a credible promise to set policies that the majority prefer; in particular, it must make a credible commitment to future pro-majority policies. A credible promise means that the policy decision should not be the elite’s but rather placed in the hands of groups that actually prefer such policies. Or, in other words, it has to transfer political power to the citizens. A credible promise, therefore, means that it has to change the future allocation of political power. That is precisely what a transition to democracy does: it shifts future political power away from the elite to the citizens, thereby creating a credible commitment to future pro-majority policies. The role that political institutions play in allocating power and leading to relatively credible commitments is the third key building block of our approach.
Why, if a revolution is attractive to the citizens, does the creation of democracy stop it? This is plausibly because revolution is costly. In revolutions, much of the wealth of a society may be destroyed, which is costly for the citizens as well as the elite. It is these costs that allow concessions or democratization by the elite to avoid revolution. In reality, it will not always be the case that democracy is sufficiently pro-majority that it avoids revolution. For example, the citizens may anticipate that, even with universal suffrage, the elite will be able to manipulate or corrupt political parties or maybe it will be able to use its control of the economy to limit the types of policies that democracy can implement. In such circumstances, anticipating that democracy will deliver few tangible rewards, the citize
ns may revolt. However, to limit the scope of our analysis, we normally restrict our attention to situations where the creation of democracy avoids revolution. Historically, this seems to have been typical, and it means that we do not delve deeply into theories of revolution or into the modeling of post-revolutionary societies.
We now have our basic theory of democratization in place. In nondemocracy, the elites have de jure political power and, if they are unconstrained, they will generally choose the policies that they most prefer; for example, they may choose low taxes and no redistribution to the poor. However, nondemocracy is sometimes challenged by the citizens who may pose a revolutionary threat - when they temporarily have de facto political power. Crucially, such political power is transitory ; they have it today and are unlikely to have it tomorrow. They can use this power to undertake a revolution and change the system to their benefit, creating massive losses to the elites but also significant collateral damage and social losses. The elites would like to prevent this outcome, and they can do so by making a credible commitment to future pro-majority policies. However, promises of such policies within the existing political system are often noncredible. To make them credible, they need to transfer formal political power to the majority, which is what democratization achieves.
This story of democratization as a commitment to future pro-majority policies by the elites in the face of a revolutionary threat and, perhaps more important, as a commitment made credible by changing the future distribution of political power is consistent with much historical evidence. As illustrated by the British, Argentinian, and South African political histories discussed in Chapter 1, most transitions to democracy, both in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe and twentieth-century Latin America, took place amid significant social turmoil and revolutionary threats. In addition, the creation of democratic societies in most former European colonies in the 1950s and 1960s was the result of pressure by the disenfranchised and relatively poor colonials against the colonizing power. Such threats of turmoil and social disorder similarly accompanied the recent spate of democratizations in Africa (Bratton and van der Walle 1997) and Eastern Europe (Bunce 2003). To quote a classic European example, in presenting his electoral reform to the British Parliament in 1831, Prime Minister Earl Grey was well aware that this was a measure necessary to prevent a likely revolution. He argued:
There is no-one more decided against annual parliaments, universal suffrage and the ballot, than I am. My object is not to favour, but to put an end to such hopes and projects ... The principle of my reform is, to prevent the necessity of revolution ... reforming to preserve and not to overthrow. (quoted in Evans 1996, p. 223).
Lang’s (1999, pp. 38-9) conclusion mirrors Grey’s:
The Whigs were aware of the support among working people for the bill.... However, they were also quite determined not to allow the working classes to hold any sort of dominant position in the new electoral system. Passing the bill therefore saved the country from risings and rebellion; the content of the bill saved the country from the “evils ”of democracy. Needless to say, disappointment among the working classes was likely to be intense once they realized how little they had gained from the bill, but by then they would have lost their middle class allies, won over to the system by the bill, and would be powerless to do anything about it.
The same considerations were also determining factors for the later reforms. For example,
as with the First Reform Act, the threat of violence has been seen as a significant factor in forcing the pace [of the 1867 Reform Act]; history... was repeating itself. (Lee 1994, p. 142).
Similarly, the threat of revolution was the driving force behind democratization in the French, German, and Swedish cases. For example, Tilton (1974, pp. 567-8) describes the process leading to the introduction of universal male suffrage in Sweden as follows:
neither [of the first two reform acts] passed without strong popular pressure; in 1866 crowds thronged around the chamber while the final vote was taken, and the 1909 reform was stimulated by a broad suffrage movement [and] a demonstration strike ... Swedish democracy had triumphed without a revolution-but not without the threat of a revolution. (italics in original)
The threat of revolution and social unrest played an equally important role in the establishment of voting rights for the populace in Latin America. We saw in Chapter I how in Argentina, universal male suffrage was effectively institutionalized in 1912 by President Roque Sdenz Pena when the secret ballot was introduced and fraudulent electoral practices outlawed. The movement toward a full democracy was driven by the social unrest created by the Radical Party and the rapid radicalization of urban workers. In Colombia, the creation of universal suffrage during the administration of Liberal President Alfonso López Pumarejo in 1936 was similarly inspired; leading Colombianist historian David Bushnell (1993, p. 185) describes it as follows:
López ... was a wealthy man ... yet he was well aware that Colombia could not go on indefinitely ignoring the needs and problems of what he once described as “that vast and miserable class that does not read, that does not write, that does not dress, that does not wear shoes, that barely eats, that remains ... on the margin of [national life].” In his opinion such neglect was not only wrong but also dangerous, because the masses would sooner or later demand a larger share of the amenities of life.
Similarly, the reinstatement of democracy in Venezuela in 1958 was a response to intense uprisings and unrest. In describing the situation, Kolb (1974, p. 175) wrote:
... in dramatic intensity and popular violence, the events on January 21 and 22 in Caracas ... was a true popular revolution of Venezuelan citizens ... armed with rocks, clubs, home-made grenades, and Molotov Cocktails, against a ferocious and well-trained Police force.
The evidence is, therefore, consistent with the notion that most moves toward democracy happen in the face of significant social conflict and possible threat of revolution. Democracy is usually not given by the elite because its values have changed. It is demanded by the disenfranchised as a way to obtain political power and thus secure a larger share of the economic benefits of the system.
Why does the creation of democracy act as a commitment when we know that democracy often collapses once created? This is because although coups sometimes occur, it is costly to overthrow democracy, and institutions, once created, have a tendency to persist. This is mostly because people make specific investments in them. For instance, once democracy has been created, political parties form and many organizations, such as trade unions, arise to take advantage of the new political circumstances. The investments of all these organizations will be lost if democracy is overthrown, giving citizens an incentive to struggle to maintain democracy. Moreover, once democracy has been created, the majority may have greater control over the military than they had under a nondemocratic regime, which changes the underlying balance of de facto power.
Finally, the trade-off for the elite, facing the threat of revolution by the citizens, is not simply between policy concessions and democratization. A further alternative would be to use force and repression. For example, the white South African regime rejected calls for democracy and kept itself in power for decades by using the military to repress demonstrations and opposition. Similarly, Argentine military regimes of the 1960s and 1970s killed thousands of people to avoid reintroducing democracy; this has been the pattern in many other Latin American countries including Guatemala and El Salvador. In Asia, nondemocratic regimes in China and Burma have used force to block demands for democracy. This was also true in Eastern European countries during the dominance of the Soviet Union - for example, in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. It is clear why repression is attractive for elites because it allows them to maintain power without having to make any concessions to the disenfranchised. Nevertheless, repression is both costly and risky for elites. It leads to loss of life and destruction of assets and wealth, and - depending on the international climate of opinion - it may l
ead to sanctions and international isolation, as happened in South Africa during the 1980s. Moreover, repression may fail, which could cause a revolution - the worst possible outcome for the elites. These considerations imply that only in certain circumstances will repression be attractive. When we incorporate this into the analysis, we see that democracy arises when concessions are not credible and repression is not attractive because it is too costly.
5. Democratic Consolidation
A theory of democratization is not sufficient to understand why some countries are democratic whereas some others are ruled by dictatorships. Many countries become democratic but eventually revert back to a nondemocratic regime as a result of a military coup. This has been an especially common pattern in Latin America. As we saw in Chapter I, Argentina is a striking example of the instabilities of Latin American democracy. Similarly, the path to democracy has been marred by switches to dictatorships in Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Peru, Venezuela, and Uruguay. Why has democracy been so hard to consolidate in much of Latin America?
To answer this question, we need to develop a theory of coups or, alternatively, a theory of democratic consolidation. What is a consolidated democracy? A democracy is consolidated if the set of institutions that characterize it endure through time. Our theory of democratic consolidation and coups builds on the different attitudes of the elites and the citizens toward democracy. Once again, the citizens are more pro-democratic than the elites (because democracy is more pro-citizen than nondemocracy). Consequently, when there is a situation with the military on the side of the elite and sufficient turbulence to allow a military takeover, the elites might support or sponsor a coup to change the balance of power in society.
Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy Page 6