Comparative Politics

A review of the main theoretical findings in the literature on democratic changes prompts the author to propose an empirical definition of democracy, to discuss the main existing normative definitions and to suggest a new type of regime, the hybrid regime, which is also empirically analysed. The second and third parts of the book cover three geopolitical areas (Southern and Eastern Europe and Latin America) and present the main theoretical results of the empirical analysis on transition towards democracy and installation, consolidation and crisis, deepening and worsening of qualities with all related connections and hypotheses. The analysis reveals two new and relevant results. First, how the different macro-processes should be explored in different ways and with different theoretical ends: only a framework when transition and installations are considered; more precise hypotheses when consolidation and crisis are under scrutiny; connections and theoretical hypotheses when qualities and deepening are studied. Second, the empirical research makes it possible to single out three core sub-processes and a key mechanism. When dealing with transition and democratic installation the core sub-process is the unfolding of a learning process at elite and mass levels towards democratic legitimation. When consolidation and crisis are considered, domestic anchoring and external anchoring are the two core sub-process that should be mentioned. In the macro-processes of deepening or weakening of qualities, the core mechanism is mutual convergence of qualities. This mechanism emerges from the empirical analysis of existing connections between the procedures, contents, and results of democracy.

This book aims to contribute to a comparatively informed theory of democracy. The book begins by arguing that conceptions of ‘the state’ and ‘democracy’, and their respective defining features, significantly influence each other. Using an approach that is both historical and analytical, it traces this relationship through the idea of legally sanctioned and backed agency which grounds democratic citizenship. From this standpoint the book explores several aspects of the democratic regime and of the state, distinguishing four constitutive dimensions (bureaucracy, legality, focus of collective identity, and filter). The book goes on to examine the role played by the idea of ‘the nation’ or ‘the people’, and the ways in which the state represents itself to different sections of society, especially in countries marred by deep inequality and pervasive poverty. Drawing on the examples of democratic and non-democratic regime, the book discusses the dialogical spaces congenial to democracy, as well as examining the options that may or may not enable agency, and the complex comparative and ethical issues raised by the intersection of agency with globalization and legal pluralism. Throughout these discussions several comparative vistas are opened, especially but not exclusively toward Latin America. The book concludes by offering a justification of democracy, even of the flawed democracies that nowadays abound.

In 2011, four of the world’s most recalcitrant dictators—Zine el Abadine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Muammar el-Gaddafi of Libya, and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen—fell after decades in power. Social protests cascaded across North Africa and the Middle East in an “Arab Spring.” Each popular uprising was unique in some ways, and digital media was relevant in different ways in each case. Communities used social media to understand their shared grievances and learn about each other’s strategies. Inspiring stories of risk and success cascaded digitally between cities, and across borders. Digital networks activated for protest with immense impact. Comparing systems of political communication across the region, we find that the use of digital media by domestic and transnational political actors helps explain why some regimes were durable, and others fragile. Moreover, patterns in technology use also help explain why some political uprisings were successful, and others not. The long-term outcomes of this latest wave of anti-authoritarian sentiment are difficult to predict. But it is no longer possible to understand political communication or social movements in the region without investigating the impact of digital media on cultural, economic and political institutions.

Around the developing world, political leaders face a dilemma: the very information and communication technologies that boost economic fortunes also undermine power structures. Globally, one in ten internet users is a Muslim living in a populous Muslim community. In these countries, young people are developing their political identities—including a transnational Muslim identity—online. In countries where political parties are illegal, the internet is the only infrastructure for democratic discourse. In others, digital technologies such as mobile phones and the internet have given key actors an information infrastructure that is independent of the state. And in countries with large Muslim communities, mobile phones and the internet are helping civil society build systems of political communication independent of the state and beyond easy manipulation by cultural or religious elites. This book looks at the role that communications technologies play in advancing democratic transitions in Muslim countries. As such, its central question is whether technology holds the potential to substantially enhance democracy. Certainly, no democratic transition has occurred solely because of the internet. But, as the book argues, no democratic transition can occur today without the internet. According to this book, the major (and perhaps only meaningful) forum for civic debate in most Muslim countries today is online. Activists both within diasporic communities and within authoritarian states—including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan—are the drivers of this debate, which centers around issues such as the interpretation of Islamic texts, gender roles, and security issues. Drawing upon material from interviews with telecommunications policy makers and activists in Azerbaijan, Egypt, Tajikistan, and Tanzania and a comparative study of seventy-four countries with large Muslim populations, this book demonstrates that these forums have been the means to organize activist movements that have lead to successful democratic insurgencies.

This book is a study of regime change in the context of international administration, where the United Nations and other multilateral organizations hold temporary executive authority at the domestic level. Work on the politics of state-building has highlighted how these administration operations can influence nearly every aspect of politics in the country or territory in which they are deployed. This book concentrates in particular on the ‘regime-building’ practices of these missions, and examines the aims and influences of international administrations in the area of democratic development, as well as their ultimate impact on the process of regime change. Through a comparative analysis of events in Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor, the book demonstrates how external actors assume positions of power conventionally held by domestic elites, and in so doing gain the ability to affect democratic development in ways unavailable to international actors in more conventional settings. In particular, the case studies highlight the ways in which the democracy promotion objectives of international administrators can have both positive and negative effects on democratization processes, with the presence of international authorities helping to rule out non-democratic options in some areas, while at times undermining democratic development in others. The book identifies the key international actors involved, highlights the mechanisms of influence available to them in these contexts, and explores the crucial mediating role of domestic actors and structures.

This book unpacks and historicizes the rise of Arab electoralism, narrating the story of stalled democratic transition in the Arab Middle East. It provides a balance sheet of the state of Arab democratization from the mid-1970s up to 2008. In seeking to answer the question of how Arab countries democratize and whether they are democratizing at all, the book pays attention to specificity, highlighting the peculiarities of democratic transitions in the Arab Middle East. To this end, it situates the discussion of such transitions firmly within their local contexts, but without losing sight of the global picture, namely, the US drive to control and ‘democratize’ the Arab World. The book rejects ‘exceptionalism’, ‘foundationalism’, and ‘Orientalism’, by showing that the Arab World is not immured from the global trend towards political liberalization. But by identifying new trends in Arab democratic transitions, highlighting their peculiarities, and drawing on Arab neglected discourses and voices, the book pinpoints the contingency of some of the arguments underlying Western theories of democratic transition when applied to the Arab setting.