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Article Excerpt
Between 1974 and 1990 more than thirty countries in southern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe shifted from authoritarian to democratic systems of government. This "global democratic revolution" is probably the most important political trend in the late twentieth century. It is the third wave of democratization in the modern era.
A wave of democratization is a group of transitions from nondemocratic to democratic regimes that occurs within a specified period and that significantly outnumbers transitions in the opposite direction in the same period. The first wave began in America in the early nineteenth century and culminated at the end of World War I with about thirty countries having democratic regimes. Mussolini's march on Rome in 1922 began a reverse wave, and in 1942 there were only twelve democracies left in the world. The Allied victory in World War II and decolonization started a second movement toward democracy which, however, petered out by the early 1960s when about thirty-six countries had democratic regimes. This was then followed by a second reverse movement towards authoritarianism, marked most dramatically by military takeovers in Latin America and the seizure of power by personal despots such as Ferdinand Marcos.
The causes of the third wave, like those of its predecessors, were complex and peculiar to that wave. This article, however, is concerned not with the why of the third wave but rather with the question of how third wave democratizations occurred: the ways in which political leaders and publics in the 1970s and 1980s ended authoritarian systems and created democratic ones. The routes of change were diverse, as were the people primarily responsible for bringing about change. Moreover, the starting and ending points of the processes were asymmetric. Obvious differences exist among democratic regimes: some are presidential, some are parliamentary, some embody the Gaullist mixture of the two; so also some are two-party, some are multiparty, and major differences exist in the nature and strength of the parties. These differences have significance for the stability of the democratic systems that are created, but relatively little for the processes leading to them. (1) Of greater importance is that in all democratic regimes the principal officers of government are chosen through competitive elections in which the bulk of the population can participate. Democratic systems thus have a common institutional core that establishes their identity. Authoritarian regimes--as the term is used in this study--are defined simply by the absence of this institutional core. Apart from not being democratic they may have little else in common. It will, consequently, be necessary to start the discussion of change in authoritarian regimes by identifying the differences among those regimes and the significance of those differences for democratization processes.
AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES
Historically, nondemocratic regimes have taken a wide variety of forms. The regimes democratized in the first wave were generally absolute monarchies, lingering feudal aristocracies, and the successor states to continental empires. Those democratized in the second wave had been fascist states, colonies, and personalistic military dictatorships and often had had some previous democratic experience. The regimes that moved to and toward democracy in the third wave generally fell into three groups: one-party systems, military regimes, and personal dictatorships.
The one-party systems were created by revolution or Soviet imposition and included the communist countries plus Taiwan and Mexico (with Turkey also fitting this model before its second wave democratization in the 1940s). In these systems, the party effectively monopolized power, access to power was through the party organization, and the party legitimated its rule through ideology. These systems often achieved a relatively high level of political institutionalization. The military regimes were created by coups d'etat replacing democratic or civilian governments. In them, the military exercised power on an institutional basis, with the military leaders typically either governing collegially as a junta or circulating the top governmental position among top generals. Military regimes existed in large numbers in Latin America (where some approximated the bureaucratic-authoritarian model) and also in Greece, Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, and South Korea.
Personal dictatorships were a third, more diverse group of nondemocratic systems. The distinguishing characteristic of a personal dictatorship is that the individual leader is the source of authority and that power depends on access to, closeness to, dependence on, and support from the leader. This category included Portugal under Antonio Salazar and Marcello Caetano, Spain under Francisco Franco, the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos, India under Indira Ghandi, and Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu. Personal dictatorships had varied origins. Those in the Philippines and India were the result of executive coups. Those in Portugal and Spain began with military coups (which in the latter case led to civil war) with the dictators subsequently establishing bases of power independent of the military. In Romania, a personal dictatorship evolved out of a one-party system. Chile under Augusto Pinochet originated as a military regime but in effect became a personal dictatorship due to his prolonged tenure and his differences with and dominance over the leaders of the military services. Some personal dictatorships, such as those of Marcos and Ceausescu, like those of Anastasio Somoza, Francois Duvalier, Sese Seko Mobutu, and the shah, exemplified Weber's model of sultanistic regimes characterized by patronage, nepotism, cronyism, and corruption.
One-party systems, military regimes, and personal dictatorships suppressed both competition and participation. The South African system differed from these in that it was basically a racial oligarchy with more than 70 percent of the population excluded from politics but with fairly intense political competition occurring within the governing white community. Historical experience suggests that democratization proceeds more easily if competition expands before participation. (2) If this is the case, the prospects for successful democratization were greater in South Africa than in countries with the other types of authoritarian systems. The process in South Africa would, in some measure, resemble the nineteenth-century democratizations in Europe in which the central feature was the expansion of the suffrage and the establishment of a more inclusive polity. In those cases exclusion had been based on economic, not racial, grounds. Hierarchical communal systems, however, historically have been highly resistant to peaceful change. (3) Competition within the oligarchy thus favored successful South African democratization; the racial definition of that oligarchy created problems for democratization.
Particular regimes did not always fit neatly into particular categories. In the early 1980s, for instance, Poland combined elements of a decaying one-party system and of a military-based martial law system led by a military officer who was also secretary general of the Communist party. The communist system in Romania (like its counterpart in North Korea) started out as a one-party system but by the 1980s had evolved into a sultanistic personal dictatorship. The Chilean regime between 1973 and 1989 was in part a military regime but also, in contrast to other South American military regimes, during its entire existence had only one leader who developed other sources of power. Hence it had many of the characteristics of a personal dictatorship. The Noriega dictatorship in Panama, on the other hand, was highly personalized but dependent almost entirely on military power. The categorizations in Table 1, consequently, should be viewed as rough approximations. Where a regime combined elements of two types it is categorized in terms of what seemed to be its dominant type as the transition got underway.
In the second wave, democratization occurred in large measure through foreign imposition and decolonization. In the third wave, as we have seen, those two processes were less significant, limited before 1990 to Grenada, Panama, and several relatively small former British colonies also mostly in the Caribbean area. While external influences often were significant causes of third wave democratizations, the processes themselves were overwhelmingly indigenous. These processes can be located along a continuum in terms of the relative importance of governing and opposition groups as the sources of democratization. For analytical purposes it is useful to group the cases into three broad types of processes. Transformation (or, in Juan J. Linz's phrase, reforma) occurred when the elites in power took the lead in bringing about democracy. Replacement (Linz's ruptura) occurred when opposition groups took the lead in bringing about democracy, and the authoritarian regime collapsed or was overthrown. What might be termed transplacement or "ruptforma" occurred when democratization resulted largely from joint action by government and opposition groups. (4) In virtually all cases groups both in power and out of power played some roles, and these categories simply distinguish the relative importance of government and opposition.
As with regime types, historical cases of regime change did not necessarily fit neatly into theoretical categories. Almost all transitions, not just transplacements, involved some negotiation--explicit or implicit, overt or covert--between government and opposition groups. At times transitions began as one type and then became another. In the early 1980s, for instance, P. W. Botha appeared to be initiating a process of transformation in the South African political system, but he stopped short of democratizing it. Confronting a different political environment, his successor, F. W. de Klerk, shifted to a transplacement process of negotiation with the principal opposition group. Similarly, scholars agree that the Brazilian government initiated and controlled the transition process for many years. Some argue that it lost control over that process as a result of popular mobilization and strikes in 1979-1980; others, however, point to the government's success in resisting strong opposition demands for direct election of the president in the mid-1980s. Every historical case combined elements of two or more transition processes. Virtually every historical case, however, more clearly approximated one type of process than others.
How did the nature of the authoritarian regime relate to the nature of the transition process? As Table 1 suggests, there was no one-to-one relation. Yet the former did have consequences for the latter. With three exceptions, all the transitions from military regimes involved transformation or transplacement. In the three exceptions--Argentina, Greece, and Panama--military regimes suffered military defeats and collapsed as a result. Elsewhere military rulers took the lead, at times in response to opposition and popular pressure, in bringing about the change in regime. Military rulers were better placed to terminate their regimes than were leaders of other regimes. The military leaders virtually never defined themselves as the permanent rulers of their country. They held out the expectation that once they had corrected the evils that had led them to seize power they would exit from power and return to their normal military functions. The military had a permanent institutional role other than politics and governorship. At some point, consequently, the military leaders (other than those in Argentina, Greece, and Panama) decided that the time had come to initiate a return to civilian democratic rule or to negotiate their withdrawal from power with opposition groups. Almost always this occurred after there had been at least one change in the top leadership of the military regime. (5)
Military leaders almost invariably posited two conditions or "exit guarantees" for their withdrawal from power. First, there would be no prosecution, punishment, or other retaliation against military officers for any acts they may have committed when they were in power. Second, the institutional roles and autonomy of the military establishment would be respected, including its overall responsibility for national security, its leadership of the government ministries concerned with security, and often its control of arms industries and other economic enterprises traditionally under military aegis. The ability of the withdrawing military to secure agreement of civilian political leaders to these conditions depended on their relative power. In Brazil, Peru, and other instances of transformation, the military leaders dominated the process and civilian political leaders had little choice but to acquiesce to the demands of the military. Where relative power was more equal, as in Uruguay, negotiations led to some modifications in the military demands. Greek and Argentinean military leaders asked for the same assurances other leaders did. Their requests, however, were rejected out of hand by civilian leaders, and they had to agree to a virtual unconditional surrender of power. (6)
It was thus relatively easy for military rulers to withdraw from power and to resume professional military roles. The other side of the coin, however, is that it could also be relatively easy for them to return to power when exigencies and their own interests warranted. One successful military coup in a country makes it impossible for political and military leaders to overlook the possibility of a second. The third wave democracies that succeeded military regimes started life under this shadow.
Transformation and transplacement also characterized the transitions from one-party systems to democracy through 1989, except for those in East Germany and Grenada. One-party regimes had an institutional framework and ideological legitimacy that differentiated them from both democratic and military regimes. They also had an assumption of permanence that distinguished them from military regimes. The distinctive characteristic of one-party systems was the close interweaving of party and state. This created two sets of problems, institutional and ideological, in the transition to democracy.
The institutional problems were most severe with Leninist party states. In Taiwan as in communist countries the "separation of the party from the state" was "the biggest challenge of a Leninist party" in the process of democratization. (7) In Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany constitutional provisions for "the leading role" of the communist party had to be abrogated. In Taiwan comparable "temporary provisions" added to the constitution in 1950 were similarly challenged. In all Leninist party systems major issues arose concerning ownership of physical and financial assets--did they belong to the party or the state? The proper disposition of those assets was also in question--should they be retained by the party, nationalized by the government, sold by the party to the highest bidder, or distributed in some equitable manner among social and political groups? In Nicaragua, for instance, after losing the election in February 1990, the Sandinista government apparently moved quickly "to transfer large amounts of Government property to Sandinista hands." "They are selling houses to themselves, selling vehicles to themselves," alleged one anti-Sandinista businessman. (8) Similar allegations were made about the disposal of government property to the Communist party as Solidarity was about to take over the government in Poland. (In a parallel move in Chile, the Pinochet government as it went out of power transferred to the military establishment property and records that had belonged to other government agencies.)
In some countries party militias had to be disbanded or brought under government control, and in almost all one-party states the regular armed forces had to be depoliticized. In Poland, as in most communist countries, for instance, all army officers had to be members of the Communist party; in 1989, however, Polish army officers lobbied parliament to prohibit officers from being members of any political party. (9) In Nicaragua the Sandinista People's Army had been the army of the movement, became also the army of the state, and then had to be converted into being only the latter. The question of whether party cells within economic enterprises should continue was also a highly controversial issue. Finally, where the single party remained in power, there was the question of the relation between its leaders in government and the top party bodies such as the Politburo and the central committee. In the Leninist state the latter dictated policy to the former. Yet this relationship was hardly compatible with the supremacy of elected parliamentary bodies and responsible cabinets in a democratic state.
The other distinctive set of problems was ideological. In one-party systems, the ideology of the party defined the identity of the state. Hence opposition to the party amounted to treason to the state. To legitimize opposition to the party it was necessary to establish some other identity for the state. This problem manifested itself in three contexts. First, in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, communist ideology and rule had been imposed by the Soviet Union. The ideology was not essential to defining the identity of the country. In fact, in at least three of these countries nationalism opposed communism. When the communist parties in these countries gave up their claim to undisputed rule based on...
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