Babel in Democratization Studies

Abstract

Babel In Democratization Studies Ariel C. Armony (bio) and Hector E. Schamis (bio) With democracy becoming the global norm, the field of democratization studies has boomed in the last quarter of a century. While early research focused on transitions, over time scholars have begun to pay closer attention to the performance of emerging democracies. Arguably, the major empirical finding of this latter research has been that, while the majority of these new regimes exhibit democratic features such as free and fair elections, a significant number of them deviate from standards and practices that are inherent in the very idea of democratic rule. In various new democracies, in fact, bypassing parliament and ruling by presidential decree appear customary. Packing the courts often paves the way for a heightened concentration of discretionary power in the executive. In some cases, drafting a new constitution and rigging an electoral contest has allowed the incumbent to prolong his stay in office. All too often, the violation of civil rights is common, devaluing the rule of law and eroding the foundations of democratic citizenship. Accordingly, students of democratization have coined a variety of terms to capture what they view as a novel form of political order: "delegative," "imperfect," "illiberal," and "immature" democracy, among many more.1 Different terminology notwithstanding, such qualifiers all indicate that these polities not only differ from the benchmark democracies of the West, but also represent a diminished version of democracy, a "half-baked" regime. More recently, the study of "hybrid" systems has inspired another taxonomical effort based on qualifying adjectives, though this time applied to authoritarianism. To depict a range of cases allegedly stuck in a gray zone of political evolution, this [End Page 113] new typological exercise labels them not as diminished forms of democracy, but instead as "electoral," "competitive," or "contested" authoritarianism. Reproducing the logic of qualified democracies, the new classification now highlights "enhanced authoritarianism."2 We call this intellectual endeavor into question, for it presents some critical shortcomings. First, this effort is carried out on the basis of inconsistent definitions of the various types and subtypes, producing a taxonomical system with blurred boundaries. The outcome has often been conceptual ambiguity and empirical confusion, for the resulting palette of qualified, yet improperly specified, regimes not only hinders differentiation among the cases but also clouds the basic distinction between democracy and autocracy. In addition, this terminological Babel has served to conceal fundamental traits of all democracies, old and new, Western and non-Western. While everyday democracy in most third-wave regimes may be considerably less effective than in long-established democracies, the kinds of problems both face tend to be the same: inequalities in the distribution of rights, failures of checks and balances, disenfranchisement of minorities, and low governmental accountability, to name a few. Old and new democracies alike are thus susceptible to delegation, illiberalism, and other suboptimal outcomes. To a great extent, the shared problems of democracy stem from its distinctive institutional design (where the different branches of government cooperate but also compete for power) and from the character of democratic citizenship (which evolved historically in such a way that civil, political, and social rights were in contradiction with one another). The literature on qualified regimes, in contrast, assumes that old and new democracies belong to different empirical and conceptual universes, a view ingrained in the compartmentalization of knowledge within political science. This disconnect narrows the bounds of comparative research, just as the idea of American exceptionalism has virtually shielded the field of American politics from the world outside. To study actual democracies today, we need a more level playing field for comparative analysis, where conceptual innovations, theoretical insights, and empirical lessons travel from old to new democracies and vice versa. We need broader comparative avenues to improve our understanding of democracy and to enrich a variety of research agendas. Qualified Democracy Revisited The current proliferation of concepts based on adjectives might appear necessary for the development of scientific discourse. While most of the new terms used to qualify regimes are now forgotten, a few have found a more lasting place in the study of gray-zone regimes and inspired further research. The most prominent are Guillermo O'Donnell's...

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