DEMOCRACY AGAINST THE ODDS? THE IMPACT OF A VIBRANT CIVIL SOCIETY
AND INSTITUTIONALIZED POLITICAL PARTIES
Michael Aagaard Seeberg
[email protected]
Assistant Professor, Ph.D.
Department of Political Science and Administration,
University of Southern Denmark
Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M
Note to readers:
This is very preliminary work. I am learning to use survival analysis and just recently decided to
extend the study from just focusing on democratic regime stability to also focus on democratic
transition. The sections on transition path and tasks of consolidation need to be elaborated and
better integrated. I plan to expand data coverage beyond 2008 to 2014, do a robustness check with other
democracy measures (Boix, Miller and Rosato) and add control variables for constitutional
framework (parliamentarian/presidential system) and democratic legacy. Moreover, I hope to be
able to give a more substantial interpretation of the results presented in table 1 and 2, and
hopefully find a way to present hazard rations for civil society on different levels of covariates, such
as level of GDP.
Paper prepared for the Annual meeting of the Danish Political Science Association
27-28 October 2016, Vejle Fjord Hotel
Please do not cite.
1
Abstract
Why does democracy break through and thrive in countries that are not favored by high levels of
economic development and democratic neighbor countries? This paper argues that institutionalized
political parties and a vibrant civil society can compensate for the lack of democracy inducing
mechanism spurred by these predominant factors. A vibrancy of politically active civil society
organization can counterbalance political elites and encourage them to engage with more pragmatic
societal groups and pursue more pragmatic policies, which extend their time horizon and force them
to seek consensus and accept electoral defeats. In return, political parties can count on firm support
from voters in civil society at the ballot box. To be amenable to civil society engagement, the
political parties must be institutionalized, which means they have distinct programmatic platforms
and internal organizational structures for leadership selection. This paper utilizes data from the
Varieties of democracy project to look into the role played by civil society and political parties. The
paper examines the proposition across a large number of non-western countries throughout the third
wave of democratization using survival analysis. It shows that we are better able to understand nonwestern political regime variety, when we take civil society strength and institutionalization of
political parties into account. Together, these alternative factors enable underprivileged democracies
to reap advantages of regime transition and stability otherwise following from high-levels of
prosperity and democratic neighbor countries.
2
Democracy thrives in a number of underprivileged countries outside the western world. This is
surprising, considering that abundant scholarship has demonstrated that high levels of economic
development and democratic neighbor countries are strong correlates of as well democratic
transitions and stable democratic rule (Lipset 1959; Przeworski and Limongi 1997; Boix and Stokes
2003; Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Brinks and Coppedge 2006). A 2008 special issue of
democratization took stock of such five democratic overachievers and concluded that the absence of
damaging factors is key to understand these remarkable cases (Doorenspleet and Mudde 2008). Yet,
we still lack a systematic appraisal of these anomalies that points to the presence of social forces
that drives this remarkable process. This study seeks to better understand what positive factors
enable underprivileged non-western democracies to reap advantages of regime transition and
stability otherwise associated with prosperity and democratic neighbor countries.
The efforts to enter transition paths to democracy and meet tasks of democratic
consolidation in non-Western countries have sparked of a broad debate about democratic political
institutions (Huntington 1991; Linz and Stepan 1996; Bratton and Van de Walle 1997). The focus
on the effects of institutions on democracy forms part of the “new institutionalism” literature in
comparative politics, which suggest that political democracy depends “on the design of political
institutions” (March and Olsen, 1984: 738). More recently, scholarly attention has been given to the
impact of political organizational features on democratic consolidation outside the Western world
(see, e.g., Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Mainwaring 1998; Randall and Svaasand 2002a). This
literature points to a host of characteristics of political parties and civil society, in particular, that are
important for democratic transitions and tasks of consolidation. Strong political parties checked by
civic associations is far from a given in non-Western countries and if we better understand their role
in this setting, we might unravel what contributes to democratic consolidation in the face of
inauspicious structural conditions.
3
I argue that Political parties’ with organizational capacity disciplines rank-and-file
members as well as the leadership and extend their time horizon beyond short-term electoral gains.
Political parties’ characterized by programmatic coherence provides for a structured interaction
with other parties. Together these two basic characteristics provide an important foundation for
reaching compromises with opponents. Politically active civil society organizations can
counterweight political power and the diverse interests that they represent forces political elites to
get together and find compromises. Voters’ engagement in diversified civic associations enables
them to accept short-term deterioration for long-term improvement and to provide firm support for
political parties at the ballot box, even in times of radical reforms.
Case studies of democratic transitions and consolidation outside the Western world
have illustrated that parties' programmatic coherence, organizational capacity and roots in civil
society organizations are important conditions for enduring democratic rule (see, e.g., Fish 1998;
Jaffrelot 2002; Adeney and Wyatt 2004; Doorenspleet and Mudde 2008; Whitfield 2009; Lussier
and Fish 2012). However, little systematic cross-regional evidence has been brought forward to
support these case-specific insights (see, e.g., Bernhard and Karakoç 2007; Basedau and Stroh
2011; Bernhard et al. 2015; Cornell et al. 2016). Institutionalization of political parties is often
studied using an index of electoral volatility that captures party entry and exit in the legislature over
consecutive elections. However it is itself a measure of regime stability and does not capture
characteristics of party institutionalization important to this study.
To offer a systematic cross-regional appraisal, I utilize comprehensive data provided
by the ‘Varieties of democracy’-project (Lindberg et al. 2014 , data version 6). This allows for
measuring parties’ organizational capacity, programmatic coherence and ties to a vibrant civil
society across the entire regime spectrum outside the western world since the wave of
democratization in third world countries sparked of in 1974. Utilizing survival analysis, this study
4
examines the impact of institutionalized political parties and a vibrant civil society on democratic
transition and stability against a baseline model that includes the most widely used determinants of
democratic transitions and regime stability during the Third wave of democracy. The analysis
support the theoretical argument that electoral democracies1 in Third World Countries are able to
thrive despite inauspicious structural conditions, mostly because civil society organizations (CSOs)
plays constructive roles in these countries.
The structure of the paper is as follows: First, I tease out the relationship and
mechanism between parties, civil society organizations and democratic transition and stability.
Second, I operationalize and measure all dependent and independent variables used in the analyses.
Third, I present the method and design followed by the main findings of the empirical analysis.
Finally, I conclude on the lessons for the democratization literature.
Political-institutional correlates of democratic transition and regime stability
Scholars of political sociology hold that high affluence levels produce advantages for political
regime stability. Affluence nourishes education, middle class and civil society – all factors that are
carriers of democracy (Lipset 1959, 79–84). Democratic neighbor diffusion effects spur democratic
ideas and notions in social forces that can cater for democracy (Brinks and Coppedge 2006). This
study is primarily concerned with factors that enable social forces to counter state power and
promote compromise in politics that together make a stable democracy viable in underprivileged
third world countries, other than the economic factors inherent to modernization theory and the
spread of ideas through neighbor diffusion effects.
1
I am interested in electoral democracies that are characterized by institutionalized political competition via elections
for access to political power (cf. Schumpeter 1974, 269; Przeworski 1991, 14; Diamond 1999, 8–9). This thin
conceptualization of democracy allows for isolating political party and civil society characteristics from the democratic
regime type per se and analyse their relationship.
5
My argument draws on Huntington’s work and the literature on party system
institutionalization that has proliferated since his seminal work on Political Order in Changing
Societies (1968). Huntington states that regime stability ‘depends upon the strength of the political
organizations and procedures in the society’ (1968, 12), which illustrates that Huntington was
foremost interested in political order, whether in democracies or not. While this study’s argument
draws on the emphasis on politics in Huntington’s work, it focuses on the narrower question of the
political-institutional conditions of democratic stability, particularly party institutionalization and
civil society.
Historically, democracies have thrived despite the lack of mechanism inducing
democracy following from high levels of socio-economic development and neighbor diffusion
effect. Scholarship on regime changes in the Interwar period suggest that strong ties between
political parties and a viable civil society shored up democracy despite economic hardship and a
hostile international climate ((Berman 1997; 2009; Ertman 1998; - see also Cornell et al. 2016).
Strengthening political parties and civil society must go hand-on-hand. If not, parties unchecked by
civil society can become engines of authoritarian rule just as irresponsive political parties can turn a
strong civil society into a weapon for totalitarian ideology that can also subvert democracy. Only
responsive political parties tied to a vibrant civil society can shore up democratic rule.
Scholarship on recent regime development suggests a number of dimensions of party
institutionalization that are generally important for democratic transition and consolidation (see e.g.
Mainwaring 1998; Lipset 2000; Randall and Svaasand 2002b; 2002a; Ezrow 2011). Mainwaring’s
(1998, 69–70) framework, explicitly concerned with electoral democracies in Third World
Countries, disaggregates party system institutionalization into four dimensions that includes
rootedness in society, stability of patterns of party competition, party legitimacy and organizational
development of the party. My framework is based on his dimensions, but primarily concerned with
6
party institutionalization as a distinct phenomenon to party system institutionalization. This study
perceives inter-party competition, a central feature of party system institutionalization as an
attribute of democracy, and to study how institutionalized parties play democracy, it focuses on
party institutionalization (Randall and Svaasand 2002b, 7; Cornell et al. 2016, 9).
Based on scholarship on democratic survival in the European interwar period this
study carve out what is perceived as the most important dimensions for democratic stability in
contemporary Third World countries. Stable democratic rule in the face of inauspicious structural
conditions depends on whether civil society is able to mobilize during extrication and forge ties to
political parties that are programmatically coherent with an entrenched intra-party organization to
meet tasks of consolidation.
There might be overlapping membership between civil society and political parties,
but it is important that civil society does not take over the representative role played by political
parties or are solely auxiliary organizations of the parties. Moreover, whereas political parties
aggregate multiple interests, civil society associations tend to group around more narrow interests
(Doherty 2001).2 The following section teases out the mechanisms linking institutionalized parties
and a vibrant civil society to democratic transitions and stability.
From authoritarian rule to democratic rule
In faltering authoritarian regimes, the void of authority generated by the collapse of the previous
power broker can be filled by other social forces with potentials for democratic rule. During the
process of extrication, emerging social forces can forge powerful coalitions across diverse
associations and political representations that produce popular resistance to the regime and a viable
2
Understood as “the realm of organizational life that is open, voluntary, self-generating, at least partially selfsupporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules” (Diamond 1999, 221; see also
Berman 2009, 37).
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political alternative. They can proliferate on the basis of alternative forms of organization that reemerges, such as regional, religious, ethnic or linguistic (see, e.g., Rudolph and Rudolph 1960). It
can provide a basis on which citizens can shape autonomous organizations and establish new
boundaries and relations between parties and citizens based on diverging interests and alternative
political discourses.
If groups of activists persistently stand together with elements of political opposition
forces at the street level, they can prevent political elites from controlling the state and block their
attempt to convert central positions of power in the old regime into new ones based on, e. g.,
privatized state companies or property. In turn, a well-brokered organization of coalition partners
that coordinates widespread resistance to the regime can use this counterweight to the regime to
launch competitive politics and encourage new-coming elites to engage with more pragmatic
societal groups and pursue more pragmatic policies.
Elements of a civil society that represents diverse interest can offer a modicum of
popular political participation and push political elites to merge diverging interest into a coherent
reform program instead of pursuing particularistic interests. Such a support base shaped by a
diverse interest representation can help political elites overcome otherwise unpopular radical
reforms and give them a clearer vision for the future that citizens are better able to support at the
ballot box and which, in turn, provides political elites as well as the electorate with a longer time
horizon (Ekiert 1996, 310–319; Stark and Bruszt 1998, 189–195; Bernhard 2016, 121–126).
Institutionalized parties, civil society and tasks of regime consolidation
Institutionalized parties
Parties that are programmatic coherent stands for a set of unifying principles that provide an
alternative to other political parties, however, not necessarily in the sense that parties captures
8
cleavages in society in the tradition of Lipset and Rokkan (1967). Programmatically coherent
parties are important because they filter and aggregate citizens’ demands into the political system.
These characteristics enable voters to use party identification as a shortcut to understand party
differences, anticipate parties’ future actions, and, in retrospective, evaluate parties at the ballot box.
On the other hand, programmatic coherence allows parties to forge substantial ideational
commitment among its core support base, which spurs stability in the relationship between social
actors in consecutive successful elections. The structured interaction that evolves among
programmatically coherent political parties gives them coalition capability that enables them to
broker compromises on key issues, which is imperative to regime stability.
Parties’ intra-organization induces political regime stability for a number of reasons.
First, parties characterized by mechanisms for leadership turnover have a life beyond its leadership,
if the leader dies or decides to form a new party. Second, if the party has formal procedures of
career paths for rank-and-file members and open candidate selection procedures for the parliament
and the presidency, it becomes attractive as a vehicle for ambitious politicians. It commits rank-andfile members and the leadership to sanction certain rules of the game to be able to run on a partyticket to official office instead of joining other parties or forming new ones. These rules spur
coherence and discipline in the party organization that in turn contribute to regime stability. Parties’
with an intra-party organization are also better able to accommodate radical or conservative flanks
of the party and retain otherwise strong obstacles to democratic rule within the political system
(Ziblatt Forthcoming).
These characteristics contribute to form strong political parties that are capable of
compromising with opponents. However, they do not onto themselves spur democratic rule.
Scholarship on authoritarian rule has shown that strong party organization is also a determinant of
stable authoritarian regimes (Geddes 1999, 11; Greene 2007, 5; Magaloni 2008, 15–19; Svolik
9
2012, 11–12). Stable democratic rule is forged when multiple civil society organizations check
political power and forces political elites to seek compromise. Parties with roots in society help to
establish the important link between citizens, organized interests and national decision makers
(Mainwaring and Scully 1995, 9; Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007, 9). Mainwaring (1998) argues that
parties must have roots in society – I argue that these roots need an organizational basis in civil
society organizations to have an actual effect on the stability of the political regime. This is
unfolded in the following section.
Civil society organizations
A great scholarly optimism emerged after the Cold War on civil society’s potential for tipping the
balance towards democratization in post-communist countries. Civil society was stressed as a virtue
for democracy in the hey-days at the beginning of the 1990s. Scholars praised civil society for
doing a whole lot of good things for democracy, including civic education, moderating attitudes
towards participatory and egalitarian values, facilitating civic trust, broad-mindedness and public
spiritedness and providing a training ground for voters and a reservoir of aspirants for political
office (Putnam 1993; Diamond 1994; 1999; Warren 2000; see also Tusalem 2007).
Towards the end of the 1990s, a reverse wave of scholarship emerged that was
concerned with civil society’s vices for democratization. Scholars objected that civil society needs
to be weighed against the broader institutional context in which it is embedded to better understand
if it is a vice or a virtue to democracy. If political institutions are either unable or unwilling to
respond to citizens’ needs and demands, civil society can fill in the gap and turn into a breeding
ground for anti-regime forces that are trained to do activities that erode democratic rule (Berman
1997; 2009). The unambiguous message from interwar studies is that only in combination with
strong political parties can a vibrant civil society work in favor of democracy (Ertman 1998).
10
In the tradition of Weber, I emphasize institutional-organizational aspects of civil
society’s contributions to democracy, and downplay neo-Tocquevillian notions of culture that
stresses aspects of learning, training and social capital (Putnam 1993). Civil society as an
organizational platform links individuals together, mobilizes them for political participation and
integrates them into the political system through their ties to political parties. That enables political
parties to hold onto their natural constituencies, create and sustain a set of democratic norms which
regulate the behavior of political elites in the state and the character of political relations between
state and society and put checks on political elites and the state power (O’Donnell et. al 1986, 53).
Civic associations that bring a vibrancy of interest into the political arena foster a
complexity which hinders political elites from coalescing around particularistic interest. Instead
political elites are forced to engage with more pragmatic societal groups and pursue more pragmatic
policies. Ultimately this forces political elites, including conservative hardliners to organize into
distinct political parties and to submerge these diverging interests into a coherent reform program
(Stark and Bruszt 1998, 192).
When political parties bring together groups with heterogeneous, divergent long-term
goals in a coherent program, they are more likely to sacrifice these for some intermediate, collective
goals. This gives parties a reservoir of support and ‘multiplies leverage points throughout the
political field’. Political elites will better know the limits of society’s tolerance of reforms and they
can better overcome otherwise unpopular radical reforms. This process extends the time horizon of
political elites and citizens and increases the chances for future compromises among parties in
opposition (Mainwaring 1998, 69; Stark and Bruszt 1998, 189–195).
At the end of the day, national decision makers who reach compromises which cut
across diverging interest representation ‘can count on the firm support of their voters thanks to the
membership of those voters in all-encompassing associational subcultures’ (Ertman 1998: 502). The
11
structured interaction between parties with disciplined organizations enable political elites to broker
agreement between its support bases on contentious state building issues and reach compromises on
cross-cutting issues with opponents that can bring the process of democratic consolidation forward
(Grzegorz Ekiert 1996, 310–311).
This study expects that only civil society that forges ties to institutionalized parties
results in democratic regime stability. If one overly dominates the other or both are absent, the
result is authoritarianism.
Measurement of key variables and analysis design
It is hard to image a democracy without political parties and civil society, yet the quality and
variation of these attributes begs the question how they independently contribute to democracy.
Kitschelt (2003) warns that more proximate conditions – such as political parties and civil society –
wash out the explanatory power of deeper structural conditions if included in the ‘tournament of
variables’ that characterizes statistical analysis. To separate the entities, this study foremost focuses
on the concept of electoral democracy that pays attention to electoral procedures of democracy at
the expense of civil liberties and the rule of law. Moreover, the analysis of determinants of electoral
democracy is divided into two blocks: a first step exhaust the explanatory power of deeper
structural conditions, and a second step introduces the more proximate causes.
Stepan and Skach (1993) and Doorenspleet and Kopecky (2008) studies requisites of
democratic regime transition and consolidation outside the Western world. Stepan and Skach (1993)
show that constitutional framework matters and Doorenspleet and Kopecky (2008) argues that the
absence of hindrances has promoted democratic transition and regime stability in inauspicious
settings. This study employs the most widely used structural conditions of regime stability that
12
other studies consistently emphasize. This includes level of modernization and geographic
diffusion, the two factors most often emphasized, followed by Muslim majority, resource reliance,
ethnic fractionalization, and former British colony (see, e.g., Barro 1999; Clague, Gleason, and
Knack 2001; Wright 2008; Teorell 2010). All variables are operationalized and measured in the
following.
The dependent variable: electoral democracy
This study focuses on regime stability of electoral democracies in Third World countries. The
conceptualization of democracy is anchored in a “realist” – or procedural – tradition of defining
democracy. I rely on Schumpeter’s (1974, 269) definition of democracy, which in its most basic
form is “that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals
acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for people’s vote”. More recently,
Przeworski (Przeworski 1991, 14) has substantiated this definition stressing that uncertainty is the
core element in a democracy: “Outcomes are not known ex ante: each party does the best it can,
then rolls the dice to see who will win. Democratization is an act of subjecting all interests to
competition, of institutionalizing uncertainty”.
The gist of these definitions is the genuine competition between multiple parties in
recurring elections for government power – not paying attention to surrounding civil liberties such
as the freedom to assemble and expression or the rule of law per se. What matters is not so much
the degree to which a country is democratic, but rather the crisp distinction between democracy and
non-democracy. This speaks in favor of adopting a dichotomous measure of democracy.
The varieties of democracy project provides a lexical index of electoral democracy,
which goes a long way of remedying shortcomings of other measures and most convincingly bring
13
out the core understanding of electoral democracy (see Skaaning, Gerring, and Bartusevičius 2015).
This study bases the operationalization on an updated version of the Lexical Index of Electoral
Democracy (ibid.). The ‘full’ index scored as 1 captures whether multiple parties competes for
legislative and executive office in (minimally) competitive elections with universal suffrage. A
score of 0 corresponds to a situation in which one or several of the criteria are not met.
To better understand if civil society tied to political parties contributes to regime
stability, this study also looks at regime breakdown. It is measured with data provided by Geddes,
Wright and Frantz’s (2013) on Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions (variable ‘gwf_fail’).
Unfortunately the data only covers the period until 2010.
The baseline model: predominant determinants of democracy
The modernizations thesis holds that more affluent countries are more likely to be stable
democracies. The relationship has proven resilient (Przeworski and Limongi 1997; Przeworski et al.
2000; Wright 2008; Teorell 2010), although the mechanisms are debated (see e.g. Boix 2003;
Inglehart and Welzel 2009). How far the relationship goes is also debated. Some find that it
enhances the chances of regimes to democratize (Epstein et al. 2006) and others, that it sustains
democracy (Przeworski et al. 1996). The latter scenario finds the strongest scholarly support. The
mechanisms underscoring the relationship are diverse. Some suggest that class struggle over
redistribution is the reason why affluence is positively associated with democracy (Acemoglu and
Robinson 2005), others emphasize that prosperity generates emancipatory values in the society,
which is decisive for sustaining democracy (Inglehart and Welzel 2005). Lipset’s (1959, 83–84)
basic idea is that higher education and literacy level, a larger middle class and a more vibrant civil
society all contributes to modernizations impact on democracy. I use the index of socioeconomic
modernization constructed by Teorell (2010).
14
Neighbour diffusions effects is based on the idea that democratic neighbour countries
will diffuse democratic values, norms and ideas to the county in question, thus enhancing the
chances of democratization and democracy stability. The more democratic the neighbors are, the
more democratic the country in question will be, and vice-versa (Brinks and Coppedge 2006;
Gleditsch and Ward 2006). I use Brinks and Coppedge (2006) measure of neighbor diffusion, which
is based on neighbor countries average Freedom House score (inversed and multiplied so high
values indicate a high level of democracy).
Muslim pluraility among a country’s religious groups is emphasized as a hindrance to
democracy. Cultural aspects of Islam dampen emancipatory values (Inglehart and Welzel 2005),
and the dominance of Muslim dogmas negatively affect the extension and sanctioning of freedom
rights (Huntington 1991, 298–301; Lewis 1993; Fish 2002). If at least the plurality (which in almost
all cases exhibiting this status means a majority) of the population of a given country is Muslim, the
country is coded 1, all else 0.
Resource reliance is a curse to democratic rule, especially if it overshadows other
income sources of the state, such as basic taxation of citizens. It allows the political elite to override
popular demands for reforms and instead dampen the pressure by using resource revenue to
clientelism and vote-buying. It can also be used to finance the military and affect its willingness to
repress oppositional forces (Ross 2009; Karl 1997). I use data on hydrocarbon-rich countries
provided by the International Monetary Fund (2007) to operationalize ‘resource reliance’,3 where
countries listed as hydrocarbon rich are coded 1 and all others 0.4
3
If changes occur over time, I use Ross’ (2009) data on oil and gas rents per capita to identify exactly when a country
became dependent on large-scale revenue from resources. Regarding the particular threshold, I follow Ross’ (2009: 10–
13) dichotomous measure of oil income, which identifies countries with more than $100 per capita of oil income. On
this basis, three additional countries have been coded as dependent: Sudan from 2005, Yemen from 1989, and
Equatorial Guinea from 1995.
4
Here a crisp distinction is preferable to a continuous one since the available data are generally not reliable enough to
make fine-grained distinctions and as there is much ‘noise’ from year-by-year fluctuations in world market prices of
hydrocarbons.
15
Ethnic fractionalization is emphasized as a fundamental hindrance for democracy.
This is the notion in Mill’s classical work (Mill 1993, 392–393), but the argument has been
reiterated in more recent work also (Rustow 1970; Dahl 1971, 105–123; Diamond and Plattner
1994). The basic idea is the risk that ethnic cleavages will structure political mobilization and, in
turn, disable political elites from reaching broad compromises that unites different groupings (Hayo
and Voigt 2007, 279; Paldam 2001, 388; Weingast 1997, 256). I use the index of ethnic
fractionalisation constructed by Alesina et al (2003) as a measure.
Former British colony has been related to democracy in several studies (although not
all find a significant correlation) (Weiner 1987; Clague, Gleason, and Knack 2001; Bernhard,
Reenock, and Nordstrom 2004). The auspicious legacy of British rule comes down to a larger
bureaucratic capacity and the judicial inheritance of the British constitutional system. These factors
enable former British colonies to democratization better than other types of colonial legacies. I cast
it as a dummy, where 1 signifies former British colony.
Political party institutionalization and vibrant civil society organizations
Scholars often use the electoral volatility index to operationalize and measure party system
institutionalization (see, e.g., Basedau and Stroh 2011, 175; Bogaards 2008, 116; Hicken and
Kuhonta 2011, 580; Pedersen 1979). This measure is, however, subject to a number of problems.
The measure is in itself a measure of regime stability, given that it is computed across two
subsequent elections and only scores cases with stable elections. This makes it difficult to separate
the explanas and explanandum. Moreover, it is difficult to interpret in quantitative analysis because
we are interested in cases that have neither too little nor too much change in the number of parties
in parliament (and hence a high or low score on the index) . If there is too much alternation in
16
political power, it questions the stability of the political system, and if the same party consequently
wins election overwhelmingly it questions the nature of the democratic regime type.
The Varieties of Democracy Index (V-dem) is preferable to other sources such as the
Democratic Accountability and Linkages Project (Kitschelt 2013, 19–29) and the Berthelsmann
Transformation Index (2014, 23), because it provides fine-grained measures for 192 countries from
year 1900 onward that are useful to unpack the nexus between political parties and civil society.
V-dem’s ‘party system institutionalization index’ measures aspects of political parties’
programmatic coherence and intra-organization. Parties’ programmatic coherence is brought out by
a measure of party linkages (v2psprlnks) that captures how parties’ link with constituents ranging
from purely clientelistic based on goods, cash or other rewards to a programmatic form where
constituents respond to a party’s party program or visions for society. Another attribute measures
the degree to which parties with representation in the national legislature have relatively distinct
party platforms (v2psplats). A third attribute captures whether members of the legislature
cohesively vote with other members of their party (v2pscohesv). Parties’ intra-organization is
brought out by a measure of level and depth of the party organization, including the degree to which
it is professional at the national level (v2psorgs) and has permanent local party branches
(v2psprbrch).
Civil society’s vibrancy is brought out by two indices. ‘CSO consultation’
(v2cscnsult) captures whether political parties reach out to civil society and is receptive towards
civil society demands on relevant policy areas. The variable distinguished between different levels
of consultation ranging from a highly insulated environment where CSO are only invited into
policymaking once legislation has been adopted to a situation in which CSO are invited to take part
in formulating policy as a respected stakeholder in relevant policy areas. The variable ‘CSO
participatory environment’ (v2csprtcpt) measures whether civil society is vibrant and vivid ranging
17
from an environment where the state sponsors most associations to an environment where there are
many diverse CSOs and citizens consider it natural to participate and contribute.
Analysis design
This study employs survival analysis to better understand requisites of democratic transition and
regime stability in countries outside the western world during the third wave of democratization and
particularly why a number of inauspicious countries have been able to establish a resilient
democratic regime. The empirical analysis run and report two separate survival analysis based on
cox proportional hazards model. This semi-parametric duration model is appropriate for this
analysis, because there is no underlying assumption of a specific distribution of the baseline hazard
rate. Contrary to, e.g., the Weibull model the form of duration dependency is left unspecified (BoxSteffensmeier and Jones 2004, 49, 66–67).
Events of failures are democratic elections in authoritarian regimes and democratic
breakdown in democratic regimes. The sample in the first analysis is authoritarian regimes and the
event or failures is democratic transitions, where the dependent variable is coded 0 in authoritarian
country years and 1 when a country holds democratic elections. The sample in the second analysis
is democratic regimes and the events or failures are regime breakdown and the onset of an
authoritarian regime. This study uses the Efron method to handle tied failures. Moreover, standard
errors are adjusted for clusters (countries).
18
Results of authoritarian survival analysis
This study focus on the third wave of democratization (from 1974 to 2014) summing up to between
70 and 83 Third World countries depending on the universe of cases with most democracies. Table
1 shows the analysis of democratic transition in all available non-western countries during the Third
Wave of Democratization. Because of lack of data on the independent variables in the baseline
model, this study only look at regime spells beginning before 2009.
Table 1 about here
Autocracies with either a participatory environment for civil society organizations or where civil
society is consulted are more than 2 times more likely to breakdown than autocracies with weak
civil society. Likewise, autocracies with institutionalized political parties are almost 6 six more
likely to breakdown than autocracies without institutionalized political parties. Moreover, we see
that Muslim majority and oil rents reduce the risk of breakdown markedly. Muslim majority by 51
% and oil rents by 73.5 %.
Results of democratic survival analysis
The maximum effect of a democracy where civil society is consulted, moving on the V-Dem scale
from 0-1, will decrease a democracy’s relative hazard of breakdown by 34.7 per cent (on a 0.2 pvalue). Likewise, the maximum effect of a socio-economically modernized democracy, moving on
the index from 0-1, will decrease a democracy’s relative hazard of breakdown by 55.4 per cent (on
a 0.2 p-value).
19
Table 2
Conclusion
A number of countries appear to be democracies against the odds considering predominant
structural conditions. However, when we take social forces in political organizations into account
they are no longer deviant. This study has utilizing a new data set on varieties of democracy to
demonstrate that inauspicious democracies tend to have a vibrant civil society.
Institutionalized parties tied to civil society enable underprivileged democracies to
reap advantages of regime stability otherwise following from high levels of socio-economic
development and neighbor diffusion effect. A vibrant civil society is a boon to democracy, because
a vibrant civil society can forge ties to political parties and compel political elites to accommodate
the diverse interest representation in civil society.
This study has contributed to the abundant literature on determinants of democracy
and highlighted the important role of political–institutional factors in the tradition of Huntington.
More specifically, the study has contributed to the emerging literature on deviant democracies by
providing a positive account that stresses the presence of factors that helps us better understand how
underprivileged democracies thrive. The account travels across the universe of third world countries
throughout the third wave of democratization. Historical cases of deviant democracy, such as India
and Costa Rica, and more contemporary cases, such as Mongolia, Indonesia and El Salvador all
have a relatively vibrant civil society.
This study has demonstrated that it is possible to point towards positive factors across
a diverse set of inauspicious democracies. The mechanisms of civil society engagement remains to
20
be demonstrated across a larger set of cases – preferable of least and most likely cases of
democratic rule, such as among inauspicious democracies.
The insight to institutionalized political parties and a vibrant civil society bodes well
for policy advisors hoping to shore up new democracies. There are actual social forces that can be
activated in building stable democracy. But as Ertman shows, already the interwar cases reminds us
that ties between parties and civil society need to be of the right kind. The political parties need to
be responsive an able to accommodate pressure from civil society that represent a multitude of
views and interests. Support to social forces in political parties and civil society needs to go handin-hand to entrench democracy.
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Tables
Table 1: Hazard ratios for democratic transition during 1974-2014
(1)
Neighbor diffusion
1.014
(0.009)
1.329
(0.238)
0.482**
(0.143)
0.265**
(0.128)
1.399
(0.762)
0.815
(0.242)
1.038
(0.098)
Modernization index
Muslim majority
Oil rents dummy
Ethnic fractionalization
British colonial legacy
Population size (log)
V-dem CSO participatory environment
V-dem Party system institutionalization index
(2)
1.014
(0.009)
0.975
(0.238)
0.515**
(0.140)
0.364**
(0.166)
1.347
(0.670)
0.665
(0.169)
0.975
(0.090)
2.155**
(0.733)
5.761**
(3.989)
CSO consultation
Number of observations
Numbers of countries
Number of failures
Pseudo R squared
Log pseudo¬likelihood
AIC
BIC
117
83
79
0.063
-302.217
618.434
637.770
117
83
79
0.096
-291.485
600.970
625.830
(3)
1.014
(0.009)
0.955
(0.232)
0.524**
(0.129)
0.303**
(0.134)
1.319
(0.639)
0.739
(0.176)
0.968
(0.087)
5.482**
(3.762)
2.215***
(0.494)
117
83
79
0.102
-289.524
597.049
621.908
* p<0.1; ** p<0.05; *** p<0.001
26
Figur 1: Political party institutionalization and democratic transition, 1974-2014
Figur 2: Civil society consultancy and democratic transition, 1974-2014
Figur 3: Civil society participatory environment and democratic transition, 1974-2014
Note: The figures show the estimated survival function at each quartile value of civil society in
the sample with all other covariates set at their mean. The value on the x-axis dubbed ‘analysis 27
time’ is year. Figure 1 and 2 are based on model 2 in table 1, and figure 3 on model 3 in table 1.
Table 2: Hazard ratios for democratic breakdown during 1974-2014
Neighbor diffusion
Modernization index
Muslim majority
Oil rents dummy
Ethnic fractionalization
British colonial legacy
Population size (log)
(1)
(2)
(3)
0.992
0.991
0.993
(0.011)
(0.011)
(0.011)
0.446*
0.471*
0.430*
(0.160)
(0.193)
(0.181)
1.660
1.661
1.505
(0.666)
(0.725)
(0.616)
0.637
0.652
0.597
(0.514)
(0.511)
(0.535)
1.868
1.773
2.615
(1.735)
(1.645)
(2.575)
0.613
0.657
0.592
(0.308)
(0.334)
(0.310)
1.023
1.018
1.007
(0.110)
(0.115)
(0.111)
V-dem CSO participatory environment
1.475
(0.728)
V-dem Party system institutionalization index
0.817
0.874
(0.975)
(1.103)
CSO consultation
0.653*
(0.211)
Number of observations
Numbers of countries
Number of failures
Pseudo R squared
Log pseudo¬likelihood
AIC
BIC
104
104
104
70
41
70
41
70
41
0.091
-145.319
304.639
323.149
0.093
-145.023
308.046
331.845
0.097
-144.369
306.738
330.538
* p<0.2; ** p<0.02; *** p<0.002
Figur 4: Civil society consultancy and democratic breakdown, 1974-2014
28