II. INSERTING THE BASIC CONCEPTS

ED.Chapter Two.REV

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CHAPTER TWO:

INSERTING THE BASIC CONCEPTS

[This Chapter was co-authored with Terry Lynn Karl]

For some time, "Democracy" has been circulating as debased currency in the

political marketplace. Politicians with a wide range of convictions and practices

tried to attach the label to themselves; scholars hesitated to use the concept,

precisely because of the ambiguities that had grown up around it. One of

America's most distinguished political theorists, Robert Dahl, gave up and chose

to introduce a new term, polyarchy, in its stead in the (vain) hope of gaining

greater conceptual precision.1

For better or worse, we seem to be "stuck" with democracy as the pre-eminent

concept in contemporary political discourse about regime change.2 This is the

word that resonates in the minds of people and springs from their lips as they

struggle for freedom and seek to improve their conditions. This is the word

whose connotations we must explore and whose referents we must seek to

operationalize, if we are to understand how to encourage its emergence and

consolidate its presence.

The wave of transitions from autocratic rule that began in 1974 produced

something like a convergence towards a common definition of democracy.3

Everywhere, there was a silent and surreptitious dropping of adjectives. Such

dubious qualifiers as "popular," "guided," "bourgeois" and "formal" disappeared

and efforts to replace them with new ones such as “Asian-style” or “non-Western”

were met with considerable skepticism. A remarkable agreement emerged on

what are the minimal conditions for determining which polities deserve the

prestigious label. Moreover, these standards are being monitored by a number of

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international organizations and, occasionally, being applied in the making of

national foreign policies.4

What Democracy is ...

"Modern, Liberal Political Democracy” or, better, "Real-Existing

Democracy” is a regime or system of government in which rulers are held

accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting

indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their

representatives.5

Hereafter, we will refer only to "democracy" or “real-existing democracy” (RED)

when using this definition for the sake of brevity and when referring .to a polity

attempting to acquire this status, we will call it a “newly-existing democracy”

(NED)6 Before dropping these adjectives, however, we should say something

about the three qualifiers:

1. Modern: Classical democracy eschewed the role of representatives

and made rulers directly responsible before the assembled citizenry.

This heritage survives in the strong emphasis that some contemporary

theorists and practitioners place upon individual participation and

collective deliberation, but almost everyone acknowledges that all

democratic polities over a certain threshold of size and complexity

have to rely on mechanisms of representation that unavoidably make

the citizens’ role in decision-making more indirect.7

2. Liberal: Liberal democracy is a regime that consciously seeks to limit

the direct political role of citizens by imposing constitutional “rights”

designed to protect minorities (especially, but not exclusively property-

owners) from potential exploitation by “the tyranny of the majority,” and

to “check and balance” political authorities by dividing them into

ED.Chapter Two.REV

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separate and competing institutions and/or levels of government so

that executive power cannot predominate.

3. Political: Social, economic or industrial democracy would extend

citizenship from the arena of public institutions where binding decisions

are made for the polity as a whole to the realms of production and

distribution where owners and managers, producers and consumers

make decisions privately according to market criteria. This limitation is

reflected in the persistent complaint that contemporary regime changes

have been confined exclusively to the political realm and, therefore,

should be followed by a "second transition" that would transform

persistent inequalities in private property and production relations.8

However much they may desire this to happen, most analysts

recognize that democracy restricted to the political domain is a

desirable goal in itself -- and may well be a prerequisite for the

eventual extension of its citizenship principle into economic and social

relations.9

Concepts that Define What It Is

A regime (or system of government) is an ensemble of patterns that

determines (1) the forms and channels of access to principal governmental

positions; (2) the characteristics of the actors who are admitted to or excluded

from such access; (3) the resources or strategies that these actors can use to

gain access; and (4) the rules that are followed in the making of publicly binding

decisions. To produce its effect, this ensemble must be institutionalized, i.e. the

various patterns must be habitually known, practiced and accepted by most, if

not all, of the actors. Increasingly, this has involved their legalization or

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constitutionalization, but many very stable regime norms can have an implicit,

informal or even prudential basis.10

For the sake of economy and comparison, these forms, characteristics,

resources and rules are usually "bundled together" and given a generic label.

Democratic is one such label used to classify regimes. Autocratic, authoritarian,

despotic, dictatorial, tyrannical, totalitarian, absolutist, traditional, monarchic,

oligarchic, plutocratic, aristocratic, sultanistic are others.11 Once the generic type

of regime has been determined, it may be desirable to proceed further and to

break up the variation observed into subtypes before inferring any consequences

for either citizens or rulers.

The rulers are those who occupy dominant positions in the formal structure of

government. Democracies are not anarchies. They are not voluntarily or

spontaneously coordinated, but depend upon the presence of persons who

occupy specialized roles and can give legitimate commands to others. What

distinguishes democratic rulers from non-democratic ones are the norms that

determine how they become rulers and the practices that hold them accountable

for what they do once they have become rulers.

Another way of putting this point is that democracies involve not only citizen

rights, but also citizen obligations -- specifically, the general obligation to

accept as legitimate and to obey commands which have been elaborated

according to fair norms and practices -- even when the affected citizens do not

agree with them and have not participated directly or indirectly in their

elaboration.

The public realm involves that part of the collective choice process in which

norms binding on the society as a whole are made and backed by the coercive

force of the state. This realm can vary a great deal across democracies

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depending upon how previous distinctions have been drawn between the public

and the private, between state and society, between legitimate coercion and

voluntary exchange, between collective needs and individual preferences.

The liberal conception of democracy advocates circumscribing the public realm

as narrowly as possible -- along the lines of "he (or she) who governs least,

governs best". The socialist or social democratic approach would extend that

realm through regulation, subsidization and, in some cases, collective ownership.

According to our definition, neither is intrinsically more democratic than the other

-- just differently democratic.12 Both, if carried to the extreme, would undermine

the practice of democracy: the former by destroying the basis for satisfying

collective needs and exercising legitimate authority; the latter by destroying the

basis for satisfying individual preferences and controlling illegitimate government

actions. In most established democracies, differences of opinion over the

optimal mix of the two array themselves along a Left-Right continuum and

provide much of the substantive content of political conflict. As we shall see, in

Chapter Nine, this continuum may have lost much of its potency and the

emerging party systems of neo-democracies may find it difficult to align

themselves accordingly.

Citizens provide the most distinctive element in democratic regimes. All types of

regime have rulers of some sort and a public realm of some dimension; only

democracies have citizens in strictu sensu.

Historically, severe restrictions on citizenship were imposed according to criteria

of age, gender, class, race, literacy, tax-paying capacity, etc. In the early periods

of oligarchic democracy, a small proportion of the total population was eligible to

vote or to compete for office. Only restricted social categories were allowed to

form, join or support political associations. After protracted struggle -- and in

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some cases as the result of violent internal upheaval or as the outcome of

international war -- these restrictions were lifted. In the contemporary period, the

criteria for inclusion are fairly standard. All native-born adults of either gender

should be eligible, although somewhat higher age limits may still be imposed for

certain offices. Contemporary discussion about the further extension of

citizenship has focused on such issues as lowering the age limit (Brazil recently

made 16 year olds eligible to vote), making voting compulsory and/or

enfranchising resident foreigners, but these are of marginal importance when

compared to past struggles over enfranchisement. Unlike the early American

and European democracies of the 19th Century, none of the recent democracies

in Southern Europe, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe has attempted to

restrict the franchise or eligibility for candidacy formally.13 When it comes to

informal restrictions on the effective exercise of citizenship rights, the story can

be quite different; hence, the central importance discussed below of a broad

array of rights.

Competition has not always been considered an essential component of

democracy. The classical conception presumed decision-making via consensus.

The assembled citizenry was expected to agree unanimously (or, at least,

overwhelmingly) on a common course of action after listening to the alternatives

and deliberating about their merits and demerits. This tradition of hostility to

"faction," "adversarial action" and "special interests" persists in democratic

thought, but at least since the Federalist Papers it has become widely accepted

that competition among factions is a "necessary evil" of all democracies that

operate on a more than local scale. As James Madison put it, two of the possible

remedies for "the mischief of faction" are worse than the disease: (1) to remove

its causes "by destroying the liberty that is essential to its existence" or (2) "by

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giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same

interests." The best alternative, he argued, was to recognize that "the latent

causes of faction are sown into the nature of man" and to attempt to control its

effects.14

Where there is no effective agreement, however, is on the forms and the rules of

competition. Indeed, it is precisely disagreement over the principles and

practices of majority rule vs. minority rights, first-past-the-post vs. proportional

representation, party competition vs. “pressure group politics,” checks &

balances vs. concentrated executive power, presidential vs. parliamentary

government that contributes the most to distinguishing between sub-types of

democracy.

Forms of competition: The most widely diffused conception of democracy

makes it virtually synonymous with the presence of regular, fairly conducted and

honestly counted elections of uncertain outcome.15 Without denying their

centrality for democracy, these contests between candidates are held

sporadically and only allow citizens to choose between the highly aggregated

alternatives offered by political parties. In between, however, individuals can

compete to influence public policy through a wide variety of other intermediaries:

interest associations, social movements, locality groupings, clientelistic

arrangements, and so forth. Modern democracy, in other words, offers a variety

of competitive processes and channels for the expression of interests --

associational as well as partisan, functional as well as territorial, collective as well

as individual. All are integral to its practice, even if their availability is hardly

equal to all categories of citizens.

Rules of competition: Here again, there is a commonly accepted image of

democracy that identifies it exclusively with majority rule. Any governing body

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that makes decisions by combining the votes of more than one half of those

eligible and present is said to be democratic -- whether that majority emerges

within an electorate, a parliament, a committee, a city council or a party caucus.

For specific decisions, say, amendment of the constitution or expulsion of a

member, the rule is sometimes bent and "qualified majorities" of more than 51%

may be required, but few would contest that democracy must involve some

process of assembling the equal preferences of individuals and deciding on the

basis of their interaction.

The problem, however, arises when numbers meet intensities, when a properly

assembled majority (especially a stable majority) produces decisions that

negatively affect some minority (especially a threatened cultural or ethnic

minority). In these circumstances, the actual practice of successful democracy

tends to modify one of its central principles and to recognize and protect the

rights of minorities. This can be accomplished in many ways: by constitutional

provisions placing certain matters beyond the reach of majorities ("Bills of

Rights"); by requirements for concurrent majorities in several different

constituencies ("Confederalism"); by guarantees for stable local or regional

autonomy in smaller units ("Federalism"); by practices of forming Grand

Coalitions that incorporate all parties ("Consociationalism"); and by encouraging

the negotiation of social pacts between business and labor ("Neo-Corporatism").

The most common, insidious and effective way of protecting minorities, however,

lies in the everyday operation of interest associations and social movements.

These reflect (some would say, amplify) the different intensities of preference

that exist in the population and bring them to bear on those chosen directly or

indirectly according to the majority principle. Another way of putting this intrinsic

ED.Chapter Two.REV

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tension between numbers and intensities would be to say that "in modern

democracies, votes may be counted, but influences are weighted."16

Cooperation has always been a central feature of democracies. Actors must

combine with each other by some voluntary process to make collective decisions

binding on the polity as a whole. Most obviously, they must cooperate in order to

compete. They must be capable of engaging in collective action through parties,

associations and movements that can select candidates, articulate preferences,

petition authorities, influence and even implement policies.

But beyond this unavoidably "adversarial" aspect to democracy, its freedoms

should encourage citizens to deliberate among themselves, to discover their

common needs and to resolve their possible conflicts without relying on

centralized political authority. The "classical" conception of democracy stressed

these qualities and they are by no means extinct -- despite repeated efforts by

contemporary theorists who stress the analogy with behavior in the economic

marketplace and attempt to reduce all its operations to competitive interest

maximization.17 Alexis de Tocqueville more than any other modern theorist

succeeded in capturing the importance of independent group action for

democracy and his Democracy in America remains a major source of inspiration

for all who would see in this form of government something more than a struggle

for election (and re-election) among competing candidates.18

The "codeword" in present-day political discourse for this concern with

cooperation and collective action is civil society. If the diverse units of social

identity and interest can organize themselves independently of the state (and,

some would argue, also independently of political parties), then, not only will their

competitive interaction place restraints on the arbitrary actions of rulers, but their

internal deliberations will alter the behavior of citizens by making them more

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aware of the preferences of others, more self-confident in their capacity to act

and more civic-minded in their willingness to sacrifice for the common good. In

its most optimistic versions, the existence of a civil society provides an

intermediate layer of governance between the individual and the state -- one that

is capable of resolving conflicts before they become the object of public struggle

and of controlling the behavior of members without using the instruments of

public coercion. As we shall see in greater detail in Chapter Ten, rather than

overloading decision-makers with increased demands and, thereby, rendering

the system ungovernable,19 a viable civil society could actually reduce the

intensity of conflicts and improve the quality of citizenship -- without relying

exclusively on the privatism of the marketplace.

The principal agents of modern political democracy are representatives.

Citizens may elect them or choose to support the parties, associations or

movements they lead, but representatives do the real work of connecting citizens

to their rulers. Moreover, most of them are not amateurs but professionals.

Without individuals who invest in democracy to the extent that they orient their

life's career around the aspiration to fill its key representative roles, it is doubtful

that any democracy could survive. The central question is not whether or not

there will be a "political elite" or even a "political class," but how that group of

representatives is composed and subsequently held accountable for its actions.

As indicated above, the channels of representation in modern democracy are

multiple. The electoral one, based on territorial constituencies (large or small,

single or multiple member, first-past-the-post or proportional, open or closed list),

is the most visible and public. It culminates in a parliament or a presidency that

is periodically accountable to the citizenry as a whole, and that may be ultimately

responsible for approving all binding decisions. However, the growth of

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government -- itself, in large part a byproduct of popular demand -- has increased

the variety of agencies charged with making public decisions and the

discretionary authority of those making them. Around these agencies, as well as

in the lobbies of the legislature, has developed a vast apparatus of specialized

representation based largely on functional interests, not territorial constituencies.

These interest associations, and not political parties, have become the primary

expression of civil society in most stable democracies -- supplemented and

occasionally countermanded by the sporadic actions of social movements on the

streets and in the courts.

The new and fragile democracies that have sprung up since 1974 must live in

"compressed time." They cannot expect to acquire the multiple channels of

representation in gradual historical progression as did most of their

predecessors. As they seek to change their regime, all manner of parties,

associations and movements will be simultaneously present -- and all will be

seeking to influence political outcomes with their highly diverse opinions,

passions and interests. We shall take up this issue in greater detail (and from

different perspectives) in Chapters Six, Nine and Ten.

Procedures that Make It Feasible

These defining components of democracy are, unavoidably, abstract. They can

give rise to a considerable variety of institutions and, hence, types of democracy.

Each of them is also sufficiently capacious to cover a wide range of substantive

programs and policy outcomes. Fortunately, for democracy to work effectively,

i.e. for its generic components to relate to each other, certain procedural norms

must be followed and certain civic rights must be respected. In and by

themselves, these minimal conditions do not define democracy, but their

presence is indispensable to its persistence. They are, in other words,

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necessary but not sufficient conditions for the existence of modern political

democracy.

Robert Dahl has offered the most generally accepted listing of the "procedural

minimum" conditions that must be present for modern political democracy, or, as

he would prefer it, polyarchy to exist:

1. Control over government decisions about policy is

constitutionally vested in elected officials.

2. Elected officials are chosen in frequent and fairly

conducted elections in which coercion is

comparatively uncommon.

3. Practically all adults have the right to vote in the

election of officials.

4. Practically all adults have the right to run for elective

offices in the government ... .

5. Citizens have a right to express themselves without

the danger of severe punishment on political matters

broadly defined.

6. Citizens have a right to seek out alternative sources

of information. Moreover, alternative sources of

information exist and are protected by law.

7. Citizens also have the right to form relatively

independent associations or organizations, including

independent political parties and interest groups.20

Elsewhere and earlier, Dahl offered slightly different listings of these procedural

minima,21 but the above seven seem to capture the essential dimensions for

most analysts. We, however, propose to add two others, one of which could be

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considered a further specification of Item (1), and the other which might be called

an implicit prior condition to all seven of the above.

8. Popularly elected officials must be able to exercise

their constitutionally mandated control over government

decisions without being subjected to informal,

overriding constraints imposed by non-elected officials

or private organizations.

This is intended to cover instances in which high military officers, well-

entrenched civil servants or well-endowed owners of private firms retain

the capacity to act autonomously from control or regulation by elected

civilians and, in the extreme (but, alas, not uncommon) case, to veto the

policy actions of accountable officials.22

9. The polity must be self-governing, i.e. it must possess

a minimal capacity to act independently from

constraints imposed by some other, overarching,

political system.

Dahl and other contemporary democratic theorists have probably taken

this condition for granted since they referred exclusively to units that were

unequivocal "nation-states" with formal sovereignty in the international

arena. However, with the development of blocs, alliances, spheres of

influence and a variety of "neo-colonial" and “imperial” arrangements -- not

to mention, the proliferation of mechanisms for governing "complex

interdependence" between polities -- the issue of autonomy has become

increasingly salient. Is a system really democratic if its freely and

competitively elected officials are unable to make collectively binding

decisions that are not vetted and approved by actors outside their

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territorial domain? This may not seem like such a critical matter if the

outsiders are themselves democratically constituted and if the insiders are

relatively free to alter or even to end the encompassing arrangement, e.g.

Puerto Rico, but it becomes very important if neither condition obtains,

e.g. Tibet.

Principles that Make It Function

These conceptual components and procedural norms help to identify what

democracy is, but they do not explain how it actually functions. The simplest

answer is "by the consent of the people"; the more complex one is "by the

contingent consent of politicians acting under conditions of bounded

uncertainty".

Contingent consent: In a democracy, representatives agree to compete in such

a way that: (1) those who win greater electoral support or those who gain greater

influence will not use their (presumably temporary) political superiority to impede

those who have lost from taking office or exerting influence in the future; and 2)

those who have lost in the present will respect the right of the winners to make

binding decisions, in exchange for being allowed to take office or influence

decisions in the future.

In their turn, citizens are expected to obey the decisions ensuing from such a

process of competition, provided its outcome remains contingent upon their

collective preferences as expressed through fair and regular elections or open

and repeated negotiations in the future.

The challenge is to find a set of rules that embody contingent consent, not a set

of goals that command widespread consensus. This "democratic bargain," to

use Robert Dahl's felicitous expression,23 varies a good deal from society to

society depending on cleavage patterns and such subjective factors as the

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degree of mutual trust, the standards of fairness, and the willingness to

compromise. It may even be compatible with a great deal of dissensus on

specific substantive issues -- providing that the implementation of controversial

policies by winners does not deprive the losers of the resources they would need

to get back into competition.

Bounded Uncertainty: All democracies involve some degree of uncertainty --

about who will be elected and what policies they will pursue. Even in those

polities where one party persistently wins elections or one policy is consistently

implemented, the possibility that either could be reversed by independent

collective action still exists, vide the Scandinavian social democracies from the

1930s to the 1980s or Japan under the protracted domination of the Liberal-

Democratic Party. If not, the system is not democratic, vide Mexico (at least,

until recently), Singapore or Indonesia (also, until recently).

But the uncertainty embedded in the core of all democracies is bounded. Not

just any actor can get into the competition and raise any issue he or she pleases.

There are previously established rules that must be respected. Not just any

policy can be decided and implemented. There are contingencies that must be

respected. What the emergent practice of democracy does is to institutionalize a

"normal" degree of uncertainty with regard to actors and policies. These

boundaries vary from country to country. Constitutional guarantees of property,

privacy, decent treatment, self-expression, personal movement and "the pursuit

of happiness" are part of the effort. But the most effective boundaries are

generated by the processes of competition and cooperation within civil society.

Whatever the rhetoric -- and some polities do offer their citizenries more dramatic

alternatives than others -- once the rule of contingent consent have been agreed

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upon, the actual variation in persons and policies is likely to stay within a

predictable and mutually acceptable range.

Where contingent consent and limited uncertainty are mutually accepted and

institutionally secured, citizens can change their rulers without changing the rules

-- and they should even be able to reverse their government's policies without

engaging in threats of violence or secession.24

How Democracies Differ ...

Several concepts have been deliberately excluded from the above definition,

despite the fact that they are frequently associated in both everyday politics and

scholarly work with democracy. They are, nevertheless, especially important

when it comes to distinguishing between different types of democracy and

different levels of democratic performance.

Consensus: All citizens may not agree on the substantive goals of political

action or on the role of the state -- although if they do, it would certainly make

governing democracy easier.

Participation: All citizens may not take an active and equal part in politics --

although it must be formally and legally possible for them to do so and it would

be desirable if they did so.

Access: Rulers may not weigh equally the preferences of all who come before

them -- although citizenship implies that individuals and groups should have an

equal opportunity to express their preferences, if they so choose.

Responsiveness: Rulers may not always follow the course of action preferred

by the citizenry -- although where they deviate from such a policy, say on

grounds of "reason of state" or "overriding national interest," they can be held

ultimately accountable through processes of representation.

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Majority-rule: Positions may not be allocated or rules may not be decided simply

on the basis of assembling more votes than for alternative candidates or

proposals -- although derogations from this principle usually must be explicitly

defended and previously approved, e.g. in the name of the protection of minority

rights.

Parliamentary sovereignty: The legislature may not be the only body that can

make rules or even the one that must have final authority in deciding what is

binding on the public as a whole -- although where executive, judiciary or other

“public guardians” do make that ultimate choice, they too must be capable of

being held accountable for their actions.

Party government: Rulers may not be nominated, promoted and disciplined in

their activities by well organized and programatically coherent political parties –

although where they are not it may prove more difficult to form an effective

government and even more difficult to carry out intended policies.

Pluralism: The political process may not be based on a multiplicity of

overlapping, voluntary and autonomous private groups -- although where there

are monopolies of representation, hierarchies of association and obligatory

memberships, it is likely that the interests involved will be more closely linked to

the state and the separation between the public and private spheres of action will

be much less distinct.

Federalism: The territorial division of authority may not involve multiple levels

and insured degrees of local autonomy, least of all, ones enshrined in a

constitutional document -- although some dispersion of power across units,

territorial and/or functional, is characteristic of all democracies.

Presidentialism: The chief executive officer may not be a single person directly

elected by the citizenry as a whole -- although some concentration of the

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authority to act for the polity as a whole is present in all democracies, even if it is

exercised collectively and only held indirectly accountable to the electorate.

Checks and Balances: It is not necessary that the different branches of

government be systematically pitted against each other and that only decisions

that meet with their concurrent approval can be implemented -- although, again,

governments by assembly, by executive concentration, by judicial command, or

even by dictatorial fiat (as in time of war) must be ultimately accountable to the

citizenry as a whole.25

* * *

All of the above have been considered -- by one theorist or another, or in the

practice of one country or another -- to be essential defining components of

democracy. Instead, they should be recognized either as valuable indicators for

delimiting one or another type of democracy, or as useful standards for

evaluating the performance of one regime or another. To include them as part of

the generic definition of democracy would run the risk of "Americo-centrism," i.e.

of mistaking the American pattern of government for the universal model of

democratic government. Whenever a policy-maker bases his/her case for the

democratic impact of some practice upon any of the above criteria: consensus,

participation, access, responsiveness, majority rule, parliamentary sovereignty,

party government, pluralism, federalism, presidentialism or checks-and-balances,

it should be recognized that he or she is advocating not democracy as such -- but

a particular type of democracy. More to the point, there is no intrinsic reason

why American democratic institutions should be universally preferable -- even

from the point of view of American foreign policy interests. Indeed, there are

some very good reasons for suspecting that the parliamentary, consociational,

unitary, corporatist and concentrated arrangements of continental Europe may

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have some virtues in guiding polities through the difficult and uncertain period of

the transition from autocracy.26

What Democracy is not ...

We have attempted to convey the meaning of modern political democracy,

without identifying it with some particular set of rules and institutions and without

restricting it to some specific culture or level of development. We have not said

much about what democracy is not -- and may not be capable of producing.

There is a real (and quite understandable) temptation to load too many

expectations on this concept and to imagine that just by attaining the exalted

status of democracy all political, social, economic, administrative and cultural

problems will be resolved.

We conclude, therefore, with some brief remarks about what not to expect from

the attainment of democracy:

1. Democracies are not necessarily more economically efficient.

Their rates of aggregate growth, savings and investment may be no

better than those of non-democracies. This is especially likely during

the transition, when propertied groups and/or administrative elites may

respond to imagined, as well as real threats to the "rights" they enjoyed

under autocratic rule by engaging in capital flight, dis-investment,

sabotage, etc. With the persistence of democracy, benevolent

long-term effects upon income distribution, aggregate demand, popular

education, worker productivity and individual creativity should

materialize to improve economic and, especially, social performance,

but it is certainly too much to expect that these improvements will be

immediately forthcoming -- much less that they will be a defining

characteristic of the process of democratization.

ED.Chapter Two.REV

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2. Nor are democracies necessarily more administratively efficient.

Their capacity to take decisions may be slower than the regimes they

replace, if only because more actors must be consulted. The costs

involved in reaching a given objective may be higher, if only because

pay-offs in patronage and exemptions have to be made to a wider and

more resourceful set of clients --although one should never

underestimate the capacity of autocracies for outright corruption within

their ranks. The level of popular satisfaction with policy performance

may not even seem greater, if only because the required compromises

often result in outcomes that are not especially beloved by anyone,

and because the losers are free to complain about how they have been

treated!

3. Democracies are not likely to appear more orderly, consensual or

stable than the autocracies they replace. Partly, this is for the

reason mentioned above: freedom for the expression of conflicting

interests. But it is also a reflection of the likelihood of continuing

disagreement over the newly emergent rules and institutions. These

products of imposition or compromise are often initially quite

ambiguous in nature and uncertain in effect, at least, until actors have

learned how to use and manipulate them. What is more, they come in

the aftermath of serious struggles and high ideals. Groups and

individuals with their recently acquired autonomy are going to test

specific rules, protest against the performance of particular institutions,

and insist on renegotiating their part of the arrangement. Therefore,

the presence of "anti-system parties" should hardly be surprising, nor

should they be taken as proof of a failure at democratic consolidation.

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What counts is less their program or rhetoric than whether they are

willing, however reluctantly, to play according the agreed upon rules of

bounded uncertainty and contingent consent.

4. Democracies may be relatively more open societies and definitely

more open polities that the autocracies they replace, but they are

not necessarily more open economies. Many of today's most

successful and well-established democracies have resorted historically

to protectionism against foreign trade, have closed their borders to

outsiders and have relied extensively upon public institutions for

developmental purposes. The long-term compatibility between

democracy and capitalism is not in doubt -- despite the continuous

tension between the two. What is problematic are the short-term policy

trade-offs involved. For example, it is not clear whether the promotion

of such liberal economic goals as the right of individuals to own

property and retain profits, the clearing function of markets, the private

settlement of disputes and the freedom to produce without government

regulation will also and everywhere contribute to the consolidation of

democracy. After all, democracies do need to levy taxes and they

must regulate the impact of certain market distributions, especially

where private monopolies and oligopolies exist. Citizens or, better,

their representative agents may decide that it is desirable to protect the

rights of collectivities from encroachment by individuals, especially

propertied ones, and they may choose to set aside certain forms of

property for public or cooperative ownership. In short, economic liberty

is not synonymous with political freedom -- and may even impede it.

Sub-Conclusion

ED.Chapter Two.REV

22

So, let us not presume that democratization will necessarily bring economic

growth, social peace, administrative efficiency, political conformity, economic

liberty, "the end of ideology," and, least of all, "the end of history." No doubt,

having some of these qualities would make the consolidation of democracy

easier, but they are neither prerequisites for it, nor immediate products of it.

What we should be looking and hoping for is the emergence of an ensemble of

politicians who respect mutually acceptable rules, can compete with each other

in forming governments and influencing public policy, and have sufficient linkage

to civil society to represent their members/voters and commit them to collective

courses of action. The "Democratic Wager" is that such a regime, once

established, will not only persist by reproducing itself within its initial "confining

conditions", but will eventually expand beyond them.27 Alone among regime

types, democracies have the generic capacity to modify consensually their rules

and institutions in response to changing circumstances. They may not

immediately produce all those desirable public goods mentioned above, but they

do stand a better chance of tackling them eventually than do autocracies.

* * *

An Excursus on Accountability

When we were searching for the most generic and concise definition of

“real-existing democracy” (RED), rather than “ideal-potentially-existing

democracy” (IED), we focused upon the concept of accountability.28 We wanted

a definition that captured the core of its meaning, that was not dependent upon a

specific institution or set of institutions, that was not uniquely liberal or

excessively defensive in its presumptions, that was neither exclusively

procedural nor substantive in its content, and that could travel well across world

TSilva � 4/15/14 5:52 PMComment [1]: p.7-8 – “Piú che sulla transformazione mi pare piú utie al nostro scopo concentrare la nostra riflessione sul divario tra ideali democratic e la «democrazia reale» (espressione che uso nello stesso senso in cui si parla di «socialismo reale»).”

ED.Chapter Two.REV

23

cultural regions. None of those in widespread use in the burgeoning literature on

democratization fit our admittedly demanding bill of particulars, especially not the

so-called Schumpeterian definition or the many versions derived from it.29 All of

these focused too single-mindedly on the regular conduct of a particular

institution, i.e. elections that offered citizens a choice between competing sets of

rulers and a subsequent opportunity to get rid of those they had previously

chosen. Moreover, these definitions seemed to presume that whoever was

elected remained accountable to those who did the electing and that those

competing with each other must have offered different programmatic alternatives

to citizens.30

Indeed, many of the more theoretically inclined scholars who relied on

such a ‘minimalist’ definition seemed embarrassed in doing so and excused

themselves by arguing that, even though elections are not the only manifestation

of democracy, their presence is easy to measure (even to dichotomize!) and/or

that alternative, so-called substantive definitions of “it” are subject to partisan

manipulation. We were all too aware that some alternative specifications have

indeed been calculatedly “unrealistic” – i.e. they stipulated conditions of citizen

equality in resources, access or benefits that no “real-existing” polity had ever

satisfied. However useful these may be in setting standards by which self-

proclaimed democracies should be judged normatively, they were not going to be

useful for the task that we had assigned ourselves, namely, to assess the extent

to which a given polity had managed to consolidate a regime that merited the

prestigious appellation of “modern political democracy.”31

ED.Chapter Two.REV

24

Although this definition has been cited with respectable frequency, it has

also met with responses ranging from indifference to hostility. To the former, the

emphasis on accountability must have seemed irrelevant or redundant. These

critics presumed, as does much of the literature, that the mere holding of regular

and honestly conducted elections in which all adult citizens are equally eligible to

participate provides “the” most reliable and effective mechanism through which

citizens can hold their rulers accountable. With Schumpeterian simplicity, all they

have to do is leave their rulers alone once they have been chosen and, then,

switch to an alternative set whose program is more in accord with their

preferences if they do not like what their rulers have delivered. When asked why

it is that citizens seem to spend a lot of time and energy on supporting other

kinds of representatives who do not stand for territorial constituencies (and who

are rarely chosen by competitive elections), e.g. from interest associations and

social movements, or even on acting individually between elections in order to

get “their” elected rulers to conform to their preferences, the answer would

presumably be that this is of minor importance and, even if not, it is contingent

upon the outcome of “free and fair elections.” When asked about how citizens

expect to hold accountable the numerous (and growing) set of non-elected but

delegated “guardians” whose actions determine in large part whether their

interests/passions are realized, the answer would be equally unsatisfactory –

namely, that their elected representatives grouped in a parliament will take care

of holding these guardians accountable.

ED.Chapter Two.REV

25

To the latter, i.e. those readers hostile to the very notion of placing

accountability at the center of such a definition of democracy, the source of

objection differed more significantly. To epistemological positivists, the concept

seemed too abstract and vague to be quantifiable and, therefore, not worth being

taken into consideration – especially, when something much more concrete and

observable (the holding of contested elections) was readily available. To political

conservatives, accountability must have smelled of “mandated representation” in

which those elected would be held to strict citizen-imposed limits on their

subsequent behavior (and, horror of all horrors, recalled if they failed to do so).

Those in positions of authority would lose their requisite autonomy for

determining what was good for the polity as a whole and for resisting the

momentary impulses of the populous. If necessary, the wise Edmund Burke

could always be cited to this effect.

Needless to say, none of these objections convinced us at the time. And

the subsequent literature seems to have vindicated our skepticism. In the

ensuing years there has been a veritable explosion of scholarly concern with the

notion of political accountability, not to mention such cognate concepts as

“corporate social responsibility” and “community responsiveness.” Predictably, in

a perfect illustration of why strict positivist operationalism is so sterile in the social

sciences, once a concept has been identified and accorded a certain theoretical

or even practical priority, analysts focus more and more critical attention upon its

meaning(s) and begin to provide an increasingly secure basis for its

measurement.

ED.Chapter Two.REV

26

Searching for a Definition

Accountability is first a relationship between two sets of actors (actually,

most of it is played out not between individuals, but between organizations) in

which the former accepts to inform the other, explain or justify his or her actions

and submit to any pre-determined sanctions that the latter may impose.

Meanwhile, the latter who/that have become subject to the command of the

former, must also provide required information, explain how they are obeying or

not obeying the formers’ commands and accept the consequences for what they

have done or not done. In short, when it works, accountability involves a mutual

exchange of responsibilities and potential sanctions between citizens and rulers,

made all the more complicated by the fact that in between the two are usually a

varied and competitive set of representatives. Needless to say, there are many

caveats, loose linkages and role reversals in this relationship, so that its product

is almost always contested. Information can be selective and skewed (“sexed up”

seems to be the current expression); justifications and explanations can be

deflected to other actors (“The IMF made me do it”); sanctions are rarely applied

and can be simply ignored (“Who are you to question and threaten my …?).

Most importantly, as Andreas Schedler has pointed out, in the real world this

relationship typically involves “recursive cycles of mutual accountability,” rather

than a simple, linear and self-exhausting event.32

Second, the subject matter of accountability can be quite varied: ethical

behavior, financial probity, social esteem, sexual relations, functional

interdependence, familial obligation, patriotic duty, etc., but the distinctive type

ED.Chapter Two.REV

27

that interests us is political accountability, i.e. that which may accompany the

exercise of asymmetric power. Needless to say, all of the above may enter into

the political equation in the form of promises and payoffs, but the core question in

terms of democratic theory is how to tame and to exploit the coercive power of

specific institutions, especially the permanent institutions of a regime that

exercises a putative monopoly of the legitimate use of that power over a given

population and within a given territory, i.e. a modern state.33

Third, all stable political regimes probably have some predictable form of

accountability to some type of constituency. Sultanistic autocracies have their

coteries and cadres. Military dictatorships have their juntas and complex

arrangements for resolving the conflicts between the different armed services.

Even absolute monarchies were supposed to be accountable to God – not to

mention more earthly dynastic and marital concerns. What democracy has that

these do not is citizens – a constituency presumably covering the entire country

and populated (these days) by all adult persons – minus some legal and illegal

foreign residents, prisoners and ex-felons and/or mental patients. Moreover, in

terms of political accountability, each citizen has the same rights and obligations,

i.e. to be informed about prospective actions, to hear the justification for them

and to make a judgment about how they were performed. What makes their role

increasingly complex is that they have had to rely more and more upon

specialized representatives, i.e. on agents who in turn act as principals when it

comes to ensuring accountability of elected or appointed rulers. If this were not

complex enough, these very same representative agent/principals may be been

ED.Chapter Two.REV

28

ruling agents in the past and probably aspire to be so in the future! Meanwhile,

citizens who started out as principals in this arrangement subsequently become

agents themselves when they are obliged to conform to decisions they may have

opposed or not even known about.34

Fourth, as fiendishly complex as it is, political accountability has to be

institutionalized if it is to work effectively, i.e. it has to be embedded in a stable,

mutually understood and pre-established set of rules. Some of these may be

formalized in a constitution, in basic legal codes or in sworn oaths, but political

accountability is not the same as legal, financial or ethical accountability. Rulers

can be investigated and held to account for actions that did not transgress the

law or result in personal enrichment or violate common mores. They may have

simply made bad political choices that failed to produce their intended effect or

cost vastly more than initially announced. And rulers can even be held

accountable for not making a good or a bad choice – just for having failed to act

after promising to do so as a condition for getting elected or selected. Similarly,

citizens can be held responsible by their rulers for what they have done or not

done – provided the rules were taken by previously established consent.

Finally, it should be noted that political accountability is not only negative.

Citizens in a democracy – or their representatives – do not normally desire to

“throw the rascals out.” This form of government does offer regular and periodic

occasions when this can be done peacefully, although in parliamentary systems

the opportunities are more irregular and dispersed. Moreover, regardless of the

executive-legislative format, rulers have a considerable array of mechanisms to

ED.Chapter Two.REV

29

defend themselves against such an eventuality. More frequently, the exchange

of information, justification and judgment is unobtrusive and citizens reward (or,

at least, tolerate) rather than punish their rulers. Hence, it would be completely

inappropriate to use manifest incidents of electoral turnover, loss of a vote of

confidence, impeachment of a president, resignation of a minister, or removal

from office due to scandal as positive indicators for the efficacy of political

accountability. In all likelihood, the rulers who are most accountable are those

who are never threatened with such measures. They have so internalized the

expectations of those they are ruling that they have nothing to fear from

accountability; indeed, it gives them greater legitimacy when they have to act

against immediate popular opinion.35

Finding Political Mechanisms to Ensure Accountability

The orthodox answer, we have seen, is quite simple – so much so that

most democratic theorists regard it as unproblematic: “free, fair and regular

conducted elections.” Needless to say, these scholars are usually not so naive

as to believe that the mere holding of regularly conducted elections and the

honest tabulation of votes are sufficient. Fortunately, REDs have several other

mechanisms to monitor and, occasionally, to sanction the exchange between

citizens and rulers via their representatives. Let us search for these by exploring

the three ‘metaphorical’ dimensions that have surrounded recent discussions of

accountability.

Space

ED.Chapter Two.REV

30

By far the most common dimension has been spatial. In the classic liberal

account, the triad of citizens, representatives and rulers are connected vertically

in an order that begins with individual citizens at the bottom, who are grouped

together in various forms of collective action (of which parties, elections and

territorial constituencies are only one) that empower and constrain governing

agents and agencies at the top. In turn, the process flows downward through

multiple channels of public authority, delegated responsibility to intermediary

representatives and, eventually, the voluntary compliance of individuals, families

and firms. Needless to say, there can be short circuits in the up and down

exchange when citizens address demands directly to their rulers and when rulers

impose their commands directly upon their citizens – but the metaphor remains

constant, with or without the intervening representatives.

Some of the other vertical mechanisms are complements to the most

visible, i.e. the electoral, one. Referendums, initiatives and recalls may or may

not follow lines of cleavage organized around political parties, but they would

hardly be effective without the periodic (and more-or-less predictable) occurrence

of elections. It is their “shadow” that determines whether these popular

consultations will be held and (usually) whether their results will be effective.

Elections themselves can be held at various levels and at different times in

federal or de-centralized polities – just as by-elections can insert an additional

interim element of accountability in more unified ones. 36 Representative

organizations can also have their own elections, e.g. primaries in parties and

leadership contests in associations, and their results can be utilized by members

ED.Chapter Two.REV

31

to improve the process of vertical accountability. What is more problematic in

interpretation is the enormous proliferation of ‘passive’ vertical consultations

undertaken by rulers and representatives via survey research, focus group

analysis and exit polling.37 On the positive side, these devices greatly improve

the information available concerning citizen preferences and may be used

constructively by politicians to orient their behavior accordingly. Elections are

notoriously poor in information content, especially when (as usual) they involve

multiple issues of uncertain salience to voters. Retrospective interpretations of

them can be very inaccurate and, thereby, distort vertical accountability in both

directions. On the negative side, all this passive information-gathering by rulers

and representatives can be exploited to produce symbolic and misleading

responses. Instead of learning what to do, politicians learn what not to say and

how to obfuscate what they are doing.

Citizens and rulers are not confined only to interacting indirectly and

vertically through their respective representatives. The former can demonstrate

in various unconventional ways (although usually party, association and/or

movement leaders are involved in organizing these events); the latter can

tolerate, listen to and even react to the content of such demonstrations. Also,

rulers can organize their own (counter-) demonstrations or, anticipating their

likelihood, they can address the issues beforehand in a form of ‘pre-emptive’

representation.

To this vertical spatial dimension, liberal advocates of democracy have

added a horizontal one, based on the interaction between agencies within the

ED.Chapter Two.REV

32

state according to pre-established constitutional or legal rules. Strictly speaking,

these “separations of power” and subsequent “checks and balances” are not

democratic. They can even be invoked to trump the vertical connection between

rulers and citizens. Their historical origin lies in aristocracy – in the pre-

democratic efforts by local notables to curb the autocratic powers of the

sovereign king and they are the contemporary embodiment of one of the oldest

principles of political prudence, namely, the desirability of “mixed regimes.” It is

argued that vertical accountability alone would be unstable, i.e. subject to short-

term swings in public enthusiasm, and dangerous, i.e. susceptible to domination

by tyrannical majorities. To countermand these tendencies, REDs need

institutions that are not based on the preferences of citizens, competition

between political representatives or popularly accountable rulers. In other words,

all contemporary REDs should be (and are) mixed regimes with rules embedded

by previous generations in their respective constitutions or basic laws that

guarantee the autonomous powers of non-democratic institutions in order to limit

the exercise of vertical accountability.

The mechanisms of this horizontal accountability are multiple and there is

evidence to support the observation that they have considerably increased in

variety and authority in recent decades. The most venerable is an independent

judiciary with powers of constitutional/legal review. There is nothing

“democratic” about a Supreme Court that rules against a piece of legislation that

is supported by most citizens, drafted and passed by normal legislative

procedures and approved by executive institutions – and, yet, such actions have

ED.Chapter Two.REV

33

routinely been accepted as legitimate in some (but not all) REDs. Moreover,

these high courts have been supplemented with more specialized ones dealing

with human rights, racism, labor relations and the conduct of elections – not

mention such American bizarries as grand juries, special counsels and class

action suits. Such a process of juridification may have beneficial effect –

especially where the rule of law is precarious – but they impinge on matters that

democratic institutions should be resolving, no matter how inefficiently or

inconclusively.

Similarly, the checks and balances (“veto points” in the current jargon)

exercised by legislative and executive agents representing different

constituencies may permit relatively small (and often highly privileged) minorities

to block measures that enjoy widespread citizen support. And the list of such

potential mechanisms of horizontal intervention has lengthened and diversified.

Autonomous Central Banks can ignore a popular government’s request to lower

interest rates in order to raise employment levels. General Staffs of the Armed

Forces and Intelligence Agencies in league with small (and secretive) factions

within executive agencies can declare wars or national emergencies without the

approval of elected representatives. And other non-electorally accountable

institutions have emerged to intervene in the classical executive-legislative-

judicial triangle by empowering actions by so called “outside” and “disinterested”

experts, e.g. auditing agencies and inspectorate generals.38 Various regulatory

commissions, licensing authorities and expert bodies within the public

administration can issue binding regulations with extensive effects on the

ED.Chapter Two.REV

34

citizenry under powers vaguely delegated to them by previous legislatures. Even

more problematic from the perspective of vertical democratic authorization are

the powers allocated by international treaties to regional and global organizations

that are not themselves subject to citizen approval or scrutiny. One can, of

course, argue that most of such delegations are functionally and temporally

imperative in the complex, multi-layered, interdependent and accelerated context

(viz. globalization) in which contemporary polities are compelled to operate – but

this does not make them any more democratic.

These national and supra-national “guardians,” to use the expression

coined by Robert Dahl, have proliferated to the extent that REDs have been

accused of having been so deprived of policy content that they are no longer

capable of responding to changes in the preferences of citizens. 39 Their

mechanisms can make it impossible for popularly elected legislatures or

executives to change national policies – even when ‘free and fair’ elections have

produced partisan rotations in the government in power. Mixed regimes filled

with guardian agencies, veto players and restricted agendas may be necessary

to protect contemporary national REDs from their own potential excesses and

inefficiencies, but will they still be able to extract political legitimacy from such

questionably democratic practices?

To these two spatial referents, I have suggested adding a third, namely,

oblique accountability. This would be exercised by diverse organizations in civil

society that do not (at least, not overtly) nominate candidates and compete in

elections, but are capable of mobilizing citizens (and sometimes denizens) to

ED.Chapter Two.REV

35

defend their interests and passions in the political process. This collective action

is much more continuous and insidious in the sense that they seek access

independently of the electoral cycle and at all sites where “authoritative

allocations” are made. 40 They tend to be permanently organized and

professionally staffed which can give them unique capacities to gather data and

exercise influence in highly specialized policy arenas. Politicians are held

accountable not so much because of the votes that these organizations can

deliver as for their indispensable information, financial support, threat of

disruption, and/or capacity to ensure conformity to policy goals. Unfortunately

from the perspective of normative democratic theory, their ability to deliver such

public goods is highly unequal.41 Unlike the putative equality of the voting act,

the “real existing” associations and movements of civil society are much better at

promoting some interests and passions than others. Or, as E.E. Schattschneider

put it so cogently, “The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus

sings with a strong upper class accent.”42

The civil societies of most REDs are still in expansion – despite some

alarmist noises about “bowling alone” in the United States.43 Their coverage of

interests and passions varies considerably according to the pluralist or

corporatist nature of their system of intermediation, but everywhere it is skewed

in favor of particular classes, sectors and professions, and specific “causes.”

The smaller and more concentrated the category of interested ‘stakeholders,’ the

greater is its likelihood of effective self-organization (viz. “the domination of

special interests”). The more intense and focused the source of passionate

TSilva � 4/3/14 2:19 PMComment [2]: “The flaw in the pluralist heavens that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent” p.35

ED.Chapter Two.REV

36

concern, the greater is the probability of its mobilizing followers (viz. “single-issue

movements”). The oblique role of such an inevitably skewed civil society is,

therefore, not a substitute for the potentially equal contribution of citizens

exercising vertical accountability, but it has become a very important complement

to it. Moreover, the associations and movements that compose it can be of

crucial importance in informing and supporting those state agencies involved in

activating the checks and balances of horizontal accountability.

Time

No one can deny that democracy of whatever type has its distinctive

rhythms, tempos, timings and sequences. Elections, popular mobilizations,

policy cycles, public attention spans and even the popularity of politicians follow

more-or-less predictable patterns over time once the regime has been

consolidated – even if their coincidences occasionally produce exciting moments

of fortuna and induce acts of unexpected virtù. Simplifying greatly, one can

distinguish a relatively lengthy period of proposing, discussing and agenda-

setting (the ex ante in Figure One below), a more compressed moment during

which a decision is made via interest alliances, inter-agency bargaining,

executive-legislative transactions and eventual ratification by vote (the dum in

Figure One) and, finally, a long drawn out process whereby the proposal – now a

law or regulation – is implemented, produces its intended and unintended effects

and may be reviewed by courts or become a matter of wider political controversy

(the ex post in Figure One). The implication of highlighting the temporal rather

than the spatial dimension is that what determines the outcome of “recursive

ED.Chapter Two.REV

37

cycles of mutual accountability” may be more a matter of when than where, i.e.

at what point in the process of making binding decisions specific actors –

whether principals or agents or both – enter into political contention rather than

whether they are located vertically, horizontally or even obliquely in pre-

established networks. Needless to say, I cannot prove this “intuition.” I can only

build upon it and discover later if it is more fruitful in explaining outcomes than

the more usual spatial metaphor.44

Figure One:

The Generic Properties of Succesful Accountability:

Time x Actors

Actors/Time Ex Ante Dum Ex Post Citizens Participation

Attention Obligation

Representatives Mobilization

Competition Compliance

Rulers Accessibility

Deliberation Responsiveness

In Figure One, we have cross-tabulated the temporal aspect of the

decision-making process with the type of actor whose behavior is being

evaluated and, thereby, generated nine criteria for describing and evaluating a

successful accountability sequence.

The most “classic” one is probably that in the upper-left hand corner:

participation. It has long been presumed that the more that citizens participate

actively in the “decision to make a decision,” i.e. in the discussion about whether

a decision should be made, what should be on the agenda and who should be

ED.Chapter Two.REV

38

involved in making the decision, the more attention they will pay to the

subsequent process and the more likely they will feel an obligation to conform

with what will eventually be decided – even if they opposed the decision itself.

Representatives in the ex ante phase will presumably play a key role in collective

mobilization, both by surveying the attitudes of their supporters/members/voters

and by informing them of what may be at stake. During the making of a decision,

they will enter into a competition under pre-established rules with

representatives from other parties, associations and movements to influence its

substance and, even if they are unsuccessful in doing so, they should be willing

to accept the result as fair and try to evoke the compliance of their

supporters/members/voters. Following a similar logic, the more that rulers

provide accessibility to the greatest number and widest variety of individual

citizens or organizations from civil society, the higher will be the level of

information that they will carry into their more restricted deliberations and the

greater will be the likelihood that the decisions they eventually take will be

responsive to the interests and passions of citizens and their representatives.

Note that these criteria are not functionally or necessarily interrelated.

Rulers can gain access to relatively passive and disorganized citizens (for

example, via informal soundings, survey research or focus groups) and active

and well-organized citizens can participate in “unconventional” ways that do not

involve being granted formal access (for example, by demonstrating against the

lack of access). The active participation of individuals in the initial phase may not

be a guarantee of their subsequent interest in a particular issue and they may

ED.Chapter Two.REV

39

feel no obligation to conform once the decision has been made and is being

implemented. Representatives are in a particularly ambiguous position since

they have, on the one hand, to mobilize their followers if they are to compete

effectively for influence over the decision, but, on the other hand, after it has

been ratified the rulers will expect them to deliver the compliance of these very

same people – even if their influence has been marginal. Should they fail to do

so, i.e. act as a disloyal opposition, they risk being excluded from future decision-

making.

Figure Two:

The Generic Properties of Failed Accountability:

Time x Actors

Figure Two simply inverts the previous matrix in an effort to capture what

qualities might emerge if the process of political accountability were to go wrong.

There is no reason to provide any detail about these negative criteria. They are

merely intended to capture the reverse of those discussed above. Their

importance would only become more evident when empirically minded scholars

attempt to deal with the thorny issue of measurement since accountability seems

to be one of those political concepts, like legitimacy, that usually becomes

Actors/Time Ex Ante Dum Ex Post

Citizens Absention

Indifference Resentment

Representatives Mobilization (against)

Obstruction Resistance

Rulers Exclusion

Collusion Imposition

ED.Chapter Two.REV

40

apparent only when it does not exist or is practiced badly. When it works well,

nothing seems to be happening and one can arrive at the false conclusion that it

makes no contribution to improving the qualities of democracy!

Concluding with a Frustration

If nothing else, the preceding discussion of accountability should have

demonstrated that the concept has a very complex and “tricky” structure. For

one thing, some of its positive properties may be incompatible with each other or,

at the very least, involve complex tradeoffs. High levels of individual participation

may not be so benevolently linked to subsequent attention and sense of

obligation. Citizens may tire after their passionate advocacy of causes and

subsequently blame representatives and authorities unjustifiably for the inevitable

compromises they had to make during and after the decision-making process.

Rulers may be accessible to the widest possible range of individual and collective

expressions of interest, but not take them into account when they start

deliberating seriously and implementing their decisions authoritatively. Even

more commonly, persons in positions of authority – whether elected or selected –

may honestly be convinced that they have done their best to be responsive to

citizen preferences, only to discover that citizens did not really want what they

said they wanted or have changed their minds in the meantime. Democratic and

accountable politicians very frequently have to take risks of this sort and follow

courses of action that are not immediately popular, with the calculation that once

the effects are experienced the citizenry will have learned to accept them. The

inference we draw from this is that the scores on the 9 x 9 variables in Figures

ED.Chapter Two.REV

41

One and Two are very unlikely to produce a single scale of accountability. The

most one should expect are distinctive clusters of scores that will generate types

(or, better, profiles) of accountability that might be equally effective or defective in

different social, cultural, institutional or historical contexts.

For another thing, reflection suggests that the relation of many of these

variables to accountability may not be linear and incremental. Officials may be

so accessible that they only manage to arrive at a decision when it is too late to

resolve the problem. Representatives may over-mobilize their followers and

raise expectations beyond realistic possibility. They may also compete so

strongly with each other and be so balanced in their efforts pro- and con- that a

tiny and quite unrepresentative minority may determine the outcome –

undermining both responsiveness and compliance. The lesson I have gleaned

from this reflection is that, one should be attentive to the probability that there will

be curvilinear, even parabolic, relations with the actual performance of REDs.

There may even be bizarre “kinks” due to peculiar sequences or unique

combinations.

All of which means that moving beyond theoretical speculation to data gathering and hypothesis

testing will be a daunting task. But it will be worth the effort. We hope that we have convinced the

reader that relying on a single indicator of accountability – the holding of free, fair and regular elections

– was always unsatisfactory and is becoming less so under contemporary conditions. Regardless of

the perspective – spatial, temporal or actor-defined – other mechanisms are involved and in REDs they

may not be correlated with each other. We doubt very much if the multiple indicators that are needed to

capture its complex dimensionality can be eventually collapsed into a single indicator that can reliably

ED.Chapter Two.REV

42

and validly tell us whether a given polity is more democratically accountable than another. The best we

may have to settle for is that some types of REDs are differently accountable than others.

Which is going to make it difficult to test what we think is the most important hypothesis

embedded in the literature, namely, that the more accountable a real-existing democracy is, the

higher will be the quality of its performance. No REDs will ever reach the level of perfection implied

by normative democratic theories, but it would be nice to be able to document how close any one of

them has come.

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* ENDNOTES: CHAPTER TWO *

1. See Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971). 2 Although it seems prudent to q ualify it by inserting “real-existing” before democracy to stress how different the actual product is from its ideological principles. origins 3. Compare, for example, the definition provided by Guillermo O"Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead in their Transitions from Authoritiarian Rule, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), Vol 4., pp. 7,8 with that in Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset (eds.), Democracy in Developing Countries, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Reiner Publishers, 1988-89), Volume Four, pp. preface XVI. 4. Numerous attempts have been made to codify and quantify the existence of democracy across political systems. The best known is probably Raymond D. Gastil, Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties, existent since 1973, previously published by Greenwood Press and, since 1988, by University Press of America. Also, see Charles Humana, World Human Rights Guide (New York: Facts on File, 1986) and United States Government, Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (Washington, D.C.: GPO, various dates). As the titles imply, these do not -- strictly speaking -- focus on democracy and its processes, but on its procedural requisites. Bollen, K. A. (1980). Issues in the comparative measurement of political democracy. American Sociological Review, pp. 370-390. 5. The definition most commonly used by American social scientists is that of Joseph Schumpeter: "that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote". Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1943), p. 269. The definition proposed here accepts certain aspects of this classic "elitist" or "procedural" approach to modern democracy, but differs primarily in its emphasis on the accountability of rulers to citizens and the relevance of mechanisms of competition other than elections. We prefer to think of it as “processual” rather than a “procedural.” 6 A ‘Real-existing’ Democracy (RED) has only three lexical characteristics:

(1) it calls itself democratic; (2) it is recognized by other self-proclaimed

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democracies as being “one of them;” and (3) most political scientists applying

standard procedural criteria would code it as democratic. Its relationship to

democracy as advocated in theory or as described in many civics texts is

coincidental. All REDs are the product of a complex sequence of historical

compromises with such other ideas and practices as liberalism, socialism,

monarchism, and, of course, capitalism. They are certainly not governments “of”

or “by” the people, as is implied by the etymology of the generic term. It is even

debatable whether many of them are governments “for” the people.

7 “The Future of Democracy: Could it be a Matter of Scale?” Social

Research, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Fall 1999). 8. In the West, only the Portuguese Revolution of 1974 attempted to bring about a simultaneous transformation in political and socioeconomic structures. This lasted only about a year and a half. In the subsequent 10 years, much of that country's political evolution has been devoted to removing the effects of initially trying to implant an economic, as well as a political democracy. In Eastern Europe, simultaneous transformations have been the norm, not the exception, but they have moved in directions opposite to economic or industrial democracy: away from collective ownership, state planning and social equality towards privatization, market mechanisms and increased disparities in individual effort and return. 9 A ‘Real-existing’ Democracy (or RED in our terminology) has three

characteristics: (1) it calls itself democratic; (2) it is recognized by other self-

proclaimed democracies as being “one of them;” and (3) most political scientists

applying standard procedural criteria would code it as democratic.

Its relationship to democracy as advocated in theory or as described in

many civics texts is coincidental. All REDs are the product of a complex

sequence of historical compromises with such other ideas and practices as

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liberalism, socialism, monarchism, and, of course, capitalism. They are certainly

not governments “of” or “by” the people, as is implied by the etymology of the

generic term. They are “governments by and of politicians” who may or may not

be held accountable by citizens. It is even debatable whether many of REDs

have governments “for” the people. However, in the immortal words of Winston

Churchill, they are still more “of, by and for the people” than all alternative forms

of government.

10. Some countries practice a stable form of democracy without a formal constitution. Even more countries have constitutions and legal codes that offer no guarantee of reliable practice. On paper, Stalin's 1936 constitution for the USSR was a model of democratic rights and entitlements. 11. For the most valiant attempt to make some sense out of this thicket of distinctions, see Juan Linz, "Totalitarian, Authoritarian Regimes" in Handbook of Political Science, eds. Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby (Reading, Mass.: Addision Wesley, 1975), pp. 175-411. 12. This implies that measures aimed at "developing the private sector" are no more intrinsically democratic than those aimed at "developing the public sector". 13. An interesting example of an anachronistic definition of citizenship is that of Kuwait in which only "1st class males" were allowed to vote in the country's first parliamentary election on October 5, 1992. The likliehood that this could occur outside of the Middle East, however, seems fairly low. 14. "Publius" (Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison), The Federalist Papers, originally published in 1788. The quote is from Number 10. 15. At the extreme, the mere presence of elections -- even ones from which specific parties or candidacies are excluded or in which substantial portions of the population cannot freely participate -- is both a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of democracy. This fallacy has been called "electoralism" or "the faith that merely holding elections will channel political action into peaceful contests among elites and accord public legitimacy to the winners" -- no matter how they are conducted or what else constrains those who win them. Terry Karl, "Imposing Consent? Electoralism versus Democratization in El Salvador", in Paul Drake and Eduardo Silva (eds.), Elections and

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Democratization in Latin America, 1980-1985 (San Diego: Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, University of California, 1986), pp. 9-36. 16. Reference to Stein Rokkan Norway: Numerical democracy and corporate pluralism”.in: Dahl, Robert A. (ed.) Political Oppositions in Western Democracy. New Haven: Yale U.P., 1966 check in library No. 329.02094) and Otto Kirchheimer “Confining conditions and revolutionary breakthroughs,”.American Political Science Review, 59(04), 1965, pp. 964-974. 17. See Jane Mansbridge, Beyond Adversarial Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 1980). 18. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols., first published in French in 1835-40 and in English in 1835-40. 19. This fear of overloaded government and the imminent collapse of democracy is well (one might even say, excessively) reflected in the work of Samuel P. Huntington during the 1970s. See, especially, Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 1975). For Huntington's (much revised) thoughts about the prospects for democracy, see his "Will More Countries Become Democratic?" Political Science Quarterly, 99 (2), pp. 193-218. 20. Robert Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 11. 21. Especially in his Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 3 where "the right of political leaders to compete for support and votes" and "institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions for preference" are included. See also John D. May, "Defining Democracy: A Bid for Coherence and Consensus", Political Studies 26, 1 (1978), pp. 1-14. 22. For an excellent discussion of the variety of ways in which military establishments have managed to hang on to power in Latin America despite regime change from autocracy to democracy, see Felipe Agüero, "The Military and the Limits to Democratization in South America," in Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O'Donnell and J. Samuel Valenzuela (eds.), Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 153-98. 23. After the Revolution: Authority in a Good Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), p. (in library No. 309.173)

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24. Note, however, the relatively demanding constraints within which these mechanisms are expected to operate: (1) winners, regardless of their margin of superiority, must forego the temptation to exercise hegemony, i.e. to convert momentary advantage into permanent domination; (2) they must also not unilaterally implement irreversible policies whose effect will persist even if they have been removed from office; (3) and losers must be willing to exercise patience, i.e. to wait their institutionally prescribed turn to compete, even if their needs are immediate. In practice, this not only seriously limits the range of possible policies, but it usually involves some arrangements for power-sharing -- either among levels of territorial aggregation or agencies of functional activity. 25 The attentive (and critical) reader will have noticed the absence of two concepts that figure very prominently in both the discourse and the aspirations of those struggling for democracy of whatever type, namely, freedom and liberty. We concede its rhetorical importance but contest its utility in defining democracy – beyond the civic and procedural rights stressed by Robert Dahl and many others. The extraordinary diversity of meanings attached to both of these terms, e.g. the freedom from vs. the freedom to, the liberty to own vs. the liberty not to be owned, the freedom of a majority vs. the freedom of a minority, the liberty to produce vs. the liberty to be protected, e così via, has led us not to include them. Democracy certainly has implications for how citizens perceive and exercise freedoms and liberties, but they are hardly uniform or even compatible with each other. 26. Cf. Juan Linz, "The Perils of Presidentialism", Journal of Democracy (Winter 1990), pp. 51-69 and the ensuing discussion by Donald Horowitz, Seymour Martin Lipset and Juan Linz in Journal of Democracy (Fall 1990), pp. 73-91. Arend Lijphart has been indefatigable in the advocacy of "European-style" solutions for neo-democracies elsewhere. See his "The Southern European Examples of Democratization: Six Lessons for Latin America," Government and Opposition, Vol. 25, No. 1, (Winter 1990), pp. 68-84; "The World Shops for a Ballot Box: A Comparative Perspective on Redemocratization," Political Science & International Studies, (October 1991), pp. 12-15; "Constitutional Choices for New Democracies," in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (eds.), The Global Resurgence of Democracy, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 146-58. 27. Cf. Otto Kirchheimer, "Confining Conditions and Revolutionary Breakthroughs," American Political Science Review, Vol. LIX, No. 1, (December, 1965), pp. 964-974. 28 Norberto Bobbio seems to have been the first to have made this distinction between la democrazia reale and la democrazia ideale.: Il futuro della democrazia. Giulio Einaudi editore, Torino, 1984.).

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29 His oft-quoted definition is “(Democracy is) that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote” Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. (New York: Harper Perennial, 1950), " p. 269. It is not clear whether those scholars who use this “minimalist”and “elitist” definition are aware of the context in which it is inserted where Schumpeter expressed great pessimism about whether citizens in modern capitalist democracies could have any other effective means of holding their leaders accountable. They could only vote periodically and then hope for the best until the next election. 30 Reference to Dahl’s point (Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy ??) 31 Much of the theorizing about REDs by empirically inclined scholars seems to consist in the invention of justifications for institutions and practices that would be dubiously democratic from an IPED perspective. Citizens do not have to be politically active; indeed, it would be irrational for them to do so. Rulers should not be too accountable to citizens or they would lack the functional autonomy necessary to perform their role. Interest associations should not perfect agents for their citizen principals or they would be too internally divided to exercise influence on their behalf. Parties should position themselves in order to please the median voter, rather than to promote an alternative program of government. E così via. 32 Andreas Schedler, “Conceptualizing Accountability,” in L. Diamond, M.F. Plattner & A. Schedler (eds,), The Self-Restraining State. Politics and Accountability in New Democracies (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 1999), pp.13-29.) 33 One of the peculiar features of virtually all of the recent discussions about political accountability is its lop-sided emphasis on limiting the power of state authorities. This is a marked feature of liberal democratic thought which is single-mindedly concerned with the prospect of tyranny (and justifiably so), but it does not excuse the almost complete lack of attention to the equally democratic concern with mobilizing the power of citizens to overcome the entrenched privileges of aristocracies or oligarchies. Rulers in a democracy, in other words, should be held accountable not just for misusing power for their own benefit, but also for not using it for the benefit of the citizenry. 34 Much of the recent literature on accountability makes heavy use of the “principal/agent problem” without any sensitivity to these switches in status in the course of the political process. Citizens are only and always the “principals” and rulers are only and always the “agents.” The crucial intervening role of representatives is almost never recognized (or else representatives and rulers are fused into a single actor/agent). When it comes to empirical analysis, the

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usual econometric estimations (often with dodgy data across a large number of incomparable units) commit egregious fallacies of inference from the individual all the way to the societal unit. 35 This may help to explain a puzzle raised by Andreas Schedler. Why do rulers willingly enter into a relation of accountability with their citizen/subjects? From the naked perspective of self-interest, they should do everything to avoid it – especially if they are powerful, unified and cynical, and the populous is weak, dispersed, ill-informed and probably rather credulous. The simple answers are either habit formation or law-abidingness. Rulers when they were previously citizens or representatives were socialized to expect such a political relationship or to respect the constitution. Neither of these is convincing in the case of a neo-democracy since rulers will have been socialized to expect the opposite under the ancien régime. Another possibility is that the international environment (at the present moment) supports accountable rulers and punishes non-accountable ones. But are these mechanisms of diffusion and reward strong and predictable enough? I am more convinced by two distinctively political micro-foundations: (1) respecting, even anticipating accountability to citizens increases one’s legitimacy when comes the inevitable moment for taking unpopular decisions; and (2) accepting accountability builds up a set of expectations among citizens that will limit the range of policy options available to one’s successor. 36 In the case of the member states of the European Union, these ‘supplements’ are supra- and not just sub-national. Indeed, the fact that so-called “secondary elections” to the European Parliament have been producing increasingly divergent outcomes from national “primary elections” has become a growing embarrassment to rulers. When one combines these elections with sub-national elections due to intra-national devolution to regions, provinces and “Estados Autonómicos,” the sheer number of electoral opportunities available to the citizens of Europe in different constituencies has increased quite significantly, which may be interpreted as increasing the degree of ruler accountability – however difficult it may be to interpret these “multi-layered” events. 37 There have even been rumors to the effect that brain-scanning has been used to measure instinctual reactions to various political stimuli. 38 The diffusion of Ombudsmen offices is more unambiguously democratic in that it provides citizens and associations with a vertical channel of direct access to rulers. Admittedly, these agencies usually act in a horizontal fashion to extract information, produce justifications and sanction actions by other state agencies. 39 Robert A. (Dahl, R. Democracy and its critics. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989.

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40 One of the most astonishing features of recent work by American political scientists on accountability is not only its single-minded focus on elections, but also its assumption that parliaments are the exclusive site at which binding decisions are made. The “discretion” of administrative agencies and “delegated powers” of guardian institutions – not to mention in some cases, the “decretismo” of elected executives – goes unmentioned. 41 Actually this “handicap” of oblique accountability raises an important issue in normative democratic theory. According to the orthodox perspective, strict political equality is what is expected of citizens. They all should have the same right and opportunity (some would even say, duty) to participate in the making of all decisions, regardless of how much these decisions might affect them or how interested they might be in the issues involved. In practice, REDs not only recognize but institutionalize all sorts of arrangements that reflect the fact that citizens do have quite different intensities of preference. Through apportionment of constituencies, weighting of votes, selective means of access, quotas of admission and other proportional allocations, some citizens are deliberately (if often informally) privileged over others. Categories of them, such as religious or linguistic minorities, are protected from numerical domination by granting them specific collective rights. Cabinets, executive boards and advisory councils are deliberately composed with over-represented territorial or functional minorities. Are these practices un-democratic because they are rooted in inequality? Or, do they correspond to a deeply entrenched normative conviction that “fairness in treatment” and “tolerance of diversity” are matters of proportion and, therefore, that a “proper mixed” RED has to incorporate differences in intensity among its citizens? 42 E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975) 43 Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). 44 An associated hypothesis would be that there has been a tendency – accelerating in recent years – toward a decline in ex ante accountability and an effort by rulers to convince their subjects/citizens that they should be content with the ex post variety, especially that offered by periodic elections and the opportunity they provide to change the incumbent set of rulers. The usual reason cited for this impoverishment is that the increased scale and scope of governing, combined with the rising importance of technology, makes the average citizen less capable of evaluating the costs and benefits of a given course of action ex ante. This should be left to technocrats and political specialists and it is only after they have experienced the results of such policies that citizens should hold rulers accountable. Perhaps, this would be a justifiable modification of democratic accountability were it not for the fact that the parties occupying most

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of the space in retrospective elections have become so similar in their programs that citizens increasingly question whether they are being offered a meaningful set of alternatives. The response, especially in neo-democracies, has been very high levels of electoral volatility and more frequent turn-overs in power – without, however, any apparent sense of satisfaction at having exercised so successfully their capacity for rendering rulers accountable. The same policies persist and the same rulers later return to power – contributing to even more desencanto with democracy.