The Liberal in Liberal Democracy

Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Click for updates

DemocratizationPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fdem20

The liberal in liberal democracyT.F. Rhodena

a Department of Political Science, Northern IllinoisUniversity, DeKalb, USAPublished online: 11 Dec 2013.

To cite this article: T.F. Rhoden (2015) The liberal in liberal democracy,Democratization, 22:3, 560-578, DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2013.851672

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2013.851672

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressedin this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content shouldnot be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expresslyforbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

The liberal in liberal democracy

T.F. Rhoden∗

Department of Political Science, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, USA

(Received 19 April 2013; final version received 30 September 2013)

This article argues that much of the work on democratization and democraticconsolidation is obscured by a conceptual fog, when at the very least someof this confusion could be ameliorated by parsing out components that areobviously liberal in nature. An admission of the importance ofliberalization and liberal consolidation as distinctly different in form andmeasurement from democratization and democratic consolidation are thefirst steps to better research on the varieties of causation that constituteand propel the dissolution of more authoritarian regimes towards moreliberal democratic regimes. Acknowledging that the liberal in liberaldemocracy is unpopular for some, and that liberal democracy does notnecessarily mean American liberal democracy, go a long way to freeingthese terms from ethnocentric misconceptions, as well as cementinganalytical clarification. Though all modern democracies have both liberaland democratic components, democratic consolidation does not guaranteeliberal consolidation.

Keywords: liberalization; liberal consolidation; liberalism; democratization;democratic consolidation; democracy; liberal democracy

Introduction

A causal argument, whether borne by a statistical inquiry or a qualitative articula-tion, is in the aggregate the most valued species of argument in contemporary pol-itical science. If we are to present an argument that veers away from causation andinstead focuses our attention on the level of concept, we must justify ourselves tothose who prefer the middle path. A linguistic trial by classification and typologycreation can “have a useful role, however, as a way of categorizing causes andeffects that cannot be measured using number[s]”.1 In order to avoid a droll discus-sion of conceptual classification and clarification, some imperative must excite usaway from a question of what causes what towards a more fundamental query ofwhat are we even talking about. Something like a normative imperative surelyexists amongst the community of scholars and practitioners of what is normally

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

∗Email: [email protected]

Democratization, 2015Vol. 22, No. 3, 560–578, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2013.851672

referred to as “democratization” and its various offspring: “democratic transition”,“democratic consolidation”, and “quality of democracy.” If scholars get these con-cepts wrong, how should we expect those in the world of policy to get it right? Thisarticle has a singular argument: in the twenty-first century, any concept of demo-cratization is wrong when liberalization is also assumed to be an inherent part ofthat process. If democracy and liberalism are not the same thing, then why dowe expect (1) democratization to automatically include liberalization, and (2)democratic consolidation to include liberal consolidation?2

To state the conclusion first: we should not. Liberal democracy, though morethan a simple sum of its parts, can never be “consolidated” unless both of itsparts are understood. Furthermore, the liberal must be accepted and embracedin the same way that the democratic has been if we are to ever make senseof the various paths of transition from more authoritarian regimes. Thisarticle begins by reviewing the current confusion caused by the concept ofdemocratization that values rule by the people more than liberty. A review ofwhat democracy and liberalism mean and how they do or do not fit togetherto create a liberal democracy is in order. An alternative classification ofcurrent regimes will be provided in order to ground future theories of causationin a plane of greater clarity.3 The remainder of the article will then ask why it isthat researchers have been so reluctant to use the adjective liberal in theirprojects and what might be gained by shifting a focus towards ideas ofliberal consolidation.

Confusion over democratization and democratic consolidation

The concept of moving from a form of government that is more authoritarian to onethat is more democratic should not be beyond the ken of anyone. Such a govern-mental regime is by all accounts “democratizing”; the transfer of state power from alone ruler or oligarchic few to rule by the people is a process of “democratization”.Thus, the term by itself, in this basic sense, does indeed make sense, and we oughtnot to feel encumbered by any additional meaning that a lay observer may wish toimpute. However, a challenge quickly arises from those within our own ranks thatthis may be too simple a construction, too “minimalist” a conceptualization, toofacile a rendering of (1) all complexities and dynamics of change from oneregime type to another, as well as (2) the possible endpoint(s) of such a process(es).The former point need not concern us here, for interest in the how and the why ofthe transition taking place already admits, for all practical purposes, of the truthvalue of the process itself. Though an argument of ideation, it is a question of cau-sation, not of classification. More fundamental (and peskier) is the latter questionand its derivations: What is the endpoint of democratization? What kind of democ-racy ushers in the end of democratization? Must we seek this endpoint empiricallyamongst the cases of regimes manifest today, or may we cogitate new creatures ofdemocratic rule which are in some way better than what already exists? Is therethen even an endpoint?

Democratization 561

These queries may be easier to answer than we think. A clearing away of thebrush and garland that both weigh down democracy and cause democracy toseem more attractive than it may actually be will go a long way in helping us tounderstand democracy’s place amongst our species’ catalogue of governmentalrule. Lest we rush past the insights of others, a review of earlier challenges andsuccess with the working concepts of democratization is in order.

The endpoint for many is something called “democratic consolidation”.4 In itsmost simple usage, democratic consolidation would be the endpoint for the processof democratization. This sense of democratic consolidation means that rule by thepeople has become the norm and that any backsliding into authoritarian govern-ment has become beyond the pale. One minimalist indicator for this consolidationhas always been the process of elections,5 though this standard has fallen out offavour for some, taking instead the pejorative “electoralism”.6 The phrase “theonly game in town” is a favourite rejoinder meant to dazzle political science gradu-ate students when they are still not sure what it is exactly that is being consoli-dated.7 However, the endpoint for which the process of democratization is saidto be consolidated has eschewed exclusivity as the term has gained a wider accep-tance as something towards which all post-authoritarian regimes should evolve.What had been a minimalist endpoint of democracy is now much more substantive.Andreas Schedler is correct in observing that:

[democratic consolidation] has come to include such divergent items as popular legit-imation, the diffusion of democratic values, the neutralization of antisystem actors,civilian supremacy over the military, the elimination of authoritarian enclaves,party building, the organization of functional interests, the stabilization of electoralrules, the routinization of politics, the decentralization of state power, the introductionof mechanisms of direct democracy, judicial reform, the alleviation of poverty, andeconomic stabilization.8

The term “democratic consolidation”, much like the word “democracy” itself, hasbecome a grab bag of hopes and dreams of those who either wish for or work for thebetterment of society under the democratization process. Everything and anythingthat is “good” in its broadest sense has come to be affixed to the expectation of ademocracy consolidated.

But if this proposed misuse is only a problem of overburdening the concept,maybe we simply need to cut away all the unnecessary meanings that have piledup over the life of the term. This is exactly how Collier and Levitsky define democ-racy.9 If the word democracy can get a social scientific scrubbing, ready for rigor-ous measurement and comparison, surely “democratic consolidation” is ready for asimilar cleansing?

With an eye open to the tradeoff between analytic differentiation and concep-tual validity, as well as the spectre of conceptual stretching,10 various plays havebeen mustered for the definitional centre of the root concept for democratic conso-lidation,11 with some skirting the classification issue in the hopes that a “‘probabil-istic’ rather than a ‘substantive’ concept of consolidation” might allow one to avoid

562 T.F. Rhoden

description altogether.12 For those who are concerned about what consolidationmeans in this context, the later research evidences that notions of “casualty isking” can, at the very least, cause us to rush past what we are even measuring tobegin with. Conjuring the word “probabilistic” does not increase concept validity.

One of the clearest guiding definitions is proffered by Schedler: “The term‘democratic consolidation’ should refer to expectations of regime continuity –and to nothing else”.13 Though a step in the right direction, this concept fails tospecify what that regime is. Of what type of democracy are we speaking? Schedlerhimself posits three types that he arrays along a gamut running from authoritarianto electoral democracy to liberal democracy to something which he calls“advanced” democracy. However, other subtypes and diminished subtypes andoverarching concepts also pervade the discourse – those ornery “democracieswith adjectives”.

If we accept that “consolidation” is something that we expect to last, others willstill be concerned what that something is. A democracy in the contemporary sense– in the modern sense – always feels naked without an adjective in front of it.There is a very good reason why Robert Dahl’s term “polyarchy” ultimatelyfailed to take hold in the popular imagination. The failure stems from a similarreason why when speaking of democracy we almost always feel the need to addsome qualification before the term. Democracies unadorned there are, but let usfirst remember what they look like.

Remembering what democracy means

Contemporaries often wish to view democracy through a prism, the three mostpopular colours separated out as something called “procedural”, “substantive”,and “process-oriented”.14 An unnatural shading or lightening of black or whiteis then added to these supposedly disparate definitions of procedural, substantive,and process-oriented democracy in order to induce qualities that are not of democ-racy itself. Of course, the art of modern regime mixing, of adding onto, is whatmakes a democracy today something different from the classical variants ofdemocracy. However, it is one thing to construct a liberal democracy through cen-turies of trial and error as the British example shows, and quite another to say thatthe liberal part (or any affixed adjective) was always a natural part of democracy.

If such a confusion is then applied to any theorization of democratization ordemocratic consolidation, is it any wonder that a few years after United Nations-assisted elections in Cambodia and Hun Sen’s victory, the people of Cambodiamay have felt that something was missing from their democracy? That the odd“abuses” of Askar Akayev’s power may have left some Kyrgyzstanis rethinkingthe “fairness” of democracy? That Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko’s or Peru’sAlberto Fujimori’s democratic rise to power produced such “undemocratic”rule?15 That Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra caused many of those left out ofpower to wish for an abandonment of democracy and a return of monarchicalpower?

Democratization 563

The quick answer to this is that Hun Sen, Askar Akayev, Alexander Luka-shenko, Alberto Fujimori, and Thaksin Shinawatra are, in fact, model democrats.They were originally put into power by the people – not by a king or queen, not bya revolutionary vanguard, not by military junta. The demos elected them. It isimportant to understand that this klatch is as democratic as America’s BarackObama, Japan’s Shinzo Abe, Britain’s David Cameron, and Germany’s AngelaMerkel.

Democracy by itself, without that pesky adjective in front of it that so many ofus are loath to say, is a frightening thing. This may seem a jarring statement.However, it was the insight of political thinkers like Montesquieu (as well aslater statesmen like Madison) who were sharp enough to understand that a demo-cratic regime by itself is not so far from despotism. Democracy without rights,without some form of liberalism, produces one of the most wanton forms of gov-ernment known to people. Even if we consider a formulation like Abraham Lin-coln’s democratic government – that is, “of the people, by the people and forthe people” the author of this article worries that the good and noble intentionsof one executive does not encapsulate all of the meaning of liberalism. WhenLincoln goes and a less virtuous, though democratically elected, executive cometo power, the best guarantee that even a small portion of Lincoln’s aspirationsfor good government will continue, will be found in liberal institutions. Withoutsome form of institutional brakes and constitutional liberties, very little can stopa demos from placing into power a “tyranny of the majority”.16

When we think of democracy in this more fundamental and classical sense,democracy naturally appears less appealing to the contemporary reader. Further-more, is it any wonder that for many of the people living under one of these“purer” forms of democracy that governmental rule may seem more capriciousand less predictable? “Democratization” takes on a more sobering, even sinister,meaning for those citizens who have lost at the ballot box. O’Donnell goes outof his way to describe this uglier aspect of democracy and calls it “delegativedemocracy”.17 What is so fascinating about his empirical description of LatinAmerican democracies is that he feels he must “depict a ‘new species’, a type ofexisting democracies that has yet to be theorized”.18 Yet if he were only to remem-ber that democracy always has this harsher aspect within it, he could have gonewithout the moniker “delegative” altogether. A delegative democracy is a democ-racy par excellence. For example, when he cogitates over the cases of Argentina,Brazil, and Peru, he warns the reader that:

the shift from wide popularity to general vilification can be as rapid as it is dramatic.The result is a curious mixture of governmental omnipotence and impotence. Omni-potence begins with the spectacular enactment of the first policy packages and con-tinues with a flurry of decisions aimed at complementing those packages, andunavoidably, correcting their numerous unwanted consequences.19

O’Donnell is not describing a new type of regime. He describes nothing morethan one of the better examples we can read about nowadays of the sordid side of

564 T.F. Rhoden

rule by the people: unchecked, unbalanced incompetence voted into power. Hisdescription could as easily apply to any ancient democracy. How is it that wehave forgotten this as political scientists?

Michael Coppedge et al. are constructing a new, more easily assessable andtransparent, database of democratic indices and indicators to measure democracystretching back to 1900.20 This attempt is informative, as they have the unfortunatetask of trying to accommodate everyone’s conception of democracy.21 From asocial scientific perspective of burrowing out concepts made for quantifiablemeasurement, their struggle with embracing what they call electoral democracy,liberal democracy, majoritarian democracy, participatory democracy, deliberativedemocracy, and egalitarian democracy all equally and all at the same time preci-pitated the conclusion for the authors of this project that: “Democracy, understoodin a very general way, means rule by the people. This seems to be a commonelement to all usages of the word and claims a long heritage stretching back tothe Classical age”.22

When all the adjectives are broken down, a core concept appears amidst thedetritus of ineloquent inexactitude and misguided aspiration for those who wishto burden democracy with a tawdry governmental utopianism. This is democracyin it barest form, the real spirit of this regime type.

Remembering what liberalism means

The following might be painful, but it needs to be articulated before we can moveon. Democracy, when denuded and reaffirmed as “rule by the people”, does not inany way include conceptually the following: executive rule of law or constraints,judicial independence or review, civil liberty, property rights, religious freedom,media independence, or minority rights. All of these things that are perceived as“inalienable rights” and taken for granted in liberal democracies are in no way afundamental aspect of democratic rule itself. They are a modern (and arguablytension-laden) addition to democracy.

These aspects, instead, form the core of liberalism. Some political thinkers towhich to turn to on these ideas are Hobbes, Smith, Mill, and de Montesquieu, butfor an article like this it is enough to mention Locke, where the most basic ofinterpretations would accredit him with at least five areas of importance concerningliberalism. In no particular order, these are government and the rule of law astrustee, the importance of property, religious toleration, individualism, and sometype of consent to being ruled. Though the concept of liberalism has strayed andbeen abused over the centuries, much like the concept of democracy, the coremeaning has always held these fundamentals.23 To this could be added more con-temporary concerns of freedom of speech and the media, and rights of gender, race,and ethnicity; and even socioeconomic concerns like rights of labour or health,when interpreted in one way, do not strictly fall outside the purview of liberalism.

Furthermore, political liberalism is not the same thing as economic liberalism.The discussion here of liberalism is one of politics and must be thought of as

Democratization 565

independent of the economic system. Milja Kurki has argued that this confusionbetween liberal democracy and liberal democracy with capitalism has surfacedin the debates on democracy promotion. Furthermore, she rightly points out thatmany political thinkers have theorized that some forms of “capitalist economics,in their laissez-faire form, are destructive of liberal and democratic values”.24

This can be confusing because when we hear talk of “property rights” of liberalismthis seems to mean that the economic system tethered to a liberal democracy mustbe capitalist. However, what is fundamental to understand for this discussion is thatthe right to hold property does not mean that property must be traded within anyone type of economic system. In truth, just like how communist economic thinkershave discussed whether a more politically democratic or politically autocratic gov-ernment might better fit with their preferred economic system, liberal political thin-kers have discussed whether a more economically social (for example, Mill) oreconomically capitalist system (for example, Locke) might better fit with their pre-ferred political regime. And there are many more voices to add to this political-economic issue. However, this discussion of political liberalism and how thatfits into a liberal democracy is agnostic about the appropriate economic systemor if there is even a best fit.

Returning to our stalwart democrats identified above, we must query whethertheir transgressions were against democracy or against liberalism. When Thaksinapplied the rule of law differently for the Muslim minority in the south of Thailandwas this a sin against democracy or for liberalism?25 When Askar Akayev soughtto enhance his executive power against the balancing institution of the Kyrgyzstanparliament was this a step down for democracy or liberalism?26 When AlexanderLukashenko clamped down on independent media, was this more an exigency ofdemocracy or of liberalism?27 When the elected Alberto Fujimori tore apart Peru’s1979 constitution, dissolved congress, and had the judiciary physically barred fromtheir offices was democracy or was liberalism weakened?28 In all these cases thetragedy is not denigration of democracy but of liberal rights and institutions.

But if we return to Collier and Levitsky’s concern about those annoying adjec-tives and the true concept of democracy in the contemporary era, possibly theabove discussion is some type of a semantic onanism? For surely when wespeak of modern democracy in a shorthand way we always mean it as includingsome liberal components. And if that is the case – that when we speak ofmodern democracy we really mean liberal democracy – then maybe by simply leg-islating the meanings of things our exercise in classification is done, and the morechallenging goals of democratization and democratic consolidation can berestarted again. If only it were so easy.

Conceptualizing liberal democracy

When we insist on calling the colour grey “white”, because we dislike saying“grey” or “black-white” or acknowledging that “black” may have some qualitiesfundamentally different than “white”, what is gained by this calling grey

566 T.F. Rhoden

“white”? When we insist on calling liberal democracy “democracy”, because wedislike including the “liberal” in that term, what is gained analytically by referringto liberal democracy as “democracy”?

The main contention of this article is that by refusing to call a thing by its propername we are in some way avoiding the nature of the challenges indicative of thatproper name. By saying democracy, when we really mean liberal democracy, arewe placing the bar for an overloaded concept of democratic consolidation out ofreach, whilst at the same time avoiding analytical issues that are, critically,issues of liberal consolidation?

No one is entirely blameless from talking about democracy when one reallymeans liberal democracy. We all tend to do it from time to time, lazily forgettingthat three syllable word in front of democracy when speaking of its modern vari-ation. Faineant diction aside, however, some of us have had more of an effect onlater scholars than others. Robert Dahl is an interesting case, both because of thefailure of his term “polyarchy” to become popularly accepted with both thosewho study politics and those who practice it and because of the success of his defi-nition of modern democracy from a “procedural minimal” of conditions – thechecklist approach to understanding and, more importantly, measuring democracy.Within the subfields of political science, his ideas are most popular amongst thoseinterested in American government and society, but citations to his work appear inother subfields enough to cement his influence across political science as a whole.

Like others, Dahl was willing conceptually to secret away aspects of liberalismin order to emphasize the utility of his new definition of modern democracy in theAmerica that he saw around him.29 But he was also very willing to reject outrightother aspects of liberalism which he felt were frivolous. To mention just one ofthose briefly: his rejection of the separation-of-powers argument for having differ-ent institutions of government serve as something of a ballast for the regime, inwhich he was fond of utilizing Britain’s parliament as an example of the superfluityof balancing institutions.30 Instead of recognizing that liberalism housed within ademocracy can take different forms and that “both the presidential and the parlia-mentary forms of government theoretically satisfy the requirements of the doc-trine”,31 Dahl was more concerned with a wholesale disabuse of liberalism inorder to subsume under his definition of democracy only specific aspects that hethought would make the term “polyarchy” more palatable. In the end this onlycreated more confusion for those who utilize his work as something of a theoreticalgrounding for how they wish to classify governmental forms. Though many esteemDahl’s work because of his commitment to advancing the scientific aspect of pol-itical science, it does not also follow that one should esteem his theorizing in pol-itical philosophy. Whatever one may think of the rise of survey methodology afterWorld War II in political science, the further Dahl departed from this “behaviour-alism” in his career, the more one should be cautious in applying his ideas,especially in an area of research like contemporary democratization whichoccurs so far from America’s shores. “Polyarchy” and its mishmash checklist ofliberal and democratic components has little value when one is trying to figure

Democratization 567

out analytically if a government that is evolving away from dictatorship is lackingin democratic or liberal fruition.

Can any conceptualization of liberal democracy exist which might be analyti-cally useful in a social scientific sense, whilst also at the same time not abandoningcenturies of theory which clearly delineates a difference between liberalism anddemocracy?

Imagine that all the contemporary national states were populated along a planein two-dimensional space (Figure 1). On one axis, say the x-axis, we were to placethe concept of democracy as it was originally meant. And on the perpendicular y-axis we placed the concept of liberalism. “Low democracy” would mean rule bymonarch or oligarchic few32 and, in general, have less political equality, whilst“high democracy” would mean the opposite. “Low liberalism” would be adeficit of the rule of law and civil liberties, whilst “high liberalism” would be a pro-liferation of rights of all kinds. Since we do not know what the future brings, wecould leave both high democracy and high liberalism unbounded.

In one sense all contemporary nation states have both a democratic componentand a liberal component, for we know of no purely democratic or purely liberalregime in the modern world. Some might be more democratic than liberal,whilst others might be more liberal than democratic. Such a conceptualizationarrayed along a gamut for both democracy and liberalism mimics reality betterthan any system of classification that wishes to places some regimes in onebucket labelled authoritarianism and in another bucket labelled liberal democracy.A true “transition” will be more readily identifiable if we also include a dimensionof time by plotting one nation state as it moves through the years. Whether it isaspects of democracy or liberalism that require “consolidation” ought to be

Figure 1. Conceptualizing liberal democracy as two components.

568 T.F. Rhoden

clearer. What would normally be called liberal democracy would be those nationstates that populate the top right of the graph (Country F), whilst the ones thatare normally considered authoritarian would tarry about the bottom left (CountryA). All the rest have been those sorry recipients of hundreds of different qualifyingadjectives, each visualizing itself as a new “species” deserving a new theorizing. Ifthe question is whether liberalism or democracy are matters of kind or degree,33 theshort answer here is that democracy is more a matter of degree, whilst liberalism ismore a matter of kind.

O’Donnell and Schmitter have a similar conceptualization as the above, but itfalls short in at least three ways. First, they tend to rush towards the processes ofdemocratization and liberalization before discussing whether their endpoint con-cepts of democracy and liberalism are theoretically sound. Second, by not ques-tioning the ever-broadening use of the term “democracy” to include aspects ofliberalism, their normative project immediately succumbs to a confusionbetween democratization and liberalization. Of course, they understand that themeaning of democracy has changed but choose to ignore its potential conse-quences. They admit: “Indeed, many institutions now thought of as distinctivelydemocratic were initially set up with very different intentions, and were only sub-sequently incorporated within its reigning definition, for example parliaments,parties, mixed governments, interest groups, consociational arrangements, andso on”.34 O’Donnell and Schmitter are comfortable with inflating democracy atthe cost of constricting liberalism’s meaning. By limiting liberalism to meanonly “protect[ing] individual and group rights”,35 other aspects of the breadthand depth of the rule of law and the role that balancing institutions have on limitingthe excesses both horizontally and vertically of democratic rulers have seemed tohave lost their conceptual grounding or simply been forgotten. A whole cottageindustry within the “transitions” literature has sprung up trying to figure out whydemocratization has not produced liberal democracies.

Third, where O’Donnell and Schmitter and many others err is in thinking thatbecause some liberalization occurs before democratic elections the liberalizationphase is now over. Nothing could be further from empirical fact: When an author-itarian government begins to open up freedom of association, freedom of speech,and freedom of press, as well as more freedoms in property rights, the liberalizationprocess is not complete because no one in these societies is certain whether or notthese new liberal freedoms will stay. When democratic elections are held, liberal-ism is not yet consolidated. After a few rounds of successful democratic elections,when people begin to expect that they will continue to have a say in who leads theirgovernment, a liberal consolidation is still not guaranteed at this point, becausethose rights and institutions of liberalism simply take much longer to consolidatethan democracy. In this sense, getting democracy right is much easier than gettingliberalism right. Additionally, if it is true that in the contemporary world the liberal-ization process begins before democratization begins and continues after demo-cratic consolidation, we may do better to think of democracy as a stepping stoneto a better liberalism, and not the other way round.

Democratization 569

When liberalism is devalued, is it any wonder that some aspects of liberalismget lost along the way? Just to take the one liberal aspect of rule of law mentionedabove, it is interesting to note that O’Donnell himself felt the need to return to thissubject 20 years after his “Transitions from Authoritarian Rule” project. O’Donnellis correct to point out that in the national states he studied there seems to be “flawsin the existing law”, “flaws in the application of the law”, “flaws in the relationsbetween state agencies and ordinary citizens”, “flaws in access to the judiciaryand to fair process”, and finally “flaws due to sheer lawlessness”.36 However,his advice on creating a new theory of “democratic rule of law” in order to cramthese aspects into the democratization process is completely unnecessary. Weneed to remember from the beginning that any degree of liberalism that is worthits namesake must address these very real issues before we can consider liberaliza-tion to be “consolidated” in any meaningful way. These liberal institutional issuesof rule of law are not only independent of but also much more difficult to get correctthan democracy. By always concentrating on “more democracy, not less”, we con-tinually misinterpret the nature of challenges inherent in establishing the liberalismin liberal democracy.37

Challenges of liberal democracy

A liberal democracy is more than the sum of its two parts, some aspects of liberal-ism and democracy seem to fit together perfectly, whilst others nearly always seemin conflict with each other.38 Those aspects that reinforce both would be somethinglike the right to vote; as suffrage continued to expand over the centuries in the West,it made sense to say that liberalism was strengthened as larger segments of thepopulation were afforded equal rights under the law – the right to vote in thiscase – at the same time as it made sense to say that democracy was strengthenedas rule by the people became more of a reality when the vote was not only repre-sentative of one stratum of property owning society, one race or ethnicity, onegender, and so on. But for every aspect that liberalism and democracy seem tojive, there are two or three additional aspects where on good days some tradeoffor moderation is necessary and where on bad days tension or conflict between lib-eralism and democracy are the norm. These are too numerous to catalogue here, butto remember just one class of tensions is anything enshrined by constitution as a“right”, which at any one time or another may fall victim to the ire of a majorityof the democratic population. The (so far) 27 amendments of the United States’written constitution stands as a historical testament that democratic notions ofequality (whether they be political, social, or material) and liberal notions ofrights (whether they be “human”, religious, or material) will never cease to causepolitical turmoil. Some might argue that nearly every domestic political squabblewithin a liberal democracy is borne by the addition of liberalism with democracy.Some might argue that this is a furnace of dynamism. Both are correct.39

Constructing a regime that is both more liberal and more democratic willalways pose a challenge, for these two aspects will always have points of conflict.

570 T.F. Rhoden

In understanding the democratization process, reminding those agents of changefrom less liberal, less democratic regimes that their end goal will never be conflictfree is an issue that must be articulated from the beginning. The game of politicsdoes not cease upon the threshold of liberal democracy. As more people areallowed to both enter the field and voice their opinion, politics and politickingreach new levels of contestation.

Discussions of whether liberalism or democracy comes first, which one is“easier”, or whether they were truly coeval are welcomed, expected, and arealready being debated. The answers to such questions benefit from historicalinquiry as much as they do from probabilistic inquiry. All that can be addedhere to that enterprise is the hope that the discussion is framed in such a way asto take advantage of the historical, theoretical, definitional, and analytical differ-ences of liberalism and democracy.

Fear of liberal democracy

Is liberal democracy the endpoint of both a democratization and liberalizationprocess? Many would still feel reluctant to agree. First, there are those thatwould wish to see some other endpoint other than liberal democracy. They maybe keen to use diction like “deeper” or “more substantive” forms of democracy.This article takes the stance that such delineation is the height of vacuous wordplay.Feel-good descriptions of “deliberative” or “consociational” or “advanced”democracy have nothing in them that rejects liberalism outright as a whole. Allof them carry some notion of individual rights, of rule of law, and of balancingof institutions. All of them embrace liberalism to at least this degree, yet moreand more scholars would prefer to use some other adjective than liberal to tackonto democracy. Even a “majoritarian” democracy, which would seem to rejectminority and individual rights of some, is in reality nothing other than a liberaldemocracy that is “low” on some aspects of liberalism like civil liberties, but itis not a democracy that would abandon all notions of the rule of law or branchesof government. To exclaim that such concepts are now included in democracy,does nothing to exclude the reality of their presence nor their desirability forsocieties which do not have them yet. Liberalism is the concept that makes democ-racy viable in the modern world as a governmental regime type. This cannot berestated enough: all forms of modern democracy have a liberal component.

The conceptualization of Figure 1 has the benefit of displaying that in manyways there is no endpoint for either democratization or liberalization. Only differ-ences of degree exist. Words like “consolidation” of either democracy or liberal-ism, only make sense if they mean something like a point of no return for eitherone of these two dimensions. Democratic consolidation means that rule by thepeople will continue for the foreseeable future. Liberal consolidation means thatliberal concepts of individual rights, rule of law, and balancing institutions areexpected to continue. Whether both liberalism and democracy will, in fact, con-tinue forever as the regime for any particular nation state is unknowable. But

Democratization 571

expectations of such a continuity are not beyond our purview today, and for the pol-itical scientist they are very measureable. Consolidation, if it means anything here,means the expectation of continuance.

A second reason persists as to why some might not wish to think of liberaldemocracy as an endpoint, either in kind or in degree. Though this second pointis quixotic for a discipline which wishes to espouse scientific objectivity morethan normative subjectivity, this other reason continues to obfuscate an articulationof the analytical difference between possible challenges of liberal consolidationversus challenges of democratic consolidation. Strangely, for some this stemsfrom nothing more than a dislike of the term “liberalism”. Some simply do notlike the word “liberal”. Despite the fact that all modern democracies have liberalcomponents, to self-identify one’s target regime as a “liberal” democracy hasmorphed into a pejorative. To assert that many different types of democraciescan be a goal has become something like the politically correct thing to say.40

Must liberal democracy be a victim of multiculturalism too?Even when cultural relativism is rightly shelved to make way for universalisms,

the term liberalism takes a backseat to the term democracy. For example, compos-ing an article entitled “Democracy as a Universal Value” is probably an easier sellthan “Liberalism as a Universal Value”, even when the “values” of that article areentirely liberal in nature.41 Sen argues that

Democracy has complex demands, which certainly include voting and respect forelection results, but it also requires the protection of liberties and freedoms, respectfor legal entitlements, and the guaranteeing of free discussion and uncensored distri-bution of news and fair comment.42

This is simply incorrect. Democracy is not complex in the way that he thinks.Liberal democracy, with the addition of liberal components like liberties, legalentitlements, and so on, is complex. Sen does not realize it, but the “universalvalue” of which he speaks is really liberalism – not democracy.43

Building on the idea of culture above, another reason why some may be wary ofspeaking of liberalism in liberal democracy is not because of universals butbecause of specific ethnocentric notions of liberalism. In case of any confusion,liberal democracy does not mean American liberal democracy. Much like Inglehartand Welzel stating emphatically that “modernization is not westernization”,44 theliberal in liberal democracy must be stripped of any preconceived ethnocentricnotions if it is to have any analytical power in a more inclusive political science.Liberalism need not be confused with something only viable for the English-speak-ing world, Western Europe, or Japan. Granted also that when someone from thedeveloping world hears a male, Caucasian American from Texas say “I bringyou liberal democracy” the correct response is to run for the hills; an Americanvariant of liberalism should not be thought of as something that must be foistedupon the rest of the world. It is quite okay to reject America’s penchant for firearms,her lack of universal health care, or her environmental policies and still keep basic

572 T.F. Rhoden

liberal tenets like individual liberties, habeas corpus, or institutions of governmentother than the executive. Particularly since the Second American-Iraq War, a senti-ment against liberal democracy has been misplaced with United States foreignpolicy. However, it was neither America’s foreign nor domestic policy that inspiredinternational statesmen like China’s Sun Yat-sen,45 Jose Rizal of the Philippines,46

Benito Juarez of Mexico,47 but rather the liberal freedoms enshrined in America’swritten constitution.

The phrase “human rights” has more cachet than liberalism and for many hasbecome the preferred term because of liberalism’s use in the economic sense asfree-market economic principles. Former political prisoner and current politicianAung San Suu Kyi, with her struggle to have a more representative governmentin Myanmar, is a perfect example of someone who prefers the phrase “humanrights and democracy” over “liberalism and democracy”. In her Nobel PeacePrize acceptance speech she used the phrase repeatedly.48 One has to searchharder to find a record of her saying “liberalism”, “liberal rights”, or “liberalvalues” in connection with democracy. She does occasionally,49 but it is obviousthat “human rights” has a more advantageous political meaning than “liberalism”today.50 One could argue that this has carried over into political science as well.Ask an average undergraduate student to define either “human rights” or “liberal-ism” and see which one she struggles with or how many students answer that lib-eralism either has something to do with economics or with the current DemocraticParty in America.

Conclusion: democratic consolidation and liberal consolidation

This article is not attempting to advocate liberalism over democracy in the processaway from dictatorship, though such an argument can be made. Nor is it arguingthat one is better than the other in the modern context; though, again, such an argu-ment would be interesting. Much has also been left out, must be left out, in a shortjournal article on the workings between liberalism and democracy, as well as theirhistorical and theoretical nuances via republicanism, constitutionalism, and repre-sentative government in general.51 The only argument in this article is that, in avery simple way, a fundamental difference does persist between liberalism anddemocracy in the modern world, and that to debate the causes and effects amidstthe process of democratization as if liberalism were a natural outgrowth of thisprocess works against the very real differences between democratization and liber-alization. Furthermore, this obfuscates both any idea of democratic consolidationor liberal consolidation. Though the fact that the title of this article pulls outwhat this author thinks is the more important of the two, the real objective hereis just for us to realize that they are not the same thing, and that we should notfear using the term liberal or liberalism because it has lost its favour in some circles.

By acknowledging that all modern democratic regimes have both a liberal com-ponent and a democratic component, those who wish to move away from author-itarianism surely benefit from being able to articulate these two components

Democratization 573

beyond a monolithic concept of democracy. Even if politicians who are fighting forthese changes choose to politically market their goals and objectives under theheading of “human rights and democracy”, we as either observers or proponentsin our capacity as gatekeepers and producers of more expert analysis need toremember that liberalism and democracy share a special relationship as liberaldemocracy – a tension-laden regime, which is the sum of more than just its twoparts and more than just one aspect of liberalism, such as in rights alone, or justone aspect of democracy, such as in elections alone. To not do so is an affront tothe analytical clarity of political science as much as it turns its back on politicalphilosophy. Liberalism and democracy are chiselled from a different stone.

AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank Kheang Un, Beth McGowan, and two anonymous refereesfor helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. He is also very appreci-ative of the financial and moral support provided by the Center of Southeast Asian Studiesand the Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University, including multiple feder-ally funded Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships for the Burmeselanguage. The views expressed herein are the author’s own.

Notes1. Geddes, Paradigms and Sand Castles, 51.2. Of course, this question has deeper political philosophic (meta-theoretical) roots, but

in the spirit of social science and academic inclusivity, this article will speak about“concepts.”

3. Kurki, Causation in International Relations. These include types of causation that falloutside the Humean tradition.

4. Diamond, Developing Democracy.5. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 269. See also Huntington, The

Third Wave; and Huntington and Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy. Schumpeter’soft-quoted definition is worth repeating here: “The democratic method is that insti-tutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquirethe power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.”

6. Karl, “Imposing Consent?”; cf. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition,4. Linz and Stepan call it “electoralist fallacy.”

7. Przeworski, Democracy and the Market, 26.8. Schedler, “What is Democratic Consolidation?,” 91–92.9. Collier and Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives.”

10. Gerring, “The Case Study,” 107; Bunce, “Comparative Democratization,” 723;Whitehead, “Comparative Politics”; Collier and Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjec-tives,” 430; Collier and Mahon, “Conceptual ‘Stretching’ Revisited”; and Sartori,“Concept Misformation.”

11. Schedler, “What is Democratic Consolidation”; O’Donnell and Schmitter, Transitionsfrom Authoritarian Rule; and Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition.

12. Svolik, “Authoritarian Reversals and Democratic Consolidation,” 166.13. Schedler, “What is Democratic Consolidation?,” 103.14. For more complex procedural definitions, see Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy;

Diamond, Developing Democracy; Schmitter and Karl, “What Democracy Is”;

574 T.F. Rhoden

Dahl, After the Revolution; Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy. For an exampleof some substantive issues, see Phillips, Democracy and Difference, Phillips, Engen-dering Democracy. For a more process-oriented approach, see Tilly, Democracy; andBarber, Strong Democracy.

15. Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” 30.16. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 239.17. O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy.”18. Ibid., 54.19. Ibid., 66.20. Coppedge et al., “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy.”21. Cf. Munck and Verkuilen, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy.”22. Coppedge et al., “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy,” 248 (my italics).23. Cf. Zakaria, The Future of Freedom, 29–58.24. Kurki, “Politico-Economic Models of Democracy,” 9.25. Baker and Pasuk, A History of Thailand, 269.26. Kubicek, “Authoritarianism in Central Asia,” 36–38.27. Silitski, “Lukashenko: Politicheskaya Biografiya,” 82.28. Schmidt, “Delegative Democracy in Peru?,” 99–132.29. Dahl, After the Revolution, 11.30. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory, 12–13.31. Gwyn, “The Separation of Powers,” 83–4; and Ceaser, Liberal Democracy and Pol-

itical Science, 206.32. Cf. Winters, Oligarchy. Winters does well to revitalize the original Aristotelian

significance of extreme wealth in the meaning of “oligarch.” An oligarch can anddoes exist in both lower and higher levels of democracy. The question here is notwhether they rule themselves, but rather if the political right to rule extends beyondthemselves.

33. Joshi, “The Protective and Developmental.”34. O’Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, 8.35. Ibid., 10.36. O’Donnell, “Why the Rule of Law Matters,” 39–41.37. For another de-liberalized conception of the rule of law, see Weingast, “The Political

Foundations”; and for an interesting argument against the focus on the rule of law, seeCarothers, “Rule of Law Temptations”; and Carothers, “The Rule of Law Revival.”

38. Ceaser, Liberal Democracy and Political Science.39. Nor does it exclude violent consequences. An interpretation of the five-year American

Civil War which viewed the issue of slavery from the perspective of a conflict betweenliberalism and democracy would not be without merit. Though most would probablyargue that liberal democracy most of the time is a regime which seeks nonviolent res-olutions of such issues – nonviolent resolution of issues being one example of some-thing beyond just the additive effect of liberalism or democracy itself.

40. For example, see Linz and Stepan, “Toward Consolidated Democracies,” 16.41. Sen, “Democracy as a Universal Value.”42. Ibid., 8–9.43. Notice that Amartya Sen chooses not to use the phrase “liberal democracy” at all in his

article.44. Inglehart and Welzel, “How Development Leads to Democracy,” 38.45. Mallory, “China’s New Constitution.”46. Abueva, “Filipino Democracy and the American Legacy.”47. Valdes-Ugalde, “Janus and the Northern Colossus.”48. Aung San Suu Kyi, “Nobel Lecture.”49. Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, 92.

Democratization 575

50. Interestingly, the word “democracy” itself has become so popular in the Burmeselanguage that, unlike the word “liberal” or “liberalism” which is translated intoBurmese via a Pali/Sanskrit loan word, “democracy” is carried over wholesale intothe Burmese language in its English form despite there being a suitable Pali/Sanskritloan word already in existence. Burmese now has a least one word in regular use thatetymologically comes from ancient Greece.

51. Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism.

Notes on contributorT.F. Rhoden is an independent consultant with seven years working and living experience inMyanmar and Thailand. He is a current PhD candidate in political science with the Depart-ment of Political Science, Northern Illinois University, 415 Zulauf Hall, DeKalb, IL 60115-5700, USA.

BibliographyAbueva, Jose Veloso. “Filipino Democracy and the American Legacy.” Annals of the

American Academy of Political and Social Science 428, no. 1 (1976): 114–133.Aung San Suu Kyi. Letters from Burma. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.Aung San Suu Kyi. “Nobel Lecture.” Acceptance speech at Oslo City Hall, Norway, June 16,

2011. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1991/kyi-lecture_en.html#Baker, Chris, and Pasuk Phongpaichit. A History of Thailand, Second Edition. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2009.Barber, Benjamin R. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2003.Bunce, Valerie. “Comparative Democratization: Big and Bounded Generalizations.”

Comparative Political Studies 33, nos. 6/7 (2000): 703–734.Carothers, Thomas. “The Rule of Law Revival.” Foreign Affairs 77, no. 2 (1998): 95–106.Carothers, Thomas. “Rule of Law Temptations.” Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 33, no. 1

(2009): 49–61.Ceaser, James W. Liberal Democracy and Political Science. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins

University Press, 1990.Collier, David, and Steven Levitsky. “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation

in Comparative Research.” World Politics 49, no. 3 (1997): 430–441.Collier, David, and James E. Mahon, Jr. “Conceptual ‘Stretching’ Revisited: Adapting

Categories in Comparative Analysis.” American Political Science Review 87, no. 4(1993): 845–855.

Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, Steven Fish, AllenHicken, Matthew Kroenig, Staffan I. Lindberg, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, HolliA. Semetko, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, and Jan Teorell. “Conceptualizingand Measuring Democracy: A New Approach.” Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 2(2011): 247–267.

Dahl, Robert. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,1956.

Dahl, Robert. Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,1970.

Dahl, Robert. After the Revolution: Authority in a Good Society. New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 1982.

Diamond, Larry. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1999.

576 T.F. Rhoden

Diamond, Larry. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughoutthe World. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2009.

Geddes, Barbara. Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design inComparative Politics (Analytical Perspectives on Politics). Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 2003.

Gerring, John. “The Case Study: What It Is And What It Does.” In The Oxford Handbook ofComparative Politics, edited by Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes, 90–122. New York:Oxford University Press, 2007.

Gwyn, William B. “The Separation of Powers and Modern Forms of DemocraticGovernment.” In Separations of Power – Does it Still Work?, edited by RobertGoldwin and Art Kaufman, 65–89. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute,1986.

Huntington, Samuel P. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century.Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.

Huntington, Samuel P., and Joji Watanuki. The Crisis of Democracy. New York: New YorkUniversity Press, 1975.

Inglehart, Ronald, and Christian Welzel. “How Development Leads to Democracy: WhatWe Know about Modernization.” Foreign Policy 88, no. 2 (2009): 33–48.

Joshi, Devin K. “The Protective and Developmental Varieties of Liberal Democracy: ADifference in Kind or Degree?” Democratization 20, no. 2 (2013): 187–214.

Karl, Terry. “Imposing Consent? Electoralism vs. Democratization in El Salvador.” InElections and Democratization in Latin America, 1980–1985, edited by Paul W.Drake and Eduardo Silva, 9–36. San Diego: University of California Press, 1986.

Kubicek, Paul. “Authoritarianism in Central Asia: Curse or Cure?” Third World Quarterly19, no. 1 (1998): 29–43.

Kurki, Milja. Causation in International Relations: Reclaiming Causal Analysis. New York:Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Kurki, Milja. “Politico-Economic Models of Democracy in Democracy Promotion.”International Studies Perspectives 14, no. 1 (February 13, 2013): 1–21. doi:10.1111/j.1528-3585.2012.00512.x.

Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation:Southern Europe, South American, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore, MD:John Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. “Toward Consolidated Democracies.” Journal ofDemocracy 7, no. 2 (1996): 14–33.

Mallory, George W. “China’s New Constitution.” Foreign Affairs 26, no. 2 (1948): 390–392.

Munck, Gerardo L., and Jay Verkuilen. “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy:Evaluating Alternative Indices.” Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 1 (2002): 5–34.

O’Donnell, Guillermo A. “Delegative Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 5, no. 1 (1994):55–69.

O’Donnell, Guillermo A. “Why the Rule of Law Matters.” Journal of Democracy 15, no. 4(2004): 32–46.

O’Donnell, Guillermo A., and Philippe C. Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule:Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore, MD: John HopkinsUniversity Press, 1986.

Pangle, Thomas. The Spirit of Modern Republicanism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago,1988.

Phillips, Anne. Engendering Democracy. University Park: Pennsylvania State UniversityPress, 1991.

Phillips, Anne. Democracy and Difference. University Park: Pennsylvania State UniversityPress, 1993.

Democratization 577

Przeworski, Adam. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in EasternEurope and Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Sartori, Giovanni. “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics.” American PoliticalScience Review 64, no. 4 (1970): 1033–1053.

Schedler, Andreas. “What is Democratic Consolidation?” Journal of Democracy 9, no. 2(1998): 91–107.

Schmidt, Gregory D. “Delegative Democracy in Peru? Fujimori’s 1995 Landslide and theProspects for 2000.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 42, no. 1(2000): 99–132.

Schmitter, Phillipe, and Terry Karl. “What Democracy Is . . . And Is Not.” Journal ofDemocracy 2, no. 3 (1991): 75–88.

Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper andBrothers, 1947.

Sen, Amartya. “Democracy as a Universal Value.” Journal of Democracy 10, no. 3 (1999):3–17.

Silitski, Vitali. “Lukashenko: Politicheskaya Biografiya (Lukashenko: A PoliticalBiography) by Alexander Feduta.” Foreign Policy 151, no. 6 (2005): 81–83.

Svolik, Milan. “Authoritarian Reversals and Democratic Consolidation.” AmericanPolitical Science Review 102, no. 2 (2008): 153–168.

Tilly, Charles. Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.Tocqueville, Alexis. “On the Omnipotence of the Majority in the United States and Its

Effects.” In Democracy in America, edited by Harvey C. Mansfield and DelbaWinthrop, 235–249. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000 [1835].

Valdes-Ugalde, Francisco. “Janus and the Northern Colossus: Perceptions of the UnitedStates in the Building of the Mexican Nation.” Journal of American History 86, no. 2(1999): 568–600.

Weingast, Barry R. “The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law.”American Political Science Review 91, no. 2 (1997): 245–263.

Whitehead, Laurence. “Comparative Politics: Democratization Studies.” In A NewHandbook of Political Science, edited by Robert E. Goodin and Hans-DieterKlingemann, 353–371. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Winters, Jeffrey A. Oligarchy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Zakaria, Fareed. “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6 (1997):

22–43.Zakaria, Fareed. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.

New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003.

578 T.F. Rhoden