Reevaluating Democracy: Another Look at the Transition Paradigm

This week's reading poses a question: do we, as a people who live under a kind of democratic institution, even know what democracy is all about? According to Scmitter and Karl in “What Democracy Is…and Is Not,” the answer is hard to decipher. They mention (as did Professor King in lecture) that there are a set of procedural rules and standards that make up the notion of a democracy. But at the same time, there are a set of principles, or a qualitative standard, for a democratic society which are not always necessarily interpreted in the same way in one democratic society as in another. Thus, they say, that there is the potential for democracies to be “differently democratic.”

So, I pose this question: if democracy seems to vary across countries and societies (because, after all, principles are different), albeit still adhering to a common, procedural standard, then do we really know what democracy is? If we don’t, why attempt to label previously authoritarian countries as automatically transitioning into democracy when, as Schmitter and Karl show, even our understanding of what a democracy is, is often limited by a minimal standard rather than a qualitative one? After all, when we utilize the transition paradigm, we are in a sense, measuring the country using a qualitative standard; that is, we “stereotype” a country based on our perceptions of the differences in the principles of each system. For example, Carothers in “The End of the Transition Paradigm” states that one of the first assumptions of the paradigm is that countries who are shedding a dictatorial past will immediately embrace democracy as the best option. This assumption often arises due to the very nature of a “bipolar” world; it is the democratic forces versus the totalitarian, communist forces. Because each system has different values and principles, the abandonment of one polar extreme (say, communism) makes the other polar extreme (democracy) assume that the country will immediately begin transition towards democracy. After all, it would be an expected outcome in a standard bipolar world.

Thus, for a country to be judged to be moving towards democracy (after experiencing an authoritarian past) would be almost hypocritical for enthusiastic observers of democracy. In the end, even we cannot determine a standard on which democracy’s merits are judged. For example, as Schmitter and Karl stated, the rising democracies that have sprung up since 1974 live in a “compressed time” where they are not afforded the “smooth” transition towards democracy in comparison to democracies that had emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth century. They are often impeded by “a bewildering array of parties, interests, and movements” which creates “challenges to the polity.” In these societies, there are differing qualitative principles that manifest themselves in the societies in which democracy attempts to latch on to.

So, it seems valid to say that people and observers living under democratic institutions cannot really discern the “truth” of democracy, let alone assume that democracy is the one system that should be pursued and achieved by all governments of the world. While there are clear benefits in a democratic system as opposed to a non-democratic system, there are political, economic, social factors that influence the principles of a society, which ultimately affects the political course a nation takes. Unless we actually understand these said factors and apply them to the prevalent principles found in a given regime, we cannot judge what is best for that regime. At the same time, it appears that even western observers aren’t necessarily sure of what exactly a democracy constitutes, and until we figure that out, it doesn’t seem like we have a right to assume the transition paradigm; in short, we should not assume that democracy is best.