The drama of democratization

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 10, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 84-98

  Whitehead, Laurence ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0033414407     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.1999.0073     Document Type: Review

References (11)

1. In retrospect, some democratic transitions can be viewed as relatively orderly processes kept within predictable limits through the tacit or explicit collaboration of the major contenders for power, whose identities and resources were apparent from the outset. But even such "negotiated" transitions carry a charge of dramatic tension while they are in process. Like a high-wire act in the circus, they may be carefully rehearsed and predictably successful, but the audience is riveted by the possibilities of mishap, and the star performers only succeed because they are alert to the consequences of carelessness.
2. In 1866, George Eliot published the following commentary on the "principal-agent" problem, written in terms that seem especially well adapted to recent discussions in the democratization literature. "Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and interests, more or less small and cunning: if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men but a little uncertain also about your own; if your knight could shuffle himself on to a new square by the sly; if your bishop; in disgust at your castling, could wheedle your pawns out of their places; and if your pawns hating you because they are pawns, could make away from their appointed posts that you might get checkmate on a sudden. You might be the longest-headed of deductive reasoners, yet you might get beaten by your own pawns. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly upon your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with the game a man has to play against his fellow-man with other fellow-men for his instruments. He thinks himself sagacious, perhaps, because he trusts no bond except that of self-interest; but the only self-interest he can safely rely on is what seems to be such to the mind he would use or govern. Can he ever be sure of knowing this?" George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1972), 323.
3. See Philippe Schmitter and Javier Santiso, "Three Temporal Dimensions to the Consolidation of Democracy," (mimeo, February 1997).
4. See my "An Elusive Transition: The Slow Motion Demise of Authoritarian Dominant Party Rule in Mexico," Democratization 2 (Autumn 1995): 246-69.
5. Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, trans. Ian Maclean, (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1995), 229. In fact Velásquez seems the perfect embodiment of the "rational fool" almost two centuries before Amartya Sen discovered him. His father taught him how to describe human action and emotion by geometrical figures, but he kept falling over because the action of walking did not always obey logical rules.
6. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 248.
7. Ibid., 364-65. "In legal language the punishment which makes a man return to the line he has transgressed is called euthynē, straightening - there, the sophist believes, the educational function of law is made manifest" (311).
8. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (Harmonds-worth, Eng.: Penguin, 1972), 145.
9. Quoted in Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 70.
10. Public dramatic performances can, of course, take many forms - not just historical drama, but farce and psychological tragedy; not just theater, but circus and soap opera. So my metaphor is very stretchable. To demonstrate its utility requires a succession of case studies, for which there is no room here.
11. To compare democratic transitions by reference to a theatrical metaphor implies that the analyst is standing outside both the performance and the audience. She is, if you like, a theater critic. But the prime test of a play is whether it engrosses the audience. In the same way the prime test of a transition is whether it persuades its citizenry. An external analyst may claim that all the requisites for democratization are present, but if the society involved is not persuaded the process will not be real. Likewise, a theater critic may praise a performance, but that is no use unless the audience responds. Naturally one would expect some convergence between social-science and citizen perceptions of democratization, but just as audiences do not necessarily see eye to eye with critics, this cannot be taken for granted.