An elemental definition of democracy and its advantages for comparing political regime types

Democratization

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 215-229

  Storm, Lise ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Democratic elements; Democratization; Neutrality; Political regime types

Indexed keywords

EID: 41349096691     PISSN: 13510347     EISSN: 1743890X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13510340701846301     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. See, among others, Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1976)
2. Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986)
3. Scott Mainwaring, 'Transitions to Democracy and Democratic Consolidation: Theoretical and Comparative Issues', in Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O'Donnell, and Samuel Valenzuela (eds), Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 294-341
4. Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991)
5. and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Stephens, and John Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell, 1992).
6. David Collier and Steven Levitsky, 'Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research', World Politics, Vol. 49, No. 3 (1997), pp. 430-51
7. which draws on the same authors' Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research, Working Paper 230 (Notre Dame, IN: Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, 1996).
8. It should be noted that Collier and Levitsky (note 2) never set out to develop a definition that is universally applicable. What the two scholars aimed at was the creation of a model that would help make sense of the many definitions of democracy in use today.
9. Collier and Levitsky, World Politics (note 2), pp. 430-1.
10. In the words of Collier and Levitsky, World Politics (note 2), p. 438, 'the distinctive feature of diminished subtypes is that they generally identify specific attributes of democracy that are missing, thereby establishing the diminished character of the subtype, at the same time that they identify other attributes of democracy that are present'.
11. Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Enquiry (London: John Wiley, 1970)
12. and Andrew Faure, 'Some Methodological Problems in Comparative Politics', Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1994), pp. 307-22.
13. Gerardo Munck, Disaggregating Political Regime: Conceptual Issues in the Study of Democratization, Working Paper 228 (Notre Dame, IN: Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, 1996).
14. Giovanni Sartori, 'Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics', The American Political Science Review, Vol. 64, No. 4 (1970), p. 1051.
15. See also Michael McFaul, 'The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship', World Politics, Vol. 54, No. 2 (2002), pp. 212-44
16. Richard Anderson, M. Steven Fish, Stephen Hanson and Philip Roeder, Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001)
17. and John Higley and Richard Gunther (eds), Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
18. In the case of Regime X: BCL. Please note that it is unlikely that Regime X would be described by a definition from the category of prototypical conceptions of established industrial democracy, since it would be missing/have a weakened form of two elements compared to other regimes in this category. Regimes described by expanded procedural minimum definitions would most likely be seen as a closer match.
19. Although an increase in the number of elements of democracy present in a regime is the aim we can associate with the democratization process, such an increase is not imperative if a regime is to be described as having undergone a process of democratization, since such processes sometimes fail to produce the desired outcome.
20. Mainwaring (note 1), p. 298.
21. O'Donnell and Schmitter (note 1), pp. 7-8.
22. Sartori (note 8), pp. 1040-4.