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Working Paper n.º 4
The International Politics of Democratization from Portugal: A
Reassessment (1974) to Iraq (2003)02 | Dezembro | 2004
Laurence Whitehead, Nuffield College, University of Oxford
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I - Introduction
From the “revolução dos cravos” (April 1974) to
the “liberation” of Iraq (April 2003) the so-called “third wave” of
democratisations has triggered various types of “transition” from authoritarian
(or even totalitarian) rule. Over the past thirty years this has affected
almost half of the sovereign states recognised by the United Nations. In some
countries a clear-cut episode of regime change separates an old (undemocratic)
order from a new (more or less “consolidated”) electoral democracy. In
many other cases the political trajectory has been more erratic and the outcome
more ambiguous, but even so what has come to the fore has been the norms and
structures of competitive politics within a relatively neutral institutional
framework. There remain large regions that have proved resistant to this
global tendency (most notably in the Arab world), and there have been a small
number of significant reversals (e.g. Pakistan). In some cases
democratisation has come about through delicate negotiations between rival
domestically based political elites, but there are also numerous examples of
regime change through rupture, perhaps precipitated by external crises or even
(as in Iraq) imposed through military conquest. The old established
democracies remain securely in place but there is quite widespread evidence of
growing disenchantment with the functioning of “really existing” democratic
politics, and in some important countries there have been some significant
signs of “decay” in the observance of basic democratic norms. Quite a few
of the new democracies display substantial levels of citizen disenchantment,
and in some cases even of institutional dysfunctionality. Whereas the
early democratisations of the 1970s all took place in long-established and securely
implanted nation states, those of the 1990s were more likely to occur in
institutionally fragile nations (perhaps newly created), where basic elements
of the underlying political order remained subject to contestation.
Overall, then, the record of the past thirty years presents a mixed picture.
Democratisation has advanced, but initial theories and models of democratic
transition have been stretched (and even undermined) by the resulting diversity
of paths and outcomes.[1]
.
The early regime changes (such as Greece and
Portugal) were rare, and seen as precarious. But as the “Third Wave”
gathered momentum in the 1980s the perception grew that democratisation had
become easy and perhaps even unstoppable. This optimism crested with the
dissolution of the Soviet bloc after 1989. During the 1990s, however,
impediments and uncertainties become more evident as the most recent claimants
for inclusion in the list of new democracies tended to lack many of what
earlier theorists had regarded as the basic “pre-requisites” for democratic
stability (a minimum level of per capita income, literacy, urbanization, and a middle
class, etc.). From Albania to Zambia the later democratisers presented a range
of adverse characteristics that could help to explain why, as the “wave” spread
the spectrum of processes has broadened and outcomes have diverged. What
initially appeared as a relatively small and coherent cluster of cases suitable
for tight comparative analysis (Portugal, Spain, the Dominican Republic,
Uruguay, etc.) has recently become a sprawling, and perhaps unmanageable,
crowd. Certainly the attempt to apply established categories and models
to such recent instances of “regime change” as Afghanistan and Iraq involves
extrapolation on a heroic scale.
.
Nevertheless, the comparative study of
democratisation process has developed into one of the most flourishing growth
industries in comparative politics, and on some important topics this has
generated substantial advances both in methods and in understanding. One
area of methodological advance is of particular interest and relevance to the
theme of this chapter – comparative historical analysis.[2]
This macro, and potentially holistic, perspective helps us to view each
democratisation process as a long-term, multi-dimensional, and partially
open-ended and perhaps even potentially reversible historical reality. It
also facilitates theoretically informed comparison of analogous processes,
undertaken with the principle aim of enhancing the understanding of each
specific instance. From this perspective the test of a good comparison
might not be whether it uncovered a “law-like” regularity applying to a
multitude of cases, still less to “predict” outcomes, or to prescribe “best
practices”. Rather, it would be to identify themes and hypotheses that
merit further inspection when “telling the story” of each particular
democratisation. Ideally, in addition, these themes might (if supported
by detailed historical corroboration) generate tentative “middle range”
generalizations applicable to suitably defined clusters of cases.
.
This is the approach guiding the rest of this
chapter. The universe of democratisations subject to reassessment in what
follows is all the attempted or achieved regime changes that began after April
1974 and before April 2003. Out of this large universe, attention will be
focussed on a limited number of “telling” examples, cases where a historically
grounded reconsideration uncovers hitherto underestimated indications of the
importance of international variables and dimensions. The Óbidos
conference contained several such studies (published elsewhere in this volume).
In particular, the Portuguese regime change was reinterpreted as an episode of European
decolonisation, and the reorientation of mainland Portugal away from its
maritime empire (seen as a counterweight to Spain’s dominance of the Iberian
hinterland) and towards full integration in a democratic European Union.
Likewise, the democratisation of Spain following the death of Franco was also
reinterpreted, uncovering historical evidence to demonstrate that this
supposedly archetypal instance of a domestically driven “pacted” transition was
also strongly conditioned by hitherto neglected international components.
Thus, subsequent democratisations in say, Argentina, Poland, Taiwan or East
Timor, can no longer be classified as mere “exceptions” to the general rule
that international dimensions of regime change are typically of no more than secondary
significance, since this new research demonstrates their centrality in even the
classic initial cases. Moreover, Washington’s current ambition to bring
democracy to the large world region it has recently constructed (the “Greater
Middle East”, which extends from Pakistan to Morocco) underscores the
continuing policy significance of comparative work on the international
politics of democratisation.
.
This overview chapter highlights three
comparative and theoretical issues that have, in my opinion, so far received
inadequate attention from the democratisation studies community. With the
benefit of thirty years of hindsight it would be illuminating to reassess
prevailing interpretations of many key democratic transitions from an
international politics perspective. More specifically, the chapter
suggests the following three axes of comparative historical analysis: (i) the
increasing emphasis on the links between democracy and security, in contrast to
an earlier perception of democratisation as liberation; (ii) the associated
possibility of a declining “counter-hegemonic” potential of democratisation;
(iii) the narrower issue of whether democratisation alters a state’s foreign
policy (and if so what parts of it, and how). The following three sections
of this chapter outline an exploratory research agenda on these inter-related
topics. It does not aspire to resolve the questions it raises (that
requires more detailed historical analysis of key cases, as exemplified in
other chapters of this volume), but only to stimulate further work (some of
which should be presented to the Twentieth International Conference of IPSA, in
Japan in 2006). The final section
of the chapter sketches some provisional suggestions and conclusions.
II - Democracy as Security, or as
Liberation
Every democratisation involves a change of
political regime. Every regime change presupposes the demise of a prior
regime. But, of course, an undemocratic regime can terminate without
being replaced by any equally coherent successor regime; and a change from an
authoritarian regime may not result in a democratic regime. Therefore
every transition generates uncertainty, and raises the spectre of potential
insecurity (both domestic and in relation to neighbours and allies of the
authoritarian incumbents). Every regime change also raises fear of
betrayal, reversal, or collapse. So those who struggle for a democratic
regime change are aiming to introduce a new political order in which old
authoritarian practices are permanently ended, not just temporarily
interrupted. In this sense they aim for “liberation” of their society
from its repressive traditions and heritage. This dialogue between hope
and fear, between liberation and security, is inherent in all democratisations.
.
Even when a regime change does culminate in the
establishment of a durable democracy this must nevertheless obey the logic of
order that applies to the implantation of every effective political
regime. Even democracy is a form of “domination”, in the sense that only
certain patterns of political conduct can be tolerated. Others lie outside the
range of what can be permitted by even the most liberal of constitutional
orders. All beliefs and forms of peaceful expression may be allowed, but
even then some more aggressive forms of behaviour will have to be prescribed,
and even in the last analysis repressed. Those political actors who remain
wedded to the promotion of outlawed behaviour will ultimately have to be
sanctioned (always within the law, and subject to constitutional guarantees and
due process, if the new regime is indeed to qualify as a fully fledged
constitutional democracy). For example, those engaged in attempts to
restore the previous authoritarian system in violation of the new rules will
have to be restrained or ultimately punished. Similarly, those who
welcome the breakdown of the old regime but refuse to accept constraints
legitimately put in place to defend the new order will also have to be
disciplined.[3]
.
So the dialogue between freedom and security in
democracy always requires the striking of a balance. Within a democratic
framework liberation cannot be confused with anarchy. But at the same
time any incoming democratic regime will want to offer its newly enfranchised
demos a menu of political and civic freedoms that were not previously
available. This is the inherent “liberation” component of a democratic
transition. Admittedly this terminology carries a baggage unacceptable to many
contemporary liberals, who prefer to speak in terms of “building the rule of
law” or “promoting the rights of citizenship”. But there is a cost to
this substitute terminology. Correctly understood, “liberation” is an
objective that people struggle for, rather than a target that is merely set for
them from above.
.
Now let us put these theoretical reflections
into some comparative historical perspective. Twenty years ago democratic
transitions were infrequent, and their outcomes were uncertain. In a
bi-polar world the two dominant blocs generally promoted loyal protégés, and
discouraged the security risks associated with democratic experimentation.
Political democratisation also raised anxieties about the stability of economic
arrangements – as voters oscillated between left and right parties this might
produce shifts between socialist and capitalist economic orientations. So democratisation
was plausibly viewed as an uncertain undertaking, one that would have to be
internally driven, one that was potentially counter-hegemonic, and therefore a
project most likely to succeed when domestic strategic interactions favoured
agreement, and when external destabilizing pressures could be minimized. The
relevant unit of analysis was therefore the individual state (or national
political regime), and attention was focused on those states that possessed
sufficient internal autonomy to screen out international intrusions.
.
This panorama has now been transformed.
Whereas in Cold War conditions the struggle for democracy often prioritised
national liberation and downplayed the issue of security, in the post-Cold War
world the balance of emphasis has swung in the other direction. There is
currently one main source of political orientation (Washington) instead of two
rival centres. During the 1990s, under Washington’s influence, democratisation
was now more commonly viewed as the norm, rather than the exception (outside
the Islamic).Unsatisfactory outcomes are most often presented as temporary
setbacks to a predetermined course. There has been an explosion of
international political and economic incentives for states to qualify as
“democracies”, and these external reinforcements are widely expected to “lock
in” democratisation processes in most or all properly administered
states. Where such expectations are clearly being frustrated, the leaders
of international opinion reach for such labels as “rogue states”, or
“collapsed” or “failed” states, etc. thereby paving the way for encroachments
on state sovereignty. There has been a proliferation of so called
“humanitarian interventions” that are supposed to end when transitional
administrations construct new democratic regimes. This radical shift in
the outlook of international actors reflects the end of the bi-polar conflict
and the discredit of socialist economic models. More recently it has been
reinforced by a perception that western-led security interests are best served
by managing the risks of controlled democratisation.
.
In the 1990s an academic consensus argued that
democracies do not go to war with one another, and therefore that
democratisation is a means to abolish war. This justified democracy
promotion as a policy that was both virtuous and cost effective, (on the “all
good things go together” principle). But with the passage of time this
automatic linking of democracy with security has been seen to be
simple-minded. The emphasis has therefore shifted to more intrusive forms
of western intervention that may promote security in troubled regions without
necessarily cherishing democratic values, although official discourse still
assumes the promotion and pro-western security through controlled withdrawal,
supposedly leaving new democratic regimes in place after the intervention ends.
Although this is mainly a western (above all US-led) approach to
democratisation it has been taken up by the United Nations and so has acquired
the status of a new international orthodoxy.
.
This was not the way democratisation was
viewed in the early (Cold War) stage of the “Third Wave”. At that time
given its confrontation with the Soviet Union the West embraced quite a few
clearly undemocratic regimes, and disavowed many of their typically democratic
opponents as either willing or naïve agents of Soviet imperialism. In
response emerging democratic coalitions in Southern Europe and Latin America
tended to view authoritarian rule and the violation of human rights as a
tolerated expression of western security interests. In consequence, when
opposition forces argued for democratisation and the return of the military to
barracks they tended to associate regime change with a certain degree of
“liberation” from the straitjacket of repressive anti-communism. More
concretely, democracy might require the legalisation of an outlawed Communist
Party, and a return of exiles, and even a reassessment of the role of military
bases and external security alliances (which could only be renewed subject to
popular democratic endorsement). In the Soviet-controlled countries of
Eastern Europe the association of democratisation with “liberation” was even
more direct and indeed stark. Since a transition from communist rule would
mean escaping Soviet control, it almost inherently involved “national
liberation”.
.
Since the end of the Cold War this logic has
faded. Now that the richest, most powerful, and most secure nations of the
world are so predominantly rated as democracies, it became possible to forge
agreements between leading states in the international system which has
extended “democratic conditionality” to a widening range of regional and
functional arenas. The intention was to press the remaining (mostly poor,
weak, and insecure) nations to conform to standard set by these leading nations
(not themselves necessarily subject to much external scrutiny). So during
the 1990s the idea that international organisations should attach a higher
priority to democracy promotion than in the past became increasingly
fashionable, at least in the West. This probably also reflected the
increased proportion of member states in most such organisations that are, at
least formally, now classified as “democracies”, and that gain international
prestige and even benefits from such a status. It also reflects the fact
that some international organisations include commitments to democracy (or
failing that at least to some basic universal values concerning human rights
and respect for international law) among their goals. Increasingly, they
even make democracy a requirement for membership. In addition, since the
end of the Cold War, if not before, western liberal thinkers have tended to
downgrade the claims of “national sovereignty” and “non-intervention”, and to
extend the scope attributed to shared international norms as arbitrators of the
conduct of nations.
.
For a mixture of these reasons the international
community has over the past decade or so become increasingly committed to
democracy promotion, and these practices are becoming more institutionalised
and perhaps more effective.Even before the end of the Cold War the five
permanent members of the Security Council had begun coming round to a more
positive view of the possibilities for promoting both political reform and
regional conflict resolution through the UN system. (The 1988 Namibia
agreement provided an early indication of this new trend).
.
Following the end of the Cold War the Security
Council has been much freer to authorize “humanitarian interventions” which
start with the determination (under Chapter VII of the UN Charter) that there
is a threat to international security justifying the temporary suspension of
state sovereignty until the fault has been corrected. International
interventionism is therefore conceived as no more than an interlude to be
accompanied by a variety of measures, including the convoking of a competitive
election, prior to the withdrawal of UN or other internationally mandated
forces. The key point to notice here is that democracy promotion is
typically embedded in a broader set of conflict-resolution objectives, rather
than pursued in isolation. There may well be a tension between the UN
desire to terminate its peace-making activities and withdraw its forces (which
implies the early convening of an election, even though conditions for a
durable democratisation may not be present) and the goal of democracy building.
It is also important to note that the typical arenas of such UN operations are
centres of international turbulence which may well consist of very weak, or
even “failed” states. This is neither the most representative nor the most
propitious setting for democratisation. At times the UN has also found
itself drawn into democracy promoting activities in states where the Security
Council has not determined that there was any threat under Chapter VII (Kosovo,
for example). In some cases the UN has felt obliged to terminate a
democracy-promoting mission on the grounds that the local situation had become
too unstable (as in Angola in 1999 and Haiti in 2000, for example).
.
Since September 11th 2001 the
international agenda has shifted once again, and the United Nations has become
a critical arena in the west’s new “war on terror”. In this new context
the notion of the UN taking responsibility for the administration of “failed
states” that can only be restored to independence once they have been
“democratised” has attracted new sources of support. It has also stirred up new
sources of anxiety. First in Afghanistan and then in Iraq the UN has been
called upon to legitimise the installation of new and purportedly
“democratising” governments in the wake of external invasions and
“liberations”. But the basic tests of procedural democracy (a level playing
field, a fair count, etc.) are subordinated to the security interests of the
occupation forces.
.
So although the assault of September 11th 2001
has elicited a new enthusiasm for UN-led transitional administrations followed
by democratisations in some quarters, this security-driven logic has also
elicited new sources of resistance in other parts of the international
community. None of the permanent members of the UN Security Council need
envisage a diminution of their sovereignty as a result of the new logic, since
they all enjoy the right of veto over initiatives that might otherwise
adversely affect them (e.g. in Chechnya, Tibet, Corsica, Guantánamo, or indeed
Gibraltar). But of course all those UN members that are listed as “rogue” or
“failed” states” are bound to take a much more critical view. In addition quite
a few other governments and currents of opinion will require considerable
reassurance before they can overcome their hesitations about this new
orthodoxy. Thus, most governments in the Middle East are bound to wonder about
the selective application of this doctrine (even if they can be persuaded to
accept its basic rationale).
.
Another area of anxiety concerns the dynamics of
a UN transitional administration, once an international intervention has been
sanctioned and carried out. Cambodia, Namibia, and East Timor all offer
relative reassurance that – at least in the limited number of suitable cases – the
process can be kept on track, and the outcome can be achieved with reasonable
punctilio, at a bearable cost, and without adversely affecting the basic
security of neighbouring states. But these were all “post-Cold War”
episodes, and even that category contains some less reassuring experiences – in
Angola, for example, or arguably, in Kosovo. Afghanistan, by contrast, is
the first of the new “war on terror” international interventions, and the
sceptics seen the implications of generalising this type of operation as
considerably more troubling. If the result is to bring peaceful and legitimate
authority to post-intervention Afghanistan, and to remove the country as a
source of instability and security threat to its neighbours and the world, the
UN is entitled to receive some of the credit. But equally, if warlordism
and narco-criminality prevail, if Afghanistan remains a “failed state”, and if
its neighbours continue to experience spill-over disturbance from its
unresolved internal tensions, then the UN’s pacifying and democratising
credentials will be impaired. At the time of writing the UN seems
to be facing an even more acute dilemma over Iraq, where elections will lack
credibility without its endorsement, but where UN officials dread further identification
with forces that the Secretary General has described as engaging in an
“illegal” occupation. A discredited UN would open the door to competitive
unilateralisms all round the globe.
.
To conclude this section we can now revert to
the more theoretical considerations introduced at the outset.
Authoritarian regimes typically promise to strengthen security, and ask in
exchange for heightened discipline and the reduction of personal
freedoms. In reaction against such regimes, democratic transitions are
typically associated with increased uncertainty, and perhaps even insecurity,
compensated by a restoration of lost liberties. This exchange was a
familiar feature of past democratisations, and it still has some currency even
today. But durable and legitimate democracies require a firm basis of public
security, where it is not present it must be created, and where present it must
be preserved. However, especially since September 11th 2001,
the liberating dimension of regime change has been downgraded, replaced by a
new emphasis on security. Security concerns have the potential to
crowd out procedural democracy altogether, but in current conditions the
greater danger could be that they merely drain it of deliberative
content. Electoral processes may still allow some limited freedom of
choice, access to information, and the right to organize and petition, all
freedoms lacking under authoritarian rule. But the freedom to choose may
be limited to a narrow range of safe alternatives; the information available
may well be manipulated to serve the requirements of order and stability; and
the right to organize and petition may be kept selective and incomplete.
Only those portions of the national territory most “securely” under the control
of the central authorities may be allowed to vote, thus unbalancing the outcome
to the advantage of foreign-backed incumbents.
.
This confirms the broader point that debates
about democratisation are also invariably about what kind of democracy is
desired, or considered to be feasible. The early “transitions”
literature, with its focus on strategic interactions between opposing currents
of domestic opinion, privileged a version of democracy structured around the
building of consent, and the establishment of local credentials of political
authenticity. This was a “dialogical “ as well as a domestically oriented
conception of democracy. But other conceptions of democracy are also
possible. Democracy can be conceived as the expression of a majority will
to affirm collective values, and to silence discordant challengers. In that
case those who control the state apparatus and define the official discourse
can use the argument from security to exclude opponents as troublemakers.
Democracy can be characterised as at the opposite pole from “liberation”. This
shift from an emphasis on building consent to one of exerting control seems to
be occurring not only within some new democracies, but within some old ones as
well. And it occurs not only within individual countries, but also at the
international level.
III - Declining “Counter-Hegemonic”
Potential?
As the focus of attention shifts from
well-established nations to weak or even “failed states”, and as western and
UN-led suspensions of sovereignty come to precede democratisation, the international
security imperative tends to over-ride the domestic drive for liberation from
authoritarian constraints. In this context it would not be surprising if
the resulting “democratic” regimes were to prove compliant or indeed
subordinate to their external mentors. If so, the post-Cold War
democratisations would tend to display less “counter-hegemonic” potential than
their pre-1989 precursors.
.
Certainly since the early 1990s the structure of
the international order has shifted. Many campaigners for democracy in
Southern Europe and elsewhere in the 1970s and early 1980s thought that they
might also renegotiate their country’s place in the international alliance
system, and even that a democratic electorate might also exercise the option to
practice re-distributive economic policies, both internally and
internationally. But since the mid-eighties international economic
arrangements have become more universal, rule bound, and – at least for most
new democracies –constraining than the ad hoc arrangements that used to precede
“globalisation”. The scope for domestically driven policy experimentation
has accordingly been reduced. Where sovereign democratic rights are
respected they are accompanied by powerful associated obligations and responsibilities.
This applies to political alliances and military security arrangements as much
as to economic commitments.
.
In this way, for example, the voters of say
newly democratic Mexico or Turkey find their international options to be
substantially limited (by NAFTA and the EU respectively), and even their
internal socio-economic choices are hedged in by manifold external
restrictions. Perhaps some such constraints were always present, but
under the preceding authoritarian regime it was possible to hope that with the
removal of artificial internal restraints on citizen pressures and demands
there would be some increased scope for choice at the international
level. Illusions of this kind have typically been dashed by recent
experiences of democratisation. If this is true even for such major and
weighty players as Mexico and Turkey it is all the more evident in lesser and
more fragile democracies (think of Benin, or East Timor, or Nicaragua). Some
observers may consider such constraints to be reassuring, or even as aids to
the stabilization of democracy. For others they may be less welcome,
since they undermine the authority and perhaps even the legitimacy of locally
elected governments. Whichever view one takes, this shift over the past
thirty years would seem to constitute a major and durable change in the
international politics of democratisations as the “third wave” has progressed.
.
Afghanistan and Iraq are so recent, and so
controversial that it may seem polemical to cite them in evidence here.
But their significance should not be overlooked. As mentioned in the
previous section, the claim that the military interventions there are paving
the way for “transitions to democracy” is heavily contested, and at least for
the time being lacks empirical support. At the time of writing neither
the Karzai nor the Allawi administrations can
claim electoral legitimisation. They were both ratified in office by
handpicked assemblies that were convoked during continuing civil conflict under
the supervision of foreign occupying armies. From these externally
created positions controlling state patronage they plan to convene elections,
which seem designed to confer a mantle of electoral legitimacy on those most
loyal to the occupiers. If these processes succeed the international
community will be invited to classify them as further examples of
“democratisation”. But this either involves stretching the term to cover
outcomes far different from an earlier period, or it is a straightforward
misnomer.[4] Only
time and future scholarly analysis will reveal which. In either case
these are telling cases for analysts interested in the declining
counter-hegemonic potential of contemporary democratisations. If the term
can be stretched to embrace the election of Karzai and Allawi these will be
limit cases
of democratisations tailored to reinforce a prevailing international hegemony
(a military supremacy at that, rather than a broader-based political
hegemony). If not, then the “counter-hegemonic” potential of regime
change in Afghanistan and Iraq will involve the expulsion of the occupation
forces. It is questionable whether such a regime change could now take a
democratic form.
.
Afghanistan and Iraq inevitably colour
contemporary debate on the broader issue. They could be aberrations, but
they could also foreshadow further regime changes along the same lines.
That at least is what the Bush administration’s “Greater Middle East”
initiative seemed to promise. (Whether it will materialise is another matter).
For the purposes of this chapter a thirty-year time horizon
introduces some necessary perspective. But how much counter-hegemonic
potential did the earlier democratisations really contain? If that
potential declined after 1990, how, and why, and with what implications for our
general models of democratisation?
.
These latest examples are not historically
unique. The 1966 elections in the Dominican Republic (following the
US-led invasion of 1965) provided a clear precursor. In that case it is
arguable that democratisation came to the country not in 1966, but in 1978,
when the party representing the losers from the US intervention won a majority
and (narrowly) secured the right to take office. In this case the Cold
War shaped the security agenda, just as the so-called “war on terror”
intervenes in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Dominican Republic was close to
communist Cuba, and the US intervention was motivated by a determination to
block all possibility of a second Castro-type takeover in the Caribbean.
For that reason only protégés of the invading force could be allowed to win the
1966 election. In 1978 it was (narrowly) decided that an electoral
victory by the opposition party of the democratic revolution would not
constitute an unacceptable rebuff to Washington. Thereafter the US came
to view competitive electoral politics in the Dominican Republic as the best
way to insulate that nation from the temptations of Castroism.
.
As the “third wave” gathered momentum in the
late 1970s and early 1980s an increasing number of democratisations began to
generate demands for the renegotiation of Cold War security commitments.
Greece and Portugal always remained formally within NATO, but their commitment
to the alliance was questionable during the early years of these new
democracies. Newly legalised left-wing parties drew attention to the
complicity linking the NATO authorities to previous anti-communist military
authoritarianism. Similarly in Spain (which had a military alliance with
the USA, outside the framework of NATO) the incoming Socialist party was
initially opposed to membership of NATO – a policy that the party subsequently
reversed through a democratic referendum. In the Philippines the fall of
dictator Marcos led to an upsurge of opposition to US military bases.
Similar security doubts arose concerning Argentina after the Falklands war,
South Africa after apartheid, etc. It is true that over time nearly all
these new democratic regimes became reconciled to the western security system,
but this was brought about through processes of democratic deliberation, and
was justified in terms of the modifications that could be secured, to adjust
western defence priorities in accordance with pluralist politics. The
“counter-hegemonic potential” of the democratisations may thus have helped to
reform and liberalise the western alliance system at a time when the Cold War
was in any case winding down.
.
In East-Central Europe no such negotiated
repositioning was on the agenda. For understandable reasons (including
the use of Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956 and in Prague in 1968)
democratisation included freeing these countries from the military, political,
and economic domination of Moscow. Here (and in the Baltic states) the
“counter-hegemonic” content of democratisation was not just potential, but
integral. Throughout the successor states to the former USSR
democratisation was similarly identified with escaping control from Moscow.
.
However, after 1990 subsequent democratisations
took place not in a bipolar, but within a basically unipolar international
security framework. In this changed setting “counter-hegemonic potential”
would involve democratising regimes against the wishes and interests of the
USA. Although Washington took care to minimise the scope for such
possibilities this was not a purely hypothetical contingency. In Mexico, for
example, to have accepted the outcome of the 1988 presidential election might
have complicated the Reagan administration’s regional security agenda, most
notably in Central America. By contrast, in 2000, when an opposition
victory in a Mexican presidential election was finally recognised as
legitimate, the democratisation of Mexico was no longer a security problem for
the USA. Similar points could be made concerning the democratisation of El
Salvador in the early 1990s. More generally, by the end of the Cold War
new democratic regimes (whether post-communist or post-authoritarian rightist) were
increasingly enmeshed in networks of economic and political obligations to
their neighbours, and to the international community, that limited their room
for destabilising policy discretionality, and that therefore diminished their
“counter-hegemonic potential”.
.
An important test case for this general thesis
would be the democratisation of Turkey. Here the victory of a moderate
Islamic party could (on some interpretations) be seen as an affirmation of
national aspirations in the face of western disapproval. After all, the
Turkish parliament voted down a proposal to send troops to Iraq and Washington
accepted this decision as a free choice of a democratic parliament. So some
leeway is still possible, although Turkey’s wish to join the EU exerts a powerful
constraint on its policy discretionality in most arenas (even on such
improbable topics as the outlawing of adultery).
IV - Democratisation and Foreign
Policy
This section tackles the question “How may
democratisation affect a country’s foreign policy”? Note that
the enquiry concerns a relatively uncertain “may”, and not a tightly causal
“does”. In principle foreign policy could be reshaped as a consequence of
a regime change. But much depends on the international context.
Some states have low profile foreign policies, and some enjoy a considerable
degree of foreign policy discretion. If democratisation occurs in this
kind of setting, there may be significant scope for foreign policy variation in
response to a shift in the internal political balance. But high profile
foreign policy commitments may be less optional. The international balance of
forces may leave little scope for innovation. Alternatively,
democratisation may be driven more by external than a by internal dynamics (the
lifting of an external veto, or even democratisation as a result of
invasion). In these cases, the same forces that produce the
democratisation may determine the re-orientation of foreign policy, and we
would be mistaken to refer to the former as causing the latter. For all
these reasons, a comparative historical analysis should explore possible
linkages, rather than causal necessities.
.
When addressing this broad question it could be
helpful to distinguish between negotiated democratisations
and regime changes brought about through “rupture”. April 1974 in Portugal, the
defeat of the Greek colonels later that year, or of the Argentine Generals in
1982 all led to major domestic turbulence (“regime change” in the strong sense)
and foreign policy was transformed as an almost inevitable counterpart.
The same was true of the “triple transitions” in post-communist Eastern Europe
in 1989. But negotiated (or “pacted”) democratisations may be much more
carefully controlled, with foreign policy disruptions thereby excluded from the
agenda for change. Thus, for example, in the 1980s and 1990s South Korea
achieved a negotiated transition to democracy without in any way altering its
security alliance with the USA (necessitated by its still unresolved state of
belligerence with North Korea). Over a similar period Chile and Mexico
both democratised gradually and without disturbing basic foreign policy
alignments, etc.
.
The example of South Korea highlights the fact
that foreign policy may sometimes be so heavily intertwined by external
necessity that domestic regime change can have little impact. This
leads to a third area of clarification. There are many dimensions to a
country’s foreign policy, and we need to be clear which aspects are to be
included in our “dependent variable”. This section focuses on “general
foreign policy orientations”, and not on key detailed or specialised sub-fields
(voting patterns at the UN Commission on Human Rights, etc.), unless these
acquire a broader significance. In addition, foreign policy can be roughly
divided into “process” and “outcome”, both of which could be affected by
democratisation. The questions of most interest here normally involve
elements of both, and that is how the issue is addressed in what follows.
.
In synthesis, then, the impact of
democratisation on foreign policy may be examined under five subheadings: what
follows the opening question is disaggregated into five sub-sections: types of
democratisation; components of democratisation; foreign policy instruments;
foreign policy areas; and discretionary outcomes.
Types of Democratisation - A distinction
has already been made between pacted or negotiated democratisations and those
brought about through rupture. But other typologies are also relevant for
the purpose of deducing foreign policy effects. If the outgoing
authoritarian regime had been a national security type military government,
then its international alignment would be likely to shift as its external
sponsors or protectors came to terms with the demotion of their preferred
protégés or assets. Similarly if the preceding regime had been a
Communist Party-led government democratisation might be expected to include a
switch from an eastward to a westward foreign policy orientation, as well as a
switch from state ownership to market, and from one party politics to
competitive elections (the so-called “triple transitions” of Eastern
Europe). If the authoritarian regime had suppressed regional minorities
(say in the Baltic, or in Bosnia, or in East Timor) then democratisation might
well lead to the rewriting of territorial boundaries, and the break-up of the
dominant state would probably generate new foreign policy problems with
unsettled neighbours. If democratisation has been strongly encouraged by
a regional association of democratic states (the EU, Mercosur, the OAS, etc.)
then domestic regime change might be integrally linked to a project of regional
integration with strong foreign policy implications. This list is
illustrative rather than exhaustive, but should suffice to demonstrate that
different types of democratisation would well have substantial and varied
foreign policy consequences.
Components of Democratization - Thus far
“democratisation” has been treated as a holistic process. But from the
foreign policy standpoint it may be equally important to consider its distinct
institutional components, and their respective international
consequences. For example, under democratisation it is normal for the
executive to lose its hitherto exclusive control over foreign policy, and to be
required to share responsibility for key operations (the ratification of
treaties, the appointment of ambassadors, the casting of votes in international
organizations) with the Congress. Where bi-cameralism prevails it is
typically the Senate or the Upper House that is assigned the major formal
foreign policy prerogatives. But the lower house may control the power of
the purse, and also take an active interest in the more controversial issues of
international and diplomatic action. Another significant component of
democratisation may be the communications media. Under authoritarian rule
their coverage of international politics and foreign policy is typically
constrained by the need to endorse official government stances, whereas in a
more pluralist and competitive political environment the incentives may shift
towards a much more critical treatment of the official line and much more
independent coverage of alternative perspectives. Reports concerning
human rights, humanitarian interventions, and electoral observation overseas
may be particularly affected. Authoritarian regimes are usually defensive
about such forms of international monitoring, but official attitudes can change
drastically following a transition. By taking a “forward line” on
such issues both domestically and internationally a new democratic government
may hope to capitalise on its new legitimacy and to underscore the moral
superiority compared to its predecessors. If so, this is likely to be
expressed through other components of democratisation, such as the incoming
government’s relations with both domestic and international NGOs. There
may also be significant legal repercussions (such as the ratification of
international legal instruments protecting human rights of domestic citizens,
changed expectations of the domestic courts concerning immunity for past
violations, etc.). Under democratisation the security
forces are also likely to lose some autonomy, with consequences for that
dimension of foreign policy as well.
.
It should not be imagined, however, that all
democratisations produce equally strong effects across all these various
components of regime change. Indeed the courts and the military may both
be much slower to adopt than the Congress and the media, if only because
whereas the latter see new opportunities for themselves in the course of
democratisation the former may fear institutional damage.
Foreign Policy Instruments - Under authoritarian
rule foreign policy is usually controlled by a small closed elite which aims to
monopolise information about the issues at stake, and which may be under very
little constraint to explain or justify its decisions to the wider
society. Democratisation tends to broaden the range of foreign policy
decision-makers, and to open up the relevant sources of information to wider
scrutiny. It may also require much more negotiation, persuasion, and
formal justification. International commitments that were previously
opaque and potentially unlimited may have to be reformulated in more precise
language and with clearly specified time limits and procedures for
review. As individual foreign ministers (or trade ministers, or
ambassadors, or economic negotiators) rotate in office the commitments they
enter into have to be made more impersonally binding on their successors (who
may come from different party political backgrounds). State governors and
opposition candidates for national office may acquire their own foreign policy
voices and may need to be included in the machinery of decision-making (at
least in a subordinate role). The differences between competing agencies
and bureaucracies operating on the same international agenda may have to be
more formally aired and arbitrated. The whole ethos of foreign
policy-making may therefore become more complex and more impersonal.
.
However, democracies may also engage in
personalist diplomacy, at least on those fronts where electoral competition can
be affected by a candidate’s image or international stature. This is
especially true of presidentialist democracies.
Foreign Policy Arenas - Under conditions of
electoral competition what counts as the most salient issues in foreign policy
may shift, in accordance with voter preferences. In Hungary, for example,
the shift to democracy uncovered a strong sentiment of solidarity with those
“ethnic Hungarian” minorities in neighbouring countries whose misfortunes
became a domestic political issue (as they had not been at least to the same
extent, under communist one party rule). Similarly, in democratic South
Africa international criticisms of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is an issue of substantial
internal political significance, and has to be treated accordingly. Thus
the change to a democratic regime may enhance the salience of some foreign
policy arenas, and may downgrade others. Where the dominant party, or the
outgoing military, conducted its own foreign policy outside formal channels
these sources of expertise and orientation may be disbanded, or at the very
least demoted. Where opposition constituencies such as the church, or the
labour unions, or the academics had previously been excluded from foreign
policy-making, under democratisation they can no longer be silenced and may
promote influential new arenas of action, with alternative sources of
information and hitherto unconsidered proposals for foreign policy innovation.
Again, these potential shifts in emphasis are
not automatic or uniform. Old agencies may find ways to reposition
themselves to avoid demotion. Not all new voices will succeed in creating
effective arenas for action to change foreign policy priorities. These
processes may be contested and delayed. But democratisation can certainly
produce foreign policy effects through this medium.
Discretionary Outcomes - As already noted, in
some countries there may be very little scope for policy discretion on issues
of external relations. So when we consider the impact of democratisation
on foreign policy processes and outcomes we need to focus on the limited areas
where some discretion is available. One outcome of particular interest would
be the decision to work more closely with an international community of
democratic states, and to make the support of democracy elsewhere one of the
new objectives of foreign policy action. A related outcome could be to
stress the value of international law and of international organisations as
sources of orientation in world affairs. Linked to these two could be an
enhanced emphasis on voluntary multilateralism as opposed to the unilateral
pursuit of national objectives in the external arena. There could also be
outcomes related to redefinitions of the conditions under which force would be
used to pursue foreign policy objectives, and also the renegotiation of
security arrangements (bases, alliance links, membership of denuclearised
zones, etc.), insofar as these can be varied by domestic choice.
As noted under previous sections of this
chapter, it should not be assumed that the installation of a democratic regime
necessarily or immediately generates large effects in these areas of
discretionary choice. Nor should it be assumed that eventual changes are
necessarily unidirectional. A democratic regime might be more reckless
than before in its military deployments (e.g. the Poles in Iraq), and the
electorate of a new democracy may favour more intense security commitments
(Baltic states in NATO), rather than neutrality.
V - Reassessing Democratisations from an
International Politics Perspective
This chapter has revisited the
international political dimensions of the “third wave” of democratisations that
took place between 1974 and 2003, highlighting three relatively neglected
issues – the shift from a conception of democracy as liberation towards one
stressing security; the associated declining counter-hegemonic potential of
recent “democratisations” (especially those induced by military intervention
since 2001); and the foreign policy changes associated with
democratisation. It has sought to illustrate the range and importance of
these neglected issues, but it has painted with a broad brush. More
conclusive reassessments would require detailed re-evaluation of critical
cases, some of which can be found elsewhere in this volume.
.
In conclusion, as new experiences destabilise
initial theories and interpretations,
.
.and as older episodes of democratisation are
re-interrogated in the light of current concerns, the international politics of
this type of regime change is acquiring heightened prominence. This shift
in perspective is important for scholarship, and it is also of considerable policy
significance. What can we expect of regime changes when these are
justified in the language of democracy, but are imposed by coercive means that
generate anxieties about their security implications? What is the value
of democratisation that leads to a policy straitjacket, in which newly
enfranchised electorates may conclude that their margins of choice have been
constrained to vanishing point by internationally imposed limitations? Do
such democracies develop foreign policies that are in any way different from
(better than) what would otherwise have been adopted? Such questions
touch on quite profound theoretical problems. The sovereignty and
discretionality of “really existing” democracies affects the moral basis of
their claims to legitimacy. The idea that international politics can be
made better by the dissemination of such regimes, and the displacement of
authoritarian alternatives, rests on certain assumptions about what democratic
regimes are like, and how they behave, assumptions that seem to require
critical re-examination in the light of recent developments.
.
These international political dimensions of
democratization require extended re-evaluation, of the type initiated in this
volume. But this is not the only area of comparative democratisation
studies requiring further consideration. Elsewhere,[5] I
have identified two other relatively neglected fields of enquiry that could
change our analysis and prescriptions. These are “lustration” (the degree to
which democratic state institutions are “purged” of individuals and groups
associated with the previous undemocratic order); and “epistemic communities”
(the extent to which under democratic conditions key areas of policy making is
guided and filtered by open and pluralist communities composed of “experts” –
i.e. those with the requisite minimum levels of technical understanding required
for effective modern government in each area).
.
This is not the place for further elaboration of
these topics, except insofar as they bear on the international political
dimensions treated in this chapter. But it is worth noting certain
interconnections. Thus, key arenas for lustration would include the
intelligence apparatus, the security forces, the apparatchiks of the ruling
party, and the foreign service personnel. The extent to which these are
replaced, retrained, or allowed to continue with their previous practices, will
have a profound effect on the balance between “liberation” and “security” in a
new democracy, and may well bear on its “counter-hegemonic potential”.
Similarly, the capacity of a new democratic regime to undertake effective
foreign policy innovations (supervised by congress, monitored by an independent
press, accountable to an informed electorate, etc.) may be strongly affected by
the presence (or absence) of an appropriate “epistemic community” in this
field. “Expertise” in foreign affairs is a scarce resource, and not all
democracies can count on a ready public understanding of the issues involved.
Thus, the comparative study of democratisations can be
reinvestigated by fresh thinking and new research in three separate fields –
international dimensions; lustration; and epistemic community building – with
the contributions from each of these reassessments feeding into parallel work
in the other two areas.
Notes
[1]
This theme is more fully elaborated in the final chapter of my Democratization:
Theory and Experience (Oxford University Press, 2002).
[2]
For a good recent survey see James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (eds.)
Comparative Historical Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
[3]
At first there may be negotiation over just how much leeway to allow those who
contributed to the downfall of the old regime. New rules may be leniently
applied until the transition to democracy is complete. But eventually
even the most generous of democratic regimes has to take a stand if some of its
initial backers press an incompatible project too far.
[4]
E.g. Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Allawi is reported as stating on September
11ththat the elections planned for January 2005 will go ahead
whatever the security situation. “If, for any reason, 300,000 people
cannot have an election, if – a very big ”if” – then frankly 300,000 is not
going to alter 25 million voting” (Financial Times, 13th September
2004).
[5] In my keynote
address to the Associaçăo Brasileira de Ciencia Politica, Rio de Janeiro, July
22nd 2004.
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