The promotion of democracy: a theoretical impasse?
Ronald Reagan, in his speech to the British Parliament in June 1982, places the defense of democracy at the heart of the Cold War: it will only come to an end when democracy prevails in the ideological battle that opposes it totalitarianism.Democratization studies are not external to this battle. This is reflected in the Journal of Democracy . Created and financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (a semi-public organization founded in 1983 by the Reagan administration to spearhead the struggle of ideas and values against the USSR), it wants to play its full role In the export of the democratic model. It also reflects the theoretical difficulties that accompanied the promotion of democracy during the last twenty years .
There are at least three reasons for taking the Journal of Democracy as an object of study.
1) This review has been, and still is, a space in which all the great figures of democratization studies , including Larry Diamond and Mark Plattner, have founded and reviewed the magazine and have always led it, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Philipp Schmitter, Juan Linz, Alfred Stepan, Robert Dahl, Seymour Lipset, Guillermo O'Donnell, Thomas Carothers, Laurence Whitehead and, occasionally, thinkers such as Amartya Sen or Adam Przeworski. The numerous debates that have taken place in the pages of this journal and the many discussions that have been held by these authors make the difficulties, tensions and stumbling blocks of the project for the promotion of democracy sensitive, particularly in the definition Of the concepts underlying its theoretical justification.
2) The Journal of Democracy pays great attention to the evolution of democratization processes, the conditions of which change radically, over the last fifteen or twenty years. Paying attention to the transformation of the issues discussed in this review makes it possible to measure this evolution - which we shall have occasion to verify.
(3) The third reason is related not so much to the content or history of this journal as to its status , at least to that attributed to it by its two directors and founders, Mark Plattner and Larry Diamond, The neo-conservative current (the first directed the magazine The Public Interest , around which this current was organized, the second is related to the Hoover Institution). At the beginning of the first issue , the two directors stressed the need for democratic defenders to unify and thus strengthen their discourse against anti-democratic ideologies. This is what the journal should serve: to oppose authoritarian and totalitarian ideologies with a militant defense of democracy , which consists in demonstrating, I shall return to it, that democracy is the only legitimate regime.
The analysis of the most important contributions reveals that the theoretical difficulties encountered in the promotion of democracy are not due solely to the complex history of democratization processes, which are difficult to understand and predict. They seem to me to be based more fundamentally on the collapse of models, the paradigms around which it has been structured . This collapse has several reasons: it is due to the impossibility of the promotion of separating scientific discourse and normative discourse from the obstacles encountered in the justification of a universalist discourse, but also perhaps from the equivocal work which Was carried out, at least in the early 1990s, on an equivocal notion of ideology.
Plattner, taking stock of the fifteen years of the magazine's existence in 2005, distinguishes three periods in the magazine's history:
- First, the debates were structured around the idea of democratic transition . This is, according to Plattner, the principal object of the first five years of the journal's existence.
- then, in the following years, the debates focused more on the question of the consolidation of the new democracies.
- finally, the interrogation on democratization moves after September 11, and questions most of the models on which it was organized.
We will follow, in our reflection, this periodization.
I. The third wave and the project of a democratic ideology
1. Democracy as a legitimate regime
When Plattner and L. Diamond set the subject of the Journal of Democracy in the first pages of the journal, they insist on two propositions which in their eyes legitimize their undertaking. An anthropological datum first: obviouswy, there is a universaw desire for freedom. This is made manifest by a historical fact , followed by the resurgence of democracy since the late 1970s and early 1980s. This historical movement of peoples towards democracy is presented as the foundation of what can be Call for a firm of democratic ideology whose magazine wants to be the nerve center. This is what Samuel Huntington called "the third wave", in a famous work of which he summarizes the essential in the Journal of Democracy . Thirty countries between 1974 and 1990 underwent a transition to democracy. This wave follows two other movements towards democracy. The first of the years 1820 to the year 1926: 29 democracies are born. This movement was interrupted by the birth of authoritarian regimes in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The second wave took place after the Second World War. In 1962, there were 36 democracies.
This third wave of democratization corresponds to the collapse of a number of authoritarian regimes in Western Europe (Portugal in 1974, Greece in the same year, Spain in 1975), Latin America (Peru in 1980, Argentina from 1982 and the Falklands war, Uruguay in 1983, Brazil in 1984), Southeast Asia (in the Philippines in 1986, in South Korea in 1987, and to some extent in Taiwan, after). It is also obviously linked to the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian system in Eastern Europe, from the late 1980s onwards.
Now, bringing together all these democratic transformations and associating them in what Huntington, like the vast majority of contributors to the Journal of Democracy, calls a "wave" is not without significance.
First, if there is "vague", it is because in their eyes one can read in this historical movement a chain relationship. This is what Huntington calls the " snowballing ": democratization calls for democratization, the transition to democracy in one state inspires transition in another state.
Then, if we can bring these democratic transitions together (which opens the age of democracy according to Huntington ), it is because the same causality is at work: if these regimes Authoritarian regimes have collapsed because they ended up lacking legitimacy in the eyes of their populations and above all in the eyes of the elites. There are, of course, other factors: the unprecedented economic growth of the 1960s, the evolution of the Catholic Church, especially since Vatican II, which has become a force opposed to authoritarianism, and changes in Foreign policies of the United States and the European Community. But the lack of legitimacy seems first .
On this point, we must distinguish in this wave of democratization authoritarianregimes and totalitarian regimes. While the lack of legitimacy of the former is not surprising, as they generally rely on a minority putting its institutions and armed forces at its service, the ideological weakness of socialist totalitarianism is more surprising: what seemed to characterize This type of regime was the massive adherence of the people to the institutions and system of socialist values. It was at least in this way that most Western analysts appeared to be a regime capable of perpetuating itself indefinitely because control over the lives of citizens was total, a regime capable of spreading to other states. In other words, the delegitimization of the socialist regime in the eyes of its population has put at the heart of politics what has been treated only marginally in modern political thought according to the founders of the Journal of Democracy : politics, The adherence of a people to a regime.
It is indeed a work on the idea of ideology that the Journal of Democracy invites: to give a positive meaning to ideology, understood not as the justification of domination, but as the system of ideas and values To which one adheres consciously and rationally, thus conferring on this system its full legitimacy. Adhering to democracy means first and foremost adhering to the democratic ideology .
If there is no democracy without democrats, if there are no democrats without a rational choice of democracy, then one understands that the Journal of Democracy's project is entirely justified in the eyes of its founders : To promote democracy is to work to enlighten consciences (especially the elites) - it is to work in the science of democracy .
2. Democracy and capitalism
But there arises a first difficulty: what is the place of economic development in this wave of transition? Huntington, when he theorized the third wave, mentions the economic growth of the 1960s, but without questioning the status of such a factor: is this a necessary condition? A necessary and sufficient condition? An occasional cause? The question is decisive for the general project of the Journal of Democracy. It can be formulated in this way: is the desire for democracy strictly political or is it only a consequence of the aspirations of homo economicus ? Should the developmentalist model, which triumphed in the 1960s, be subordinated to the promotion of democracy and the establishment of a market economy and a high level of economic development?
Such a problem, on which the conception of the promotion of democracy depends, is discussed at length in an issue of the journal devoted to the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter. In this work, Schumpeter puts forward two fundamental theses.
On the one hand, the decomposition of capitalist society is inevitable, not least because the ethics of the bourgeois entrepreneur, who is the object of increasing hostility on the part of the elites, is constantly weakening.
On the other hand, even when capitalism has produced democracy, there is no incompatibility between capitalism and socialism.
The bulk of the debate in this issue of the Journal of Democracy is organized around the second of Schumpeter's theses, namely the question of the link between democracy and capitalism. The contributions in this issue are many and varied.However, three arguments emerge.
1) The relationship between democracy and capitalism is considered asymmetrical : there is no democracy without capitalism, but history teaches that capitalism can triumph without a democratic regime. Numerous contributions cite the four Asian dragons (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong), where political authoritarianism seems to favor economic dynamism . If democracy serves capitalism, especially because it gives civil society its place, or because it guarantees individual rights, the opposite is by no means obvious.
(2) It is all the less so because it is reasonable to think that a market economy encompasses a number of threats to democracy, of which Robert Dahl shows logic.If corruption is the first and most visible of these threats, it is not the only one.Thus, the market inevitably produces inequalities. Consequently, democracy is preserved only if the public virtue of the most disadvantaged is appealed. If this virtue runs out, there is no other solution than to impose market freedom on those who do not, as this imposition is clearly contrary to the principles of liberal democracy.
(3) If there is an undeniable empirical and historical link between democracy and capitalism, the reasons for such a link may be regarded as external to the economic field itself. This is the thesis defended by F. Fukuyama: economic development frees people from material worries and thus leaves the field open to the expression of a deep and constitutive desire for recognition that only liberal democracy can satisfy.
The desire for democracy is fundamentally political, not economic, and the Journal of Democracy seems to be fully justified: to promote democracy is to promote the democratic idea , especially among the elites whose role was decisive in the transitions of The third wave. The essential task of a militant science of democracy is to prevent the disenchantment that threatens the new democracies . Failing to satisfy the hopes of an enthusiastic population, desirous of seeing the new regime ensure prosperity, order, justice and security, these new democracies can be delegitimized and consequently weakened . What is important is therefore to prevent the illusions that can surround the democratic idea during the transition period, especially and especially by working on its definition . The task of review like the Journal of Democracy consists in some way in going against the general enthusiasm for democracy, which works against democracy; It consists, in other words, in limiting its comprehension, in tightening it to a minimal (and schumpeterian ) or even procedural definition. What characterizes democracy in this way is the competition for power through free and competitive elections. It is also, therefore, the responsibility of the elected representatives before the voters. But of democracy, one must not expect greater economic efficiency or more accomplished social justice .
II. From transition to consolidation: critical feedback on the third wave.
1. Democratic universalism and local peculiarities
The promotion of democracy thus conceived can only be deployed on the basis of a universalist foundation. It is possible to disregard local and historical conditions because democracy is understood above all as the expression of a rational choice - even more as an expression of the rationality that has been achieved (only democracy allows full and complete adhesion To a regime, because it alone guarantees the autonomy of individuals). Such a position inevitably leads to making election (the choice process) the very essence of democracy.
However, it quickly appears that a democratic ideology thus constructed is based on a number of important assumptions. This is the case with the minimalist definition of democracy: what is gained in extension (a definition that makes it possible to group different experiences of democratic transitions), one inevitably loses it in understanding . As L. Diamond points out, the evolution of the third wave requires that we distinguish between genuine democracies ( liberal democracies) and pseudodemocracies (only electoral democracies) . Some democracies are only fronts, it is important not to identify democratic government and democratic regime . It is therefore necessary to call upon other criteria in order to determine, among the new democracies, those which deserve the name. All the contributors stopping on such a question seem to agree on one point: a democracy is fully itself when the democratic rule is recognized by the whole population as the only game in Town ") .
All these remarks lead us to reject the concept of transition in favor of the concept of consolidation , which seems more suited to understand how a democracy manages to establish itself in culture and in political mores. It is thus to a double change of perspective that reflection on democratization is invited: from a conceptual point of view, it is the deepening of democracy, not its extension, that must be taken as an object; From a historical point of view, the idea of a wave gives place to the idea of stasis .
However, this change of object must not conceal that it is accompanied by significant theoretical displacements.
- First, if the concept of transition, as has been pointed out, derives its validity from its universality , on the other hand, that of consolidation seems necessarily to be particularized . Indeed, there are various paths towards consolidation . In other words, democratization can not simply include the establishment of free and competitive elections. Electoral monism tends to hide the pluralism of the ways.
- Then, in reflections on consolidation , the emphasis is not on the extension of democracy, but on its conservation . From a reflection on space, on the geopolitical zones, one passes to an interrogation on the duration. However, this displacement leads to a difficulty that is both classical and major: should democracy not rely on non-democratic measures? But is there not a major contradiction, between the end and the means, between the imperatives of legitimacy and the necessities of conservation ? This contradiction seems a stumbling block in these reflections on consolidation. Thus, one accepts that in the new democracies one can invoke the state of necessity in order to, for example, and as it was possible to do in Latin America , to concentrate the executive powers and to govern by decrees, but then , There is a risk that the process of democratization will be reversed; Either avoiding any recourse to a state of emergency, considering that the new democracies are not sufficiently established to control it, but then one exposes oneself to see certain undemocratic forces seize power through the elections .
- Finally, if economic considerations seem to be discarded from reflections on democratic transition, because they may lead astray as to the causes which push them to leave the authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, it seems absolutely necessary to reintroduce them when Considers the consolidation of the new democracies. In other words, if economic development is not a precondition for democratization, it is a prerequisite for sustainable democracy. This is at least demonstrated by the essential contribution of Adam Przeworski, who shows that if a democracy can settle in a poor country, experience teaches that the level of economic development, accompanied by the desire to reduce Inequalities, is essential to the consolidation of the new democracies .
2. The transit model in question
This set of difficulties will contribute to a fairly clear questioning of the promotion of democracy as it has been theorized since the beginning of the 1990s. This questioning will first of all relate to the concept of consolidation, A number of dissatisfactions, before moving and embracing the transitory paradigm itself.
The first series of criticisms (formulated in particular by Guillermo O'Donnell) is organized around two main arguments . The first insists on the uncertaintysurrounding the concept of consolidation: when can we say that a new democracy is consolidated? From when can morals be said to be democratic? There is no reason to believe that there are solid criteria on this point (since the holding of free and competitive elections is not sufficient to characterize a consolidated democracy).The second argument focuses on the ethnocentric dimension of this concept, which tends to make Western democracy the model of all democratization, as well as its teleological dimension: it tends to assimilate the democratization process for progress Natural to the only regime that can satisfy the universal desire for freedom.
The second series of criticisms is even more radical (and has, within the democratization studies, a very great repercussion). It is due to Thomas Carothers (Vice President of Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ), and challenges the transitory paradigm itself, both the idea of transition andconsolidation, which is essentially linked to it. This paradigm establishes that a state emerging from an authoritarian regime is ipso facto moving towards a democratic regime, with marked steps. It also establishes that elections are the essence of democracy and that socio-cultural conditions are not of major importance. So many proposals that, according to T. Carothers, deny the wave of democratization of the years 80-90. There is an intermediate zone ("a gray zone"): many states, included in the third wave, can not be classified as authoritarian regimes or democracies.The transitory paradigm distorts experience; It sheds a veil on the singularity of the stories and on the conditions of democracy. In other words, it serves the promotion of democracy more than it serves it .
Yet, if this set of criticisms is significant, it is because the answers that will be given to them will clearly modify not the promotion of democracy, but rather its theorization. The responses, on the one hand, to G. O'Donnell and, on the other hand, to T. Carothers, will insist on two dimensions they believe constitute the promotion of democracy as it has been since the 1990s. First, on its ideal-typicaldimension: the notions of democracy and consolidation do not pretend to accord with the historical experience of peoples with accuracy, they are only models allowing theorists to apprehend this experience . Secondly and above all, on the normative dimension of these notions: the transitory paradigm is by no means descriptive , it is prescriptive . This is what a number of practitioners in the promotion of democracy have responded to Carothers' objections: that some states are in a "gray zone", certainly impugn the idea that the path of democracy is A natural process, but that does not in any way preclude it from being regarded as a process describing the establishment of the only acceptable regime . The perspective that the professionals of democracy adopt is not positivist: the paradigm is used to set the right path. It determines the principles which establish not what is done, but what must be done.
Two conclusions emerge from these remarks. On the one hand, the transitory paradigm is no longer based on the minimum and universal definition of democracy, but on the universality conferred on it by normative principles which should serve not to interpret history, but to lead it . On the other hand, and therefore, the promotion of democracy seems to have changed its meaning: originally conceived as a reflection on the third wave which was supposed to prevent the possible disenchantment of the peoples, it now seems to be thought more in militant terms - Less assume more clearly its normative dimension, without seeking in the universal history any justification.
III. Democratization after September 11: historical pessimism and theoretical uncertainties
In the early 2000s, the promotion of democracy faced two types of problems. The first are theoretical : is the growing gap between the analysis of the processes of democratization and the desire to export a political regime of freedom that is supposedly based on a universal desire does not tend to make promotion Of democracy an ideology , not in the sense in which its founders understood it, but in the pejorative sense, which they intended precisely to exclude? The second set of problems, more historical , is related to the consequences of September 11. They put on the front of the stage forms newly democratization, which arise not from the revolt of the peoples but from the external intervention of international coalitions.More broadly, Afghanistan and Iraq are joining Namibia, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and East Timor to form a new category of Democratization encounter a number of specific obstacles .
These two sets of problems will lead to new theoretical displacements in the reflection devoted to the promotion of democracy, of which the Journal of Democracy testifies. It is no longer a question, in fact, of thinking democratization processes as the result, in civil society, of a rational adhesion of elites to a regime, nor as a consequence of a "snowball effect" "Within a wave. This new subject leads us to question again the conditions necessary for the establishment of a process of democratization (in particular the need for a culture accorded to the values of liberal democracy and to that of strong state structures guaranteeing Right wing state).
1. Cultural conditions.
The question of the agreement between democratic values and non-Western cultures becomes a central concern after September 11, 2001. It is deployed in a theoretical field marked by the effect produced by what may have appeared to many thinkers As a reversal in the mind of S. Huntington. In 1996, in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order , he defended the thesis that Islam and Confucianism are monolithic cultures, inevitably brought to conflict with the West.Hence two consequences for the promotion of democracy: on the one hand, the West must not think, under penalty of weakening, that its values (in the first rank of which is liberal democracy) are universal; Which, on the other hand, means that the promotion of democracy, which should not be abandoned, must be reconsidered: it passes through the influence of Western values on non-Western cultures.
The issue of democratic culture in such a context requires different treatment.Reflections on transition, at least in their first form, emphasized the need for a democratic culture in an authoritative country: an ethic, a practice, traditions and democratic mores. But it was also to make clear that such a culture could only take place over a long period of time, and that the promotion of democracy should emphasize, at the moment of transition and consolidation, Other factors (including the first of these, on rational adherence to a regime).
The question now is whether cultures are substantially resistant to any process of democratization. This issue is discussed at length in the Journal of Democracy .Many contributions, which it is obviously impossible to summarize, are thus devoted to Islam. An axis, however, predominates: there exists in the Islamic religion a liberal, enlightened tradition which opposes fundamentalism in that it rejects ahistorical essentialism. It recognizes, in other words, the historicity of the expressions of Islam, and is therefore open to the values of modernity. This enlightened tradition of Islam considers that man is born free, and in particular free to choose the practice of his faith; It also considers that individual freedoms and limited government must be defended.
Such arguments make it possible to remove the objections of S. Huntington: non-Western civilizations are by no means an obstacle to democratization. If there is a shock, it is not between civilizations, but within each civilization. The promotion of democracy can therefore retain its universalist claim.
2. State and democracy
Can democratization do without a solid state, ensuring order and security? It is the question posed to the promotion of democracy what may be called the " sequentialist " position: this is to affirm that democratization is possible only if To establish a relatively impartial State capable of upholding the rule of law.Democratization in this perspective is not absolutely good: it is so if state conditions are met, it is not good if the state is weak, dominated by a faction. Such a proposal is not without consequence for the promotion of democracy as defended in all its complexity by the Journal of Democracy and as it has been reactivated since 11 September by the Bush administration. It calls into question a number of its foundations, as it pushes back to the analysis of the third wave and the processes of democratization of the 1990s.
The "sequentialist" position is nourished by the pessimism which, since the late 1990s, has won democratization studies . Many thinkers have observed that the processes of democratization, far from leading to the establishment of regimes where individual freedoms are guaranteed and where powers are limited, have set up illiberal democracies, for example in Latin America. Most of these thinkers, like Fareed Zakaria, do not write in the Journal of Democracy . But the review echoes this pessimism, which contrasts with the enthusiasm triggered by the third wave, which threatens its general project and that the conflict in Iraq evidently fuels .
The transitory paradigm, on which the promotion of democracy was organized, considered the State to be a potential obstacle to an advanced democratization. It was necessary to limit its prerogatives, to strengthen its capacity of action, which the authoritarian regimes had used, in order to free the forces of the civil society.But history obliges us to return to this argument. Have we not confounded, in this analysis, the extension of the State and its power ? The authoritarian state is a state of maximum extent. He is thus repressive; But it is not necessarily a strong state, that is, capable of upholding the rule of law, ensuring order and stability. On the contrary: in most cases, the autocrats weaken the state by diverting its apparatus to their advantage. On the other hand, it is the opposite for the minimal liberal state: it is small but powerful, because it is concentrated on its essential tasks and because it is legitimate in the eyes of the population. However, as F. Fukuyama points out, such as T. Carothers, democratization requires the proper functioning of the state.
However, this concession to the partisans of "sequencialism" is not without difficulty. It is not enough to say that a democratic transition can succeed only if the rule of law is assured. Indeed, it is necessary to specify the relations between the State and democracy. And, in this matter, it seems that one falls into a circle. For if a State is to have democracy, it must not be an authoritarian state (incapable of assuring the rule of law) nor be the product of foreign intervention (for then its institutions lack legitimacy ). There is a dilemma: democratization can succeed only if the state is ... fully democratic. Thus, democratization in countries where conflict has occurred and where external forces have intervened makes the need for a State a primary imperative; But it makes equally sensitive the aporia in which this democratization finds itself, incapable of removing the contradiction between the end (a regime of freedom in which a population recognizes itself) and the means(external intervention and construction ex abrupto d State institutions which the population is driven to consider unreasonable).
Following the evolution of the questions posed in the Journal of Democracy makes it possible to gauge the difficulties facing democratization studies . The review, in its early years, raised the question of the relationship between democracy and capitalism; It had decided in favor of a political interpretation of the processes of democratization. After September 11, a similar question arises between the State and democracy. But the answer seems more delicate, almost aporetic. The discrepancy between these two debates is symptomatic of the difficulty of promoting democracy, which leads us to understand how democracy can emerge from war and thus cut off from what was at the beginning of the 1990s: the attraction Of a democratic model which appears, to a population which adheres in full awareness, as fully legitimate.
Florent Guénard
published on 28/11/2007
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