Rethinking Democracy How to Capture Democracy’s Empowering Nature

Rethinking Democracy: How to Capture Democracy’s Empowering Nature ABSTRACT The core idea inspiring democracy is to empower people To measure democracy in ways that capture its empowering nature one needs to take into account rule of law as a state quality making democracy effective Based on this premise, we portray an index of “effective democracy” and test its qualities against six alternative indicators of democracy for some 180 states We find that the index of effective democracy represents best the empowering nature of democracy because it captures most clearly democracy’s embedding in empowering conditions in the wider society Specifically, effective democracy is shown to be firmly embedded in (a) empowering socioeconomic conditions that make people capable to practice democracy and (b) in empowering sociocultural conditions that make people willing to practice democracy In light of these findings, people empowerment appears to be an entity of empowering societal conditions and empowering regime characteristics, the latter of which are best depicted by the index of effective democracy Key words: effective democracy – human empowerment – civil rights – rule of law Word count: 10,836 INTRODUCTION The “global explosion” (Doorenspleet 2002) in the number of democracies that followed the Third and Fourth Waves of Democratization (Huntington 1991; McFaul 2005) has intensified scholars’ interest in the functioning and quality of the many new democracies outside democracy’s traditional stronghold in the Western world (Adcock & Collier 2001; Bollen & Paxton 2000; Elkins 2000; Collier & Adcock 1999; Goertz 2006; Munck & Verkuilen 2003) After initial enthusiasm scholars discovered pretty soon that the quality of most of the newly emerged democracies falls far short of what is standard among long established Western democracies Since then researchers hold that a new division between full democracy and partial democracy has become as important as the old division between democracy and autocracy (Rose 2001; Ottaway 2003; Zakaria 2003) In describing democracies with deficient qualities various typologies have emerged Using terms like “illiberal” democracy, “deficient” democracy or “ineffective” democracy (Diamond 2002; O’Donnell 2003; Merkel 2004), scholars attribute a “diminishing adjective” to regimes in the hybrid zone between autocracy and fully effective democracy (Collier & Levitsky 1997) Prominent authors claim that state failure in enforcing rule of law and controlling corruption is a major factor separating effective from ineffective democracies (O’Donnell 2004; Rose 2001; Warren 2006) Elaborating on this distinction, categorical approaches that dichotomize effective against deficient democracies prevail (Merkel 2004) But categorical approaches to state deficiencies have their own problems (Elkins 2001) Implicitly they assume a bimodal distribution of deficiencies, such that given countries either suffer or don’t suffer from a deficiency, even though in fact deficiencies might differ by degree, establishing a continuum rather than a binary distinction (Bollen & Paxton 2000) Yet, only one attempt has been made to use continuous data on state deficiencies to produce a fine-graded index of “effective democracy” (Welzel, Inglehart & Klingemann 2003:357) This index depreciates a given country’s level of democracy to the extent that the state fails to establish rule of law, differentiating fully effective democracies at one polar end from autocracies and completely ineffective democracies at the opposite end, with many gradations in between (Inglehart & Welzel 2005:191-6) However, the authors of the index not demonstrate its conceptual strength in ways satisfying the standards of proper concept formation, as outlined by Adcock and Collier (2001) or Goertz (2006) Nor they conduct a systematic validity test to demonstrate the performance of the index in comparison with other established democracy indices Neither theoretically nor empirically have the merits of the concept of effective democracy been laid out in sufficient clarity Whether and in how far the index of effective democracy is a better measure of democracy remains thus an open question This is a serious shortcoming in an era in which the rise of deficient democracies makes it more pressing to identify effectively working democracies This article fills this gap, outlining the conceptual merits as well as the empirical validity of the index of effective democracy, analyzing democracy data for some 180 states The first part describes the theoretical rationales informing the concept of effective democracy The second part portrays the operationalization of the index of effective democracy The third part analyzes the empirical qualities of the index of effective democracy in comparison with six alternative indices of democracy CONCEPTUALIZING EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACY Adcock and Collier (2001) as well as Goertz (2006) outline best practice standards for concept formation Following these guidelines a proper conceptualization of the term democracy should begin with the theorizing task, which is about to outline the “root understanding” of what democracy means in a most general sense Any further elaboration of the concept must operate within the limits of the root understanding The task of definitional specification is to identify concrete subcomponents of the root concept The third task, operationalization, identifies the indicators that can be used to measure the definitional components In the fourth step, measuring, one gathers data on the selected indicators and combines them in ways that are logically consistent with one’s concept definition Upon accomplishing this step, one arrives at a theory-grounded index of democracy with empirical data ready to be analyzed We explicate the concept and measurement of effective democracy following these guidelines People Power as the Root Meaning of Democracy In its literal meaning, “government by the people,” the ideal that ultimately inspires democracy is to empower ordinary people to govern their lives (Arblaster 2002; Canovan 2006; Finer 1999; Holden 1992; Macpherson 1977; Philpott 1995; Sen 1999; Warren 2006) The literal meaning of democracy points to people empowerment as its root idea Academic definitions of democracy can differ from the literal meaning in that they are more precise and elaborate But they should be more precise and elaborate within the semantic field of the literal meaning, not in establishing an alternative understanding Academic definitions of democracy should be elaborated in specification, not in contradiction, to the term’s literal meaning Otherwise, the term becomes a misnomer, in which case its academically intended meaning will be difficult to communicate This is all the more true as the popular understanding of democracy largely coincides with the term’s literal meaning Recent survey data from mass publics around the world show that ordinary people’s understanding of democracy emphasizes everywhere the civil rights that empower ordinary people to govern their private and public lives (Dalton and Shin 2006; Diamond 2003) People empowerment is the common sense understanding of democracy In a historical perspective, too, people empowerment appears to be the root idea that inspires people’s struggles for democracy Modern democracy originates in the liberal revolutions of the 18th century, which established partial democracy by such rights-setting acts as the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the French Declaration des Droits de L’Homme et des Citoyens in 1789 (Beetham 1999; Donnelly 2006; Finer 1999; Grayling 2007; O’Donnell 2003) These declarations entitled parts of the public to practice personal and political freedoms, which was a decisive step into a state in which significant shares of the population were empowered to govern their private and public lives This achievement established partial democracy because still a majority of the adult population was excluded from suffrage Yet, establishing partial democracy encouraged further struggles of yet disempowered groups to become empowered too, until universal suffrage gave birth to full democracies in a core of Western nations early in the 20th century (Markoff 1996; McAdam, Tarrow & Tilly 2001) Since then people’s struggles for democracy have continued and expanded: within established democracies civil rights and equal opportunity movements have fought to advance democracy’s empowering qualities (Tarrow 2003); beyond established democracies, people power movements have pressured to replace autocracy with democracy (Huntington 1991; Schock 2005; Thompson 2005) From the American Revolution to the people power movements of today, movements for democracy have invariantly been struggling for the civil rights that empower ordinary people (Ackerman 1991, 1998; Canovan 2006; Markoff 1996; Foweraker & Landman 1997; Karatnycky & Ackerman 2005) The literal meaning of the term democracy, its common sense understanding, and the motives of the people struggling for democracy throughout its history, all suggest to define the root meaning of democracy as “the empowerment of ordinary people to govern their lives, in entitling them to follow their own preferences in their private lives and to have their preferences count in public life.” In its root meaning of people empowerment, democracy is not directly observable One can observe people empowerment only indirectly, by identifying the institutional tools that are instrumental to people empowerment Yet, one should not reduce the definition of democracy to its observable institutional tools, abandoning the idea inspiring them It is still the idea of people power that informs us which institutional tools are instrumental and in which order they are instrumental Keeping in mind that the features by which democracy becomes manifest are instruments to empower people, prevents one from two types of misconceptions: “electoral reductionism” and “unordered eclecticism.” Electoral reductionism is when scholars limit the meaning of democracy to upholding regular competitive elections to vote government into and out of office (Diamond 2001) Keeping in mind people empowerment as the root meaning of democracy will prevent one from this reductionism because it is evident that elections are just one out of many instruments to empower people, next to a whole variety of political and personal rights that all help making the people agents of their private and public lives Unordered eclecticism is when scholars define democracy by catalogues of institutional features observable among existing democracies, without ordering these features as to how instrumental they are to the core idea of people power For instance, personal and political rights are first-order instruments of democracy, for they are directly instrumental to empower people, widening their decision making power in both their private and pubic lives Other institutional features of democracy, such as an independent judiciary, exist to protect the citizens’ personal and political rights Existing for this purpose, such features are indirectly instrumental to empower people They are secondorder instruments of democracy A concept of democracy that starts from democracy’s root meaning as people empowerment does not base its empirical definition on just one instrument of democracy, nor does it mix up first-order and second-order instruments Instead, it focuses on firstorder instruments and encompasses them in as broad a scope as possible, avoiding both reductionism and eclecticism Civil Rights as First-Order Instruments of Democracy In reality democracies take on many institutional features But some of these features are more directly instrumental to the idea of people empowerment than others The feature most directly instrumental to the idea of people empowerment is civil rights: democratic citizenship is eventually established by civil rights, as they entitle people to practice civil freedoms, including personal freedoms to govern their private lives as well as political freedoms to govern public life (Beetham 1999; O’Donnell 2003; Saward 2006; Williams 2006) In the form of personal rights, civil rights provide private freedom, that is, freedom from external interventions into individual life decisions Personal rights empower people to act in a shielded sphere of autonomy into which no authority is allowed to intervene Personal rights include such freedoms as the freedom to choose one’s religion, residence, sexual partner, occupation, and so on In state-organized societies people’s lives are affected in many ways by political decisions To govern one’s life in such a society does not only require a shielded sphere of personal autonomy Self-governance also requires the freedom to participate in the political decisions that affect one This public freedom is provided by political rights, including the right to found and join political parties, to express political views freely in public, to campaign for self-chosen political goals, and to run for public office, among others Together, personal and political rights constitute civil rights Since civil rights are intended to empower people to govern their lives, they are democratic rights in the literal meaning of the term From the viewpoint of people empowerment, democratic rights are the core definitional feature of democracy Other institutional features of democracy such as political pluralism or an independent judiciary, are derivates of a full set of operating democratic rights For instance, should the right of a citizen to have a free vote in elections be operating, it must be tolerated that candidates compete for votes with alternative policy programs Necessarily this leads to political pluralism and competition Likewise, should the right of a citizen to be protected from abuses of executive power be operative, there must be an independent judiciary that citizens can appeal to, to sue executive authorities We could continue with other examples but the major point is clear: every institutional manifestation of democracy is derivative of people’s democratic rights The full set of known democratic rights is impossible to operate without a multi-party system, competitive elections, information pluralism and other features listed elsewhere as institutional characteristics of democracy (Beetham 1999; O’Donnell 2003; Sen 1999; Williams 2006) Democracy’s Gradual Nature Democracy is about people empowerment But an absolute empowerment of people is, as of now, only theoretically thinkable It would be a state in which each resident’s private autonomy would at any point in time be fully protected from collective interventions and in which every collectively binding decision could at any point in time be submitted to a popular vote in which every resident can participate with an equal vote Empirically this absolute level of democracy is unknown; we only know gradual approximations to it Likewise, an absolute disempowerment of the people is, as of now, only theoretically thinkable It would be a state in which an autocrat is at any moment in full control over the lives of every resident Again, in the empirical world we know only gradual approximations to this absolute level of autocracy People empowerment is not a simple dichotomy such that people are either fully empowered or entirely disempowered Instead, people power constitutes a continuum ranging from absolute autocracy at one extreme to perfect democracy at the other, spanning a wide middle ground in which empowering and disempowering features intermingle to create hybrid regimes Because people power is by its nature a gradual phenomenon, basing one’s understanding of democracy on people power unavoidably establishes a gradual definition of democracy, not a dichotomous one (Bollen & Paxton 2000) From this point of view, Sartori’s (1984) dictum that one has first to dichotomize regimes as being either democratic or autocratic and only then to grade them within these categories as to how autocratic and democratic they are, is mistaken It overlooks that autocracies and democracies differ in people empowerment and that this difference is a continuum, so that one has to know first where on this continuum given regimes are located before one can decide whether they are more autocratic or democratic Grades as to how autocratic or democratic given regimes are, are grades on one-and-the-same underlying continuum: people power (Figure about here) To illustrate this point, Figure assumes the ideal case of an interval scaled people power index that ranges from zero, indicating the known minimum of people power in the most autocratic regime, to 100, indicating the known maximum of people power in the most democratic regime.1 The 50 percent mark constitutes a natural cutting Alternatively, the endpoints of the 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and Autocratic Regimes More Autocratic More Democratic Hybrid Zone More Completely Autocratic NONE 10 15 More Incompletely Autocratic 20 25 30 35 40 More Incompletely Democratic 45 50 P E O P L E 55 60 65 70 P O W E R More Completely Democratic 75 80 85 90 95 100 FULL 42 Figure Effective Democracy as the Interaction of Democratic Rights and Rule of Law POLITICAL REGIME CITIZENS Political Rights + STATE Personal Rights DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS EFFECTIVE Procedural Regularity * + Tamed Corruption RULE OF LAW DEMOCRACY 43 Figure Democratic Rights and Rule of Law Note: For data sources and variable construction see the Internet-Appendix at http://www. 44 Figure Distributional Changes from Democratic Rights to Effective Democratic Rights 45 Figure Differentiating Regime Types on the Effective Democracy Scale 46 PEOPLE EMPOWERMENT Figure Effective Democracy in a Human Empowerment Framework ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT EMPOWERING ECONOMY: DISTRIBUTIVE EQUALITY EMANCIPATIVE VALUES EMPOWERING CULTURE: CIVIC ENGAGEMENT EMPOWERING REGIME: EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACY HUMAN EMPOWERMENT (an empowering regime in an empowering environment) 47 Figure The Embedding of Democracy in an Empowering Environment Legend: In order from top to bottom, bars represent various democracy indices as follows: Bar 1: Polity Democracy Score 2000-3 Bar 2: CIRI Empowerment Rights Scale 2000-4 Bar 3: Freedom House Democratic Rights 2000-6 Bar 4: Vanhanen Democracy Index 2001 Bar 5: Economist Democracy Index 2006 Bar 6: World Bank “Voice and Accountability Index” 2000-6 Bar 7: Effective Democratic Rights 2000-6 Note: For data sources and variable construction see the Internet-Appendix at http://www. 48 Figure The Predictive Power of an Empowering Societal Context for Various Measures of Democracy, Controlling for Democracy’s Endurance 49 Table The Unidimensionality of Empowering Societal Conditions Loadings on first and single principal component: Empowering Societal Conditions Indicators: Analyses 1: Socioeconomic Empowerment Analysis 2: Sociocultural Empowerment Analysis 3: Overall Societal Empowerment Economic Development 1998 947 948 Distributive Equality 1998 947 926 Emancipative Values 1995-99 910 950 Civic Engagement 1995-99 910 863 KMO-Index 500 500 822 Explained Variance 89.7% 82.7% 85.1% Number of Nations 161 74 74 Note: For data sources and variable construction see the Internet-Appendix at http://www. 50 Table The Dependence of Democracy on Empowering Conditions in Society Dependent Variables: Extent of Democratic Rights 2000-6 Predictors (mid 1990s): M1 Socioeconomic empowerment 77*** (11.39) M2 M3 14* (2.59)** Overall societal empowerment M5 93*** (24.42) 80*** (9.45) Lagged dependent variable 1996 M4 Extent of Effective Democratic Rights 2000-6 83*** (15.29) M6 M7 30*** (4.66) 21* (2.05) 93*** (18.57) 72*** (6.90) M8 68*** (10.55) 35*** (4.23) 64*** (7.65) Adj R2 57 87 63 81 86 94 87 94 N 99 99 53 53 99 99 53 53 Notes: Entries are standardized regression coefficients with T-ratios in parentheses Significance levels: * p