Abstract
In this chapter, a relational model of political regimes is introduced. It assumes that democracy depends on the establishment and maintenance of stable and cooperative relations between four key actors: (1) the government, (2) the opposition, (3) security forces, and (4) citizens. Transitions represent critical junctures during which relations among these actors are renegotiated and institutionalized, leading to path-dependent processes of democratic development. The chapter presents theoretical assumptions how nonviolent resistance leads to democratic consolidation: first, by levelling the political playing field; second, by advancing a democratic political culture; and third, by avoiding the ‘praetorian problem’.
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Notes
- 1.
This does not imply that other kinds of actors, such as business elites or societal authority figures, are unimportant. But we expect that their importance varies greatly from case to case which is why we do not include them in this general model for the sake of parsimony. For the same reason, our treatment of these groups as singular actors glosses over the possibility of internal factionalism within each group.
- 2.
The differences among the cited works are rather subtle, although the conceptual distinction between contestation and participation is emphasized most prominently by Boix et al. (2013).
- 3.
A dichotomous conceptualization of regime type is necessary so that we can identify transition events. For a more elaborate discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of dichotomous and continuous approaches to specify regime types, see Collier and Adcock (1999).
- 4.
The ‘two-turnover test’ was first proposed by Huntington (1991) and is admittedly crude. Schneider points out some of the problematic classifications thrown up by this approach: ‘Japan barely met the two-turnover test in the 1990s, the United States did not meet it until 1840, and Chilean democracy was consolidated in 1970, only shortly before collapsing’ (Schneider 1995, p. 220). Power and Gasiorowski (1997, p. 132, Fn. 116) argue that a ‘first-turnover test’ should be sufficient, especially when analysing young democracies in developing countries.
- 5.
Of course, this requires the simplifying assumption that each group is homogenous in their assessment and action. In truth, each group will contain factions and subgroups, but accounting for such complexity would overload the model.
- 6.
We also checked for a range of hypotheses drawn from the existing literature but could find little evidence that they had a systematic causal effect beyond isolated instances (see Chapter 5).
- 7.
It is possible that the causal relationship works both ways. Contrary to earlier assumptions (Almond and Verba 1963), more recent research finds that a democratic political culture is often already present when democratic transition occurs. For instance, Welzel and Inglehart argue that in countries of the former Eastern Bloc like Poland, Hungary, and Estonia, high intrinsic support for democracy had emerged prior to the transition to democracy. Thus, they argue, democratic values within the population made democratization possible, not the other way around (Welzel and Inglehart 2009, p. 138).
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Lambach, D., Bayer, M., Bethke, F.S., Dressler, M., Dudouet, V. (2020). Theory. In: Nonviolent Resistance and Democratic Consolidation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39371-7_2
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