The reports of western liberal democracy’s death are greatly exaggerated.
(attributed to Mark Twain).
Abstract
The distinction between the ideal of Western Liberal democracy and real democracies is essential for all those who desire to understand what is going on in the world of democratic regimes. In fact, there is no crisis of the ideal. Indeed, the ideal continues to be the goal of all those who, no matter in which part of the world, want to obtain and maintain civil and political rights and to construct a political system characterized by pluralism and free and fair elections. Many of them, the statistics show, have had success. Real democracies are always facing challenges and problems. The most important one in recent times is populism. Accommodating political and parliamentary representation for the populists is a sign that democratic regimes work and know how to react and transform themselves. The author argues that the most important factor affecting the dynamics of contemporary democratic political systems is the decline of political parties. Parties created and accompanied real democracies. Their decline has a negative impact on the quality and, perhaps, even the continued existence of real democracies.
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Source: author’s own compilation based on data provided by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project
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Notes
See also Schmitter (2015). It is a pity that, though making a useful distinction between the folk theory of democracy and the democracy for realists, Achen and Bartels (2016) do not refer to Sartori’s analysis, then and later (1987) and do not discuss it. I take the opportunity to stress that it is a pity that too many scholars are unwilling or have become unable to look, not even critically, at the books written by their predecessors and build on them.
It is very important to emphasize that Linz and practically all the contributors do not put the blame for the breakdown on the political and institutional weaknesses of the then-existing democratic regimes, but on the wrong choices made by the elites at the beginning and during the “crisis”. Better choices were made by the elites who saved their democracies in the cases analyzed by Capoccia (2005).
Achen and Bartels (2016, p. 297) central thesis is that the majority of democratic citizens are unwilling and/or unable to “engage in thoughtful monitoring of their governments”. Sartori’s (1987, ch. 5) “realist” argument focused on public opinion is much more nuanced and, I believe, more convincing: most of the time most of the voters obtain the amount of political information they need to make their choices.
There is more to the governmental coalition than just two different brands of populism. The League’s “sovranisme” goes hand in hand with the Five Stars’ “technological/electronic” (for lack of a better term to define a confused perspective) democracy.
See the truly excellent comparative article by Caramani (2017), also very useful because it illuminates some “democratic” problems.
All one wants to know concerning this crucial feature of party democracies can be found in the outstanding dissertation by Marco Valbruzzi, Government Alternation in Western Europe. A Comparative Exploration, Florence, European University Institute, 19 May 2017.
In parliamentary democracies, all governments are produced by their respective parliaments, are responsible to Parliament, may be transformed, defeated, and replaced by Parliament.
What parties truly represent is something to be analyzed more in depth. But I consider extremely important to include a variety of political, social, economic, cultural preferences with interests having to do with the voters’ daily life.
The very title of the book edited by Przeworski, Stokes, and Manin (1999) is revealing. Moreover, all the chapters contain excellent material and reflections. On my part, I would have included one chapter devoted to the impact of different electoral systems on the accountability of parties and parliamentarians. My view can be found in Pasquino (2011a, b).
I see many points of contact with what Schmitter (2004, p. 54) has argued classifying “the generic properties of successful accountability: time x actors”. Some empirical work would certainly improve my perspective and Schmitter’s.
Here, one may also want to discuss the impact, the significance and the implications of term limits on political representation and accountability.
On a personal recollection, I was struck by the handshake on the White House lawn between President George W. Bush and presidential candidate John McCain in the Fall of 2008. It meant to convey the unity of the party even though neither Bush nor McCain had ever hidden their profound differences of opinions, behavior (Bush draft dodger at the time of the Vietnam War and McCain war hero) and policies and, even, of personality. For the Republican party’s sake, they mended their confrontation.
Potentially, all the post-materialists, as defined by Inglehart (1977), fit in this category.
I am happy to defer to Terry Lynn Karl’s (1997) superior knowledge of this very important case.
Unfortunately, they have missed the opportunity of a probably fertile comparison with what was done by Linz and Stepan (1978).
Which does not mean that scholars and citizens should underestimate what is going on in Hungary and Poland most certainly to be interpreted as a dangerous shrinking of the democratic space and its practices. By defining his country “illiberal democracy”, the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán tries to hide his less than democratic behavior that seriously endangers the democratic quality of Hungary and has already been sanctioned by the European Union. Still, as Philippe Schmitter hinted at in a brief remark at the conference, what is needed is a deep reflection of how and how much the democratic rules have to be bent before they lose their democratic characteristic.
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I am very grateful to Marco Valbruzzi (Ph.D., European University Institute of Florence) for his indispensable help with the tables and the figure.
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Pasquino, G. The Ideal of Western Liberal Democracy and Real Democracies. Chin. Polit. Sci. Rev. 4, 238–254 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-019-00119-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-019-00119-z