Democracy

Democracy identifies the general processes causing democratization and de-democratization at a national level across the world over the last few hundred years. It singles out integration of trust networks into public politics, insulation of public politics from categorical inequality, and suppression of autonomous coercive power centers as crucial processes. Through analytic narratives and comparisons of multiple regimes, mostly since World War Ⅱ, this book makes the case for recasting current theories of democracy, democratization, and de-democratization.

Charles Tilly (Ph.D. Harvard, 1958) taught at the University of Delaware, Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the University of Michigan, and the New School for Social Research before becoming Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has published 50 books and monographs. His recent books from Cambridge University Press include Dynamics of Contention (with Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow, 2001), Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (with Ronald Aminzade and others, 2001), The Politics of Collective Violence (2003), Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000 (2004), and Trust and Rule (2005).

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Democracy

CHARLES TILLY
Columbia University

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521877718

© Charles Tilly 2007

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2007

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tilly, Charles.
Democracy/Charles Tilly.
   p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-87771-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-70153-2 (pbk.)
1. Democracy. I. Title.
JC423.T5 2007
321.8–dc22      2006031969

ISBN 978-0-521-87771-8 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-70153-2 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for
the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or
third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such
Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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for Sid Tarrow, intellectual democrat

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Contents

Boxes and Figures			page viii
Preface			xi
1.		What Is Democracy?	1
2.		Democracy in History	25
3.		Democratization and De-Democratization	51
4.		Trust and Distrust	80
5.		Equality and Inequality	106
6.		Power and Public Politics	133
7.		Alternative Paths	161
8.		Democracy's Pasts and Futures	186
References			207
Index			229

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Boxes and Figures

Boxes

1-1.	Freedom House Checklist for Political Rights and Civil Liberties	page 2
2-1.	Revolutionary Situations within Metropolitan France, 1648–2006	37
2-2.	Sites of Relatively Rapid Democratization, 1850–1979	42
3-1.	Principles for Description of Democracy, Democratization, and De-Democratization	60
3-2.	Payoff Questions in the Study of Democratization and De-Democratization	73
4-1.	Major Historical Exceptions to the Segregation of Trust Networks from Public Politics	89
4-2.	Signs of Trust Networks’ Integration into Public Politics	90
5-1.	Historically Prominent Inequality-Generating Resources	113
5-2.	Mechanisms Insulating Public Politics from Categorical Inequality	119
5-3.	Six “Systemic Periods” of South African Inequality, According to Sampie Terreblanche	122
6-1.	Mechanisms Subjecting States to Public Politics and/or Facilitating Popular Influence over Public Politics	141
6-2.	Democratization and De-Democratization in Spain, 1914–1981	150
8-1.	Titles of the World Bank’s Development Reports, 1991–2006	187

Figures

1-1	Variation in Regimes	17
1-2.	Crude Regime Types	19
1-3.	Regime Placement of Kazakhstan and Jamaica in 2006	21
2-1.	Trajectory of French National Regimes, 1600–2006	35
2-2.	Freedom House Ratings of Post-Socialist Regimes on Political Rights and Civil Liberties, 2006	46
2-3.	Freedom House Ratings of Four Post-Socialist Regimes, 1991–2006	47
3-1.	India’s Freedom House Ratings, 1972–2006	55
3-2.	Representation and Suffrage in Selected European Regimes	63
3-3.	Fluctuations in Swiss National Regimes, 1790–1848	71
4-1.	Total Population and Popular Vote in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1824–1900	98
5-1.	South African Regimes, 1948–2006	109
5-2.	Relative per Capita Income by Racial Category, South Africa, 1917–1995	129
6-1.	Russian Regimes, 1985–2006	136
6-2.	Causal Connections between Changing Power Configurations and Democratization	138
6-3.	Spanish Regimes, 1914–2006	157
7-1.	Three Idealized Paths to Democracy	162
7-2.	Venezuelan Regimes, 1900–2006	170
7-3.	Venezuela’s Freedom House Ratings, 1972–2006	172
7-4.	Irish Regimes, 1600–2006	183

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Preface

I dared not call this book by its true name: Democracy, Democratization, De-Democratization, and their Interdependence. That clunky, cranky title would have driven too many readers away from the book’s visibly vital topic. But readers who reach the book’s end will, I hope, emerge understanding why it makes no sense simply to describe an ideal political system called democracy and then try to specify conditions under which that system could emerge and survive. Democratization is a dynamic process that always remains incomplete and perpetually runs the risk of reversal – of de-democratization. Closely related processes, moving in opposite directions, produce both democratization and de-democratization. Or so, at least, this book argues at length.

   Over long years, the study of democracy, democratization, and de-democratization forced itself on me gradually but inexorably. It grew out of a lifelong effort to explain how the means that ordinary people use to make consequential collective claims – their repertoires of contention – vary and change. Anyone who looks closely at this problem in historical perspective eventually recognizes two facts: first, that undemocratic and democratic regimes feature very different repertoires of contention, indeed that prevailing repertoires help identify a given regime as undemocratic or democratic; second, that as democratization or de-democratization occurs, dramatic alterations of repertoires also occur. Civil wars, for example, concentrate in undemocratic regimes, whereas social movements form almost exclusively in democratic regimes. The correlation is imperfect and contingent, hence more challenging and interesting than would be the case if democracy merely entailed one array of claim-making performances and undemocracy another. Popular struggle affects whether and how democratization comes to pass. This book says how and why.

   Perhaps 20 percent of the present text adapts material I have already published in some other form, notably in two previous Cambridge books: Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000 (2004), and Trust and Rule (2005). Let me defend this wholesale borrowing. In this book the adapted material appears in different contexts that give it substantially new meaning. Contention and Democracy used comparative histories of European regimes to demonstrate the interdependence of democratization and popular struggles, whereas Trust and Rule analyzed change and variation in connections between interpersonal trust networks and political regimes. Both themes reappear in the present book, now subordinated to a broader question: How, in general, do democratization and de-democratization take place?

   This book clarifies and revises some arguments from my earlier publications, especially when it comes to autonomous centers of coercive power and control of public politics over the state as factors in democratization and de-democratization. Although it retains a historical perspective, the book concentrates much more heavily on the recent past and the contemporary world than my previous treatments of democracy. I hope that it will help students of today’s struggles over democracy to see the value of historical-comparative analysis in this fraught field. In any case, I regard Democracy as the culmination and synthesis of all my work on the subject.

   Let me thank five people for their help with this book. I haven’t seen my graduate school classmate Raymond Gastil for decades, but he pioneered the Freedom House ratings on which chapter after chapter of the book relies as proxies for the more direct measurement of democratization and de-democratization that my arguments imply. My frequent collaborator Sidney Tarrow did not read the manuscript, but his constant questioning of related ideas in our joint and separate publications has kept me alert to the dangers lurking in concepts such as regime, state capacity, and democracy itself. Viviana Zelizer has once again cast her discerning non-specialist eye over the entire text, drawing my attention forcefully to obscurities and infelicities. Finally, two sympathetic but demanding anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press have required me to clarify and/or defend a number of the book’s concepts and arguments, to your benefit and mine.