Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xm8r8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-05T08:32:50.812Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Emergence of Democracy: Forces and Counter-forces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2015

Dirk Berg-Schlosser
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Capitalism and democracy have transformed the world, but not in a harmonious way. This article provides a broad overview of the major driving forces of democracy, its relationship with ongoing socioeconomic developments and some of the countervailing factors. It points to the inherently conflictive nature of democratic procedures and decision-making, but also emphasizes the potentially universal implications of basic democratic values. Against this background, the future prospects of democracy and possible alternatives in the age of globalization are assessed. All this is based, as far as space permits, on the huge body of available theoretical and empirical literature, but also on the author’s long-term preoccupation with this topic and some of his personal views and experiences.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 50 , Special Issue 3: 50th Anniversary Special Issue THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY , July 2015 , pp. 336 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Dirk Berg-Schlosser is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Marburg. Contact email: bergschl@staff.uni-marburg.de.

References

Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J.A. (2006), Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J.A. (2012), Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Publishers).Google Scholar
Almond, G.A. and Coleman, J.S. (1960), The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Almond, G.A., Coleman, J.S. and Verba, S. (1963), The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso).Google Scholar
Baker, K.L., Dalton, R.J. and Hildebrandt, K. (1981), Germany Transformed: Political Culture and the New Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Barnes, S.H. and Kaase, M. (1979), Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage).Google Scholar
Baumgartner, F.R. and Leech, B.L. (1998), Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Politics and in Political Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Beetham, D. (2009), ‘Democracy: Universality and Diversity’, Ethics and Global Politics, 2(4): 281–296.Google Scholar
Berg-Schlosser, D. (2007) (ed.), Democratization: The State of the Art, 2nd rev. edn (Opladen: B. Budrich).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berg-Schlosser, D. (2008), ‘Neighbourhood Effects of Democratization in Europe’, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 4(2): 29–45.Google Scholar
Berg-Schlosser, D. and Kersting, N. (1996), ‘Warum weltweite Demokratisierung? Zur Leistungsbilanz demokratischer und autoritärer Systeme’, in R. Hanisch (ed.), Demokratieexport in die Länder des Südens (Hamburg: Deutsches Übersee-Institut): 93–144.Google Scholar
Berg-Schlosser, D. and Mitchell, J. (2000) (eds), Conditions of Democracy in Europe, 1919–39: Systematic Case Studies (Basingstoke: Macmillan).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berg-Schlosser, D. and Mitchell, J. (2002) (eds), Authoritarianism and Democracy in Europe, 1919–39: Comparative Analyses (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berg-Schlosser, D. and Rytlewski, R. (1993) (eds), Political Culture in Germany (New York: St Martin’s Press).Google Scholar
Berry, J.M. and Wilcox, C. (2007), The Interest Group Society (New York: Pearson/Longman).Google Scholar
Brooker, P. (2009), Non-democratic Regimes (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).Google Scholar
Carothers, T. (2004), Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace).Google Scholar
Collier, P. (2003), Natural Resources, Development and Conflict: Channels of Causation and Policy Interventions (Washington, DC: World Bank).Google Scholar
Collier, R.B. (1999), Paths toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Colomer, J.M. (2000), Political Institutions: Democracy and Social Choice (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Council of Europe (2010), Strengthening Social Cohesion: Improving the Situation of Low-Income Workers: Empowerment of People Experiencing Extreme Poverty (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing).Google Scholar
Crouch, C. (2004), Post-democracy (Malden, MA: Polity Press).Google Scholar
Dahl, R.A. (1989), Democracy and its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Dahl, R.A. (2002), How Democratic is the American Constitution? (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Dalton, R.J. and Anderson, C. (2010), Citizens, Context, and Choice: How Context Shapes Citizens’ Electoral Choice (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Della Porta, D. (1995), Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Della Porta, D. (2013), Can Democracy Be Saved? Participation, Deliberation and Social Movements (Cambridge: Polity Press).Google Scholar
Di Palma, G. (1990), To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley: University of California Press).Google Scholar
Diamond, L.J. and Morlino, L. (2005), Assessing the Quality of Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
Dierckx, D. (2010), ‘Empowerment of People Experiencing Extreme Poverty’, in Council of Europe, Strengthening Social Cohesion: Improving the Situation of Low-income Workers: Empowerment of People Experiencing Extreme Poverty (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing).Google Scholar
Doorenspleet, R. (2005), Democratic Transitions: Exploring the Structural Sources of the Fourth Wave (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).Google Scholar
Easton, D. (1965), A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley).Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, S.N. and Roniger, L. (1984), Patrons, Clients, and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elkins, D.J. and Simeon, R. (1979), ‘A Cause in Search of its Effects or What Does Political Culture Explain?’, Comparative Politics, 11(2): 397–437.Google Scholar
Elms, A.C. (1976), Personality in Politics (New York: Harcourt Brace).Google Scholar
Frank, A.G. (1968), Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil (New York: Monthly Review Press).Google Scholar
Freedom House (2014), Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (New York: Freedom House).Google Scholar
Fukuyama, F. (1992), The ‘End of History?’ (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace).Google Scholar
Furnham, A. and Heaven, P.C.L. (1999), Personality and Social Behaviour (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Geddes, B. (2003), Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).Google Scholar
Haerpfer, C.W., Bernhagen, P., Inglehart, R.F. and Welzel, C. (2009) (eds), Democratization (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Hall, J.A. (1995), Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison (Cambridge: Polity Press).Google Scholar
Hall, P.A. and Soskice, D.W. (2001), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Held, D. (1995), Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
Hirschman, A.O. (1970), Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Horowitz, D.L. (2000), Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press).Google Scholar
Huntington, S.P. (1991), The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press).Google Scholar
Inglehart, R. (1997), Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Inglehart, R. and Welzel, C. (2005), Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Jennings, M.K., van Deth, J.W. and Barnes, S.H. (1990) (eds), Continuities in Political Action: A Longitudinal Study of Political Orientations in Three Western Countries (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter).Google Scholar
Kailitz, S. and Köllner, P. (2013) (eds), Autokratien im Vergleich (Baden-Baden: Nomos).Google Scholar
Karvonen, L. and Kuhnle, S. (2000) (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments Revisited (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Kaufmann, D., Aart, K. and Zoido-Lobatón, P. (1999), Aggregating Governance Indicators, Policy Research Working Paper 2195 (Washington, DC: World Bank).Google Scholar
Keane, J. (1988), Democracy and Civil Society (London: Verso).Google Scholar
Khatib, L. and Lust, E. (2014) (eds), Taking to the Streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitschelt, H. and Wilkinson, S. (2007), Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Kriesi, H., Bochsler, D., Matthes, J., Lavenex, S., Bühlmann, M. and Esser, F. (2013), Democracy in the Age of Globalization and Mediatization (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).Google Scholar
Leonard, D.K. and Straus, S. (2003), Africa’s Stalled Development: International Causes and Cures (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).Google Scholar
Lerner, D. (1958), The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (Glencoe, IL: Free Press).Google Scholar
Levitsky, S. and Way, L. (2010), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Lijphart, A. (1977), Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Lijphart, A. (2012), Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, 2nd edn (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Lindberg, S.I. (2009), Democratization by Elections: A New Mode of Transition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
Linz, J.J. (2007), ‘Some Thoughts on the Victory and Future of Democracy’, in D. Berg-Schlosser (ed.), Democratization: The State of the Art, 2nd rev. edn (Opladen: B. Budrich): 133–153.Google Scholar
Linz, J.J. and Stepan, A. (1978) (eds), The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
Lipset, S.M. (1959), ‘Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy’, American Political Science Review, 53: 69–105.Google Scholar
Lipset, S.M. (1960), Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday).Google Scholar
Lipset, S.M. (1994), Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, expanded edn (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
Lipset, S.M. and Rokkan, S. (1967), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (New York: Free Press).Google Scholar
Löwenthal, R. (1963), Die Demokratie im Wandel der Gesellschaft (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag).Google Scholar
McCormick, J. (2007), The European Union: Politics and Policies (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).Google Scholar
Markoff, J. (1996), Waves of Democracy: Social Movements and Political Change (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press).Google Scholar
Moore, B. (1966), Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press).Google Scholar
Moravcsik, A. (2006), European Union and World Politics (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Mudde, C. (2007), Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Munck, G.L. (2009), Measuring Democracy: A Bridge between Scholarship and Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
Offe, C. (2011), ‘Capitalism’, in B. Badie, D. Berg-Schlosser and L. Morlino (eds), International Encyclopedia of Political Science (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage): Vol. 1, 186–193.Google Scholar
Olson, M. (1968), The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (New York: Schocken Books).Google Scholar
Pharr, S.J. and Putnam, R.D. (2000), Disaffected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Piketty, T. (2014), Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Plasser, F., Ulram, P.A. and Waldrauch, H. (1998), Democratic Consolidation in East-Central Europe (New York: St Martin's Press).Google Scholar
Polanyi, K. (1944), The Great Transformation (New York: Farrar & Rinehart).Google Scholar
Polity IV Project (2013), ‘Regime Authority Characteristics and Transitions Dataset’, Center for Systemic Peace, www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html. Google Scholar
Przeworski, A., Alvarez, M.E., Cheibub, J.A. and Limongi, F. (1996), ‘What Makes Democracies Endure?’, Journal of Democracy, (1): 39–56.Google Scholar
Przeworski, A., Alvarez, M.E., Cheibub, J.A. and Limongi, F. (2000), Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Putnam, R.D. (2000), Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster).Google Scholar
Putnam, R.D., Leonardi, R. and Nanetti, R. (1993), Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Rohe, K. (1992), Wahlen und Wählertraditionen in Deutschland: Kulturelle Grundlagen deutscher Parteien und Parteiensysteme im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp).Google Scholar
Rose, R., Mishler, W. and Haerpfer, C.W. (1998), Democracy and its Alternatives: Understanding Post-communist Societies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rokkan, S., Flora, P., Kuhnle, S. and Urwin, D.W. (1999), State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan: Based on his Collected Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Rothstein, B. (2011), The Quality of Government: Corruption, Social Trust, and Inequality in International Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Rueschemeyer, D., Huber, E. and Stephens, J.D. (1992), Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Russett, B. (1993), Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Sartori, G. (1994), Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives, and Outcomes (New York: New York University Press).Google Scholar
Scharpf, F.W. (1997), Games Real Actors Play: Actor-Centered Institutionalism in Policy Research (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).Google Scholar
Scharpf, F.W., Reissert, B. and Schnabel, F. (1976), Politikverflechtung: Theorie und Empirie des kooperativen Föderalismus in der Bundesrepublik (Regensburg: Scriptor Verlag).Google Scholar
Schmitter, P.C. and Lehmbruch, G. (1979) (eds), Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation (London: Sage).Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J.A. (1943), Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (London: G. Allen & Unwin).Google Scholar
Sen, A. (1999a), Democracy as a Universal Value’, Journal of Democracy, 10(3): 3–17.Google Scholar
Sen, A. (1999b), Development as Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Shapiro, I. and Hacker-Cordón, C. (1999) (eds), Democracy’s Edges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shiratori, H. (1997), Conceptual Map of Asia: The Relevance of Rokkan Model (Nagasaki: Nagasaki University).Google Scholar
Standing, G. (2009), Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).Google Scholar
Streeck, W. (2013), Gekaufte Zeit: Die Vertagte Krise des Demokratischen Kapitalismus (Berlin: Suhrkamp).Google Scholar
Temelli, S.Y. (1999), Demokratisierung im subsaharischen Afrika: Formen und Faktoren einer politischen Landkarte (Münster: LIT).Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (1990), Coercion, Capital and European States (Oxford: Blackwell).Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (2007), Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
UNDP (2002), Human Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
UNDP (2013), Human Development Report 2013: The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Waldmann, P. (1989), Ethnischer Radikalismus: Ursachen und Folgen gewaltsamer Minderheitenkonflikte am Beispiel des Baskenlandes, Nordirlands und Quebecs (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag).Google Scholar
Welzel, C. (2013), Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Wendt, A. (1999), Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Whitehead, L. (1996), The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
World Bank (1992), World Development Report 1992: Development and the Environment (Washington, DC: World Bank).Google Scholar
Zartman, I.W. (1995), Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).CrossRefGoogle Scholar