International Context Hakan Yilmaz • Introduction • The International Dimension of Democratization: Theoretical Approaches • Democracy Promotion Strategies of the USA and the European Union • Globalization, Global Civil Society, and Democratization « Conclusion Until recently, most analyses of democratization have treated their subject primarily as a national issue, by paying little or no attention to the influences coming from the international environment. Despite a variety of rich empirical analyses, the subject of external and internal linkages in the processes of democratization has remained an under-researched and under-theorized field. Transitions to democracy, whether in the distant past or in the more recent times, have almost always been accounted for by the operation of domestic factors. Thus, historical cases of democratization in early modern Europe were explained by underlining the legacy of separation :J2MATJO 93 Overview This chapter discusses the major theoretical democracy promotion strategies of the USA and Lhe p approaches to the issue of the international con- EU, and examines the effects of globalization and text of democratization. It also reviews the principal the formation of a global civil society, dimensions of the international context, namely, Introduction of powers, church-state separation, independenl towns, and by social contracts based on the prin' i-ple of 'no taxation without representation' between the tax-paying citizens and the autocratic ruli is ■■ the state. More recent cases of democratization were studied by underlining sometimes the structural factors (e.g. the degree of national unity, the leve. of political institutionalization, economic development, and political culture) and sometimes the more intimately political factors (e.g. the nature of civil-military relations, the cracks within the ruling Wol-and the relative weights of the costs of suppre. i i and toleration). Whether structural or political. ■ ■11 rht historical and the more recent cases of ,in "Sly ifcratization, the factors that were attributed explanatory power belonged mainly to the domestic social and political life, implying that democratization had little to do with the forces operating outside national borders. The International Context of Democratization: Theoretical Approaches , in a famous essay on the interaction of domestic and inteinatiorial politics, Robert D.' Putnam wrote that ' ( Iriestic politics and international relations are ofterif somewhat entangled, but our theories have not vet sorted out the puzzling tangle' (Putnam 1993: ' 431);'[Putnam's critique has targeted the classical theories of international relations, but some scholars r | linparative politics have expressed similar ideas c u erhing their own discipline. Douglas A. Chalmers observed that comparative political analysts fre-c i (i try ignore international factors or relegate them to the'1 contextual background. When attention is paid, it is usually restricted to intervention, dependency, jsubversion, or foreign aid (Chalmers 1993). For >.j ius intellectual, institutional, methodological, and historical reasons, examined in some detail by Andrew Moravcsik (1993) and Tony Smith (1994), theories of international relations and comparative polities have constructed two separate, independent, ■l' i. self-contained political universes, domestic and i -u national, with distinct actors and specific rules of the game. It was a rare exception for an analyst to refer to the developments in one of the political universes with the purpose of explaining an event that was taking place in the other universe. Democratic transition has been one particular field of study in comparative politics in which the dismissal of the international factors was perhaps i" i a pronounced than in the other fields. Geoffrey Pridham, writing on the Southern European democ-u . rtions in the 1970s, has argued that '[t]he international context is the forgotten dimension in the sli.iUv.of democratic transition. Growing work on this problem, both theoretical and empirical, has continued largely to ignore international influences and effects on the causes, processes and outcomes of transition' (Pridham 1991: 1). At the same time, a critical dimension of the international context affecting democratic developments in smaller countries, namely the efforts of the USA, EU, and other democratic powers to promote democracy worldwide, has also remained remarkably underresearched (Smith 1994: xiii-xiv). By the early 1990s, influenced by the more obvious role played by the international environment in the Central and Eastern European transitions to democracy, theorists in the fields of international relations and comparative politics have made serious attempts to build approaches that would bridge the gap between the two political universes. In this connection, a number of interdisciplinary approaches have emerged, with the purpose of confronting the problem of external-internal linkages in the processes of democratic regime change. Important examples of the new approaches to the issue of external-internal linkages in democratization include Laurence Whitehead's concept of 'democratization through convergence' (Whitehead 1991), Geoffrey Pridham's idea of 'democratization through system penetration' (Pridham 1991), Douglas Chalmers' notion of 'internationalized domestic politics' (Chalmers 1993), and various theories of 'diffusion' in the vein of Samuel Huntington's 'snowballing' effects. Whitehead and Pridham developed their approaches from their analyses of the Southern European democra-tizations, while Chalmers based his theory on the Latin American cases. For now, it should be noted that such attempts have not yet produced widely accepted models of explanation. All such works are still at the level of initial reflections and explorations to be developed by further theoretical refinements and case studies. In fact, Putnam himself has called it 94 ŕ i IM his two-level game approach a 'metaphor' that could at best serve as the starring point for building an 'algebra' (Putnam 1993: 437). Whitehead's 'democratization through convergence' occurs in a process in which a non-democratic country joins a pre-existing democratic community of states without losing its sovereignty. Examples are the democratizations of Spain, Portugal, and Greece while these countries were being integrated with the European Community. According to White-head (1991: 45-6), the greatest puzzles in measuring the effects of the international factors arose in the intermediate cases of democratization through convergence where 'the key actors involved in regime change and democratization may have been overwhelmingly internal, [but] their strategies and calculations have often been strongly shaped by the pressure of externally designed rules and structures'. Pridham's concept of 'system penetration' is similar to Whitehead's notion of 'regime convergence'. According to Pridham, long term external factors that 'penetrate' a given domestic system affect the background conditions of and prepare the way for regime transition. Hence, even if there is no immediate external factor at the time of the transition itself, the impact of the long-term external factors and the degree of 'system penetratedness' must be accounted for in the explanation of regime change (Pridham 1991: 21-5). The convergence approach of Whitehead and the penetration approach of Pridham are useful for understanding the impact of the international factors on the political regimes of countries which were not politically or economically dominated by a foreign power. The pitfall of both approaches is that they are not themselves theories. They are rather conceptual frameworks within which we can develop a model of explanation for the particular cases at hand. A third approach to the role of the international factors in domestic politics has been developed by Douglas Chalmers, which he has called 'internationalized domestic polities'. Chalmers has formulated the concept of 'internationalized domestj c politics' to account f or the imp act of the international factors on the cases of authoritarian breakdown and democratic transition in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. The author defines an 'internationally based actor' ás any actor who stays involved in a country's domestic politics over a period of time, becomes built mtn the political institutions of the country, and is identify with international sources of power (Chalmers 19g;-j 1). When internationally based actors are a signil cant presence, then the political system that results is called 'internationalized domestic politics'—' nr.. nationalized' because of thepresence of international actors, and 'domestic' because the problem at hari is not a question of foreign policy or interstate rcla tions, but of decision-making on local issues. In cbi trast to a more conventional perspective that limite the international factors to the ones that arose: ■ ■ from state-to-state relations and considered them as being external to a country's political system, Chalmers redefines political systems 'to include internatidi ally based actors as normal parts of the system, not actors external to it' (Chalmers 1993: 35). Although Chalmers underlines the fact that internationalize domestic actors are not a novelty, he also says that internationalized domestic politics is a recent phenomenon. He attributes that phenomenon, on one hand, to the tremendous increase in the numbers, types, scope, and resources of internationally based actors, and on the other hand to the post-Cold War trend of globalization which is progressing throug developments in communications, sales of national assets to foreigners by privatizations, liberalization of world trade, and a general decrease of a nation-state control over social organization and production within its borders. A fourth view on external-internal linkages in the processes of democratization centres on the idea of 'diffusion'. Diffusion refers to the various interactions and inter-linkages between two structure's, one bein l the international context and the other one a single country that is situated in that context. Although var ous authors have later developed more focussed rno( els of diffusion, Samuel Huntington's well-know theory of the three 'waves' of democratization ca be taken as a predecessor of the diffusion approach In his 1991 book, Tlie Third Wave: Democratizatiom' the Late Twentieth Century, Huntington refers to the 'snowballing' or demonstration effects, enhanced by new international communications, of democrat -zation in other countries, as one of the factors tlrat had paved the way for the third wave of transitioi to democracy. In a later article, 'After Twenty Year The Future of the Third Wave', Huntington has put ■ I It i I If ill the accent on the concept of diffusion for explain-l'iilg'tfte chances of electoral democracies to develop uito liberal democracies. In that article Huntington , arVVe have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no jdpminion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material I i' ' i i I 97 compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. The second, 'realist' drive behind the post-Cold War promotion of democracy stemmed from security concerns and it was meant to make the world safe for the USA. This reasoning has been influenced by the 'democratic peace' hypothesis, according to which war was unlikely between democracies. The origins of the democratic peace theory can be traced back to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (2006), who, in his 1795 essay entitled 'Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch', argued that constitutional republics were a necessary condition for a perpetual peace in the world. Kant's idea was that a majority of the people would never vote to go to War, unless in self defence. Therefore, if all nations were republics, it would end war, because there would be no aggressors. Arguably, neither the idealist nor the realist logic fully dominated the US democratic promotion policies at any one point in time. As Robert Gates, the former head of the CIA and current Secretary of Defense, stated in a speech in 2007, 'from our earliest days, America's leaders have struggled with "realistic" versus "idealistic" approaches to the international challenges facing us. . . . We have at times made human rights the centrepiece of our national strategy even as we did business with some of the worst violators of human rights' (Gates 2007). The record of US democracy promotion policies to date, particularly during the George W. Bush Administration, is at best mixed. The Middle East has taken the lion's share in the overall democracy promotion programmes of the Bush administration. Latin American countries, for instance, have not been paid a lot of attention in the last decade, though many democracies in the region have been shaken by political and economic crisis, which has paved the way for the coming to power of anti-American regimes in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia. Except for the heightened funds and efforts dedicated to the Middle East, the US democracy promotion activities in the other countries of the world, such as Indonesia, Nepal, and Liberia, remained unambitious. Even in the highly publicized 'colour revolutions' in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan hi the 98 early 2000s, despite the claims that'US government and institutions had been the prime movers of the revolutionary movements, the role of the US was at most modest (Carothers 2007: 10-11). With respect to the US democracy promotion activities in the Middle East, one can safely say that the returns on the increased funds and efforts remained marginal. First of all, much of the US funds and efforts have been consumed by the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan (since October 2001) and Iraq (since March 2003), both of which were far more related to the realist concerns of security, stability and oil rather than motivated by any idealist mission of bringing human rights and democracy to that part of the worid. Except for its engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, the USA has largely continued to do business as usual in the other countries of the Middle East. As US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it '[i]t is neither hypocrisy nor cynicism to believe fervently in freedom while adopting different approaches to advancing freedom at different times along the way - including temporarily making common cause with despots to defeat greater or more urgent threats to our freedom or interests' (Gates 2007). Recently, many authors have observed a 'backlash' against democracy promotion by the USA. According to Peter Burnell, 'the current mood in and around the industry itself appears to be at an all-time low' (Burnell 2008: 39). What are the factors behind this backlash? Thomas Carothers identifies four main causes. In the first place, US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the rhetorical legitimation by the US Administration that these actions were taken for the sake of bringing democracy to these countries, have helped to associate democracy promotion with US military intervention. Second, conspiracy theories claiming that the 'colour revolutions' of Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan were stage-managed by such US organizations as the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), Freedom House, and the Open Society Institute, have helped to associate democracy promotion with US covert operations. Third, the violation of human rights by and within the USA, symbolized by such incidents as Abu Ghraib, the practice of detaining people indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, the undenruning of fundamental civil liberties through the US Patriot Act, and discrimination »1 against Muslim Americans by such practices as terrorist profiling, has discredited the USA as the charfi pion of democracy m the other parts of the world (Carothers 2006). Finally, a growing assertiveness of President Putin's international stance combined with Russia's improved financial prowess, as well as the wealth that is being accumulated by some com modify exporting developing world governments ai, a result of rising demand from the booming economies of China and India, have all served to reduei the leverage that Western governments could exeri on behalf of democracy promotion (Burnell 2008).i What could be a more successful and sustainable regime of US democracy promotion? Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder (2006) have argued thai democratization has certain preconditions. Thes; preconditions have to do with sufficient levels o; state-building and nation-building. In other words prior to launching democratization, a society rnus-have established a mode of peaceful coexistence between the various ethnic groups that make it up and it must have built the necessary institutions fo; interest representation and conflict resolution. If democracy, and particularly an externally imposed democracy, comes before these preconditions ars met, then it will almost certainly lead that country to internal conflict and external aggression. Mansfield and Snyder recommend that a democracy promotion program should help a country to establish the pre conditions of democracy, which consists of developing the economy, building an impartial and effective public bureaucracy, inducing the state to move awaj from patronage and repression as the basic instru ments of government, and promoting a pro-democ racy constituency within the civil society, the latter to serve as the internal push for democratization. Democracy promotion by the EU The term 'conditionality' has been coined to describe the democracy promotion strategy of the EU. Sch-mitter and Brouwer (1999: 15) have defined 'con- . ditionality' as 'imposing or threatening to impose: sanctions or providing or promising to provide rewards in order to promote or protect democracy'. Given the pace and depth of the democratic transfer-1 mation of post-communist countries of Central and lill 11 tví 1 IV,. li: •m, I pastern Europe under EU conditionality, it would not I- \ Tong to claim that in the last two decades the EU I, -, been a far more successful democracy promoter t]i il the USA. However, the main qualification of 'rlus Warm to success is that it has only worked for countries that were on the way of joining the EU. These cases of democratization were, in the words of petet:Burnell (2008: 38), 'easy victories' for the EU. - h. countries of Central and Eastern Europe had just cJjne out of Soviet domination, and EU membership was the best choice for them to secure themselves .against Soviet power and to consolidate their newly i-. ur democratic regimes. Hence, they were ready to comply with the membership conditions that the II, etifor them. From the perspective of the member states of the EU, on the other hand, Central and I j-1 Kn European nations were seen as part of a com-i-i -n European civilization, history, and geography. ' 11 refore, enlargement to the East was viewed as the exercise of necessary solidarity with their ldn. lorEU conditionality to be an effective catalyst of democratization, a number meta-conditions have to be met. First, in order to be effective political conditionality must involve a, rightly balanced mix of con- slditions and incentives, the adoption of the political conditions by the receiving countries create serious adjustment costs, which can only be outweighed by "substantial incentives. Thus, in the case of the Central and Eastern European transitions of the 1990s, ithe principal incentives involved a clear timetable for quick accession to the EU coupled with generous -aid, credit, and direct investment flows from member states to the candidate countries. Those incentives helped the candidate countries to face the costs 'of■ political and economic transition, which was undertaken in line with the EU requirements. On .the other hand, a situation of conditions with no i incentives, instead of contributing to the promotion Of democracy, might produce just the reverse effect if rid might play into the hands of the opponents of liberalization and democratization. Second, the EU must not change the conditions in the middle of the fgarne (consistency of the conditions). Third, the EU ; must apply essentially the same conditions to all the candidates (fairness of the conditions). Finally, the ;Candidate country must have an undisputable prospect for joining the club, when she meets all the conditions tor membership (attainability of the prize). 99 If one or more of these meta-conditions are violated, conditionality might not produce the desired outcomes. What is more worrisome, violations of these meta-conditions by the EU might provoke a nationalist reaction within a candidate country and thereby produce the opposite outcome, in the form of a backlash against EU-driven democratization and liberalization. The case of Turkish candidacy illustrates the point. Turkey has been a candidate state for the EU since December 1999 and it has started accession negotiations in October 2005. Turkey has been the only candidate country for which an accession date has not been specified. Not only has a date for joining the European club not been set, but many influential politicians from the EU member states, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have started to question whether Turkey is a European country and therefore has a right to join the EU. New membership conditions have also been created for Turkey, which make the accession process harder and longer, compared to the Central and East European countries. For example, for the case of Turkey, the EU has formulated a new concept, the so-called 'absorption capacity' of the EU, meaning that, even if Turkey met all the conditions, the EU could still refuse entry, if it judged that it was not ready to take in a new member. The impact of these and other violations of the meta-conditions of conditionality was to bring about in Turkey what may be called a 'reverse conditionality'. In other words, as the EU has started to disengage itself from Turkey, critically placed Turkish political actors and social forces have responded to this signal coming from the EU by either detaching themselves from the EU project or at least adopting a position of indifference with Tespect to it. The consequence of 'reverse conditionality' might be that European values might lose their support base in the Turkish political and civil society, with the outcome of an erosion of the reforms made in the area of democratization and liberalization. Ironically, to save the earlier democratization reforms that had been made under EU conditionality, Turkey might now need to de-link the project of democratization from the project of EU accession, because reversals in the latter process could seriously harm the advances made in the former. 100 HAKAK YtLMAZ As Aiitoaneta Dimitrova and Geoffrey Pridham (2004) observed, EU conditionality has not been very effective for countries with no prospect of membership. A case in point is the Mediterranean countries of North Africa. The Barcelona Process, which had been set in motion in the mid-1990s to bring the Mediterranean countries to a closer political and economic cooperation with the EU, and to socialize the political class and civil society in the region into a greater acceptance of European demor cratic ideals and values, has not produced tangible results (Gillespie and Youngs 2002). A closer analysis of the newly proposed 'Union for the Mediterranean', which had been put into the EU agenda by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, reveals that, unlike the previous Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (the Barcelona Process), this new EU-Mediterranean cooperation scheme would not have any political or democratic substance. Avoiding politics, the Mediterranean Union's focus would be on crime and terrorism, sustainable development, illegal immigration and energy security, and its key objective would be to establish a Euro-Mediterranean free trade area by the year 2010. Globalization, Global Civil Democratization Globalization and the decline of state power The, internalist understanding of democratization, prioritizing the role of domestic factors in paving the way to democracy, was relatively plausible until the onset of globalization in the 1980s. In a world where nation states could effectively control the movements of money, commodities, people and information through their borders, it made sense to take the state, with all that existed within its borders, as thebasic level of analysis for political change. This closed-polity view of change in political science corresponded roughly to the closed-economy model of economics: in both, ............ "j Box 7.2 Key points • In 'democracy promotion', a global agent (the USA, j' the EU, the UN, or a transnational advocacy net- i work) consciously and deliberately tries to impart | new mentalities, new institutions, and new codes | of behaviour to a country for the openly declared J purpose of promoting democracy. 1 • The term 'conditionality' has been coined to describe J the democracy promotion strategy of the EU. 'Con- i J ditionality' is defined as imposing sanctions or pro- [s viding rewards in order to promote democracy. • Recently, there has been a 'backlash' against i democracy promotion by the USA. The association \ of democracy promotion with US military interven- P tion; the violation of human rights by the USA; and a \ growing assertiveness of states like Russia and China j have all served to reduce the leverage that the USA 1 and other Western governments could exert on > s behalf of democracy promotion. I Society, and the role of international factors was seen as secondary to explaining political or economic outcomes. In a world dominated by nation states, the kind of international factors that were significant enough to exert a lasting impact on domestic developments could only come from one state clashing with other, competing states, which typically took the form of war, invasion, occupation, economic domination, economic sanctions, and colonization. One likely consequence of such clashes was that, like defeat in war, they dramatically weakened state power at home, both physically and normatively, thus increasing the chances of the opposition forces to win the political struggle they were waging against the forces of the state. Theda Skocpol (1979) underlined the role of such state-'' 11 ijyeal!enrng international factors in explaining the French and Russian revolutions. Losing external wars '1 r1 was iid doubt the primary cause of the collapse of fas-flast regimes of Germany and Italy after the Second ,\i ild War. In the 1970s, the failure of the colonial adventures of the Portuguese army led to the down-■i i af' the Salazar regime in Portugal, while the Turkic military intervention in Cyprus triggered the end li 1 'P of the 'colonels' regime' in Greece. More recently, the ed NATO operations against Serbia and Afghani-si a i li1 and the US invasion of Iraq, helped remove the |i ultranationalist, Islamic fundamentalist, and Baathist r_.i mes in these countries. Regime change, and in particular democratic regime change, as a result of the impact of state-weakening international interventions, will no doubt be with us for years to come. In fact, that has been the favourite method for 'democracy promotion' for the Bush Administration and the ''nboconservative' sections of the US foreign policy ;blishment in recent years. ! 11 By the end of the Cold War, however, state power 'has arguably been weakened by globalization. Glo-Pbalization meant, particularly for the smaller states, tfiat their control over the movements of money, o 'imodities, people and information across their borders has entered a process of decline. This has ,i i ii particularly the case for financial capital and (information, whose cross-border movements are increasingly independent from regulation by individual states. The enormous progress in informa-i.tion and communications technologies, the spread of the internet, and the world-wide proliferation of Ji! lithe alternative markets for investing financial capital . meant that state borders have become increasingly -; tporous and permeable. Some authoritarian states, .such as Iran and China, have been waging a quixotic struggle to slow down the penetration of their ■ I ■ borders by banning the use of the satellite dishes or i restricting the use of the internet. Some other semi-lauthoritarian states, such as Russia, have been trying ■fojcleanse their societies from the 'infection' of globalization, by ousting international NGOs from their i countries, nationalizing the assets of newly emerg- i ', 4ng capitalists, censoring the media, and persecuting nJQUinalists. 101 Positive and negative effects of global civil society upon democratization Globalization has prepared a very different field for the game of democratization, involving both encouraging and discouraging facets. Global forces, whether they come in the form of superpowers such as the USA, supranational organizations such as the EU, or transnational companies, have acted like double-edged swords, sometimes cutting in favour of democratization and sometimes against it. In the process of globalization states have become more vulnerable to the demands of the global forces that control capital movements, investment decisions, technological innovation, and the production and dissemination of information, norms, and values. These global forces can and sometimes do use their power to further-the cause of democracy. One example is no doubt the democratic transformation in the post-Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe under EU conditionality. US-led NATO actions to prevent ethnic cleansing and to establish stable political regimes in former Yugoslavia is another example of the positive impact of global forces on the promotion of human rights and democracy. Yet a third example is the fact that human rights violations have gained an unprecedented visibility due to the widespread information networks of human rights organizations. This global visibility is no doubt a factor that has made authoritarian governments think twice before proceeding to suppress democratic forces. At other times, however, states, transnational companies and other globally operating entities have not shied away from backing utterly repressive regimes, such as the ones in the oil-producing countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, often in return for securing lucrative political or economic deals. Facing the increasing challenges of globalization, and in order to cope with rising internal dissent, states have resorted to extreme measures, which involved, primarily, anti-globalist mass mobilizations along the lines of populist, nationalist, religious fundamentalist ideologies. These are what can be called 'de-democratization' or 'authoritarian restoration' attempts in the age of globalization. In these 102 Ih, ,t,' r •)' ,1 I : processes of authoritarian restoration, dissenters are often tainted as foreign agents, imperialist lackeys, and enemies of the nation, and are persecuted under the charges of betrayal and subversion. Putin's Russia, Ahmadinejad's Iran, Chavez's Venezuela are all examples of this anti-globalist authoritarian backlash. Most states that take these de-democratizing measures against the forces of globalization can afford to do so because they are oil or natural gas exporting rentier states (see Ch. 8). As exporters of a highly demanded global product, their bargaining power vis-ä-vis the global forces is high compared to the non-rentier states such as Turkey, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. Rentier states also have access to financial resources to finance their anti-globalist restoration or preserve their authoritarian systems. The non-rentier states, on the other hand, have had to be more responsive to the liberalizing and democratizing conditions recommended to them by the outside world. What impact has globalization had on the world's authoritarian regimes? On the positive side, globalization has spread democratic norms and values through the national boundaries and helped generate new ethical codes of behaviour for the states, international organizations, and multinational companies. The advances in the information technologies have greatly increased the visibility of the actions of the states and other powerful actors, thereby eroding secrecy, widening transparency, and exposing the states to the scrutiny of the global civil society. Under the circumstances of increasing transparency, states that are in search of global prestige and credibility have had to restrain their despotic actions. On the negative side, globalization has exacerbated economic and political inequalities in the world, further widening the gap between the richer and poorer nations and regions. Their growing wealth has made richer nations more self-centred, more conservative, and more indifferent towards the problems of the poorer nations. Richer nations' main concern for the more disadvantaged nations of the world has remained limited to aid, charity, and the prevention of migration. Poorer nations, on their part, having seen no way out of the cycle of poverty, have become more susceptible to the manipulations of religious fundamentalists, ultranationalists, terrorists, and human traffickers. Amy Chua (2002) pointed to another dangerous liaison between a country's insertion into economic globalization and the democratization of its political regime. Chua argues that, if there was an economically dominant ethnic minority in that country, the initial impact of globalization would be to further enhance the dominant position of that minority. Economic globalization tends to exacerbate existing inequities' insofar as the economically dominant minorities are better-positioned to take advantage of new economic opportunities, have better access to capital, and (, are endowed with a cultural tradition of entn |n neurialism that other groups do not have to an equal extent. This can result in growing resentment on the part of an impoverished and marginalized majorj ity. Hence, when democracy is introduced into such a tense domestic environment, a majority group or coalition of groups may be tempted to use its demo; cratic powers for settling of scores, which can lead to many incidents of ethnic clashes and ethnic cleansing. As examples of democratization resulting in the majority's aggression against market-dominant ethnic minorities, Chua cites anti-Semitism in Weimar Germany and post-Communist Russia; hostility fai the wealthy Chinese minority in 'the Philippines; Serbian assaults against the more affluent Croats in former Yugoslavia; violence against the more prosperous Tutsi minority by the Hutu majority; and seizures of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe. A significant outcome of globalization has been the formation of transnational advocacy networks, defending global norms and values in the areas oi human rights, minority rights, democracy, and the protection of the environment, which together have been paving the ground for the emergence of a global civil society. Transnational advocacy networks have brought together individuals and associations from all over the world in defence of certain highly valued issues. Some of those issues have been truly global in nature, such as global warming. In many cases; though, advocacy groups managed to 'globalize' certain essentially local issues, such as the massacres in Darfur (Sudan) or the mistreatment of the detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. When an issue found its way onto the global agenda, chances increase thai it becomes the subject of some sort of 'humanitarian intervention' by the most powerful agents of globalization, including the UN, NATO, transnational companies, the USA, the EU, or INGOs. We are, as yet, only at the beginnings of a global civil society, which exists mostly in the form of a vir tual community enabled by the internet. However 111 lil 103 ■ ■ ■ I (1i'at this initial stage, a global civil society has " I ed two very significant roles in democracy pro-[no'rioii. First, it has given an unprecedented global 'yisibllitv' to the suppressive policies and atrocities awiiiitted by the governments. Secrecy and denial liad. traditionally been the Chinese Wall behind which authoritarian governments could hide their objectionable actions. New communication technol-aa\i'M, from the internet to cell phones, have made secrets much more difficult to keep. Sooner, rather lhan'later, massacres, tortures, extrajudicial killings, electoral fraud, and other such practices, are likely to find their way onto the global agenda. Misinformation, disinformation, selective information, bad information, and manipulation of all sorts have always been, and probably will always be, with us. This does not, however, refute the fact that the age of secrecy is coming to an end. Governments and oppositions will increasingly have to operate in an environment of abundant information and will not be able to rely on secrecy. t V.hat can we say about the impact of the global civil society on democratization? On this issue we can discern two contrasting views, one optimistic land the other one more cautious and pessimistic. From an optimistic point of view, the growth of a global civil society is seen as helping build social capital, trust and shared values across the globe, facilitating »anunderstanding of the interconnectedness of global ;i problems and their solutions. Global civil society is considered to be a vehicle that spreads ethical norms a and values across national boundaries, and that acts -;.as a deterrent for govermnents who might attempt Xa violate human rights and freedoms. Pessimists, on s the other hand, would argue that transnational advo-scacy networks avoid the more important but politi-■j cally sensitive causes, and they turn their attention to Conclusion Js democracy possible within the borders of a single ■state? Or should democracy, if it is to survive in any country, become a transnational system, sustained by supranational agencies? A similar debate had been made in regard to socialism in the early twentieth century. Shortly after the Russian revolution, one Box 7.3 Key points • A significant outcome of globalization has been the formation of transnational advocacy networks, defending global norms and values in the areas of human rights, minority rights, democracy, and the protection of the environment, which together have paved the ground for the emergence of a global civil society. • Global civil society is considered to be a vehicle that spreads ethical norms and values across national boundaries and that acts as a deterrent for governments who might attempt to violate human righto and freedoms. • Sometimes transnational advocacy networks avoid important but politically sensitive causes and restrict their attention to the less important but generally acceptable issues. If they do so, their efforts fall short of challenging the unfair distribution of political power and economic resources over the globe. the less important but generally acceptable issues. As such, they do not make a real difference because they do not challenge the unfair distribution of political power and economic resources over the globe. This anti-political attitude of transnational advocacy networks stem from two factors. One factor is that they often ask for funding and understanding from the dominant actors of the global system, such as superpowers, supranational bodies, and multinational corporations, which leads them to compromise with their supporters' conservative agendas. The second factor is that they want to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, which forces them to choose mainstream discourses and overly general issues. hot topic of debate among the theorists of socialism of the day was 'socialism in one country' vs. 'socialism as a universal system'. A realist camp, among which were figures like Nikolai Bukharin and Joseph Stalin, were staunchly defending the idea of consolidating socialism in Russia only, even at the expense of revising some of the most well-known texts of Marxism, in which the founders of the movement talked of a universal, at least pan-European, proletarian revolution and socialism as a world-system. The idealist camp, first defended by V.I. Lenin himself, and then by Aleksandr Zinoviev and most notably by Leon Trotsky in his theory of Permanent Revolution, argued that unless the socialist revolution had been spread to at least the advanced countries of Europe, by the force of arms if necessary, and a socialist European and then world system had been established, a socialist regime could not survive in Russia or, for that matter, in any other single state. The question that we are facing today in relation to democracy bears some resemblances to that historical question of the socialist revolution: Can an advanced democratic regime, fully equipped with influential participatory mechanisms, and based on a comprehensive array of individual or human rights, survive in any single country, unless democracy becomes the global norm, perhaps eventually supported by accountable and competent supranational authorities? In its early years, democracy was a rather simple system, involving the guarantee of basic rights and liberties and participation in free and fair elections at the level of the nation state or below. Democracy today has become a much more complex system. One dimension of its complexity has to do with an immensely widened and detailed QUESTIONS system of rights, going far beyond the basic rights andlibertiesoftheearlydays.Rightstodaycove] mci- i viduals, ethnic groups, age groups, gender groups foreigners living in a country, animals, and the i ;•■ system, and encompass a whole array of political economic, social and cultural matters. Parallel to the widening and deepening in the area of rights participation too grew far more advanced than its rather uncomplicated early meaning of free and fai-elections. Today, democratic participation covers many more areas, including decision-making at the work place, in schools, local communities, political parties, and various civic associations. What ismore, direct democracy, which had been in the pa;, n-feasible but for very small polities, has now becom manageable for large populations, thanks to the advances in information and communications technologies. What we are observing is the evolution o democracy to a deepened, advanced and complex political system. As a result, one can argue that a single country, however large and rich it maybe, migh not possess the economic resources, political instltu tions, social capital, and cultural traditions required to sustain such a regime. Hence, disciplinary-mechanisms of international or supranational bodies/ to which individual democratic states would pool par of their sovereignties, may be necessary for the dem ocratic regime in each state to have the best chances to survive at its most highly developed stage. 1. By the early 1990s, theorists in the fields of international relations and comparative politics began taking into account the international dimensionsof democratization. What were the important changes in the international arena that led the theorists to pay more attention to the international dimensions of democratization? 2. Is a supranational global authority needed to promote and sustain democratization at a global scale? 3. Various authors have shown that the diffusion of democratic ideals and institutions across the nations in a world region has been one of the most effective international dimensions of democratization. What could be the specific ways and means of the diffusion of democracy? 4. Imagine an authoritarian country being surrounded by democratizing neighbours. What could be, for this country, the economic, political, and security costs of remaining authoritarian in an increasingly democratizing regional environment? m 5. The state in country C faces charges of human rights violations while trying to keep radical opposition forces under control. C's interests in the international system incentivize it to forge an alliance with democratic states. However, such an alliance is made conditional upon C's improvement of its human rights record. Under these circumstances, what kind of policies can C follow in the domestic and international arenas? 6. How do superpowers such as the USA and transnational unions such as the EU behave when their particular political, economic or military interests come into conflict with the outcomes of democracy promotion abroad? How should they behave? Visit the Online Resource Centre that accompanies this book for additional questions to accompany each chapter, and a range of other resources: . FURTHER READING Grugel, J. (1999) (ed.), Democracy without Borders: Transnationalization and Conditionality in New Democracies (London: Routledge). This book analyses the transnational dimensions of democratization, by putting the emphasis on the role of civil society and non-state actors. The chapters examine selected cases from Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Yilmaz, H. (2002), 'External-Internal Linkages in Democratization: Developing an Open Model of Democratic Change', Democratization, 9/2: 67-84. This article presents an open model of democratization for the semi-peripheral states of the international system. It introduces two new external variables: the expected external costs of suppression and toleration. It then applies the open model to the cases of political change in Spain, Portugal and Turkey in the aftermath of the Second World War. Pevehouse, J. C. (2002), 'Democracy from the Outside-in? International Organizations and Democratization', International Organization, 56/3: 515^19. This article explores the linkages between membership in regional international organizations and democratization. Tt discusses which organizations should be expected to be associated with democratic transitions. It also presents a statistical test of the major arguments it has developed. Munck, R. (2006), 'Global Civil Society: Royal Road or Slipper)' Path?', Voluntas - International journal of Voluntary and Non-profit Organisations, 6/3: 325-32. This article offers a critical discussion of the dominant views that global civil society has become an important mechanism for global democratization. It argues that these approaches depoliticize global civil society and make it the social wing of neoliberal globalization. It calls for bringing progressive politics back in the global social movements. Carothers, T. (2007), US Democracy Promotion Daring and After Bush. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment, Carnegie Endowment Report, September 2007. Available at . This report offers a critical discussion of the US democracy promotion under President George W. Bush. It argues that Under George W. Bush, US democracy promotion has been widely discredited through its association with American military intervention. It also claims that beyond the Middle East US foreign policy is primarily driven by economic and security interests. It argues that the success of US democracy promotion requires ending the close association of democracy promotion with military intervention and by strengthening the core institutional sources of democracy assistance. Dimitrova, A. and Pridham, G. (2004), 'International Actors and Democracy Promotion In ■ i ■: Central And Eastern Europe: The Integration Model And Its Limits', Democratization, 11/5: 91-112. This article focuses on the influence of the European Union in the process of democratization in Central and Eastern European states. It argues that the EU model 1 of democracy promotion through integration has been more successful in fostering a; democracy than the efforts of other International organizations in other parts of the world. The weakness of the model is that it has limited potential when encountering defective democracies with little chance of becoming EU members. IMPORTANT WEBSITES The web site of the Carnegie Endowment publishes important articles on US democracy promotion. The Brookings Institution website includes many useful commentaries on the successes, as well as failures, of the US democracy promotion in the Middle East and other regions of the world. The website of the US State Department offers the official US views on democracy promotion. ALDE stands for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. It brings together liberal and democratic members of the European Parliament. This website includes many useful articles on the European democracy promotion. FRIDE is a think tank based in Madrid that aims to provide innovative thinking on Europe's role in the international arena. Its research interests cover the areas of peace and security, human rights, democracy promotion, and development and humanitarian aid. The website of the European Commission's department of External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy offers the official EU views on democracy promotion. I Ii JP i I'Li, ll1 ■II HUP ■Hp I Hp IB hi Democracy, Busine: the Economy Patrick Bernhagen » Introduction • Capitalism and Democracy: The Historical Connection • What Capitalism Does for Democracy » What Democracy Does for Business • The Role of Business Actors in Democratic Transition • Political and Economic Reform • Conclusion 107 109 112 116 119 121 123 Overview jpThis chapter explores the relationship between |j democratization and the economy. After an histori-l|i(3al overview of the emergence of capitalist democra-Ijcythe chapter introduces some general problems of the relationship between democracy and capitalism, drawing out the main areas in which the two systems condition each other. This is followed by an analysis of the role of business in democratizing countries. Lastly, the intricacies of combining major political and economic reforms are discussed. Introduction 1 With the demise of the Soviet Union and the com-dmunisl regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in l'l the late 1980s and early 1990s, capitalist democracy l' has virtually become the only game in town except jWmost countries around the world. The atrocities, ' human rights abuses, economic inefficiencies, and numerous other failings of these systems that were gradually uncovered was such that almost any other politico-economic system would be deemed preferable. With feudal and kinship-based economic structures restricted to all but the most primitive agrarian societies, capitalism remains the sole