Carsten Q. Schneider - The Consolidation of Democracy: Comparing Europe and Latin America

This book investigates the successes and failures in consolidating those democratic regimes that emerged in Europe and Latin America in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

The theoretical approach developed combines the most prominent political institutional and sociostructural approaches to explaining the Consolidation of Democracy (CoD). Reinterpreting conventional claims, Schneiders comparative analyses of 32 countries indicates that the driving force behind CoD is the fit between the institutional type of democracy and the societal context in terms of power dispersion. This book:

This innovative and important volume will be of interest to political scientists, particularly those with an interest in democracy, democratization, comparative politics, and social science methodology.

Carsten Q. Schneider is Associate Professor and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Imperfections in Democracy (DISC) at the Central European University (CEU), Budapest, Hungary.

First published 2009
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

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2009 Carsten Q. Schneider

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Schneider, Carsten Q., 1972
The consolidation of democracy: comparing Europe and Latin America/Carsten Q. Schneider.
p.cm. (democratization studies; 14)
Includes bibliographical references and index
1. DemocratizationEurope. 2. DemocratizationLatin America. 3. DemocracyEurope. 4. DemocracyLatin America. 5. Comparative government. I. Title
JN40.S36 2008
320.94dc22 2008023481

ISBN 0-203-88677-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0-415-46806-X (hbk)
ISBN 10: 0-203-88677-1 (ebk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-46806-0 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-88677-9 (ebk)

Causal chain of social dimensions leading to CoD

LoA items in Southern Europe

LoA items in South America

LoA items in Central America

LoA items in Central and Eastern Europe

LoA items in former Soviet Republics

LoA items in Middle East and Northern Africa

LoA score in year of founding elections

Development of LoA in Southern Europe, 19742000

Development of LoA in South America, 19742000

Development of LoA in Central America, 19742000

Development of LoA in Central and Eastern Europe, 19742000

Development of LoA in former Soviet Republics, 19742000

Development of LoA in Middle East and Northern Africa, 19742000

Development of CoD in Southern Europe, 19742000

Development of CoD in South America, 19742000

Development of CoD in Central America, 19742000

Development of CoD in Central and Eastern Europe, 19742000

Development of CoD in Former Soviet Republics, 19742000

Development of CoD in five world regions, 19742000

Index of CoD (19742000)

Fit of power dispersion between contexts and democracy type: theoretical expectations

Calibration function for membership scores in fuzzy set socioeconomically developed societies based on GDP

Example of x-y plot

x-y plot solution term for CoD

x-y plot solution term for not-CoD

Fit of power dispersion between contexts and democracy type: empirical findings

x-y plot Mongolias path towards CoD

Expected distribution of cases under pact hypothesis 2 x 2 table

Test of pact hypothesis 2 x 2 table

Link between parsimony, complexity, consistency, and coverage of solution terms

Number of logical remainders in one- and two-step QCA approaches

Juxtaposing correlational and set-theoretic approach to testing the pact hypothesis

Indicators of CoD

The seven LoA items

Power dispersion typology of democratic systems

Hypothetical truth table

Fuzzy set membership scores in remote and proximate conditions and the outcome

Necessity test for CoD and not-CoD, remote and proximate conditions and their negations

Sufficiency test of remote conditions for CoD

Consistency and coverage solution of CoD-enhancing remote conditions

Power dispersion typology of societal contexts

Power dispersion typology of democracy types

Sufficient paths towards CoD and not-CoD

Liberalization of autocracy (LoA) annual scores, 19741999/2000

Consolidation of democracy (CoD) annual scores, 19741999/2000

Calibration of fuzzy set membership scores in conditions and outcome

Fuzzy set membership scores in sufficient paths towards CoD

Fuzzy set membership scores in sufficient paths towards not-CoD

Linguistic qualifiers for different fuzzy-sets

Cronbachs alpha, CoD and LoA (base: all years)

Cronbachs alpha, CoD and LoA (base: different points in time)

Regressions models, dependent variable CoD

In the early 1990s, just after my civilian service and before starting university, I had decided to spend my first own money traveling for half a year through South America. Despite the many pleasant distractions one certainly finds there, it struck me how different political life was compared with what I was used to in West Germany, my home country in the 1980s. In Chile, ex-dictator General Pinochet still heavily influenced political life. In Argentina, President Menem set out to change the constitution in order to gain himself a third term in office, despite widespread rumors of large scale corruption partly fueled by stories about the president occasionally cruising the city with his red Ferrari. Brazil was in the midst of hyper-inflation while Argentina had pegged the peso to the US dollar, transforming me from a poor to a wealthy person every time I crossed the border from Argentina to Brazil with my few dollar notes and a poor person again when coming back to Buenos Aires. These were exciting places compared to the boring political scene of the Bonner republic, which in those years always saw the same man winning every national election. I found it difficult to imagine Helmut Kohl in a Ferrari speeding through the streets of Bonn. All this made me start wondering why these glaring differences were there. In the second half of the 1990s I moved to Spain, another young democracy, and studied political science. It was there that I got my hands on a Spanish version of Guillermo ODonnells passionate critique on the concept of the consolidation of democracy. Back in Germany, during my time as a research assistant at the Social Science Center (WZB) in Berlin, I started trying to figure out in a more structured way how, despite ODonnells disillusionment with the then current consolidation literature, one can nevertheless say more about why democracy in some countries is becoming the norm while in others it is not. This question turned into my dissertation project which got its final shape while I was a doctoral student at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence.