scholarly journals Weapons of the Strong: Elite Resistance and the Neo-Apartheid City

2021 ◽  
pp. 153568412199452
Author(s):  
Benjamin H. Bradlow
Keyword(s):  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Local State ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Public Power ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Urban Elites

Transitions to democracy promise equal political power. But political ruptures carry no guarantee that democracy can overcome the accumulated inequalities of history. In South Africa, the transition to democracy shifted power from a racial minority in ways that suggested an unusually high probability of material change. This article analyzes the limits of public power after democratic transitions. Why has the post-Apartheid local state in Johannesburg been unable to achieve a spatially inclusive distribution of public goods despite a political imperative for both spatial and fiscal redistribution? I rely on interviews and archival research, conducted in Johannesburg between 2015 and 2018. Because the color line created a sharp distinction between political and economic power, traditional white urban elites required non-majoritarian and hidden strategies that translated their structural power into effective power. The cumulative effect of these “weapons of the strong” has been to disable the capacity of the local state to countervail the power of wealthy residents’ associations and property developers. Through these strategies, elites repurposed institutional reforms for redistribution to instead reproduce the city’s inequalities.

scholarly journals Weapons Of The Strong: Elite Resistance And The Neo-Apartheid City

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin H. Bradlow
Keyword(s):  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Local State ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Public Power ◽  
Inclusive Distribution ◽  
Transitions To Democracy

Transitions to democracy promise equal political power. But political ruptures carry no guarantee that democracy can overcome the accumulated inequalities of history. In South Africa, the transition to democracy shifted power from a racial minority in ways that suggested an unusually high probability of material change. This article analyzes the limits of public power after democratic transitions. Why has the post-Apartheid local state in Johannesburg been unable to achieve a spatially inclusive distribution of public goods despite a political imperative for both spatial and fiscal redistribution? I rely on interviews and archival research, conducted in Johannesburg between 2015 and 2018. Because the color line created a sharp distinction between political and economic power, traditional white elites required non-majoritarian and covert strategies that translated their structural power into effective power. The cumulative effect of these “weapons of the strong” was a form of institutional arbitrage that led the mostly black-led local state to exercise forbearance towards largely white wealthy residents’ associations and property developers. Through these strategies, elites repurposed institutional reforms for redistribution to instead reproduce the city’s inequalities.

Dictators and Democrats

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Haggard ◽  
Robert R. Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Organizational Capabilities ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Emerging Democracies ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Multiple Routes

From the 1980s through the first decade of the twenty-first century, the spread of democracy across the developing and postcommunist worlds transformed the global political landscape. What drove these changes and what determined whether the emerging democracies would stabilize or revert to authoritarian rule? This book takes a comprehensive look at the transitions to and from democracy in recent decades. Deploying both statistical and qualitative analysis, the book engages with theories of democratic change and advocates approaches that emphasize political and institutional factors. While inequality has been a prominent explanation for democratic transitions, the book argues that its role has been limited, and elites as well as masses can drive regime change. Examining seventy-eight cases of democratic transition and twenty-five cases of reversion to autocracy since 1980, the book shows how differences in authoritarian regimes and organizational capabilities shape popular protest and elite initiatives in transitions to democracy, and how institutional weaknesses cause some democracies to fail. The determinants of democracy lie in the strength of existing institutions and the public's capacity to engage in collective action. There are multiple routes to democracy, but those growing out of mass mobilization may provide more checks on incumbents than those emerging from intra-elite bargains. Moving beyond well-known beliefs regarding regime changes, this book explores the conditions under which transitions to democracy are likely to arise.

scholarly journals The Dictatorship Game: Simulating a Transition to Democracy

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (02) ◽  
pp. 353-357
Author(s):  
Luis F. Jiménez
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Sufficient Condition ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Teaching Evaluations ◽  
Central Topic

ABSTRACTA central topic in the comparative-politics subdiscipline is the study of democratic transitions. Despite a growing role-playing literature, there are currently no simulations that illustrate the dynamics of democratic transitions. This article proposes a role-playing simulation that demonstrates to students why it is difficult for countries to transition to democracy and why protests are a necessary but not sufficient condition to topple a dictatorship. As surveys and teaching evaluations subsequently showed, this exercise succeeded in clarifying the more difficult theoretical concepts as well as in making a potentially dry subject more accessible.

scholarly journals Economic Diversification and Institutional Quality—Issues of Concentrated Interests

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-364
Author(s):  
Petrus Olander
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Time Series Data ◽  
Institutional Quality ◽  
Series Data ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Economic Diversification ◽  
Public Power ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
Cross National

Abstract Recent research has provided broad accounts of what high institutional quality is; bureaucrats should be impartial and recruited on merit, public power should not be used for private gain, there should be rule of law, and property rights should be secure. Many scholars argue the reason why, in spite of this knowledge, recent institutional reforms have had limited success is that improvements are not in the interest of incumbent elites. Constraining elites is, therefore, crucial for institutional improvements. In this article, I argue that economic diversification functions as one such constraint on elite behavior, affecting their ability to form collusive coalitions. When the economy is concentrated to a few sectors, elite interests are more uniform making it easier for them to organize. However, as the economy becomes more diverse, collusion becomes harder and elites must settle for impartial institutions more often. I test the theory using cross-national time series data covering the last 25 years; the results corroborate the theory, as the economy of a country becomes more diverse, institutions become more impartial.

Democratic transitions and monetary policy: are democratic central banks different?

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-180
Author(s):  
Christian Bjørnskov ◽  
Martin Rode
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Market Institutions ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Electoral Democracy ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Competing Hypotheses

Empirical studies have shown democracies to be more supportive of pro-market institutions than authoritarian regimes; however, to date, it is virtually unknown through which channel democracy might actually create institutional improvements. In addition, causality between democracy and economic institutions is anything but clear, as competing hypotheses highlight. In this article, we examine the possible association of democratisation and political instability with sound monetary policy and the independence of central banks, both of which can be considered central pillars of an economic policy aimed at producing overall prosperity. Results mainly indicate that stable transitions to democracy are followed by strongly improved access to sound money and more independent central banks, probably because stable shifts to electoral democracy create incentives for policymakers to refrain from using monetary policy for short-run gains. Conversely, we also find evidence that especially unstable democratic transitions could impede the establishment of a more independent central bank, making inflationary policies and high money growth more likely.

Rethinking State and Regime: Southern Europe's Transition to Democracy

1990 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Fishman
Keyword(s):  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Common Causes ◽  
The Difference

The historical clustering of the transitions to democracy of Spain, Portugal, and Greece—all having taken place in the mid-1970s—encourages scholars to search for common causes, patterns, and paths of development. But important differences remain between the cases. Analytical distinctions include the difference between state and regime, and the contrast between regime crises of failure and crises of historical obsolescence. These distinctions make it possible to delineate divergent causes, actors, trajectories, and outcomes for the three cases of redemocratization.

The Middle East's Democracy Deficit in Comparative Perspective

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 189-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehran Kamrava
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
The State ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Norms And Values

AbstractThe Middle East's democracy deficit is a product of the patterns of political and economic development in the region. It is not because the region is predominantly Islamic or is somehow afflicted by purportedly undemocratic cultures. By itself, culture is not an impediment to transition to democracy as it is subject to influences from the larger polity, especially insofar as the economy and the initiatives of the state are concerned. Instead, transition to democracy is determined by the degree of society's autonomy from the state. This autonomy may result from the empowerment of society as a consequence of economic development, or the state elite's devolution of power to social actors and classes, or, more commonly, a combination of both. Assumptions about the inherently undemocratic nature of cultures such as Islamic and Confucian ones are fundamentally invalid. The key to understanding democratic transitions lies instead in the nature of state-society relations rather than the nature of society's norms and values in themselves.

Virtual Legality

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 555-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTHONY W. PEREIRA
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Military Justice ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Legal Justification ◽  
The Military ◽  
Relevant Factors

Authoritarian regimes in Latin America frequently expanded military court jurisdiction to prosecute political opponents and protect members of the armed forces and police engaged in repression. What happened to the military courts after the recent transitions to democracy in the region? Why did some democratic transitions produce broad reform of military justice while most did not? This article first reviews contending theoretical explanations that offer answers to these questions, comparing those answers with actual outcomes in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. It then argues that the “mode of transition” perspective, which attributes variation in the extent of military justice reform to the autonomy and strength of the military in the democratic transition, best explains the outcomes in these cases. However, the military's autonomy and strength should be specified. In the area of military justice, the relevant factors are the military's propagation of an accepted legal justification for past uses of military courts and the creation of congressional support for the maintenance of existing military court jurisdiction. Both of these factors are present in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, where little or no reform of military justice took place under democratization, and absent in Argentina, where broad reform did occur.

The Fourth Wave of DemocracyandDictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World

2002 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McFaul
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
New States ◽  
Distribution Of Power

The transition from communism in Europe and the former Soviet Union has only sometimes produced a transition to democracy. Since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of the twenty-eight new states have abandoned communism, but only nine of these have entered the ranks of liberal democracies. The remaining majority of new postcommunist states are various shades of dictatorships or unconsolidated “transitional regimes.” This article seeks to explain why some states abandoned communism for democracy while others turned to authoritarian rule. In endorsing actorcentric approaches that have dominated analyses of the third wave of democratization, this argument nonetheless offers an alternative set of causal paths from ancien regime to new regime that can account for both democracy and dictatorship as outcomes. Situations ofunequaldistributions of power produced the quickest and most stable transitions from communist rule. In countries with asymmetrical balances of power, the regime to emerge depends almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful. In countries where democrats enjoyed a decisive power advantage, democracy emerged. Conversely, in countries in which dictators maintained a decisive power advantage, dictatorship emerged. In between these two extremes were countries in which the distribution of power between the old regime and its challengers was relatively equal. Rather than producing stalemate, compromise, and parted transitions to democracy, however, such situations in the postcommunist world resulted in protracted confrontation between relatively balanced powers. The regimes that emerged from these modes of transitions are not the most successful democracies but rather are unconsolidated, unstable, partial democracies.

scholarly journals Discussion of Montiel and Belo: Nonviolent Democratic Transitions Within a Peace Psychology Framework

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-11
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Christie
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Human History ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
The Face ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Peace Psychology

AbstractIn addition to being the bloodiest century in human history, the 20th century was distinguished by many large-scale nonviolent movements that successfully toppled oppressive regimes, often in the face of overwhelming military power. Notable examples include: India, South Africa, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Philippines, Chile, and Serbia (cf. Ackerman & DuVall, 2000; Ackerman & Kruegler, 1994; Zunes, Kurtz, & Asher, 1999). Montiel and Belo's research is unique, identifying human cognitions, emotions, and values that accompanied East Timor's nonviolent transition to democracy. The current article places their work within the larger framework of peace psychology

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