The Spirit of Democracy, page 60
66. This figure (34 percent) derives from a study of voter turnout between 1993 and 2000 in fifty-seven cities with populations between 25,000 and 1 million. U.S. Election Assistance Commission, “National Voter Turnout in Federal Elections,” http://www.eac.gov/election_resources/htmlto5.htm.
67. In fact, the highest turnout for statewide midterm primaries in the last fifty years was only 33.5 percent, in 1966. Curtis Gans, “2006 Primary Turnout a Record Low,” American University News, October 6, 2006.
68. Norman J. Ornstein, “Vote—Or Else,” New York Times, August 10, 2006.
69. Ibid.; and Nivola and Galston, “Toward Depolarization,” p. 271.
70. Nivola and Galston, “Toward Depolarization,” pp. 252, 272.
71. This is the recommendation of a panel of political scientists drawn together by the American Political Science Association in 2002 to examine civic education and engagement. Stephen Macedo et al., Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2005), p. 60.
72. Ibid., p. 66.
73. Michael Falcone, “Belmont Journal: What If They Had Elections and No One Ran?” New York Times, September 21, 2003.
74. Macedo et al., Democracy at Risk, p. 28.
75. Ibid., p. 30.
76. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). The transition from mass-membership organizations with more active citizen participation to professionally managed organizations with less engaged citizens is traced in Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003).
77. Macedo et al., Democracy at Risk, p. 120.
78. Ibid., p. 152.
79. James S. Fishkin, “Deliberative Polling®: Toward a Better-Informed Democracy,” The Center for Deliberative Democracy, http://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/docs/summary/.
80. Nivola and Galston, “Toward Depolarization,” p. 236.
81. This is indicated by the distribution of the congressional district vote for the two parties being within the range of 45 to 55 percent. See Thomas E. Mann, “Polarizing the House of Representatives: How Much Does Gerrymandering Matter?” in Pietro S. Nivola and David W. Brady, eds., Red and Blue Nation? Characteristics and Causes of America’s Polarized Politics (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution, and Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2006), p. 268.
82. Ibid., p. 269, figure 6.1.
83. Although the sizeable Republican losses in 2006 (thirty-one seats in all) suggests the possibility of renewed competitiveness within the current system, Democratic gains would likely have been larger in the absence of post-2000 census gerrymandering, and Democrats did best in 2006 in states like New York, Indiana, and Arizona where redistricting in 2002 was done on a bipartisan or nonpartisan basis. J. Gerald Hebert, “Gerrymandering Is Alive and Well: Why We Need Redistricting Reform,” Campaign Legal Center Blog, December 20, 2006, http://www.clcblog.org/blog_item-99.html.
84. Mann, “Polarizing the House of Representatives,” pp. 275–76.
85. Morris P. Fiorina and Matthew S. Levendusky, “Disconnected: The Political Class versus the People,” in Nivola and Brady, eds., Red and Blue Nation?, pp. 49–71.
86. In completely open primary elections, any voter can opt to vote in any party’s primary election. This permits Democrats to vote in the Republican rather than Democratic primary, and vice versa, thereby vitiating the entire idea of a party system. For this reason, I do not favor the completely open primary. Interestingly, Nivola and Galston report (p. 269) that fully open primaries do not do as good a job as partially open primaries in electing House members who “reflect their district’s median voter preferences.”
87. Nivola and Galston, “Toward Depolarization,” p. 263.
88. Lisa Vorderbrueggen, “Berkeley Analysis Backs Redistricting Changes,” Mercury News (San Jose), February 24, 2007.
89. Nivola and Galston, “Toward Depolarization,” p. 254.
90. Ibid., p. 274.
91. Ibid., pp. 258–59 of manuscript. Nivola and Galston propose a single, nonrenewable eighteen-year term for Supreme Court justices. Something in that range (or even twenty or twenty-five years) would diminish, at least somewhat, the stakes.
92. Stephen Flynn, The Edge of Disaster (New York: Random House, 2007), p. 112.
93. See The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004); and The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward—A New Approach (New York: Vintage Books, 2006).
94. Benjamin Reilly, “Electoral Systems for Divided Societies,” Journal of Democracy 13 (April 2002): 156–170; and Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
95. In 2006, voters in Oakland, California; Minneapolis; Takoma Park, Maryland; and Pierce County, Washington, chose to adopt AV for some local elections beginning in 2008 and 2009.
96. Thirty-Thousand.org, “How Did the Size of the House Become Constrained at 435 Representatives?” http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/Why_435.htm. See also the accompanying Table B, http://www.thirty-thousand.org/documents/Apportionment_USCB_table_B.pdf.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book distills knowledge and insights I have gained in three decades of studying comparative democratic development. For its completion, I owe many more debts of gratitude than I can possibly acknowledge here. I would like to begin by expressing my appreciation to the institutions that have made my work on democracy possible. For twenty-two years, the Hoover Institution has been my professional and intellectual home and has given me the freedom and support to research democracy on a global basis. I express my deep gratitude to the Hoover Institution and its director for most of this period, John Raisian, for this extraordinary opportunity. Over the past five years, I have also drawn support and intellectual stimulation on these issues from Stanford’s new Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), where I coordinate the program on democracy. For this enriching experience, I thank the current and former directors of the center, Professors Michael McFaul and Stephen Krasner, and the Hewlett Foundation, whose generous support has made it possible for us to launch the center. I would also like to thank Coit D. (“Chip”) Blacker, director of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (of which CDDRL is a part), and Stanford University provost John Etchemendy for the support they have given to the center and to my own work.
Above all, I am indebted to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for helping me to bridge the worlds of democratic theory and practice, and for introducing me to so many of the inspiring people and organizations struggling for democracy and liberty throughout the globe. My nearly twenty years of association with NED have given me an appreciation for the human dimensions of democratic change and for the roles of strategy, organization, innovation, and courage in the face of daunting risk. Through my participation in NED’s international conferences, in editing its Journal of Democracy, and in codirecting for the past fifteen years its International Forum for Democratic Studies, I have come to know many of the activists who embody the spirit of democracy and are working, often against great odds, to build free societies. In particular, I am profoundly indebted to NED president Carl Gershman and to Vice President Marc F. Plattner, who has also been my coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, my codirector of the forum, and my most important intellectual partner in democratic studies. I would also like to thank the senior staff of the NED who have given so generously to me of their time and insights, especially Sally Blair, Nadia Diuk, Barbara Haig, Miriam Kornblith, Laith Kubba, David Lowe, Dave Peterson, and Abdulwahab Alkebsi (now with the Center for International Private Enterprise), as well as the presidents of three of the core institutes within the NED family, Kenneth Wollack of the National Democratic Institute, Lorne Craner of the International Republican Institute, and John Sullivan of the Center for International Private Enterprise. I am also deeply indebted—as is obvious to any reader of this book—to Freedom House for its work to assess the state of freedom around the world, and I thank in particular its vice president for research, Arch Puddington.
Several colleagues generously shared with me data and unpublished materials from their projects studying public opinion toward democracy. I would particularly like to thank Michael Bratton and Carolyn Logan of the Afrobarometer, Marta Lagos of the Latinobarometer, Mark Tessler and Amaney Jamal of the Arab Barometer, and my many associates in the Asian Barometer, especially Yun-han Chu, Doh Chull Shin, Andrew Nathan, and Robert Albritton. I would also like to thank the many people who generously allowed me to interview them for this book, often for several hours. Several of them have preferred to remain off the record because of their vulnerable situations at home, but I would particularly like to thank Alejandro Toledo, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, and Akbar Ganji.
At Stanford, I was fortunate to have a number of highly talented and motivated students helping me with my research. I am pleased to acknowledge here and thank for their outstanding research assistance the following Stanford undergraduates: Kevin Hsu (introduction and chapter1), Robert Fuentes (chapter 8), Sebastian Burduja (chapter 9), Matthew Platkin and Chan-hong Yiu (chapter 10), Michael Wilkerson (chapters 11 and 14), and Omar Shakir (chapter 12). And I express my high regard and deep appreciation for the superb research support of two brilliant Stanford law students, Alexander Benard (chapters 5 and 6) and Ben Joseloff (chapter 15). I also thank the following students who have helped me research democratic efforts to utilize and authoritarian efforts to suppress what I call in this book “liberation technology”: Galen Panger, Tucker Herbert, Ryan Delaney, Daniel Holleb, Sampath Jinadasa, and Aaron Qayumi. I owe a special debt of thanks to Galen Panger as well as Mark Lieber, who made me aware of the exceptional power and political potential of Internet-based communication technologies at a time when I was only dimly aware of YouTube and had never heard of Facebook.
Two of my most valued intellectual mentors, Alex Inkeles and Juan J. Linz, read most of the manuscript and offered numerous helpful comments and suggestions. I also thank for their reading and commentary on individual chapters and/or their more general encouragement and stimulation of this book project Abdulwahab Alkebsi, Edward Aspinall, Jamal Benomar, Sumit Ganguly, Carl Gershman, Bruce Gilley, Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, Jonathan Hartlyn, Charles Kenney, Miriam Kornblith, Nicholai Lidow, Cynthia McClintock, Andrew Mwenda, Marc F. Plattner, Rob Raznick, Henry Rowen, Emad El-Din Shahin, John Sullivan, and a number of my Stanford colleagues at CDDRL, particularly Michael McFaul, Gerhard Casper, Laura Cosovanu, Thomas Heller, Erik Jensen, Terry Karl, Stephen Krasner, Helen Stacey, and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. Thanks also go to my sister, Linda Raznick—a gifted editor herself—for her perceptive and supportive feedback on many issues of substance and design. As with my previous book, Squandered Victory, my assistant at the Hoover Institution, Alice Carter, once again held together my professional life while I wrote this book and quickly helped me obtain information and publications—always with efficiency and good cheer. I have been extremely fortunate to have her intelligent and devoted assistance throughout this project.
I am very grateful to my editor at Times Books, Robin Dennis, for her creative and skillful efforts to refine, reorganize, and pare back an overly long manuscript, and again to Paul Golob, editorial director of Times Books, for his generous support and immensely wise counsel, particularly with regard to the title, structure, and overall concept of the book. I thank them both as well for their patience and graciousness during periods when teaching and other programmatic and personal obligations delayed the delivery of chapters. And I thank my agent, Scott Mendel, who first suggested that I turn my paper “Universal Democracy?” (published in Policy Review in June 2003) into a book. This book would have been completed some two or three years earlier if I had not received a call that autumn asking me to go to Iraq to advise on the political transition under American occupation, which ultimately drew me into the momentous debate over that debacle. Since the global democratic story is now rather different and less immediately promising than it was in 2003, I believe the delay has resulted in a better and more accurate account of global democratic prospects.
Finally, I note with sadness the recent passing of two individuals who would have wanted to read and help me celebrate this work. Seymour Martin Lipset—my teacher, friend, coauthor, and the most enduring intellectual influence on my work—passed away on December 31, 2006, after a long illness. My views about the transformative impact on democracy of socioeconomic development and the role of a moderate, tolerant, and pluralistic culture in making stable democracy possible owe more to him than any other single individual. As I was finishing this book in early August, my dear friend Beverly Canali died after a brief and sudden illness. During thirty-seven years of a very special friendship, Bev had been one of my strongest sources of personal support and one of my most enthusiastic readers. An ardent democrat and devoted citizen, she shared my passionate interest in American politics and my acute concern over its many signs of deterioration. I particularly regret that she was not able to read the final chapter of this book, which expresses not only the frustration but also the hope and ultimately the confidence we have shared in American democracy.
INDEX
Entries in italics refer to charts and tables.
Abacha, Sani, 120, 244
Abbas, Mahmoud, 266
Abdullah, king of Jordan, 265, 271–72, 276
Abdullah, king of Saudi Arabia, 268
Abiola, Moshood K. O., 244
Abkhazia, 201
Abramoff, Jack, 348
abuse of power, 29, 58, 68, 82, 161, 165, 167, 189, 206, 226, 241–42, 256, 299, 302–3, 306, 309–10, 349–50
accountability, 20, 22, 26, 28, 33, 78, 101, 109–10, 162–67, 181–82, 189, 212, 232, 240, 245–47, 250, 256, 265, 287, 292, 300, 357–59, 363–64
accountability agencies, 308–9
Afghanistan, 13, 24, 86–87, 114, 133, 204, 213, 301–2
Africa, 2, 7–9, 13, 26, 32–34, 42–43, 48–50, 54–55, 77, 88, 90, 92–94, 103–4, 109–12, 117–20, 133, 136, 146–49, 162, 167–68, 238–62, 293, 296, 323, 326–28, 332–33, 342
African Bar Association, 109
African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, 147–48
African Democracy Forum, 256
African National Congress (ANC), 49, 52, 110, 117, 260
African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), 149, 332–33
African Union (AU), 147–49, 332–33;
Constitutive Act (2000), 147–48
Afrobarometer, 34, 74, 257–59
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 64, 279–80, 339
Ahmed, Iajuddin, 226
Akayev, Askar, 191, 202
Akbar, emperor of India, 30
Albania, 124, 190–91
Albright, Madeleine, 74, 331, 334
Alfonsín, Raúl, 42
Algeria, 75, 76, 77, 268–69, 271, 273, 277–78, 286, 335
Aliyev, Ilham, 114, 125, 202
Aliyev, Rakhat M., 204
Allawi, Ayad, 267
Allende, Salvador, 3, 6
Alliance for Progress, 2
Alliance for Truth and Justice (Romania), 196
alternative vote (AV, instant run-off), 367–68
American Political Science Association, 361
American Revolution, 17, 104, 156
Amin, Idi, 148
Andean countries, 179, 181, 187
Angola, 9, 39, 50, 75, 76, 77, 109, 247, 250, 252
anticorruption efforts, 127, 159–60, 254, 300, 303–7, 309
anticorruption index, 101
Aquino, Benigno, 43
Aquino, Corazón, 44, 115, 221, 223
Arab Barometer, 32, 277
Arab Human Development Report (UNDP), 30–31
Arab League Charter on Human Rights, 151
Arab world. See Middle East and Arab world
Arafat, Yasser, 265
Arena Party (El Salvador), 181
Arendt, Hannah, 279
Argentina, 7, 42–43, 51, 63, 88, 91, 97, 104, 114, 128, 130, 135, 162, 178–79, 182, 188, 231, 295, 301, 335
Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 116, 134, 144
Armenia, 25, 26, 113, 141, 200, 202
Ashoka, emperor of India, 30
Asia, 2, 7, 8, 13, 17–18, 33, 36–38, 54–55, 90, 100, 102, 108, 133, 153–54, 167, 208–37, 293–95
Asia Foundation, 127
Asian Barometer, 38
Asian values thesis, 36–38, 100, 214–15
assassinations, 24, 71, 186, 202, 225, 240, 244, 253, 255, 265, 267, 273, 299
asset freezes, 86
“Association for a Better Nigeria,” 243–44
Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN), 151, 219
“at-risk” democracies, 295–96; overcoming poor governance in, 299–313; predatory society and, 296–99
Attack (Bulgarian party), 196
Aung San Suu Kyi, 31
Australia, 36–37, 162, 335, 359, 362, 368
Austria, 47
authoritarian backlash, 12, 64, 83–87, 191–92, 315, 320–21, 332
authoritarianism: creeping, 189; cultural tradition and, 18–19, 37; failure of, as system, 111; public opinion and, 31–34, 257
authoritarian parties, 194, 200
authoritarian regimes: Africa and, 240, 243–44, 295; Asia and, 57–58, 208–15, 228–37; civil society and, 103–5; conditionality of aid and democratic assistance and, 105, 120–33, 322–28, 335; consolidation and backlash in, 61, 83–87; crisis of legitimacy and, 88–90, 111; cultural limits to democracy and, 12, 31; democratic transitions in, 12, 52–53, 90–103, 108–9, 111; development in, 7–9, 94–102; elections and, 26; future of remaining, 292–93; international pressure for liberalization of, 111–20; Latin America and, 177; Middle East and, 266, 268–72, 278–83, 337–39; oil and, 76, 77, 105; postcommunist countries and, 67, 191–93, 200–207; public opinion in, 36–37; strategic swing states, 63–64; technology and, 340–44; U.S. support for, 1, 3, 274–76, 330–32
