Christopher Bennett TA: Nan Zhang

PS/IR114D Final Paper, Prompt 1

Although the social science literature provides a robust view of necessary democratic
elements- egalitarianism, wealth, and participation, for example- it does not make clear
what is sufficient. Seymour Lipset states that there is no single recipe for democracy:
“political democracy exists and has existed in a variety of circumstances, even if it is
most commonly sustained by a limited cluster of conditions.”i Despite the fact there are
many roads to democracy, Dankwart Rustow maintains that one can go from correlate to
cause, and he attempts to formulate a “genetic theory of democracy” on how democracy
originates and persists.ii Rustow’s argument goes as follows. A background condition of a
democratic state is national unity: citizens must identify as one political community. If
that is satisfied, democracy can then come about through three phases: a prolonged
political struggle between those in power and those seeking power, a decision by elites to
institutionalize democratic procedure, and continuing democratic deliberation and
experimentation.iii This paper argues that across time and regions, places in which
democracy either flounders or cannot emerge have either failed the test of national unity,
have been unable to sustain a meaningful struggle for power resulting in compromise, or
both. In the first case, competing ethnic identities trump national identification and
fracture the political body. In the second, past “concentration of political and economic
power”iv creates a vicious cycle in which political struggle becomes either impossible or
meaningless in the face of unequal citizenship. The paper will then discuss how issues of
political legitimacy are more fundamental in creating and maintaining democracy than
economic development or the rule of law. This suggests that while wealth and good
governance certainly correlate to healthy democracy, political legitimacy is causative,
and must form the foundation of a lasting democracy.
In many countries and regions, Rustow’s background condition for the genesis of
democracy is unfulfilled. The first case occurs when ethnic identities fragment a country
from within. In Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, Paul Collier
traces the ways in which competing ethnic identities severely fracture the political
process across the African continent. Strong ethnic identity and loyalty creates a
phenomenon known as “ethnic politics”, and this poisons the democratic process in two
key ways. First, it determines the composition of competition among political coalitions.
Voters support candidates of their own ethnic group, as in the case of Raila Odinga, a
Luo political candidate in Kenya who secured 98% of his ethnic group’s vote, and almost
no votes amongst other ethnicities.v In ethnically diverse states with a plurality of
groups, strong polarization occurs instead of democratic moderation. An example of such
a state is Nigeria. In the December 2007 elections, the more than forty-eight ethnic
groups coalesced into two camps, pro-Kikuyu and anti-Kikuyu coalitions.vi Second, the
content and policies that result from this process become ethnically motivated. Leonard
Wantchekon’s research reveals that ethnic politicians adopt policies that appease their
polarized coalitions because it works. In a randomized experiment, he persuaded several
politicians from Benin to adopt various campaign messages, and the results showed that
ethnic campaign messages were far more effective in drawing votes than substantive

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policies appealing to good governance.vii As a result, states assume a higher risk of
political violence through political polarization in the first case and unresponsive and
illegitimate leadership in the second. Examples are easy to conjure. For a country that has
made early democratic steps, consider Kenya, which reached the decision phase when
popular opposition forced Moi to hold Kenya’s first competitive elections in 1992 and
1997.viii More recently, elections pitted Kikuyu incumbent Kibaki against Odinga. In all
three cases, unfair elections resulted in ethnic clashes and violent suppression of protest.
African authoritarian states are much worse off; civil wars either directly or indirectly
fueled by ethnic rifts have resulted in broken states unable to progress towards
democracy. The most drastic examples are the Sudan and Democratic Republic of the
Congo, in which armed conflicts remain explosive and threaten to spread to neighboring
countries. Yet it is a broader trend; since 1995, the proportion of African countries
experiencing ongoing armed conflicts has remained at around 30%.ix In sum, in many
countries the failure of democracy to emerge or persist is caused by the triumph of sub-
national ethnic politics over national unity.
Second, national unity can be thwarted by a transnational ethnic identity among
countries rather than ethnic fragmentation within a country. In the Arab world, a pan-
Arab identity exists among many different states in the region. This is also know as the
wantan, or Arab nation, and originates with the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire and
later emergence of Arab nationalism.x Before tracing examples, this should first be
distinguished from religious identity and desire for democracy in general. Although some
stress the importance of a pan-Islamic identity, that notion has little connection to
political reality. Alfred Stepan and Graeme Robertson’s statistical analysis reveals that
today, eight non-Arab Muslim-majority countries are classified as electorally
competitive, while powerful positions in government have not been filled “through a
reasonably free and fair vote” in any Arab-majority country.xi Likewise, survey evidence
reveals that the large majority of citizens in the Arab world believe that democracy is the
best potential political system despite its drawbacks.xii So, what explains the way in
which pan-Arab identification prevents democracy? This puzzle is partially resolved by
the way in which existing authoritarian regimes draw on support for strong leadership
and membership within the broader Arab community to trump democratic desires. In
their survey work, Jamal and Tessler find that support for a strong leader who doesn’t
have to bother with parliament or elections is at 17% across all countries, and
simultaneous with preference for democracy.xiii Moreover, authoritarian regimes draw
upon Arab solidarity when they focus on military strength and particularly conflict with
Israel. The example of Lebanon illustrates how this may have prevented the emergence of
legitimate democracy there. Although in the early 1970s Lebanon was electorally
competitive, normal political leave ceased when civil war broke out on the heels of Arab-
Israeli conflict and the presence of Israeli and Syrian forces.xiv [insert bratton]
The history of Tanzania and Kenya reveals a natural experiment confirming deeper
evidence for the fundamental importance of political unity. In what Collier describes as a
“beautifully crafted piece of social science,” Edward Miguel conducted research in two
nearly identical districts, Busia in Kenya and Meatu in Tanzania, arbitrarily separated by
the national border. The two districts revealed stark differences in the supply of public,
mirroring the different post-independent political strategies the two countries followed.

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Tanzania followed the path of political coalescence under the leadership of Julius
Nyerere, president from 1964-1985. Although not an ideal leader or eminent
policymaker, he constructed a national identity by making Kiswahili Tanzania’s universal
language, focused standardized primary education on pan-Tanzanian ideology, and
uprooted local ethnic chiefs in the place of national political parties.xv Kenya, as earlier
referenced, continued to experience strong ethnic fragmentation and little to no national
unity. Miguel’s randomized experiment revealed a powerful difference between the two.
In Kenya, the results were consistent with results elsewhere in Africa, where increasing
ethnic diversity increased rivalry within groups and reduced important provisions like
school funding. In Tanzania, however, diversity had “no discernible effect on public-
goods provision,” and respondents did not discuss ethnicity but referenced the fact that
they were all Tanzanians.xvi This suggests that national unity is not unattainable, but an
achievable and endogenous process “constructed by political leadership.”xvii This also
bridges the slight differences between the transnational and sub-national identities
previously discussed, as both are casualties of colonialism. In these post-colonial states,
arbitrary national boundaries were imposed upon pre-existing ethnic, cultural, or religious
contours. In Africa, they forced smaller nations to coalesce into a larger state; in the Arab
world, they arbitrarily divided a larger political body. In either case, resilient democracy
is not readily taking hold because it is a slow process. Creating “new identities and
institutions” is not the province of foreigners, past or present, but transformation by
visionary leaders who can define new “national narratives and heroes.”xviii
Even if national unity exists, a transition to legitimate and healthy democracy cannot
occur if the political game is rigged. This occurs when political and economic systems
concentrate wealth and power at the expense of equal citizenship. The insight that
political and economic power is tightly coupled is pivotal in tracing the power of this
phenomena and its persistence throughout time and place. Terry Karl describes the way
in which virtuous and vicious cycles occur between political and economic systems. In
virtuous cycles, there is a “complementarity between equity and economic growth, on
one hand, and democracy and social justice, on the other.” In vicious cycles, however, a
self-reinforcing political and economic dynamic emerges based on the “concentration of
both assets and power, the institutionalized bias this creates in political structures, and the
permanent exclusion of large segments of the population.”xix The relationship to
democracy is intuitive. Centralization will “bias the political rules of the game and mold
polities in favor of the wealthy,” and is thus naturally antithetical to democracy, an
egalitarian system based on “the principle of equal citizenship.”xx There are two cases. In
natural states like Syria or Zimbabwe, centralization will prevent the emergence of
democracy at all; in transitional states, like many in Central Asia or Latin America,
democracy will exist with a serious birth defect marring its quality and resilience.
A variety of states around the world remain at this first stage, mired in autocracy.
Centralization is nothing new, as the logic of the natural state suggests. North, Wallis,
and Weingast argue that all states initially function off of a process of “continual rent-
creation through limited access.”xxi The resource curse and remnants of colonialism
continue this trend across many different states and regions of the world. Karl describes
the fundamental cause as the “commodity lottery,” a paradox in which those areas richest
in initial mineral wealth have experienced the least growth and most political tumult.

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Tropical areas with economic riches were the targets of foreign powers, which built
elaborate bureaucracy and military structures to extract natural riches. In Africa, English
and French rulers set up regimes based upon extracting commodities and labor. In Latin
America, Spanish and Portuguese conquerors established mining, encomienda, and
hacienda systems to control land and minerals and subjugate the indigenous peoples.xxii In
addition to this legacy, the “resource curse” continues centralization as commodity-based
economies allow elites to more easily extract rents, distribute them internally, and
develop closed linkage between political and economic power.xxiii In Africa, many
economies are based off of single commodity exports and this generates easily
controllable rents. Crude oil governs the economies of states like Nigeria, Angola, Chad,
Sudan, and Gabon, and Zambia’s economy is dominated by the export of copper.xxiv Not
coincidentally, many of these states are hardened autocratic regimes. In the Arab world,
Daniel Brumberg argues that rents from oil, a “harmonic foundation of legitimacy,” and
powerfully centralized state organizations combine to form “total autocracy.”xxv
Examples of such these include Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Algeria.
Moreover, political and economic centralization retards democratic health and
resilience in countries where it exists in name. The regions blighted by this are
transitional areas that historically fell prey to economies or colonization based on the
extraction of rents, and have since reformed. Fukuyama describes how in Latin America,
centralization continued long after “the colonial democracies were established and formal
democracies were established”, because elites were able to continue their dominance of
the economy by using changes in formal political institutions to their advantage.xxvi The
failure of democratic institutions to address “both economic problems and to function
properly weakens their legitimacy in the eyes of all… citizens.” xxvii The resulting macro-
economic instability, party conflict, and social exclusion, has caused states to lose
democratic resilience. In Democracy in Latin America: Political Change in Comparative
Perspective, Peter Smith confirms this insight with the track record on the continent.
Countries in the region oscillate back and forth between electoral regimes of various
quality and authoritarian ones; Brazil, Argentina, and Peru have each experienced three
or more of these changes.xxviii Latin America as a whole “has displayed an unusually high
level of regime instability” relative to other areas: electoral, semi-democratic, and
authoritarian regimes collectively had a lifespan of only 11-13 years.xxix A related case is
that of post-communist regimes, whose transition from centralized communist states
produced many fragile democracies, like Russia and Ukraine, and Georgia, and many
autocracies like Belarus, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Michael McFaul argues that initial
asymmetrical balance of power was continued because the regime that emerged depended
“almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful” that often continued
the political and economic privilege they experienced in communist states.xxx Only rarely
did a confluence of political actors allow democrats to prevail. In the example of Russia,
dismal economic performance followed the immediate transition in the 1990s because of
poor reform, and semi-autocratic rule emerged in its shadow in the form of Putin.
Economic development and democracy are often conceived of as strongly linked if
not synonymous processes. Certainly, the correlation between wealth and democratic
states is enormous. Nearly every one of the world’s richest countries is a well-established
democracy, and since 1960 only 16 autocracies have had per capital incomes over

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$2,000.xxxi However, this relationship is at best unclear; development is not fundamentally
important to democratic progression, and once democracy takes root, it does not
guarantee better outcomes. First, if development were a precondition to democracy, we
would expect to discover no cases in which poor countries undergo a transition to
legitimate governance. Yet the facts show otherwise. Stepan and Robertson find that 7 of
31 countries in their research are “electoral overachievers,” reaching high levels of
democratic quality at very low levels of income (as low as $750 GDP/capita in the case
of Niger). They conclude that “electoral competition is clearly possible at low levels of
development.”xxxii One would also expect all rich countries to be healthy democracies
even if they are unequal. Yet, as mentioned earlier, inequality damages democratic
resilience even in rich countries like Argentina. Second, Przeworksi and Limongi
conclude that we simply cannot tell whether democracy fosters or hinders economic
growth.xxxiii They argue that while political institutions probably do influence the outcome
of economic growth, categories of regime type do not unequivocally capture relevant
differences. There are three primary veins in which the type of government could affect
growth: by creating effective property rights, by altering the relative weight of
consumption or saving, or by giving the state effective autonomy. Democratic proponents
argue that democracies facilitate better investments and property rights, and opponents
argue that saving rates and economy autonomy are damaged. These points are an
example of arguments that “talk past each other,” since they can all be true in various
cases, and the statistical evidence is inconclusive.xxxiv The experience of various countries
confirms this theoretical argument. In response to Miguel’s tentative suggestion that
democracy might be the cause of Africa’s recent economic uptick, Collier notes that he
strongly doubts it could have any effect considering that democracy in Africa is little
more than “elections without checks and balances.”xxxv Likewise, China reveals a case of
dynamic authoritarian policies that promote successful growth. Yingyi Qian explains how
China’s autocratic leadership implemented novel transitional institutions that
simultaneously increased economic efficiency and eased reform by taking into account
the initial conditions of power. The dual-track approach to market liberalization allowed
actors to continue to use pre-existing quotas while selling excess at the margin, increasing
efficiency. Similarly, new township-village enterprises helped to secure property rights
through accountability in local government.xxxvi As a result, China’s economy has
rocketed from half the size of Russia in 1988 and will likely surpass Japan as the world’s
second largest economy next year. Both lines of evidence point to the fact that
development is an important, but not fundamental, component of democratic growth.
Similarly, a strong rule of law is salubrious to both democracy and development.
However, the experience of many countries makes clear that a constitutional or legal
framework does not produce outcomes when there are more fundamental political
stumbling blocks. Fukuyama describes the rule of law within the institutional framework
of a region, and confirms it has a critical impact on both the quality of political life and
economic development in an area. However, he also admits that the rule of law is only
valid insofar as it is “regarded legitimate by its citizens.” xxxvii If it exists within a society
with high social inequality, breaks down in the face of political tumult, or does not
incorporate new groups over time, it is no longer pivotal. Fukuyama contrasts the well-
respected rule of law in the United States to that in Latin America. In the latter, citizens
have lost respect for it as they have accustomed to regime changes and states have done a

5
poor job at incorporating new parties or groups like populist coalitions. This is also the
case in Africa. Michael Bratton states that in many new African states, the rule of law is
often “ignored with impunity, unusually in deference to personal or communal ties” even
when it is well implemented. H. Kwasi Prempeh details the way in which the codified
rule of law, and specifically constitutionalism, has been ineffective or even backfired
there. Rather than a legitimate process of reform, he shows that the implementation of
constitutionalism reflects “the narrow, self-interested agendas of rival political
elites.”xxxviii Constitutional design has often done this by helping to ensure the dominance
of the executive branch over the legislative branch in countries like Ghana. Finally,
where the rule of law might generate do some good, it is often confronted by the
institutional weakness of courts. Judiciaries are limited by funding, exposing them to
direct control by the judiciary, and must deal with repressive laws and traditional
jurisprudence.xxxix In short, the rule of law is crucial in guaranteeing economic and
democratic development, but without political legitimacy lacks any teeth.
Before concluding, two potential counter-arguments will be addressed. First, one
might argue that this essay misapplies Rustow’s characterization of democratic genesis.
While Rustow’s theory is basically chronological, by focusing on the application of these
two elements this paper has exposed examples of currently existing democracies that
never experienced national unity- in other words, states that leap-frogged the background
condition. However, this fact reflects on historical complications more than a
misapplication of the ideas. Rustow based his progression on the endogenous emergence
of democracy in 18th and 19th century Europe, and not the fragmented tale of colonialism
and democratic state building in the 20th century. In this sense, the framework must be
modified slightly to admit both factors as important simultaneously if not precursors to
one another. Second, one might argue that the framework presented here does little to
account for the actual historic record of democratic transition. Samuel Huntington’s work
records that democratization does not happen independently within countries, but rather
spreads between them in a seemingly contagious fashion. These episodes occurred in
broad ‘waves’ of democratization, notably a long wave from 1828 to 1926, a short wave
from 1943 to 1962, and most recently a short wave from 1974 to 1990.xl This broad
global process might seem to contradict the country-level process argued throughout.
However, upon closer examination global democratization and Rustow’s framework are
compatible. The first mover in the ‘domino’ effect of these waves is a country that
undergoes a democratic decision or compromise in the vein of Rustow. For example, the
third wave began in 1974 with the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal in
1974.xli Second, waves occur through the decisions of political actors, not invisible forces.
With the downfall of an authoritarian regime in one country, the same process of
democratic decision might simply be accelerated in nearby states as material, popular and
ideological support goes towards opposition groups and the existing elites concede that
the costs of an authoritarian system might exceed that of a democratic system.xlii McFaul
varies Rustow’s background formulation slightly, but admits that a decision among elites
based on a common understanding of the state is the key variable in the emergence of
democracy.
Since democracy exists in wildly diverse places and forms, this paper argues for
attention to the political fundamentals when considering its emergence and resilience.

6
Rustow’s genetic theory of democracy provides a framework for classifying the essential
elements of a legitimate democracy, and testing this framework in different areas
confirms two independently necessary clauses of legitimacy. In some countries, like
Kenya or Morocco, a specific national identity is spoiled by other competing factors,
fracturing legitimacy. In others like Russia or Nicaragua, a closed political and economic
system destroys equal citizenship, preventing the possibility for democracy or else
enhancing the risk of autocratic relapse. In some countries, like Egypt and Nigeria, both
of these are true. Finally, a comparison of the trends of economic development and the
rule of law confirms that they are not as relevant to the emergence and resilience of
democracy as the political fundamentals earlier described. The interrelation of
democracy, development, and the rule of law across time and place is an enormously
complex topic, and admittedly one which no theoretical framework can adequately
contain or predict. Still, articulating and testing even an incomplete hypothesis in the
emergence and operation of democracy has great value. Lipset concludes that this study
is perhaps the “most substantive intellectual task that students of politics can still set
before themselves.”xliii

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i
Lipset, S.M., "Some Social Requisites of Democracy," American Political Science
Review 53 (1959): 103
ii
Rustow, Dankwart. “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,”
Comparative Politics (1970): 346
iii
Ibid., 350-358.
iv
Karl, Terry. “The Vicious Cycle of Inequality in Latin America,” in What Justice?
Whose Justice? (Berkeley 2004): 141
v
Paul Collier, Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, ch. 2, “Ethnic
Politics,” (2009): 51
vi
Ibid., 57
vii
Ibid., 56
viii
Edward Miguel, “Is it Africa’s Turn? Progress in the World’s Poorest Region” Boston
Review, (2008): 12
ix
Ibid., 33
x
Alfred Stepan and Graeme B. Robertson, “An ‘Arab’ More Than ‘Muslim’ Democracy
Gap,” Journal of Democracy 14, No. 3, (2003): 41
xi
Ibid., 35-6
xii
Amaney Jamal and Mark Tessler, “The Democracy Barometers: Attitudes in the Arab
World,” Journal Of Democracy vol. 19 (2008):98
xiii
Ibid.,106
xiv
Stepan and Robertson, 38
xv
Collier, 67
xvi
Collier, 71
xvii
Collier, 66
xviii
Miguel, 42-43
xix
Karl, 150
xx
Karl, 140
xxi
North, Douglass C., Wallis, John and Weingast, Barry, “Violence and the Rise of Open Access
Orders,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 20, no. 1 (2009): 59
xxii
Karl, 139
xxiii
Karl, Terry, “The Social and Political ConsequencesEncyclopedia of Energy. San Diego: Elsevier,
(2004): 37
xxiv
Miguel, 17
xxv
Daniel Brumberg, “Democratization in the Arab World?: The Trap of Liberalized
Autocracy,” Journal of Democracy 13, No. 4, (2002): 58
xxvi
Fukuyama, Francis, “Conclusion,” in Fukuyama, ed., Falling Behind: Explaining the
Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States, Oxford University Press, (2008): 275
xxvii
Karl, 150
xxviii
Smith, Peter, Democracy in Latin America: Political Change in Comparative
Perspective, Oxford University Press, (2005): 143
xxix
Ibid., 41
xxx
McFaul, Michael, “The Fourth Wave” in Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss,
eds., After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition, Cambridge University
Press, (2004): 59
xxxi
Halperin, Morton H., Joseph Siegle and Michael Weinstein, "Why Democracies Excel," Foreign
Affairs, (2004): 63
xxxii
Stepan and Robertson, 40
xxxiii
Przeworksi, Adam and Fernando Limongi, “Political Regimes and Economic Growth,” Journal of
Economic Perspectives, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1993): 64
xxxiv
Ibid., 60
xxxv
Collier, 110
xxxvi
Qian, Yingyi, “How Reform Worked in China,” in Dani Rodrik, ed., In Search of
Prosperity: Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth, Princeton University Press (2003): 311
xxxvii
Fukuyama, 266
xxxviii
H. Kwasi Prempeh, “Progress and Retreat in Africa: Presidents Untamed,” Journal of Democracy,
Vol. 19, No. 2, (2008): 112
xxxix
Ibid., 118
xl
Smith, 31
xli
Smith, 32
xlii
Smith, 34
xliii
Lipset, 103