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Elections in Hard Times: Building Stronger Democracies in the 21st Century
Why are "free and fair" elections so often followed by democratic backsliding? Elections in Hard Times answers this critical question, showing why even clean elections fail to advance democracy when held amidst challenging structural conditions. The book opens with a comprehensive, accessible synthesis of fifty years of research on elections and democratization, a resource for experts, policymakers, and students. It then develops a new theory of why elections fail in countries with little democratic history or fiscal resources, and a history of violent conflict. In a series of five empirical chapters, the book leverages an eclectic mix of cross-national data, short case studies and surveys of voters to support this theory. It closes with a careful examination of popular strategies of democracy promotion, evaluating steps designed to support elections. This book will attract academic experts on democratization and elections, students and policymakers.
298 pages, Paperback
First published August 30, 2016
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June 1, 2017
In Elections in Hard Times, Thomas Flores and Irfan Nooruddin tackle one of the challenging policy questions of the early 21st century: Why do countries keep having elections but fail to become any more democratic? They argue that, to some extent, a selection effect has occurred: all the easy cases, the ones where democracy had the best chance to flourish, democratized early. All the remaining cases, the ones that are still struggling to become fully democratic, face structural constraints that impede the ability of elections to be forces for democratization. In fact, under most of these conditions – conflict, limited fiscal space, and a lack of democratic experience – elections can actually be triggers for democratic backsliding. The struggle to retain power leads to less-than-ideal behaviors by political leaders, with a result that the polity is worse off (democratically) after the election than before.
By focusing on the election outcome – as opposed to its process – as the dependent variable, and treating structural factors as independent variables rather than simply preconditions, Flores & Nooruddin attempt to bridge the significant gap in comparative democratization studies between those in the structuralist camp and those who focus primarily on elections and their competitiveness. By and large, this attempt is successful. The key is the focus on legitimacy, one of the few factors the two existing traditions equally value, though they value different forms. Flores & Nooruddin argue that elections can be democracy promoting contingent on their levels of three types of legitimacy: performance, democratic-institutional, and contingent. High levels of these make for democracy-promoting elections; low levels make good environments for backsliding – and unfortunately, most of the not-yet-fully-democratic states are at low levels of one or more forms of legitimacy. Low fiscal space exacerbates all three problems. Contingent legitimacy comes from winning a (clean) election, but dissipates rapidly and so adds little to re-election chances – unless the incumbent has fiscal resources to turn her initial honeymoon of legitimacy into public policy successes and thereby generate performance legitimacy. Without performance legitimacy, populations are dissatisfied with incumbents and so incumbents turn to cheaper strategies than public goods provision to ensure their re-election. Finally, democratic-institutional legitimacy comes from having previous experience with democracy, which is rare in poor states (especially those who decolonized late) and states with extensive conflict experience.
The book’s empirics are thorough and well-executed; they are also incredibly well presented given their complexity. The authors clearly paid attention to making the book readable by less technically sophisticated audiences. The concluding substantive chapter on democracy promotion interventions is noteworthy for examining the effectiveness of multiple intervention strategies in a single consistent context, making comparison of their effects possible in a way that is not common in most of the literature. While most of the analysis is preliminary, its sheer existence is a step forward and an encouragement toward further work in that direction.
In short, Flores & Nooruddin’s argument explains the old maxim that democracy is only sustainable with GDPPC over $5000 a year as being because that’s the level at which tax revenues provide sufficient fiscal space to govern by policy rather than by under-the-table politicking. Democratization by election can only occur where state leaders have sufficient fiscal space to pursue policy agendas and govern via public goods provision. That does not occur in states emerging from conflict or states with little prior experience of how democratic politics is supposed to work (though fortunately it only takes a few good years to overcome this hurdle).
By focusing on the election outcome – as opposed to its process – as the dependent variable, and treating structural factors as independent variables rather than simply preconditions, Flores & Nooruddin attempt to bridge the significant gap in comparative democratization studies between those in the structuralist camp and those who focus primarily on elections and their competitiveness. By and large, this attempt is successful. The key is the focus on legitimacy, one of the few factors the two existing traditions equally value, though they value different forms. Flores & Nooruddin argue that elections can be democracy promoting contingent on their levels of three types of legitimacy: performance, democratic-institutional, and contingent. High levels of these make for democracy-promoting elections; low levels make good environments for backsliding – and unfortunately, most of the not-yet-fully-democratic states are at low levels of one or more forms of legitimacy. Low fiscal space exacerbates all three problems. Contingent legitimacy comes from winning a (clean) election, but dissipates rapidly and so adds little to re-election chances – unless the incumbent has fiscal resources to turn her initial honeymoon of legitimacy into public policy successes and thereby generate performance legitimacy. Without performance legitimacy, populations are dissatisfied with incumbents and so incumbents turn to cheaper strategies than public goods provision to ensure their re-election. Finally, democratic-institutional legitimacy comes from having previous experience with democracy, which is rare in poor states (especially those who decolonized late) and states with extensive conflict experience.
The book’s empirics are thorough and well-executed; they are also incredibly well presented given their complexity. The authors clearly paid attention to making the book readable by less technically sophisticated audiences. The concluding substantive chapter on democracy promotion interventions is noteworthy for examining the effectiveness of multiple intervention strategies in a single consistent context, making comparison of their effects possible in a way that is not common in most of the literature. While most of the analysis is preliminary, its sheer existence is a step forward and an encouragement toward further work in that direction.
In short, Flores & Nooruddin’s argument explains the old maxim that democracy is only sustainable with GDPPC over $5000 a year as being because that’s the level at which tax revenues provide sufficient fiscal space to govern by policy rather than by under-the-table politicking. Democratization by election can only occur where state leaders have sufficient fiscal space to pursue policy agendas and govern via public goods provision. That does not occur in states emerging from conflict or states with little prior experience of how democratic politics is supposed to work (though fortunately it only takes a few good years to overcome this hurdle).
Displaying 1 of 1 review