May 20, 2010
Case Study
I’ve written a fair few blog posts about how difficult a concept democracy is. In particular, I’ve drawn attention to the fact that “democracy” does not ensure all values harmonise, and is not a panacea for soothing all conflict and disturbance. It’s therefore worth noting the situation in Thailand, which has been climbing up the UK news agenda as the death toll grows.
I’m no expert on Thai society or history (by a very long way), but the basics of the situation are illuminating. The troubles centre roughly around two groups, the Red Shirts and the Yellow Shirts. The former are mostly made up of the urban and rural poor, whereas the latter are more closely aligned with the professional classes and better-off urban “elites”.
Digging a little deeper, in 2006 the democratically elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted and sent into exile following a military coup led and supported by the Bangkok elites that distrusted and loathed him for his policies of mobilising support amongst the urban and rural poor. However we must not wear rose tinted spectacles; allegations of corruption and human rights abuses have dogged Shinawatra for many years, most notably when he briefly owned Manchester City football club.
In 2008 however, the the People’s Power Party led by Samak Sundaravej, and which Shinawatra supported, won the post-coup elections. Despite forming a coalition government the PPP was eventually ousted from power after so-called the Yellow Shirts organised mass sit-in protests at Thai airports (effectively shutting-down travel into a country highly economically dependent upon tourism). The Thai Supreme Court eventually backed the Yellow Shirts, declared Sundaravej guilty of conflict of interest, forcing his resignation as PPP leader. The party itself was then declared to have committed electoral fraud, and Thai law in turn rendered the party illegal. Charges were continued against Shinawatra for corruption, of which he was found guilty in absentia and sentenced to two years in jail. He has now obtained Montenegrin citizenship, but is alleged to be bankrolling the Red Shirt protestors, who are calling for his return.
Trouble has, accordingly, been brewing for the past two years and has boiled over into the recent bloodshed. What’s illuminating about the case is the extent to which despite having democratic institutions in place, as well as the second-fastest growing economy in South East Asia, Thailand has descended into violence not because of a lack of democracy but precisely because there is democratic formality without the underlying mores, or ethos, required to make those institutions function successfully.
To usefully caricature and over-simplify, the situation is roughly as follows: the Yellow Shirts and Bangkok urban elites saw the Thaksin premiership, and his threatened return with the 2008 election win, as unacceptable. Despite a democratic mandate for the Red Shirts, the Yellow Shirts and their string-pullers lack the basic commitment to a fundamental principle of working democracy: that you accept losses and time out of power on the assurance both that this will not harm your interests too extensively, and that in a relatively short period you will have a fair chance of winning power back.
To be sure, it seems the policies and practices of the Shinawatra regime made it very difficult for the Yellow Shirts to adopt this basic democratic norm. But for whatever reasons, the lack of this basic norm led to a military coup in 2006 and a mass protest that led to the ousting of a democratically elected regime in 2008. On the other side, the Red Shirts are increasingly estranged from a democratic system which they will see as vacuous given that power is denied them even when they win at the ballot box. A turn to violent confrontation is therefore hardly surprising.
What political scientists have observed in so-called “transitional democracies” is that it usually takes 4 or 5 “cycles” of government before such democratic norms are established. That once both sides have experienced power and opposition without violence or serious damage to their interest, they tend to settle down into accepting the democratic trade-off as a decent way to pursue politics, and furthermore become attached to the system and seek to work within it rather than outside of it. When countries achieve these sorts of basic democratic norms they tend to become politically stable. Hence, for example, following the disputed 2000 election in the USA supporters of Gore and Bush did not take violently to the streets of Florida because a deep-seated acceptance of democratic institutions and power-alterations had rendered such courses of action unthinkable and unacceptable, such was the deference to the established constitutional system.
It’s not good enough to simply have democratic institutions; the people working within and living under them need to posses the democratic norms that make those institutions function over time. Acquiring those norms is no simple or straightforward process – as the case of Thailand tragically shows.
Nick said,
May 20, 2010 at 10:43 am
Hmmm… interesting stuff. I’ve never come across the “4-or-5 cycles” model before, although it is intuitively plausible, any chance of a reference.
I think there is also a sharp divide between origins in the US and UK, where political competition was historically intra-elite (and thus non-threatening) and in more modern democracies where political conflict has tended to become elite-mass (albeit often led by elite) organised more immediately.
Intriguingly despite the almost blindingly intuitive attachment of democratic norms and democratic consolidation, no convincing work has yet been performed demonstrating the causal connection. Though the argument that the successful operation of democratic institutions is most conducive to the entrenchment of democratic norms is one I would support.
A final question is whether elite or mass attitudes towards democracy, or both, are most important. I believe it is elite attitudes which are of proximate causal importance, although these can (given other conditions) be shaped by mass attitudes.
(I also replied to your questions on the previous post)
Paul Sagar said,
May 20, 2010 at 11:03 am
Nick,
1. You’d have to ask my girlfriend for a reference on the 4-5 cycles thing, though it may be more of an intuitive general statement than a “model” in the formal sense (she was talking to me about this last night, drawing on her knowledge regarding post-colonial Africa mostly – accordingly I think I’ve over-stated the formality of that position in the OP).
2. You’re right about the fact that the US and UK have traditionally had a more intra-elite model of political competition, and that newer democracies have seen more elite-mass competition (or rather: elites vs. elites manipulting the masses, cf. Thailand incidentally). But there’s clearly precedent for the latter managing to come to resemble the former: Spain is arguably a case study (though admittedly the Fascist period makes it more unique), as are Eastern Bloc nations that have successfully made the transition to democratic alternation without bloodshed. Presumably the more successful African nations too (Tanzania, maybe? – I don’t really know this area at all)? This is your turf not mine, and of course you are right that there’s important historical differences – but I think the general point about democratic mores holds good regardless, no?
Interestingly, does Russia serve as a model for how democratic institutions can secure peaceful social conditions even without democratic mores, in that the elites there run the show, but because conflict is intra-elite it doesn’t spill-over into the mass mobilisations that cause so much trouble in other transitional democracies? Just a vague thought, really, but there appears little genuine appetite for democratic alternation in Russia, however because Putin runs the show from behind the scenes the outward show of democracy keeps things tinking over, even if those institutions are pretty hollow.
3. Is the reason no work proving the causal link that mores and norms cannot be quanitifed and shoved through a rational choice deliberation model, and ergo cannot be constitutive of the True Science of political science? Or am I just being unfairly facetious?
4. Regarding your final question: I’d lean that way too, but precisely because I’m basically a Weberian/Schumpeterian on these sorts of issues and I think leadership elites are pretty good at giving focus and direction to – or at least, harnessing the bangwagon of – mass sentiment and demand. I guess the important point, though, is the one touched on above: that in “transitional” democracies some sections of the elite pit “the mass” against another section of the elite, and that’s really explosive.
But I’m really getting into territory that I’m simply not qualified to pronounce on now…
Nick said,
May 20, 2010 at 1:37 pm
I’ll try and keep this reasonable brief and intelligible – enough material for several essays!
1. Easiest point first: the measurability/operationalization (love the CG jargon) of the “democratic political culture” argument.* Attitudes towards democracy are easy (relatively) to measure and there are clear correlations between these and other measures of consolidation (see Whitefield on Eastern Europe as an example – although his model and concepts are not without fault). The difficulty is in demonstrating a causal connection that is more than purely residual/assumed (Almond/Verba admit as much in their foundational Civic Culture). Qualitative studies such as Putnam’s Social Capital have provided some support for the thesis but their history is often reductionist/erroneous. With the growth in surveys and the increase in their complexity along with an expanding set of case studies it should become easier to examine the link between democratic mores and democratic consolidation. (The length of time required for real consolidation is often underestimated unwittingly in the literature).
The importance of elite attachment to democracy is easier to demonstrate through case studies, although its interaction with mass attitudes is difficult to explore. I have also completely neglected the fundamental conceptual problem of the difference between norms and attitudes and how the two might be profitably distinguished empirically.
*Disclaimer: I am not a fan of the “True Science” of politics. I find it oversimplifies and shoehorns important concepts and underplays causal complexity to its own detriment.
2. On the 4-5 cycles point, there are those (Przeworski, Sartori) who question whether one can count countries such as Botswana and SA as democratic, given that they are yet to survive a transition of power. The idea of learning democracy over such cycles is interesting, although I would see the cause as being not an acceptance that democracy is “safe” (it could become dangerous in the future with the rise of a more radical opposition) but that institutional incentives have been restructured such that the easiest way to achieve goals is through legitimate political competition – democracy is “the only game in town”. Though admittedly this is argument is open to charges of circularity.
3. On elite-elite versus elite-mass conflict. Undoubtedly this is subject to change over time. However, I think elite-mass conflict is far more dangerous to democratic development (Thailand being a case in point) as it sparks redistributionist fears amongst the elite. Although, elite-mass conflict can also spark democratisation as elites feel pressure to redistribute or face greater/more radical retribution. Thailand may well be an example of the strategic failure of elites.
Your point about Russia is interesting. There has certainly never been the type of attempt to spread democratic norms that was visible in SA, Poland, Hungary, Uganda and others. I feel the current elite’s superficial attachment to democracy is, however, driven by popular support for nominal democracy, while both elites and masses and willing to see the actual practice of democracy subverted to a considerable extent. Although this is a fairly intuitive reading of the case.
4. On elite leadership I think it is very rare that masses are able to self-organize to overthrow/challenge elites, although it is not unprecedented (SA – arguably, Kazakhstan currently).
There are so many threads being touched upon here – transitions, consolidation, breakdown, political competition, collective action, elites – but to return to the OP somewhat, the current Thai difficulties do demonstrate the absence of democratic commitment amongst elites.
Richard said,
May 20, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Fact is that if 2 people vote to infringe the rights or take the wealth of 1 person, that 1 person isn’t necessarily going to say “ok, that’s fair”. It’s the good old clash between liberty and democracy.
The Conservative Left « Bad Conscience said,
August 31, 2010 at 12:55 pm
[...] because it was right to triumph. We don’t tend to pause and consider just how slippery a concept “democracy” really is. Nor do we often reflect upon the extent to which [...]