TRANSITIONS TO DEMOCRACY

Transitions to Democracy

Transitions to Democracy

Introduction

Political transition from authoritarian system to democracy represents a major trend of political change since the end of the Cold War. While more than two-thirds of the world's states were under authoritarian rule in early 1970s, in the beginning of the 21st century, nearly two-thirds of the countries were described as democracies. The collapses of the Soviet Union and the growth of pro-democracy opposition movements across the world preceded democratic transitions while authoritarian states were attenuated by both governance failure and inadequate economic performance. However, democratic transitions, either from autocratic or colonial regimes, were not necessarily a smooth path to democratic consolidation. Alternative paths from successful democratization were instability, illiberal democracies, frozen transitions, and even retraction to autocracy among other possibilities (Seymour, 2009, pp 69).

From 1955 to 2004, 60 democracies fell back to autocracies. Political Instability Task Force, after 13 years of vigorous study, has discovered a strong linkage between anocracy mixed system of both democracy and autocracy and instability. Transition to democracy was a phase of imperfection as well. But this imperfect phase of the beginning could create a plethora of serious crises was not a sole form of polity in all transitional countries, it was a common pattern in many transitional countries, especially those struggling with factionalism, economic destitution and security predicament. There is a plethora of literature and qualitative analyses of democratic transitions. However, quantitative studies of transitions to democracy are still rare. Many studies on democratic transition focus on the conditions contributing to a transition, but only a few quantitative studies attempt to explain how democratic transitions endured democracy (Michael, 2008, pp 51).

Discussion

Why Study Transitions to Democracy?

The end of the Cold War has fostered the prospect of the ideological dominance of liberal democracy over other competing ideological foundations. Some scholars even postulated that western democracy was the end of human search for an ideal political system. However, the emergence of democracy was not a sole characteristic of the end of the Cold War. The rise of violent societal warfare in the early 1990s accompanied the wave of democratization all around the world. A few other studies also confirmed the relationship between new democracies and violent instabilities. As the consequences of transition to democracy were not necessarily positive, understanding democratization required more than a transitional paradigm (Levitsky, 2006, Pp 1015). Democracy may stand unchallenged in principle, and yet in practice be formidably challenged in its performance. In addition to instability, the success of any political system lays in the benefits it bestows over its population. People might express these benefits in different forms of political values such as participation in politics, in their warfare values, through economic prosperity, and even through interpersonal values, respect, and peaceful relationships among citizens.

A successful democratic system confers both non-material and material benefits to its population. Democracy also empowers people to protect and promote their human rights. If a transition to democracy is successful, a democratic system could significantly benefit people living under ...