The transition paradigm relies on five core assumptions: (i) any departure from authoritarianism can be considered a move towards democracy; (ii) democracy unfolds in a predetermined sequence of steps; (iii) elections are a crucial test; (iv) there are no special prerequisites of democracy; (v) the third wave of democratization takes place in coherent, functioning states....
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The existence of a strong civil society, though not a prerequisite for the demise of autocracy and a successful transition, contributes to the consolidation of democracy. Modern democracies are complex institutional arrangements in which the political parties cannot channel all the communication between independent agents and the public sector. A high density of civil society...
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An advanced market society is not strictly necessary for the existence of a robust democratic culture, neither is it sufficient. The latter does not emerge automatically from the socio-economic modernization, while the former can also constitute the basis for hierarchical and unequal arrangements. As a result, there is no unique path that links development, the...
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The notion of democratic consolidation is used in many ways, which threatens o confuse democratization policy agenda. By consolidation we mean sometimes simply a better organization of the current democratic institutions; alternatively, we may refer to the step from electoral to liberal democracy; or to the strategic shift from both to advanced, modern democracy. This...
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Even though liberalism and democracy are not the same thing, the former containts within itself the seeds of its own democratization. Once the liberal principles were accepted in politics, the property qualifications of voting were gradually removed and the universal suffrage became inevitable. Other barriers, such as the exclusion of women, were also removed subsequently....
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The general optimism that followed the third wave of democratization was grounded in the unilinear, stadial notion of democratic consolidation: once the transition is completed, there can be only one way of political development in the new democracies that is, towards the model of the advanced Western societies. In fact, such optimism is unwarranted. Undemocratic...
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The rise of democracy is the most important development in the 20th century. This is a crucial fact to be taken into account when talking about the developing countries: democracies are not performing economically worse than autocracies, and no substantial famine has ever occurred in an independent and democratic country with free press, no matter...
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The modernization theory was wrong in arguing that a pro-business dictatorship is the best way towards a modern, affluent democracy in the third world. In fact, the authoritarian regimes are no more likely to generate growth, as the time series analysis shows, nor are they likely to give way to democracies in the long run....
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Even though the third wave of democratization is over, the empirical data suggest that there has been no reverse wave yet. The global situation has stabilized in a sort of equilibrium, with some new political regimes qualifying as pseudo-democracies: they hold multiparty elections, but the real power lies with unaccountable actors, the minorities’ rights are...
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There were three main waves of democratization across the globe in the last two centuries, each of them followed by a reverse wave. Since the early ‘70s we have witnessed to the rise and spread of the third such wave, which has included parts of Latin America, Southern Europe and the Communist Eastern Europe. Many...
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The reinventing of politics in Eastern Europe brought about ambiguous side-effects. The most salient is populism, which surfaced again after an interruption of fifty years. The current East European populism is however more refined than its historical ancestor and relates well to the Western neo-populism of our days. While extremism appears somehow appeased in the...
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Where does Romania stand on democracy a decade after the fall of the Communist regime? Has it become a consolidated democracy? Did democratic institutions gain the trust of the majority? Political transition is defined as the process of replacing formal institutions of Communist times with new, official and formal institutions, oriented towards free market and...
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