POLI 474 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Robert A. Dahl, Standard-Definition Television, Civil Society
21 Aug 2019
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Tuesday, January 24, 2017 POLI474 (NOTES).
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W4 – Democracy and Inequality (Class 1)
- Before getting into the arguments, let’s take a look at the state of democracy in the developing
world.
- What we have today is known as the third wave of democracy, that dates from the 1970’s and
was a term coined by Samuel Huntington and is used to categorize countries that became
democratic from the mid-1970’s until the fall of communism in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s.
- This wave swept across much of the developing world, but not across the Middle East or Africa
really; but virtually all of Latin America and Eastern Europe moved into a democratic direction.
Since then, there have been significant regressions of democracy, but overall most countries are
democratic.
- There are two earlier waves of democracy.
- The first wave of democracy came in Europe and North America in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries (UK, France, etc.)
- The second wave of democracy came in the post-war period (WWII), with many developing
countries in Africa and Asia, with parliamentary democracies emerging in the wake of the collapse
of colonial regimes.
- The third wave of democracy is dated by Huntington from 1974 when you have a coup in
Portugal against the regime of Salazar, leading to democratization; Spain as well. Then sweeping
across Latin America from the 1980’s to 1990’s and then going to parts of Asia. Such as the
Philippines in 1986, a bloodless revolution, but also South Korea in 1987. Parts of Asia
experienced this wave and also Eastern Europe with the crumbling of communism.
- Across much of the world, you had this sweeping move towards democratization that began in
Portugal and went across the world.
- According to one index, there were 123 democratic countries that held multi-party elections in
2013.
- Standard definition: democracies must hold some form of elections that are relatively free and
fair.
- By contrast, in 1980, you had only 54 countries that were democratic according to Freedom
House and in 1990, only 69 electoral democracies. Thus, electoral democracies have risen sharply
since 1990.
- We must be careful what these numbers mean, because though they have elections, civil rights,
rule of law, freedom of association may be very weak. But we still see a trend towards
democracy since countries hold multi party elections.
- At the minimal threshold of democracy, we should have free and fair elections.
Robert Dahl, called these kinds of democracies that hold these elections: polyarchies, and
distinguished them from full democracies because polyarchies hold elections, but that is minimal
level. The minimal level of democracy is multiparty free and fair elections essentially.
- At the second level of democracy, he thinks that democracy has to have certain liberal
institutions and liberal rights. So elections by themselves are not enough, but you need civil
rights such as freedom of association, rule of law; institutions that can insure accountability of
the executive branch, freedom of opinion, etc.
- The third level of democracy, that democracy should be something for the disadvantaged in
society and we expect democracy to have some degree of relative equality. This third level is
contentious, because some argue that associating democracy to equality is two concepts that
Tuesday, January 24, 2017 POLI474 (NOTES).
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should stay separate, Dahl argued that a real democracy is one that expresses significant political
equality. A certain level of democracy in which equality is seen as a crucial element is up for
debate or whether equality should be separate from democracy.
Third Wave of Democratization: What is the relationship of democracy and inequality?
- We see that many democracies across the world have significant imbalances in power, wealth,
income and therefore, significant inequality.
- Brazil, South Africa have historically had significant inequality and they are democracies today.
In Latin America, many countries returned to democracy in the 1990’s and income inequalities
were also very high. In Eastern Europe who returned to democracy in the 1990’s, income
inequalities also spiked after the fall of communism.
- Evidence is that newly democratizing countries have significant levels of inequality, but by
contrast, you have countries in East and Southeast Asia where you have a trend of declining
inequality within authoritarian regimes.
- South Korea and Taiwan are pertinent examples of this. In South East Asia: Malaysia, Singapore
and Indonesia have had declines in poverty and inequality in authoritarian or semi-
authoritarian regimes. The idea that democracies lead to declines in poverty and inequality is
questionable given the empirical evidence.
- Not only newly democratic countries, but also authoritarian countries that have had been
able to reduce inequality and poverty. There is a bit of a paradoxical situation where some
authoritarian countries have been more successful than some democratic countries in reducing
poverty and inequality.
Argument between Democracy and Poverty Decline
- First argument will be that democracy does lower inequality and poverty and the second
argument will be that democracy does not lower inequality and poverty.
1. Positive relationship between democracy and inequality is that in most developing countries,
the poor form the majority of the nation and if they do form that majority, then policy output
should reflect that majority who are poor.
- Furthermore, if the poor are organized this will further the policy outputs reflecting the interests
of the poor. This is a fundamental position in liberal pluralist thought, and the assumption in
liberalist pluralist thought is that you have different groups competing for power and
resources in society and these different groups are more or less equally matched. So whoever
gets to win by getting their interests represented in policy is the group that has the larger number
because these groups are evenly matched, but that is the fundamental point here. Numerical
weight explains policy output, since there is an even level playing field among competing
interests and those with great numbers get what they want in democracies.
- In this liberal position, it also reflects anxieties about democracies. John Stuart Mills made an
argument that the poor and working class might get their policies pursued via democracy and he
feared that the masses would overwhelm parliamentary regimes and re-distribute wealth away
from property masses, the tyranny of the majority.
- Aristotle says if justice was to be made of the majority of persons, then justice would act unjustly
- Democratic mechanisms of weight seen in classical liberal thought as a source of anxiety
because of the fear of re-distribution by those who dominate in numbers.
Document Summary
Before getting into the arguments, let"s take a look at the state of democracy in the developing world. This wave swept across much of the developing world, but not across the middle east or africa really; but virtually all of latin america and eastern europe moved into a democratic direction. Since then, there have been significant regressions of democracy, but overall most countries are democratic. There are two earlier waves of democracy. The first wave of democracy came in europe and north america in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (uk, france, etc. ) The second wave of democracy came in the post-war period (wwii), with many developing countries in africa and asia, with parliamentary democracies emerging in the wake of the collapse of colonial regimes. The third wave of democracy is dated by huntington from 1974 when you have a coup in. Portugal against the regime of salazar, leading to democratization; spain as well.
