Comparative Politics Modes of Transition and Democratization: South America and Eastern Europe in Comparative Perspective

Comparative Politics Modes of Transition and Democratization: South America and Eastern Europe in Comparative Perspective

Transitions, defined as periods of regime change, are formative or founding moments. As such, they set a society on a path that shapes its subsequent political development. This thesis, which is at the heart of path dependent analysis of democratization, has recently been articulated by a long list of prominent scholars who have sought to link the mode of transition from authoritarian rule to the problems and prospects of democratic consolidation. Their contributions notwithstanding, their work has suffered from both conceptual imprecision and a dearth of conclusive findings, deficiencies that have bred scholarly skepticism about assessing the impact of modes of transition. A decade after this debate was initiated, it thus remains unclear not only how modes of transition affect political developments but, more fundamentally, if they matter at all.

However, the appeal of a path dependent analysis of democratization persists. Therefore, rather than dismiss the debate on the potential impact of modes of transition, we seek to revisit it. We begin by clarifying the key concept of mode of transition and by spelling out the causal mechanisms whereby the defining attributes of this concept generate consequential political legacies. We define the mode of transition in terms of the identity of the actors who drive the transition process and the strategies they employ; we then argue that these modalities shape the posttransitional regime and politics by affecting the pattern of elite competition, institutional rules crafted during the period of transition, and disposition of key actors to accept or reject the new rules of the game. Through these causal mechanisms the mode of transition helps to explain whether and how democracies emerge and consolidate. To substantiate this argument, we analyze several South American and East Central European countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland.

The mode of transition is not the only factor affecting democratization. Nor are the legacies of modes of transition permanently fixed. However, we wish to stress that an eminently political factor, the process of transition itself, has continuing political relevance. We thus draw upon two of Dankwart A. Rustow's main arguments in his seminal article, "Transitions to Democracy": his critique of theories that stress social and economic prerequisites to the exclusion of political factors, and his development of a process-oriented approach to democratization. In stressing the centrality of transitions from authoritarian rule, however, we put a new twist on Rustow's significant proposition that "the factors that keep a democracy stable may not be the ones that brought it into existence." Building upon the distinction between transition from authoritarianism and transition to democracy, our path dependent argument advances a slightly different proposition: the very process of transition from authoritarian rule, independently of the conditions that generated it, helps determine not only the prospects of democratic consolidation but also the success of the transition to democracy in the first place.

Modes of Transition and Their Impact

The concept of mode of transition distinguishes the different processes whereby the rules that define political regimes are jettisoned. All too often the literature on modes of transition has failed to distinguish between transitions from established regimes and transitions to new regimes and thus reduced the assessment of modes of transition to their impact on the consolidation of democracy. The mode of transition not only affects the consolidation of new regimes but also helps determine whether the transition is to democracy or some other regime type.

How can we distinguish among transitions from established regimes? Two basic criteria can be extracted from the existing literature. Strongly influenced by the contrast between Portugal and Spain, the early literature emphasized the degree of control that outgoing rulers exerted over the process of transition. In more dynamic terms, these studies targeted the strategies employed by the relevant actors in the transition process. They distinguished transitions that advanced through different degrees of accommodation and confrontation between actors seeking change and defenders of the old order, thus differentiating transitions that broke with the old regime from those that proceeded within a preset legal framework or through agreements with the incumbent elites. It rapidly became clear, however, that this single criterion did not capture important differences in the transition process even in the cases that inspired it, and various scholars thus proposed new criteria.

Probably the most interesting of the alternative formulations was the suggestion that transitions should also be distinguished in terms of the identity of the primary agents of change. This criterion highlights a critical variable: whether a transition is carried out by elites within the established structure of power, by counterelites who challenge incumbent elites, or by some combination of the two. Moreover, when conjoined with the first, strategic criterion, this two-dimensional conceptualization of modes of transition has the virtue of directly capturing a distinctive feature of transitions: they are uniquely fluid processes defined by the identity of regime challengers and their strategies in challenging the old regime. This concept of mode of transition highlights who makes transitions and how they are made.

Two basic questions remain to be confronted. Why do modes of transition matter, and how do they matter? Transitions matter because they generate fairly durable legacies that affect the posttransitional regime and politics. Different modes of transition are likely to have distinct consequences for a country's politics. The primary challenge is to explain how modes of transition matter by specifying the causal mechanisms and significance of these legacies. A number of scholars has tackled this challenge. One productive line of inquiry has sought to link the relative balance of power between rulers and opposition during the transition to the choice of particular institutional rules that both persist beyond the transition period and shape the prospects for regime consolidation. However, our analysis is somewhat broader.

We argue that the mode of transition affects the form of posttransitional regime and politics through its influence on the pattern of elite competition, on the institutional rules crafted during the transition, and on key actors' acceptance or rejection of the new rules of the game. A probabilistic connection between modes of transition and democratization can thus be spelled out. A given mode of transition is likely to increase the odds for the emergence of democracy if it generates a more or less balanced pattern of elite competition. And it is likely to increase the odds for consolidation of newly installed democracies if it facilitates the adoption of institutions suited to the management of elite conflict and the willingness of all major actors to accept the democratic rules of the game.