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1 Democratic Stability and Democratic Crisis
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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c h a p t e r o n e Democratic Stability and Democratic Crisis In societies, particularly European societies, in which democratic regimes gained considerable stability, relatively few problems were of the structural type; many of the di≈culties arose following decisions by the democratic leadership that made solutions within the democratic framework impossible. Oversimplifying somewhat, we can say that a regime’s unsolvable problems are often the work of its elites. . . . It would also seem that without attention to the historical political process, it would be di≈cult to explain why political institutions in di√erent societies do not su√er the same fate on experiencing similar strains. — j ua n j . l i n z , ‘‘ c r i s i s , b r e a k d o w n a n d r e e q u i l i b r at i o n ’’ Not all democracies that can break down actually do. This was true even for interwar Europe, where democracy faced one of its darkest moments. Yet comparative politics scholars interested in interwar Europe—and elsewhere— have traditionally asked why certain democracies collapsed. For several years, under the influence of important authors such as Alexander Gerschenkron, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Barrington Moore, among others, the problem of democratic breakdown in interwar Europe was principally framed in terms of the presence or absence of certain socioeconomic or cultural conditions, while much less attention was devoted to specific political and dynamic factors, at least as independent determinants of a certain regime outcome. In 1978, Linz and Stepan challenged this ‘‘structuralist’’ approach to interwar democratic crises by focusing their analysis of democratic breakdowns on the strategies and choices of political and institutional actors during a political crisis. The European countries analyzed in that volume, however, were almost exclusively examples of democratic breakdown, that is, of failure of democratic leaderships (Linz and Stepan 1978).∞ This phenomenon has been well captured by O’Donnell and Schmitter’s (quite literally) dramatic words: ‘‘crucial personae 4 The Theoretical Framework during the breakdown period seem in retrospect like actors in a Greek tragedy, anticipating their fate but fulfilling it to the bitter end, powerless either to modify their solidarities, alliances, and styles, or to control the international, macroeconomic, macrosocial, and institutional factors that led toward the breakdown’’ (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, 19). One of the messages of Linz and Stepan’s volume, however, is that none of those breakdowns was predetermined : they could have been avoided if ‘‘right’’ decisions had been taken and some crucial mistakes had been avoided. I share this view completely and add to that the contention that failures of democratic leadership can be better understood by analyzing leadership success. In other words, if certain choices made by political leaders during democratic crises are quite properly considered to be harmful for democratic persistence, then the ‘‘right’’ choices in similar critical moments must be seen as contributing to the survival of democracy . Yet very little is known of such ‘‘right’’ choices—which actors are best placed to make them, the minimal political conditions that make them possible , and in which countries such choices made a di√erence for democracy’s survival. That is what this book is about. More specifically, the analysis centers on the short-term strategies that democratic rulers can adopt against extremist actors who use the guarantees and rights of democracy to challenge democracy itself. Even so specified, the field of analysis remains vast and needs some further definition and clarification. First of all, I limit myself to political decisions designed to have e√ects in the short term against an extremist challenge that is already strong and active in its opposition to the regime. This excludes all political decisions and institutional arrangements that are designed to have beneficial e√ects for democracy in the longer run—for example, those acting on political culture or civil society. As I specify in chapter 3, the distinction between short- and long-term strategies of democratic defense not only is important from a theoretical point of view, but also has a very concrete empirical grounding: any presence of extremists strong enough to threaten to take over the system poses an urgent problem to democratic rulers. In such cases there is no time to plan ahead, the imperative is primum vivere. Second, the book deals with the problems posed to democratic regimes by those extremist forces that ‘‘play the democratic...