Dealing with democratic deficits: helping democracy deliver the goods

Contemporary governance theories assume that democracy fosters equality, prosperity and peace. Is life really so simple? Is the development of a democratic political culture catalysed by political institutions or is it the other way round? How can we evaluate the durability or fragility of democratic values and institutions in developing countries?

A paper from the Institute of Development Studies combines conceptual analysis with assessment of the capacity of contemporary democracies to broaden popular participation, alleviate poverty, reduce social exclusion and manage conflict. Salutary case studies from around the world illustrate the profusion of ‘democracies with adjectives’ - incomplete, diminished, fragile, failed, guided, illiberal, no-party and tutelary democracies.

The spread of democratic institutions does not necessarily mean the spread of democratic politics. In much of Africa and Eastern Europe democracy is seen as a form of legitimation of governments introducing unpopular measures under pressure from Western institutions. In states such as Yugoslavia, Croatia or Belarus, powerful presidents have employed democracy as a form of totalitarian politics by other means. African leaders have accepted democracy as a pre-emptive defence against domestic opposition and donor conditionality. Presidentialism is favoured as former military rulers re-invent themselves as civilian politicians. In Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda populist leaders see multi-party politics as a divisive distraction from reconstruction challenges.

The paper reminds us that the dramatic collapse of the democratisation process in Rwanda and the intractability of political violence in such established democracies as Sri Lanka and Colombia shows the dangers of assuming that democratic institutions can foster democratic politics. Cynicism and voter apathy are on the rise everywhere.

The paper also considers:

• The consequences that the collapse of Eastern Europe’s people’s democracies and the South’s ‘developmental dictatorships’ has left us with only one (often triumphalist) liberal model of democracy.
• Does democratic contestation undermine macroeconomic stability? Would states like Botswana, Singapore, Malaysia or Mauritius have enjoyed sustained growth if they had had unfettered democracy?
• Prospects for democracy in the many post-conflict states where Faustian bargains have allowed ex-protagonists to assume political roles.

Where democratic institutions manage to establish themselves they usually create incentives to encourage political elites to be more inclusive, transparent, honest and open to compromise. The paper urges us to see democratisation not as a technical process of implanting institutions but an ongoing struggle to build cultures comfortable with diversity, opposition and power-sharing. We need to consider:

• The quality of real world democracies. What rights and entitlements do citizens enjoy? Is there vertical accountability? Can the judiciary be considered free and the executive accountable?
• Democracy’s gender bias: what changes in electoral, administrative and legal systems are needed to ensure equal treatment and participation of women in policy and law?
• Actions to tackle the disadvantages of the poor in competitive political systems invariably dominated by elites. Is democratic decentralisation necessarily pro-poor?
• The international accountability dilemmas created by globalisation. As policy space for national decision-making shrinks, what new norms of global governance can allow citizens to hold governments, multinationals and international financial institutions to account?

Source(s):
‘Democratic institutions and politics in contexts of inequality, poverty and conflict’, Working Paper 104, Institute of Development Studies, by Robin Luckham, Anne Marie Goetz and Mary Kaldo, 2000 Full document.

Funded by: Department for International Development-UK (ESCOR), Ford Foundation (Delhi office), ESRC Project No: R000237885

id21 Research Highlight: 12 April 2002

Further Information:
Robin Luckham
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1273 678782
Fax: +44 (0)1273 621202/691647
Contact the contributor: R.Luckham@ids.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

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