International Politics Week 5: Whence comes democracy?

1. International Politics Week 5:Whence comes democracy? Instructor: James Raymond Vreeland, Professor 2.0

3. The effect of IOs on democracy • Represents the intersection of two major literatures in political science: • The Democratic Peace • Regime Transitions

4. The Democratic Peace Democracy Reading from this class War Peace International Trade International Organizations

5. What is democracy?

6. Democracy is… • Representation • Accountability • Equality • Dignity • Rationality • Security • Freedom • Happiness… empty set Get your hopes down!

7. empty set. • From an analytical pt of view, this is useless. • Precludes important questions. • E.g. • Do repeated elections induce accountability? • Does participation lead to income equality? • Does economic freedom produce rationality in the market place?

8. Democracy: • A political regime in which some government offices are filled as a consequence of contested elections. • “Offices”: Chief executive, legislature. • “Contested”: There exists opposition that has some chance of winning offices as a consequence of elections. • “Democracy is a system in which incumbents lose contested elections.” • Ex ante uncertainty • Ex post irreversibility • Repeatability (all outcomes are temporary – for a term)

9. Culture and democracy?

10. How might culture matter? A shared democratic culture among citizens is required for: • Coordination of views: • Shared view of what constitutes illegitimate action. • Coordination of actions: • Common sense of “duty” to act against potential illegitimate actions.

11. Democracy Culture

12. HOW DO WE MEASURE “CULTURE”?(Almond & Verba) • “The political culture of a nation is the particular distribution of patterns of orientation toward political objects among members of a nation.”

13. Hypotheses • Interpersonal trust • (hypothesis: support democracy) • Life satisfaction • (hypothesis: support democracy) • Support for revolutionary change • (hypothesis: support dictatorship)

14. Inglehart finds the following: Democracy % of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”

15. Leads us to believe that there is a positive relationship: Democracy % of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”

16. Democracy % of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”

17. $6,000 $5,000 $4,000 $3,000 Democracy $2,000 $1,000 % of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”

18. Once we control for per capita income, there is no clear relationship between “culture” and “democracy.” Democracy % of pop. saying “most people can be trusted.”

19. Other Cultural factorstested (Przeworski et al.) • Protestantism: not significant • Islam : not significant • Catholicism: not significant (weak finding- makes democracy slightly more likely!) • Colonial legacy: not significant (British colony, maybe) • Education: not significant • Ethnic heterogeneity: makes both democracy and dictatorship unstable – generates general instability • Religious heterogeneity: not significant • Number of other democracies in the world: not significant

20. Not surprising that culture variables fail… • Culturist arguments are typically • “ex post” or “ad hoc.” • We observe • many Protestant countries with democracy • and not many Islamic countries with democracy • so we (mistakenly) conclude that there must be something in Protestant culture that leads to democracy and something in Islam that prevents it.

21. Example: • A study concludes that Hinduism leads to democracy because of its pluralistic belief system. • Confucianism, on the other hand, is not pluralistic and thus leads to dictatorship. • What do you think the study would have found if China were a democracy and India a dictatorship?

22. There are elements in every culture that are conducive (and not conducive) to democracy. • So one can pick and choose in an ad hoc manner. • Protestantism: • Legitimates inequality. • Is this compatible with a political system based on equality? • Islam: • Stresses the importance of the umma – community. • Isn’t trust in community decisions is essential for democracy?

23. There are no standard assumptions about culture. People seem to pick and choose.

24. And now we return to… Democracy and Development

25. Puzzle time! • Explain the correlation between development (per cap income) and democracy.

26. HINTS • Development does NOT cause democracy to emerge. • Democracy does NOT cause development. • The correlation is NOT spurious. • (There is a causal connection.)

27. Regime dynamics • High per capita income has little to do with why democracies emerge. • Democracy is more likely to survive at high levels of per capita income. • The cost of “struggle”/conflict/coup is too high • Threshold ~ $8,000 PPP • EXPLAIN THOUGHT EXPERIMENT • Which countries do we get wrong?

28. Prediction list from Cheibub and Vreeland (2011)…

29. 2014 coup d'état 2012 coup d'état

30. Estimating separate determinants of why democracies emerge and surviveEBA results • 59 factors, evaluating over 3 million regressions • Emergence of democracy: • GDP growth (a negative effect) • Past transitions (a positive effect) • OECD membership (a positive effect) • Some evidence that fuel exporters and Muslim countries are less likely to see democracy emerge • the latter finding is driven entirely by oil-producing Muslim countries • Survival of democracy • GDP per capita (a positive effect) • Past transitions (a negative effect) • Some evidence that having a former military leader as the chief executive has a negative effect & having other democracies as neighbors has a reinforcing effect

31. Why is oil important? • Dutch disease • Oil exports drive up currency value • Suffocates other export entrepreneurial activity • Economy does not develop

32. Alternative - Game theoretic story for oil • Democracy  redistribution • Rich vs. Poor • Dictatorship: Rich pay “repression” cost • Democracy: Rich suffer redistribution • Unless the rich have a credible threat to exit  the poor have a credible promise to temper redistribution • Democracy works 

33. “Sorry, Mandela, but we've got problems everywhere we look. Housing, food, jobs, crime, our currency. You can't keep interrupting affairs of state to placate a minority” “I must. That minority still controls the police, the army, and the economy. If we lose them, we cannot address the other issues.”

34. Summary • Culture not a good predictor of democracy • The emergence of democracy is largely idiosyncratic • Development predicts survival of democracy • Look for per capita income >$8,000 PPP • So, where does development come from? Is development due to culture?

35. So where does development come from? • Maybe democracy doesn’t come from culture… • But does development come from culture? • Why are rich countries rich and poor countries poor?

36. Jared Diamond’s Guns Germs and Steel • Culturist stories – tend to be ad-hoc (if not simply racist…) • “Protestant work ethic” • If another culture had succeeded we could find some other quality… • Diamond begins with the assumption that all societies began with the same distribution of “talent.” • Some societies had better “material” to work with. • And some societies were better positioned to learn from neighbors. (Diffusion was geography-dependent!!!) • Reductionist story. • Boils human history down to available plants and animals, latitude, and orientation of landmass.

37. Readings discussion

39. More meaningful…

43. This session’s take-aways: • Strong relationship between income & political regime (Lipset 1959) • Poor democracies are at risk of breakdown (Przeworksi and Limongi) • Income – not culture – explains political regime survival (Seligson 2002) • The emergence of democracy is hard to explain – oil and other highly specific assets may be part of the story (Boix and Stokes) • Regional international organizations can promote the emergence and survival of democracy (Pevehouse) • Regional international organizations may have a stronger effect when election monitors are present. They may not have an effect on geopolitically important countries (Donno) • Democracy is good for human rights (Davenport and Armstrong)

44. Thank you

45. Jared Diamond’s Guns Germs and Steel • Culturist stories – tend to be ad-hoc (if not simply racist…) • “Protestant work ethic” • If another culture had succeeded we could find some other quality… • Diamond begins with the assumption that all societies began with the same distribution of “talent.” • Some societies had better “material” to work with. • And some societies were better positioned to learn from neighbors. (Diffusion was geography-dependent!!!) • Reductionist story. • Boils human history down to available plants and animals, latitude, and orientation of landmass.

46. Time-line

47. Story in a nutshell: • Advances made by: • Original discovery • Learning from neighbors. • Original discovery (by accident/luck) • A function of region’s biological endowments. • Learning • A function of geography

49. The Eurasian landmass was the best suited for the transfer of information. • South America perhaps the worst suited. • Northern Africa was better off than Africa South of the Sahara. • Many agricultural inventions can travel 1000s of miles along the same latitudinal range. • Cannot travel more than 100s of miles along the same longitudinal range.

50. Languages, writing, etc… • Sedentary lifestyle necessary. • Elites necessary • Only becomes possible when food is stored. • Most societies borrowed / learned from neighbors. • Helpful to have other neighbors with sedentary lifestyle and elites. • Again – think of how luck is shaped by your endowments. • Much less likely to learn writing if none of your neighbors have…