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Title: Democracy
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Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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| Democracy by Cambridge University Press An ambitious but incomplete undertaking |
Chuck Tilly's latest book is an ambitious work, and sets out to provide an explanatory account of the emergence of democracy in the modern world. In short, Prof. Tilly argues that there are three key processes crucial to the emergence of democracy - these being the integration of trust-based social networks into public politics, the insulation of public politics from the major inequalities in society, and the reining-in of "autonomous centers of power" by which he means private militias, religious sects and the like. As always, Prof. Tilly's work is highly readable, often entertaining, and chockfull of rich historical details. This relatively slim book is well-organized into 8 intuitive chapters, and amply illustrated with easy-to-understand diagrams and boxes.
The book's greatest strengths are its conceptual clarity (succinctly laid out in the opening chapters) and sweeping historical perspective (examples cited range from peasant protests in contemporary China to the failed negotiations in 431 BCE that led to the Second Peloponnesian War). Unfortunately, with regard to the main explanatory objective of the book, the author fails to fully deliver.
Part of the problem is the analytical style adopted by the author. While I believe that a rigorous historical analysis can be as compelling as the most sophisticated statistical model, analysis also has to far transcend mere narrative. Consider for instance the chapter on trust. The author provides a colorful narrative of the growth of ethnic/religious social networks in 19th century America and their role as vote-getting mechanisms in the party machines. While the author's argument that such networks helped strengthen American democracy seems plausible, to convincingly establish the point the author would have to address the counter-factual - which is that American democracy would have been weakened if such networks were not integrated into the political machines. Or at least, for those of us who dislike counterfactual speculation, it should be shown that democracies which attempted to segregate such networks proved more fragile. Instead, the chapter went on to a meandering discussion of social networks in Argentina and Mexico, which only gives the impression that despite the integration of trust networks into politics, these countries still went down the authoritarian path. Strictly speaking, the Latin American examples do not refute the original point, which never claims that trust networks are sufficient for democracy. But if these later cases do not strengthen the argument, why bring them in at all? Similar problems also plague the chapters on inequality and non-state centers of power.
These issues are related to a more fundamental problem, which is the logical constraint that the author places on his project. From the outset the author firmly declares that no sufficient condition for democracy exists. He also declares that no necessary condition exists although he later concedes that there are "necessary processes" which can be thought of as necessary conditions. The problem is as J.L. Mackie points out, when peple speak of "causes", they have in mind INUS conditions - i.e. conditions which are not sufficient by themselves, but are necessary to some broader combination of conditions which in turn are sufficient. Conditions which are merely necessary in the strict logical sense are seldom satisfactory, because there are always a large number of necessary conditions from the profound to the trivial (e.g. air is necessary for democracy), which are often not far removed from the tautological. Especially if one is interested in providing answers to prognosticators and promoters of democracy, I doubt that any answer can be satisfactory without some reference, however fuzzy, to sufficiency.
To put this issue in a more concrete context, note that trust in public politics (for example) is not just necessary for democracies, but also necessary for any state with a reasonable level of capacity especially if "trust" is defined to include sending one's children to public schools. In that sense the condition verges on the tautological. Now, if high state capacity is shown to be a sufficient cause for democracy, and trust is a key ingredient to capacity, then we have a far more interesting causal condition. Of course high state capacity is not sufficient for democracy. If it were, the author's arguments would be far more compelling, because most of the conditions identified are more directly necessary for high state capacity, the other key dimension in all of the discussions which really should have been included in the title of the book. In essence, many of the conditions are necessary for democracy because they are necessary for state capacity, and a successful democracy requires some reasonable level of state capacity. Except what's good for state capacity is not always good for democracy. The chapter on non-state centers of power, for instance, would have benefited greatly from a more explicit and conscious discussion of the relationship between democracy and state capacity. While private militias and recalcitrant religious sects are major obstacles to democracy in many developing countries, in totalitarian "mass societies" it's precisely autonomous centers of non-state power that are needed to counteract an over-abundance of state capacity.
Nonetheless, one always learns a great deal from reading Chuck Tilly. Although it falls short of its ambitions, the book is never short on provocative ideas and stimulating insights. Among the recent crop of books on the subject focusing on societal conditions with a macro-theoretical bent, this book provides a useful counterpoint from the perspective of the state and mid-level conditions, a domain arguably of the greatest interest to political forecasters and would-be democratizers alike.
***
April 29th, 2008 Addendum:
It's with great sadness that I learned today of Prof. Tilly's passing. I have only had the privilege of meeting Prof. Tilly once at a conference. I was a graduate student completely unknown to him, yet he was kind enough to sit with me for 20 minutes and gave me many valuable advices on my research. I gave him a fairly long paper I've been working on, and to my great surprise, an email arrived from him the very next day providing a detailed critique of my work.
I will always remember his kindness. He will be missed.
| | Democracy by Cambridge University Press Democracy - "for and against". | Democracy is the government by the people. Can any real citizen be against having that opportunity of governing themselves? Who is then against? Democracy has become an abstract word with a meaning not yet described in any new century's dictionary.
As the traditional dictionaries teach us, Democracy is the government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. The common people considered as the primary source of political power. Majority rule. The principles of social equality and individual rights (American Heritage, 2002). It is very important to have such concepts in the human mind. But, had and have we experienced that?
Experience is what we would like to have if we could live the 6000 years of human history. Let's break the word Democracy in two pieces: demos- people, and kratia- crazy. People get crazy under freedom and democracy and the reason is probable because since the beginning of time we had never trusted any political system.
What is our System? Today America is the `democratic light' that announces to the world the necessity of openness and democracy. We want to see the American dream spread as a gospel all around the world, but in reality we should be fighting in order to see that dream materialized in our own land where many are still under the poverty line, where still people has no voice whether we go to war or not, whether we let the government put cameras on private places or not, whether anybody without money could possibly become President, or whether as in the Old Greek and Roman Empires, Kings used to go to war with their children in a democratic way, following their own premises. All of that can come under fire if we measure it with the statement: "government by the people".
America has in reality being a light of hope for generations, we must keep America as a reachable dream, but no way it will be possibly achieved if we remain silent to the globalization in which America has get into without understand the differences between cultures around the planet. Is democracy good for an Arab? For a Muslim? Democracy has pro and against.
Democracy has brought legal pornography, the materialization ($$$) of all traditional values, the freedom of speech, the speech of insanity as well. It has removed signs of Christianity from our traditional government until the point that the word God is almost a sin at any public place and document.
Is that what others want to do or to have in their own lands? Is their history equal to our, with European traces? Are we sure that some people will be willing to sacrifice democracy by security, or security by democracy? We believe that we must keep democracy without sacrificing our rights, but it will be only manageable if we really let people govern themselves in a democratic way, where taxes are not taken from your daily check book without your consent, where corruption is not the daily headline in our newspapers and where we never forget the intentions of our founder fathers; and not just as a relic in Washington DC's monuments, but as a sign that we really worry about America's future.
As a conclusion, as we see, Democracy is still a very abstract concept out of the books. We must use diplomacy in the international arena to help others in their own dreams for their citizens. We need to defend ourselves with our mind, soul and military mighty; but never impose to others what they are not ready to accept, even by their own disoriented history. When Democracy becomes licentiousness and ungodliness is something to be against as well; then let's fight for the freedom that gives us and not just takes from us.
Alejandro RG.
| | Democracy by Cambridge University Press Product Description | | Democracy identifies the general processes causing democratization and de-democratization at a national level across the world over the last few hundred years. It singles out integration of trust networks into public politics, insulation of public politics from categorical inequality, and suppression of autonomous coercive power centers as crucial processes. Through analytic narratives and comparisons of multiple regimes, mostly since World War II, this book makes the case for recasting current theories of democracy, democratization, and de-democratization. |
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