In their often-cited discussion of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (1986), Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter draw important attention to the contingency of transition processes and the central role of agents in determining the fate of “uncertain democracies.” While much of the literature working to explain these processes of change continued to focus on the actions of key agents, the democratic consolidation literature that followed has re-turned to formal institutions as the primary means of measuring and analyzing the democratic content of regimes. The institutional focus in much writing on new democracies, and the measures commonly employed to compare them, often fails to capture the complex dynamics of new regimes.
Two recent books, The Making of Democrats and Constructing Democracy in Transitioning Societies of Africa, work to address this gap by focusing on the ways in which individuals respond to and seek to reform the institutions created by democratization processes. Authors Carrie Manning and Susanna Wing, respectively, investigate what lies behind the formal transitions put in place by new legal structures and inaugurated with multiparty elections. They explore the deeper changes that take place (or fail to) with the establishment of democratic systems by investigating starkly different cases. Unsurprisingly, they come to contrasting conclusions, but both offer innovative frameworks for investigating the content and development of democracy.
In Constructing Democracy, Wing investigates the development of constitutionalism in Mali, a low-income, ethnically diverse, predominantly Muslim country that seemed an unlikely candidate for viable democracy after decades of military rule. In an overview of transitions in Francophone West Africa, Wing compares the successful transitions in Benin and Mali (and the intermediate case of Niger) to those she labels failed or uncommitted: Togo, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Cote d'Ivoire. She argues that inclusiveness and participation in the process of constitutionalism are crucial in determining the legitimacy and durability of democratic transitions. She points to the lack of inclusion in Niger's democratization process, arguing that “the lack of dialogue outside of the entrenched group of elites serves to reinforce the divide between the people and the politicians” (p. 51). Her argument has been borne out by recent history. In February 2010, Niger's democratic experiment was cut short by a coup after a prolonged constitutional crisis.
In her in-depth analysis of Mali's political process, Wing argues that the National Conference “helped to embed the democratic ideals of dialogue and debate in contemporary Malian political culture,” with subsequent forums serving as “fragment[s] of democratic consolidation” that work to embed “a culture of participation … into the political arena” (pp. 62–63). In a low-income country such as Mali, in which an estimated 80% of the population lives in rural areas and which has been ranked by the United Nations Development Programme as among the lowest in the world for women's empowerment, the inclusion of a diversity of voices in participatory institutions poses a great challenge. Wing notes the severe under-representation of women at the crucial National Conference, as well as the concern raised over the exclusion of the rural population. She argues that while the forum was limited to “members of an elite class, predominantly male … for the first time, the voices of farmers, students and representatives from the North were being heard in the political realm in Bamako” (p. 70). She adds that those not included in the forum could follow the proceedings on the radio, arguing that listening linked them to the process, “whether or not they understand the intricacies of the debates” (p. 79). This linkage is certainly important in creating a sense of nationalism, but it is unclear how effectively it might empower those outside of the forum as active democratic citizens.
In order to more deeply investigate questions regarding inclusion and deliberation, Wing considers women's participation and the role of Mali's Éspace d'Interpellation Démocratique (Question and Answer Assembly). She demonstrates women's increased activism and participation in political debates during the 1990s, including this assembly, where women “demand[ed] the protection of women's rights as integral to democracy and development” (p. 126). While critics suggested that the forum was simply created by the government to deflect criticism and sideline opposition, Wing demonstrates the ways in which the forum expanded public discussions of justice and human rights. Still, she notes that participation was limited largely to elites in the capital who were familiar with the legal structure. Participation in the assembly declined in the late 1990s, raising doubts about its future. With the election in 2002 of an independent candidate as president, a new era of consensus politics without deliberation emerged, and both opposition and civil society activity dwindled. These developments raise significant questions concerning the strength of Mali's democratic system and the culture of participation.
Overall, Wing's focus on constitutional legitimacy and literacy is a very welcome addition to analyses of democratic development on the African continent. She offers a rich discussion of the actual functioning of the new institutions and demonstrates not only the innovations of the forums but also the great challenges that citizens face in accessing them. Despite the post-2002 decline in public deliberation and active debate, Wing remains optimistic about the prospects of democracy in Mali. But the decline in participation in the Question and Answer Assembly in the 1990s, the lure of “lucrative possibilities of project funding or political appointments” (p. 103) for members of civil society, and the great challenges that ordinary people continue to face in actively engaging in the political process also serve as a reminder of the continued uncertainty of democracy.
In The Making of Democrats, Manning begins with an important question: Why do elections seem to encourage political actors to support democratic norms and institutions in some settings, while in other cases they have little positive effect for the development of democracy? To address this question, she investigates the impact of electoralism in three postconflict “success stories”: Mozambique, Bosnia, and El Salvador. Manning argues that “the repeated holding of elections, however imperfect, tends to create a constituency within parties for more elections. Whether or not that leads the party leadership to commit to or to invest in the democratic rules of the game depends on the interaction of the demands of interparty competition and internal party dynamics” (p. 4). The central challenge, she argues, is whether reform constituencies within parties will prevail. This is dependent upon the two political “games” that party leaders play in seeking to first maintain their position within the party and then compete with other parties.
Manning's investigation of three country cases, and four armed opposition groups turned political parties within them, is designed to move beyond what she describes as “an over-reliance on institutional design as a solution to the challenges of democratic state building; and a failure to problematize the role of political parties in democratic transition” (p. 17). The three case studies present a wide range of challenges and outcomes. In Mozambique, Renamo received a lower percentage of votes in each election after the formal end of the civil war in 1992, losing ground to Frelimo, the governing party since independence. In Bosnia, Manning follows two parties, the Croatian HDZ and the Serbian SDS that compete in a context of continuing ethnic division and the extensive involvement of the international community. While the United Nations played a significant role in monitoring the cease-fire and overseeing the transition in Mozambique, international actors played a much more significant role in Bosnia by actively policing the actions of political parties and driving “a wedge into hairline fractures in the dominant coalitions of both HDZ and SDS” (p. 99). Both parties experienced an overall decline in votes from 1996 to 2006, as more nationalist parties upstaged them. In contrast, in El Salvador, the former armed opposition movement won increasing percentages of the vote, finally winning the presidency in 2009 (after the book under review was published).
By means of a discussion of the politics of inter- and intraparty competition in each case, Manning demonstrates that while constituencies developed in each of the parties supporting electoral competition, in only one of the four did reformers prevail within their party. While she does observe the “making of democrats” in each case, in three of the four these democrats “soon found themselves and their more proactive agenda for adapting to democratic rules and procedures thrust outside the realm of ‘viable’ opposition monopolized by the former opposition group” (p. 144). By investigating these diverse cases, she demonstrates the incredible challenge of redistributing power via competitive elections. The practice of electoralism in the three country cases, during the time period of investigation, proves to be insufficient in addressing the great inequalities of political and economic power or, in the case of Bosnia, in defusing the role of ethnic identity as the basis of politics. As a result, Manning's conclusions concerning the impact of elections upon the prospects for democracy are quite sobering. At the end of her discussion of Bosnia, she follows Dankwart Rustow in arguing that “democracy may be of limited value in bringing substantive change on fundamental issues” (p. 113).
Manning's study is highly ambitious. She tackles three complex postconflict environments and draws important comparisons among quite different cases. There are many variables at work in the cases that help to explain their different trajectories. As a result, a clearer operationalization of the key variables would have helped to demonstrate the comparative strength of the model. The book's overall argument could also have been bolstered by a more explicit discussion of case selection. Why, for example, were these cases chosen rather than other postconflict settings, such as Guatemala, Lebanon, or Cambodia?
Together, these two texts underline the need to evaluate democracy as an ongoing political process, rather than as a set of formal institutions. In both studies, resource constraints (political, economic, and social) provide dramatic challenges to the redistribution of power through democratic institutions and, therefore, democracy's promise of formal political equality. Wing's innovative analysis of constitutionalism in Mali and Manning's wide-ranging investigation of party development offer important insights into the development of democracy that are relevant far beyond the cases they investigate.
