What explains the uneven appearance of political pluralism over time and space? This is a question of major importance, both for understanding the human condition and for actively seeking to improve it. Some governments spend millions and even launch wars with at least the stated aim of promoting democracy, while others spend and launch wars to resist its spread. Accordingly, “democratization” has become one of the most important subfields in political science.
So well-trodden is this subfield that one might not expect to come across anything fresh and fecund there. Indeed, myriad theories have been advanced and hypotheses tested by postwar political science, and most major advances in recent years have arguably reflected the compilation of new data, the application of new methodologies, or the refinement of older theories. In terms of concepts, democratization research has long revolved around a fairly limited set that are widely believed to support or even be prerequisites for democracy. In particular, democracy is said to be more likely to emerge and/or become consolidated when economies are more developed, civil societies more robust, international forces more proactive, leaders more committed, militaries more constrained, institutions better designed, cultures more receptive, and historical legacies more supportive.
This context helps us understand how important the new book by Lucan Way truly is. Through in-depth case studies of three post-Soviet republics and shorter descriptions of other countries, Pluralism by Default presents Way’s pathbreaking insight that democratization often occurs not because prerequisites of democracy are strong but because would-be authoritarians are weak, resulting in pluralism “by default” (hence the name of the book). In fact, he contends, weak authoritarianism frequently results in countries where few if any supportive conditions for democracy are in place, causing pluralism to remain the default condition for years with scant chance of movement to genuine liberal democracy. The result can be everything from highly corrupt and inefficient democracy to what Way has called “competitive authoritarianism,” where weak rulers are unable to fully squelch opposition, resulting in competitive and unruly politics (Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War, 2010). Way has presented this basic insight in some of his earlier work, which has had a major impact on the field. Nevertheless, his new book constitutes the definitive statement of this argument and offers evidence mobilized in its strongest form to date.
Way’s contribution forces scholars who want to understand contemporary pluralism to focus not just on factors that support democracy and facilitate transition, but on factors that support authoritarian rule and can make it stronger or weaker. And these, he convincingly argues, are not always mirror images of each other. One can think of factors that this new book does not discuss that support authoritarian rule and that might also account for authoritarian weakness. However, this is one way in which Way’s work will spur productive debate. For his part, the author singles out identity divides and how authoritarian regimes are organized.
Regarding authoritarian organization, Way quickly makes clear he does not have in mind things like constitutions or parliamentary rules; authoritarians tend simply to ignore or manipulate these formalities to their advantage, he avers. Instead, what matters are how a state structures its coercive apparatus and its mechanisms for controlling the economy; and whether regimes have a strong ruling party. While it is not entirely clear why he privileges these organizational features as causal while dismissing others like presidentialism as being epiphenomenal, Way does not rule out that other factors can matter. His book just focuses on making the case that when states and ruling parties are decentralized and organized poorly (or are nonexistent), aspiring authoritarians will not be able to quash opposition fully, leading to pluralism by default.
With respect to identity divides, the argument initially appears straightforward: Countries that are divided roughly equally along identity lines are going to be harder for authoritarians to control because the opposition will be able to mobilize the identity group to which the ruler does not belong. Way makes the important point here that such divides tend to complicate both authoritarianism and democracy, with pluralism by default being a commonly resulting in-between state for cleft societies. If one looks a little closer, however, one finds that the argument the book actually makes about identity is more nuanced.
For one thing, the book limits its argument only to the claim that divisions within the titular national identity are likely to have this effect. The precise meaning of “titular national identity” (p. 18), though, is not entirely clear. One wonders, for example, whether the highly authoritarian Kazakhstan should count as having an identity divide, with its bifurcation between its ethnic Kazakh population (usually considered titular) and its ethnic Russian community (usually considered non-titular), or whether all that counts would be divides within Kazakhstan’s Kazakh ethnic group (for example, among its famous hordes [zhuz]). In any case, by not requiring identity divisions to be strictly ethnic in order to matter, Way very reasonably codes Ukraine as featuring such a divide—between its more EU-oriented western-based and more Russia-oriented eastern-based populations of ethnic Ukrainians—and similarly (but perhaps a bit more controversially) counts Moldova as being deeply divided between its less-geographically-separated Russophile and Romanophile traditions. Belarus is his core case of a country without such an identity divide.
The precise causal effect of identity divides is also not as simple as a shallow reading might suggest. While Way does posit that identity divides simply make it harder for autocrats to consolidate power, the in-depth case studies place a great deal of emphasis on a logic that has more limited cross-national application. Specifically, identity divides in Ukraine and Moldova made it impossible for leaders to fully accommodate Russia’s foreign policy demands, forcing these leaders to get more economic assistance from the West, which in turn subjected them to stronger democratizing pressure. In Belarus, the near-consensus on a Russian orientation meant that Belarus was more likely to “behave” in Russian eyes, helping it obtain massive economic support that freed Belarus from needing Western support that would come with democratizing strings attached.
The book is also to be lauded for its empirics. For one thing, in a special appendix on “Coding Rules for Main Variables,” Way is transparent in laying out the specific criteria he uses for determining whether countries in his study count as having (for example) low or high closure, coercive capacity, discretionary economic control, and national divisions (or something in between). While some readers may question some of the criteria he chooses, such readers are invited to explore on their own whether adopting other criteria make a difference. Beyond the three core cases of Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine, the book does not detail how particular countries are given scores (as noted above with Kazakhstan). So, specialists are likely to find at least some room to quibble.
The biggest empirical strength of the book is the depth and rigor of its case studies. Each one—on Ukraine, on Moldova, and on Belarus—reflects impressively deep country knowledge and extensive, energetic field work. While Way is thorough in mining published material ranging from news reports to memoirs in local languages, he does not stop there, engaging in extensive interviews with participants in and contemporary observers of the events he describes. I would encourage readers to make the effort to flip to the endnotes in order to get a sense of this.
What results is a fascinating set of narratives that will engage undergraduate students as well as the very best country experts. In many ways, this is a model for how field work on political regimes should be conducted. And it bears noting that these were not at all easy environments in which to work. Belarus stands out as an especially challenging environment into which very few Western social scientists have stepped, and Way does so with a verve that is inspiring and revealing. The book also contains a chapter on the remaining non-Baltic, post-Soviet countries and discusses some other countries in different parts of the world. In addition, Way includes a chapter on the collapse of the USSR, which set the stage for the emergence of pluralism by default.
Like all great books, this one also sets the stage for some important debates without necessarily having resolved them. For example, some may find the operationalization of regime organization rather close conceptually to the outcome of interest (pluralism). This may lead some to want a more systematic treatment as to what causes a regime to develop more or less coercive capacity at a given point time. Such a step would add predictive power. There is also a lot more work to be done on the relationship between identity divides and regime dynamics, though Way’s work is clearly a milestone along that path. The basic insight that pluralism can result by default from authoritarian weakness, though, has already stood the test of time and is sure to remain influential well into the future.
In short, Way has produced a terrific book that should be read by comparative political scientists, policymakers, and anyone else interested in regime change and democratization in the world.
