Journal of International Relations and Development

Volume 2, No. 4 (December 1999)

 

Development and Democratic Political Change in the South
By Jean Grugel _*

 

Introduction

'TRADITIONAL' DEVELOPMENT THEORY WAS BASED ON THE NORMATIVE PREMISE THAT ECONOMIC GROWTH WOULD LEAD TO DEMOCRACY; WHILE CRITICAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY, SUCH AS DEPENDENCY AND WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY, PURPORTED TO REVEAL HOW THE SPREAD OF CAPITALISM STRANGLED THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEMOCRACY AND AUTONOMOUS POLITICAL, AS WELL AS ECONOMIC, DEVELOPMENT IN THE SO-CALLED 'THIRD WORLD'. Democracy has thus been intimately associated with development theory from its origins. If the struggle in the 'Third World' has, in an economic sense, been one for equitable development, in a political sense it has been for justice and democracy. As a result, the wave of political change which began in the 1980s raised enormous expectations. They have not, however, been fulfilled.

This article takes as its starting point the growing awareness among critical thinkers that many so-called 'third wave' democratisations in the South are democracies in name only. New 'democracies' are frequently restricted systems of political competition or collusion between a small number of elites or civilian regimes which have introduced electoral processes but which, in fact, retain highly authoritarian patterns of government. The signs that a number of 'new democracies' were heading in this direction may be dated from the early 1990s. Chalmers et al. (1997) have, for example, argued that new democracies, at least so far as Latin America is concerned, are 'socially disembedded' in that they survive despite any active support from the majority of the population. Weffort (1995) speaks of 'hybrid democracies' and Collier and Levistky (1997) of "democracy with adjectives". In sum, there is a growing critical consensus that to talk of 'democratisation' as a way of describing political change in the South is misleading. This article explores some of the factors which link the South with non-democratic forms of government or, more precisely, which mean that regimes in the South now tend to be formally democratic in structure but in fact lack democratic practices.

In 1994, O'Donnell coined the term "delegative democracies" to describe stable political systems reliant upon undemocratic charismatic leadership from the top and suggested that a number of states in the South would fail to become full democracies in the sense understood in the developed world. He went on to identify two distinct causes: "long term historical factors [and]... the severity of the socio-economic problems that newly installed democratic governments inherit" (O'Donnell 1994:56). The aim here is to examine the role these factors play in the emergence of the 'hollow democracies' of the South. The article will discuss the impact of the historical legacy of restricted and elite rule on political change in the South, using Latin America as an example. Secondly, the article will extend O'Donnell's emphasis on the economic crisis facing new democracies to look more generally at the impact of the global political economy on political change in developing states. It is first necessary, however, to 'clear the ground' by establishing what is, and what is not, genuine democracy, in order to distinguish it from the hybrid and hollow forms to which political change in the South is giving rise.

 

The Meaning of Democracy

DEMOCRATISATION HAS FREQUENTLY BEEN TAKEN IN THE LITERATURE TO REFER TO A NARROW PROCESS OF POLITICAL REFORMS LEADING TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF COMPETITIVE ELECTIONS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MULTI-PARTY SYSTEMS. This way of conceptualising democracy has its roots in empirical democratic theory as developed by Schumpeter (1954), and is an approach commonly found in comparative politics (see, for example, Sartori 1987). An emphasis on elections as the leitmotiv of democracy also derives from Dahl's notion (1956) of polyarchy. Broader than Schumpeter, Dahl bases his analysis of democracy on the assumption that it emerges from pluralist competition between elites which prevents power being accumulated by any single social group. Dahlian pluralism and empirical democratic theory were highly influential in shaping the emerging field of democratisation studies. Democratisation was generally understood as the creation of procedures for free and fair elections and the alternation of leadership. It thus came to be perceived essentially as an exercise in creating either a system of elections and alternation among leaders or the establishment of pluralism in government.

Adopting the standard comparative politics definition of democracy outlined above to political change in the South creates a number of problems. First, Schumpeterian and Dahlian conceptualisations of democracy have a confused and ambiguous understanding of the relationship between politics and the socio-economic system. On the one hand, they suggest that democracy depends on the market - for Schumpeter, political competition is analogous to the operation of the market - while on the other hand, they imply that citizenship, as a POLITICAL category, is unconnected to the socio-economic universe. Both hypotheses that result from this - that democracy requires a fully functioning and marketised economy, or that democracy depends upon a separation of wealth and political power - render this approach problematic to say the least in terms of understanding politics in the developing world (Leftwich 1994). Second, an electoralist conceptualisation of democracy fails to analyse the significance of the gulf between the formal structures of the political system and the cultures and practices which shape political activity on the ground. This is important for understanding the politics of any period of transition. In the South, it ignores the reproduction of authoritarian cultures and the retention of authoritarian enclaves after the formal process of democratic transition; it fails to deal with the authoritarian manipulation of elections, the political agenda and the state by elites; it does not address social relationships - within families, localities, the workplace - which remain dependent on cartels or oppression; and it bypasses a discussion of the impact of economic resources (or a lack of them) upon the operation of the political system.

Third, establishing the holding of elections and the development of multi-party systems as criteria for defining democracy leads to an elision between democracy and Westernisation. Empirical democratic theory in particular deduces its core understanding of democracy from an (erroneous) description of the operation of western politics, reducing it, in the process, to what is presumed to exist in the West. This makes it highly prescriptive - democratisation SHOULD BE the reproduction of the procedures for government which have been developed in Western Europe and the United States.

A final problem is the assumption that democracy arises from and ensures competition between elites. Dahl stresses pluralism as the bedrock of competition in government. Pluralism implies that socially-constituted groups (labour organisations, business groups, farmers' groups, grass roots movements, neighbourhood committees, women's organisations, gay and lesbian movements, religious pressure groups, etc.) operate on a level playing field. Pluralism has been the subject of searching critiques since the 1980s (Smith 1993). In particular, it has been criticised for ignoring the structural, ideological and 'hidden' dimensions of power which frequently render the policy-making processes undemocratic in liberal democracies. So effective has the attack on pluralism been that it would be difficult now to find unreformed pluralism as constituting the framework of research for politics in the United Kingdom, the US or Germany. Dahl (1989) himself came to the view that the inequalities generated by capital can radically affect political decision-making and shape the state.

Therefore, in contrast to the tradition which emphasises elections it can be assumed that democracy implies citizenship and the creation of a culture of equal rights and tolerance in terms of its political components, however difficult these may be to define. According to Jelin (1996:104),

from an analytical perspective the concept of citizenship refers to a conflictive practice related to power — that is, to a struggle about who is entitled to say what in the process of defining common problems and deciding how they will be faced.

Citizenship, then, can only be filled with meaning in concrete situations of struggle and through social practices which become embedded in society; it cannot simply be copied from models of citizenship rooted in culturally and socially distinct societies. Emphasising the importance of citizenship for democratisation studies directs our attention, above all, to analysing social relationships, power struggles and the quality of people's lives. Democracy can be said to exist where political systems reflect popular consent and popular participation, and where accountability and a practice of rights, tolerance and pluralism shape the decision-making process.

Becoming a 'citizen' implies gaining political rights; but democracy cannot be treated as belonging only to the 'political' sphere, separate somehow from the socio-economic system. Democracy requires a kind of citizenship which confers socio-economic rights as well as political rights and obligations (Marshall 1973). The social components of democracy, according to Marshall (1973:71-2), include "the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security ... the right to a share ... to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in society". In effect, democracy then, is located in sets of relationships

'between the institutions of democracy, between those institutions and citizens and between citizens themselves. [I]t is not immediately obvious where the boundaries of the political system should be set, and how far it encompasses the relationships of economic and social life, as well as the more exclusively 'political' (Weir and Beetham 1999:4).

Democratisation logically entails "the creation, extension, and practice of social citizenship throughout a particular national territory" (Grugel 1999:11).

 

Long-Term Historical Factors: Restricted Elite Rule

HAVING ESTABLISHED WHAT THE CONTOURS OF DEMOCRACY MIGHT BE, WE NOW MOVE ON TO LOOKING AT THE ROLE OF HISTORY WITH REGARD TO THE 'THIRD WAVE' IN THE SOUTH. The outcome of political struggles are shaped by the structures which contain them; hence the current wave of democratisation is shaped not only by the global consensus that formal democracy is the only form of legitimate government (Schmitter 1995), but also by the past and in particular the history of political traditions and relationships. Genuine democracy, as the author has argued above, requires the establishment of political, social and economic citizenship rights and the creation of institutions which offer effective and responsive government to its citizens. Latin America, where the contemporary phase of democratisation began over fifteen years ago, has grosso modo, a history of restricted elite rule. This history shapes the transitions, and structures contemporary political change, making genuine democracy difficult to achieve. The author illustrates these general points with brief reference to Chile and Venezuela.

During the period of authoritarian rule under General Pinochet and indeed as far back as the 1960s, Chile was frequently referred to as one of the few democracies in Latin America, with a history of party competition, regular periodic elections etc. stretching back most of the twentieth century. Yet, in fact, it would be more precise to describe the political system in Chile as restricted civilian elite rule for most of that period. A competitive party system was established in Chile in the twentieth century without any significant weakening of the landed elite which, alongside early consolidation of state power, allowed for the establishment of electoral contestation as a means to determining office-holding (Rueschmeyer, Stephens and Stephens 1992). The party system grew out of inter-elite conflict and the fragmentation of interests within the dominant class at the end of the nineteenth century; once these conflicts were overcome a parliamentary model of politics was established which protected the material and cultural interests of all sectors of the economically privileged to the exclusion of the majority. The socio-economic power of the landowners also meant that formal democracy came at the price of the political exclusion of the peasantry, corruption, an electoral register which comprised only an estimated 7-12 percent of the population (Cruz-Coke 1952; Zeitlin 1984) and the co-opting of opposition elites (Grant 1983). As a result, despite the establishment of competitive elections, Chilean governments, at least until 1964, exhibited less inclination to introduce measures of socio-economic reform than populist governments in Latin America (Remmer 1984). Remmer (1984: 205) concluded that "inter-party competition impeded rather than promoted state action on behalf of subordinate groups in Chile". This model lasted virtually untouched until the 1960s. In sum, democracy was little more than a strategy for elite rule; when this model of democracy was challenged by the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei (1964-1970) and the Popular Unity coalition of Allende (1970-1973), there was a right wing backlash in the form of Pinochet's military coup.

The Chilean transition which began in 1989 was hailed almost immediately as one of the more successful of the new democracies in Latin America and throughout the developing world. As Pearce notes (1996:172), some of this is due to the fact that "the 'formal' features of Chilean political life ... proved resilient enough to survive the years of military dictatorship and then to re-emerge and contribute to the notably smooth transition to civilian rule in the 1990s". Yet, on closer inspection, the terms under which the transition was carried out reproduced a number of the restricted and elitist features of the pre-1973 system which suggested poor chances of creating a genuine and inclusive democracy and diminishing the veto power of authoritarian enclaves. The nature of the transition meant that the armed forces were able to retain substantial economic resources and able to insist on a constitution which reduced the executive's power to make sweeping changes (Linz and Stepan 1996). In certain areas, executive policy is de facto subject to armed forces approval and the military has developed the concept of 'the internal frontier' to define for itself a role in drug policies, terrorism and development policies in areas with weak infrastructure and poor development indicators (McSherry 1998). At the same time, the transformation of the economy under Pinochet meant that business had acquired an institutional weight within the state (Silva 1993) which gave it important resources with which to shape the agenda of economic reform after the transition. As a result, the centre-left alliance which took office in 1989 and was re-elected in 1994 has established stable government but is unable to tackle decisively the inequitable distribution of political and economic power in the country. Social reforms, despite a promising start and some limited successes, have run into difficulty because business groups oppose further tax increases. This is exacerbated by a slowdown in growth, making it impossible for the government to fund further social reform. Growth for 1999 was expected to be only 0.5 percent, following an economic slump of up to 6 percent for some months (Latin America Weekly Report, 15 June 1999; Latin America Weekly Report, 22 June 1999). And, finally, the centre-left government split on the Pinochet case. Polls in Chile reveal a growing disenchantment with the 'political class' and the electoral process (Riquelme 1999). The Pinochet affair appears much less important to the public at large than to Chilean political elites, with the government's failure to tackle poverty and improve living standards apparently weighing more in terms of popular judgements of the government. Nevertheless, the government's response to Pinochet's detention does reveal the persistence of authoritarian enclaves in Chile and an elected government which has not yet freed itself from the influence of the armed forces.

Venezuela offers a different example of the limitations of formal democratic structures on the creation of a culture of citizenship and constitutes a very different pattern of limited elite rule. The contemporary political system, based on party contestation and competitive elections, was established in 1958 following a long period of dictatorship. It survived the wave of military authoritarianism of the 1960s and 1970s in Latin America in part due to the leverage the government enjoyed as a result of revenue accrued from oil reserves. But a severe crisis, expressed most dramatically in the popular uprising in 1989 known as the Caracazo which left at least 500 people dead, engulfed the country in the early 1980s and centred on the failure of the two main political parties, the Social Democratic Accion Democratica and the Christian Democratic COPEI to represent the popular sectors (or indeed substantial parts of the middle class) or to bring about significant social reforms. By the 1990s, the small leftist party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) was also tainted by association with the traditional party system. As a result, the electoral process has since been dominated by the growing strength of non-traditional political movements. These are of two sorts. There is, first, the movement known as Causa Radical or Causa R, which draws intellectually on the leftist critique of traditional parties dating back to the 1970s (Lopez-Maya 1997) and has channelled an important part of popular dissatisfaction with politics. Causa R won the state elections in Bolivar in 1989 and the elections for mayor of Caracas in 1992. By 1993, it received over 20 percent of the vote in presidential and parliamentary elections, displacing the MAS as the third force in Venezuelan politics. But even more spectacular than the rise of Causa R has been the eruption of military populism. Following the two failed coup attempts in 1992 led by young officers, the military has come gradually to be seen as the only force capable of reforming the corruption of the state by an important sector of Venezuela's poor, working class and middle class. As a result, the leader of young golpistas of 1992, Hugo Chavez, won the 1998 presidential elections with an ad-hoc political grouping the Polo Patriotico, and is currently embroiled in a struggle with the Venezuelan Congress, the site of the traditional parties' strength, over reforming the state. It is hard not to attribute the current crisis, as least in part, to the long-standing distance between the political elite and the traditional parties on the one hand, and the mass of voters on the other and to the culture of deference and non-accountability which gave rise to spectacular levels of corruption in politics. In other words, the possibilities of a genuine democratisation of Venezuelan politics is impeded by political traditions - of elitist and populism - which have shaped political interactions through the twentieth century.

Not surprisingly, there is growing evidence of popular disenchantment with the new political systems in Latin America. A number of anti-system movements have won significant support in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina as well as in Venezuela. Also, there are increasing signs that the citizens of new democracies are questioning the extent to which democracy is working for them. A 1997 public opinion poll of 17 Latin American countries, for example, found that 65 percent of the region's population is dissatisfied or not very satisfied about how democracy works (MORI Chile 1998).

 

The Global Political Economy and Political Change In The South

IF THE NEW DEMOCRACIES ARE EMPTY OF DEMOCRATIC CONTENT, AND SHORT ON CITIZENSHIP, HOW DO THEY SURVIVE? In part, this is for the same reason that many of such democracies came into being: a combination of global pressures combined with the impact of globalisation on states in the South. Together, these have created political systems where the drive to establish a new model of global insertion have created at best formal democratic systems which institutionalise competition without creating citizenship. Elected governments rely on external support and/or support from a coalition including state elites and business groups which are able to adapt successfully to the new liberal and export-oriented development models. At worst, global pressures to promote new export industries coupled with pressure to reform the state along the new public management lines have made political reform and the introduction of elections meaningless because the state has collapsed and power struggles have shifted to local groups or to external agencies (Zartman 1995).

In order to understand the complex political processes unfolding in the South, it is, therefore, important to unpick the model of democracy which is pressed on developing states. In effect, the current 'conjuncture for democracy' is, in fact, a conjuncture favouring a broader process of liberalisation which links democracy with the neoliberal economic agenda. States in the developing world are encouraged to carry out political reforms which fit the current notion of economic development through open trading, global integration and marketisation: the new development paradigm consists essentially of market economics and democratisation, understood as the introduction of liberal institutional reform (Gill 1995). Thus, democracy is seen either as a convenient political shell for reform of the state and marketisation of the economy or as an enabling factor in encouraging successful liberalisation of the economy. The result is that developing states are under pressure to implement a very specific particular model of democracy: 'neoliberal democracy', which takes a conventionally liberal perspective in that it assumes the market to be egalitarian and capitalism to operate along socially democratising principles (Pinehiro 1996; Grugel 1998). It presumes that individual rights and freedoms originate in the market and that political representation is independent of social and economic variables. Neoliberal democracy thus replicates the unproblematic linkage between democracy and capitalism that can be found in empirical democratic theory. Elections, human rights and pacification policies are tagged onto economic liberalisation and viewed essentially as a consequence of it. The intellectual origins of this policy lie in liberal theory rather than in a grounded analysis of the politics, society or economies of the South.

The process by which neoliberal democracy is imposed and/or encouraged can be traced through the documents of the World Bank. A World Bank Report on Africa dating from 1981, for example, concerned with explaining the economic crisis in Africa, pointed the finger of responsibility for policy and development failures at national governments, suggesting that a particular model of democracy could assist in the implementation of economic growth. It thus constituted the beginning of a process whereby international donors pay attention to the political framework in which economic reform is carried out. By 1989, the World Bank had defined 'good governance', as the drive for democratic government came to be termed, as part of the reform package it was recommending to aid-dependent states in Africa, thereby linking political change to the introduction of market-led economic reforms. Thus in the case of a number of African countries, 'democratisation' is, in fact, related to the leverage of international agencies rather than to any movement from within demanding accountability and a deepening of citizenship, and the model of democracy which is encouraged relates democracy squarely with the process of economic restructuring.

Pressures on Southern states to pursue neoliberal democracy come from a number of sources apart from the World Bank. States that are not even heavily indebted are also subject to pressures and enticements to implement democratic reforms which are favourable to marketisation. As well as donor agencies such as the World Bank, Northern states, international organisations including the United Nations, regional organisations (the Organisation of African States and the Organisation of American States), and transitional non-governmental organisations (NGO) including powerful aid donors such as Oxfam (Oxford Committee for Famine Relief), are also interested in democratic promotion. Many of these also link democracy with the expansion of capitalism and the market, although in the case of the transnational NGOs, their policies are more ambiguous and their concerns are more to do with the idea that the market may promote an active civil society and thereby lead to greater participation and accountability in government (Grugel, forthcoming).

Promoting democratisation means that international agencies link aid to particular policies. This linkage can be negative or positive. It may be, for example, that the World Bank will only release aid providing that certain political, economic and administrative reforms are carried out (negative linkages); or a number of positive strategies may be applied in aid-dependent countries - funds for the introduction of multi-party elections, programmes to promote civic awareness or human rights and support for local NGOs may be made available independent of the economic and political performance of the recipient country.

Direct pressure is, however, only one way in which the global political economy favours the introduction of elitist and formal democracies in the South. The international environment also provides actors within developing states with ideas, norms and models of democracy. In this way, international norms, the spread of ideas and policy learning also contribute to generating a consensus about how developing countries should recreate their political systems. Hence, the impact of the global political economy on the South can be conceptualised as one in which actors in the South choose to learn, rather than find, recipes for development imposed upon them. It thus becomes difficult to unravel the source of the pressure leading to political change and to a particular model of democratisation. In particular, learning has led to an emphasis on following western recipes, even though it is clear that, once transposed to the South, their impact may be quite different. As the first Minister of the Economy in post-transition Poland explained the country's choice of economic model: "Poland is too poor to attempt experiments, we are following models used elsewhere. The rich countries are free to experiment if they wish" (quoted in Maravall 1996:102).

The rise of neoliberal economics and formal democracy in some developing states is, therefore, attributable to choices made by elected governments. In Latin America, neoliberal policies have rarely been imposed in the direct way that has shaped Africa's economic trajectory in the 1990s. Indeed, in Latin America, neoliberal policies have frequently been implemented by governments elected into office to develop heterodox policies which went on to experience a change of heart once in office. Fujimori in Peru, Menem in Argentina and Caldera in Venezuela are examples of presidents who 'changed their minds'. Yet governments in the South, even in Latin America, hardly have a FREE choice either. They make choices about economic policies from a menu of development ideas generated internationally, in the context of a global restructuring between rich and poor which favours the adoption of non-confrontational policies on the part of the South as a way of avoiding exclusion from the international system and in the full knowledge of the dependence of developing states on global capital markets. Conceptualised in this way, adopting liberal economics combined with formal democracy is less an example of 'social learning' (Kahler 1990; Biersteker 1995) and more a sign of the exhaustion pervading the South. This is reflected in the attempts made since the early 1980s to create development alternatives, the 'new realism' on the part of elites in government and the fundamental restructuring of power relations within many developing states, strengthening the hand of conservative thinkers, the right and business groups over leftists and reformers.

Once again the general argument can be illustrated with reference to Chile. As we have seen, the transition to democracy was carried in a consensual way, leaving a number of features of the authoritarian period intact. One such overhang from the Pinochet period was the penetration of the state by business, especially export groups. At the same time, the democratic governments sought to build a consensus with business over aspects of economic policy-making. The government accepted the need to listen to business when making economic policy and has formed sets of relationships with business groups, which have replaced the links business had established with the technocrats of the dictatorship. In the words of a representative of the Chilean Association of Manufacturers (1997), the Sociedad de Formento Fabril (SFF), the relationship between the democratic government and industry is 'one of confidence'. The result is a government concerned with growth, export performance, international integration and global liberalisation instead of (not alongside) the introduction of policies to repair the social fabric traumatised by the dictatorship. Little wonder that while economic growth, at least until 1999, has been steady, and indeed impressive; on the other hand, social progress has been slow. The governments have been able to force business to consider only very moderate tax increases in order to combat extreme poverty. Entrepreneurs initially accepted readjustments to the tax system, which expanded revenue by 2 percent of GDP until 1994, allowing for modest rises in social spending. The minimum wage remains only around US$ 156 and business groups have since indicated their rejection of further tax increases.

The transformation of Costa Rican democracy from the early 1980s also reveals the way in which choices in the South are structured by the need for global insertion and acceptance and the impact this has on the quality of democracy and citizenship. Costa Rican democracy has been from the 1950s linked to the strong state intervention in the economy. Nevertheless, the collapse of the economy in the 1980s undermined the confidence of state actors in their ability to lead the economy and weakened social support for a strong state. The state was no longer the driving force behind the export-driven model that emerged by the end of the 1980s and state elites have not been sufficiently strong to keep welfare promotion as a priority on the political agenda. Instead, economic policies have been shaped by a policy coalition in which the leadership of the coalition was supplied from outside, and USAID (US Agency for International Development) piloted and promoted export policies through the 1980s (Clark 1995; 1997). This has had an inevitable impact on social provision and state-society relationships.

 

Conclusion

THE ARTICLE HAS TRIED TO SHOW IN THIS ARTICLE THAT THE TERM 'DEMOCRATISATION', MEANING THE INTRODUCTION OF CITIZENSHIP PRACTICES AND ACCOUNTABLE AND RESPONSIVE GOVERNMENTS, DOES NOT ADEQUATELY CAPTURE THE COMPLEX NATURE OF POLITICAL CHANGE IN THE SOUTH; AND THAT THE PROCESS OF POLITICAL CHANGE IN THE SOUTH IS A RESPONSE TO PRESSURES AND MODELS WHICH EMANATE FROM WITHIN THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY, AND IS CONTAINED WITHIN PARAMETERS SET BY THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM. These pressures then entwine with embedded national histories and cultures. The introduction of the formal structures of democracy - periodic elections, party systems, etc. - is the result either of global pressures or influences or a model imposed by domestic governments in the South which now rely on domestic and international business groups for support and stability. Democratisation is thus, rather paradoxically, frequently an exclusionary form of government which serves to strengthen elitism and privilege, and to fence off the government from popular pressures which might otherwise prove unsustainable. It is not therefore simply a case that democracy requires structures which are absent in the South and that exclusion and the absence of citizenship are the result of undemocratic cultures or the difficulties of transposing democracy to the South; but rather that the contemporary process of 'democratisation' builds upon elitist practices and is aimed principally at establishing enabling conditions for marketised economic growth. Exclusion therefore may not be an accident; the current model of democracy currently being built in the South carries with it almost the inevitability of exclusion of the majority and may pre-empt the establishment of citizenship and solidarity as core values within the political system.

Analysing the process of democratisation in the South suggests a number of potentially rich avenues of departure for development studies. First, it points to the continuing importance of the 'political' for understanding the trajectories of the South. Second, it suggests that the state still matters, globalisation notwithstanding. The state in the South is more than a 'conveyor belt' for decisions taken elsewhere and state policies may reflect the preferences of national as well as international elites. And, finally, it suggests the need to extend development theory towards a (re)emphasis on the state and national politics and the linkages between the state and the global order.

October 1999

 

Note:

*:  Jean Grugel is Lecturer at the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.Back.

 

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