The meaning that we ascribe to the notion of democratic consolidation depends on where we stand our empirical viewpoints and where we aim to reach our normative horizons. It varies according to the contexts and the goals we have in mind.
The most widely accepted criteria for identi-fying a country as democratic have been put forward by Robert Dahl—civil and political rights plus fair, competitive, and inclusive elections. Two other subtypes of democracy have gained wide recognition in the scholarly literature on new democracies. Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide.
Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves. Built on the Johns Hopkins University Campus. To establish democratic zeal throughout the state, elites should create inclusive policies rather than exclusive policies. This condition directly relates to the ethnic demographics. To ensure that elites play the democratic game, they must feel that their political position is secure.
Having a favorable balance of power concerning demographics will allow these elites to feel more comfortable extending full citizenship rights to ethnic minorities. The last condition stipulates that citizenship laws should not include language governing who can and cannot be a citizen. While it may seem like an inclusive idea to codify that different ethnic groups can all be citizens, it ignores the fluidity and confines the trajectory of identities.
Ideas of what constitutes a certain ethnic group change over time, as does who identifies within that ethnic group. While citizenship laws in this model can list certain requirements, such as knowledge of the country's history or constitution, it should not list who can become a citizen based on anything resembling a social or economic characteristic, lest it fall to the same flaws as federalism and consociationalism.
This article utilizes the methodology of a comparative case study CCS. CCS allows the reader to synthesize similarities across cases, providing a path toward theory generalization that will give political scientists a model from which to analyze future cases in the field of ethnic politics.
The main goal of a CCS is to find relationships between variables Lijphart , By finding points of convergence and divergence for independent and dependent variables, an argument can be constructed. In this analysis, I identify the fair extension or lack thereof of citizenship as my independent variable, and the full consolidation of democracy, and thus a necessarily cohesive population or lack thereof as my dependent variables.
Each of the three cases explored in this article Estonia, Latvia, and Israel are analyzed to understand the uses of Jus Sanguinis and Jus Soli both individually and together. Estonia, Latvia, and Israel are used in this analysis because they each dealt with or are in the midst of an ethnically fractured society. In Estonia and Latvia, the cleavage was between ethnic Estonians and Latvians on the one side, and Ethnic Russians on the other. In Israel, the cleavage is between Jews and Arab Muslims.
The key difference between the cases is located in what their respective application of citizenship doctrines produced. Latvia and Estonia demonstrate how the fair extension of citizenship laws produces consolidated democracies. For example, citizenship laws were used to defuse ethnic tensions between Latvians and Estonians, and Russians.
Meanwhile, while Israel's application of citizenship laws has solved the ethnic conflict, they did not extend them fairly and equally to all potential citizens, and thus failed to heal the ethnic fractures. The differences between the Baltic cases and Israel demonstrate that when fair citizenship laws are extended, democracies consolidate.
When they are not extended in an egalitarian manner, the ethnic cleavages go unresolved, harming the potential for a long lasting consolidate democracy. While Latvia and Estonia represent the first model, Israel represents the second.
The requirements for joining the European Union were laid out in the Copenhagen Constitution, which emphasizes democratic freedoms and institutions as the first requirement Copenhagen European Council One of the political criterions for NATO membership is the promotion of democratic values. As Linz and Stepan b , explain, however, a fractured society poses a large stumbling block in this process.
The pressure to consolidate a democracy in this paradigm forced astute political maneuvering from Estonia and Latvia's titular ethnicity, which would want to keep their country's Estonian or Latvian characteristics without becoming too illiberal.
The third case, Israel, felt similar pressures to consolidate its democracy under difficult circumstances. The state of Israel itself is an ideological project serving as a safe haven for Jews in which they can govern themselves on the one hand and a fully democratic outpost on the other. Because Israel was founded to exist as a Jewish state, it is expected that the Israeli polity will be Jewish, yet confining who exactly can lead a state to a certain group means is illiberal in design.
Resolving the inherent tension between these two goals is key to implementing a fully consolidated democracy in Israel. Perhaps the most pertinent statement of Israel's goal to consolidate its democracy can be found in its declaration of independence, which states that the country "will be based on freedom, justice and peace […] it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants irrespective of religion, race of sex" Israel Yet, to a state wishing to be both Jewish and democratic, additional ethnic groups can be a barrier to those lofty goals.
Would it be possible to reconcile idealistic democratic goals and a state founded to be Jewish in an overwhelmingly Arab region? The solutions and failures to prevent ethnic divisions inhibiting democratic ventures can be found in Latvia's, Estonia's, and Israel's use of citizenship laws.
Latvia's path toward democratization is largely informed by its history of oppression at the hands of two foreign powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Attempts to alter the cultural makeup of Latvia had largely failed and instead triggered an increased sense of what it meant to be Latvian.
Perhaps the most important instance in this process was the Soviet Union's intense strategy to "Russify" Latvia. These demographics remained throughout the fall of the Soviet Union and presented a problem when Latvia began its path toward democratization after the fall of the Soviet Union.
In , Russian president Boris Yeltsin recognized Latvia's independence, allowing Latvians to chart their own course Ibid, 7. Given the poor economy and history of subjugation to foreign powers, Latvians quickly sought economic development and social liberalization initiatives to spearhead their goal of joining NATO and the European Union Ibid, Because economic liberalization and development often go hand-in-hand with political democratization Moore , , and because the route toward Western protection against Russian encroachment was predicated on those goals, Latvians felt enormous pressure to pursue democratic transition.
Consolidating democracy in Latvia, however, demanded an artful solution to the common problem of ethnic factionalism. The obstacle Latvia faced was the ratio between ethnic Latvians and nonLatvians, primarily ethnic Russians. While this ratio displayed a large discrepancy between the titular and minority ethnicities, it was a sharp decline compared to previous demographic censuses.
The decline in ethnic Latvians came as a result of the effort to "Russify" Latvia by the Soviet Union and largely contributed to the main ethnic cleavage in the country: Latvians supporting a Latvian Latvia, and Russians supporting a Russified Latvia.
Rather than suppressing the rights of ethnic Russians, pro-democracy Latvians decided to push ahead with their democratic initiatives. Survey data show that although ethnic Russians were not viewed as assimilable, they were comfortable identifying as "citizens of the republic" Ibid, Members of the Latvian polity , recognizing that ethnic Russians were comfortable identifying as citizens even if they identified as Russian rather than Latvian, extended citizenship rights to the minority ethnicity.
Through data gleaned from the census, the Latvian polity inferred that before Soviet domination, Latvia maintained a much higher percentage of ethnic Latvians than non-Latvians. Implementation of combined Jus Soli and Jus Sanguinis citizenship doctrine allowed for the re-incorporation and re-integration of ethnic Latvians who had not been considered citizens under Latvia's foreign rulers.
Ethnic Latvians who had been living overseas and descendants of former Latvian nationals were presented with a path toward citizenship. Securing the ethnic majority provided a more comfortable atmosphere for the Latvian polity to consolidate democratically. Pressure to secure Latvia's independence coincided with the need to join the liberal-democratic institutions of NATO and the European Union.
Rather than capitulating to ethnic factionalism, lawmakers in Latvia recognized the favorable demographic context and strategies to amplify the population of the titular nationality.
This maneuver allowed them to implement a type of safety-valve democracy, in which full democratic rights could be extended to ethnic minorities via citizenship without compromising the secure position of ethnic majority.
Due to the extension of full democratic rights to minority groups, they felt comfortable joining in and accepting the process of democratic consolidation, eliminating any of the large cleavages that would have split the population and deconstructed any democratic transition. The Latvian elites could, on one hand, display their democratic improvement and, on the other hand, embrace their comfortable majority and initiate moves to join the EU and NATO. The offer of citizenship in this case facilitated democratic consolidation through securing the future for the titular nationality and through extending full citizenship rights to ethnic minorities.
How Latvia Came through the Financial Crisis. Washington: Peterson Institute for International Economics. Accessed August 17, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. January 1, Accessed August 19, Accessed August 24, Anderson, L. Ben-Gurion, David. Accessed August 10, Bennich-Bjorkman, L. Human Rights Watch. Brubaker, Rogers. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. July 4, Accessed August 18, Collins, Kristin A.
Critchley, W. Erk, Jan and Lawrence M. London: Routledge. Copenhagen European Council. Evans, Alfred B. Golan, Arnon. Havel, Vaclav. Freedom House. Joost, Kai. Law, John. Lijphart, Arend. Linz, Juan J. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Marshall, Monty G. Accessed August 23, Moore, Barrington. Boston: Beacon Press. Norris, Pippa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gifford, and Ignacio Correa-Velez. Rabinovich, Itamar and Jehuda Reinharz. Waltham: Brandeis University Press. Scott, James Brown. Spatig-Amerikaner, Ary. Washington: Center for American Progress. Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldstein, A. Goldstein, Adam. Clocks and Clouds [Online], 7. Clocks and Clouds. JournalQuest is a free program to help academic student publications increase online readership and distribution.
Munck, Gerardo L. This article offers a systemic assessment existing data sets of democracy used in large- N analysis and evaluates three challenges that researchers face in their construction: conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation.
Instead, he suggests that if consolidation is determined by whether a democracy will endure, then typologies of polyarchy must include informally institutionalized democracies—those in which actors act for particularistic rather than universalistic reasons.
These imperfect democracies can endure despite the lack of a close fit between formal rules and political behavior. Schedler, Andreas.
Schedler tackles the expanding field of definitions of democratic consolidation. He proposes that scholars use the definition most appropriate to their starting point: authoritarianism, electoral democracy, liberal democracy, and advanced democracy. If consolidation is complete when a democracy is likely to endure, then observable measures of endurance are needed.
Schedler suggests that behavioral evidence is superior to attitudinal and economic evidence because it is more proximate to the phenomenon of interest: regime stability. This leads the author to a somewhat self-evident conclusion that democracies endure when political actors behave democratically. He supports this conclusion with evidence of crisis management in Latin America.
Schmitter, Philippe C. The authors outline an intentionally broad understanding of what democracy is by focusing on its conceptual definition, procedures, and institutions, as well as its underlying principles not enshrined elsewhere, such as contingent consent and bounded uncertainty. They point out that democracies may take many forms and will not necessarily be better at solving various socioeconomic problems.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login. Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here. Not a member? Sign up for My OBO. Already a member? Publications Pages Publications Pages.
Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Username Please enter your Username.
0コメント