The End of Power

by Naim, Moises

  Rethinking political parties, modernizing their recruiting methods, and retooling their organization and operations can boost their allure and make them more worthy of the trust of the societies they wish to govern. Ideally, they could also become more effective laboratories of political innovation.

  Only when we restore trust in the political system at home—and thus endow our leaders with the capacity to contain the decay of power and enable them to make hard decisions and avoid gridlock—will we be able to tackle the most pressing global challenges. And for this we need stronger, more modern, and more democratic political parties that stimulate and facilitate participation.

  THE COMING SURGE OF POLITICAL INNOVATIONS

  Restoring trust, reinventing political parties, finding new ways in which average citizens can meaningfully participate in the political process, creating new mechanisms of effective governance, limiting the worst impacts of checks and balances while averting excessive concentrations of unaccountable power, and enhancing the capacity of nation-states to work together should be the central political goals of our time.

  Without these changes, sustained progress in fighting the threats at home and abroad that conspire against our security and prosperity will be impossible.

  In this era of revolutionary change, where almost nothing we do or experience in our daily lives has been left unaffected, one critical area remains surprisingly untouched: the way we govern ourselves, our communities, nations, and the international system. Or the ways in which we as individuals engage in the political process. Ideologies have come and gone, political parties have risen and fallen, and some government practices have been improved by reforms and information technology. Electoral campaigns now rely on more sophisticated methods of persuasion—and, of course, more people than ever are governed by a leader they have elected and not by a dictator. While welcome, these changes pale in comparison with the extraordinary transformations in communications, medicine, business, and war.

  In short, disruptive innovation has not arrived in politics, government, and political participation.

  But it will. We are on the verge of a revolutionary wave of positive political and institutional innovations. As this book has shown, power is changing in so many arenas that it will be impossible to avoid important transformations in the way humanity organizes itself to make the decisions it needs to survive and progress. This kind of surge in radical and positive innovations in government has happened before. Greek democracy and the wave of political innovations unleashed by the French Revolution are just two of the best-known examples. We’re overdue for another. As the historian Henry Steele Commager asserted about the eighteenth century:

  We invented practically every major political institution which we have, and we have invented none since. We invented the political party and democracy and representative government. We invented the first independent judiciary in history. . . . We invented judicial review. We invented the superiority of the civil over the military power. We invented freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the Bill of Rights—well, we could go on and on. . . . Quite a heritage. But what have we invented since of comparable importance?9

  After World War II, we did experience another surge of political innovations designed to avert another global conflict. That led to the creation of the United Nations, and to a plethora of specialized international agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that changed the world’s institutional landscape.

  ANOTHER, EVEN MORE SWEEPING, WAVE OF INNOVATIONS IS BUILDING, one that promises to change the world as much as the technological revolutions of the last two decades did. It will not be top-down, orderly, or quick, the product of summits or meetings, but messy, sprawling, and in fits and starts. Yet it is inevitable. Driven by the transformation in the acquisition, use, and retention of power, humanity must, and will, find new ways of governing itself.

  APPENDIX

  Democracy and Political Power:

  Main Trends During the Postwar Period

  Note to readers: This appendix—prepared by Mario Chacón, PhD, Yale University—applies particularly to Chapter 5.

  MEASURING THE EVOLUTION OF DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP

  I start by taking a look at how the number of democratic regimes has changed over the last four decades. To determine which countries are democracies and which ones are not, I have used two taxonomies widely employed in the academic literature.

  The first taxonomy of regimes is the one provided in the Freedom in the World survey conducted by Freedom House (2008). In this survey, regimes are classified as “not free,” “partially free,” and “free.” Each country is classified depending on a scale that measures political rights and civil liberties. The subcategories measured in the scale are freedom of electoral processes, political pluralism, functioning of government, freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational freedom, rule of law, and personal rights. For purposes of the analysis, I categorize “free” countries as full democracies, and “not free” and “partially free” countries as nondemocratic.

  The second source I used is the regime classification of Przeworski et al. (2000), which is based on a minimalist definition of democracy similar to the one proposed by Schumpeter (1964). In this classification, a “democracy” is a regime in which the government is selected through contested elections. Thus, in this classification free and fair contestation is the fundamental facet in any democratic regime (see Dahl 1971 for a similar approach). Using these two classifications, I have calculated the percentage of all independent regimes in the world that are classified as “democratic” (as opposed to “nondemocratic”) in any given year.

  Figure A.1 shows the evolution of democratic regimes worldwide since 1972.*

  FIGURE A.1. PERCENTAGE OF DEMOCRATIC REGIMES: 1972–2008

  SOURCE: Adapted from Freedom House Index.

  As shown in Figure A.1, the percentage of democracies across the world has increased significantly in the last four decades. According to Freedom House, in 1972 a little more than 28 percent of the 140 independent regimes observed in the world were democratic. Thirty years later, in 2002, this figure was 45 percent. This global increase in the number of democracies is confirmed by Przeworski’s data. In this classification, between 1972 and 2002 the percentage of democracies increased from 27 percent in 1972 to 59 percent in 2002. The differences between the two measures are to be expected given that the conditions for democracy used by Freedom House are somewhat stricter than the ones used by Przeworski and his coauthors. Yet, we can conclude from this first approximation that there has been an overall positive trend in the number of democratic regimes around the world in the past three decades.

  Are there regional differences in the evolution of democratic regimes? If the factors causing drastic regime changes are clustered across space, we should observe regional patterns in the evolution of democratic regimes. These regional patterns are closely related to the idea of “waves of democratization” described originally by Huntington (1991). To explore this possibility, in Figures A.2 and A.3 I show the evolution of democratic regimes (as a percentage of all the regimes) in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the ex-Soviet bloc, North Africa, and the Middle East.*

  As shown in these two figures, many Latin American and ex-Soviet countries experienced a democratic transition during the period from 1975 to 1995. These transitions occurred mostly in the late 1970s for Latin America and in the early 1990s for the ex-Soviet bloc (following the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989). In 2008, 54 and 48 percent of the Latin American and ex-Soviet countries, respectively, are classified as free (democratic) by Freedom House. There is also a positive trend in democratization in sub-Saharan Africa, although it is less steep than the trend for Latin America. The Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East are remarkably stable, and fewer than 10 percent of them are classified as democracies throughout these years. These patterns are confirmed by Przeworski’s data, which are graph
ically represented in Figure A.3.

  These trends, of course, do not yet capture the effect of the Arab Spring on the political regimes in North Africa and the Middle East.

  FIGURE A.2. REGIONAL TRENDS (FREEDOM HOUSE 2010)

  SOURCE: Adapted from Freedom House, Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties 1970–2008 (New York: Freedom House, 2010).

  The OECD countries are not shown because these countries did not experience any radical regime change during the period in question. Given that all of these countries were democratic at the beginning of the period studied, their evolution is characterized by a stable (consolidated) democracy.

  FIGURE A.3. REGIONAL TRENDS IN DEMOCRACY (PRZEWORSKI ET AL., 2000)

  SOURCE: Adapted from A. Przeworski, M. Alvarez, J. A. Cheibub, and F. Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990, Cambridge University Press, New York.

  MINOR REFORMS AND LIBERALIZATIONS

  The figures presented thus far focus on radical political transformations in which a political regime becomes (or ceases) to be a democracy. These numbers may hide smaller movements toward democracy in many countries that did not experience a full transition. Minor reforms may induce important changes in the distribution of political power and human rights. For instance, many nondemocratic regimes introduced and allowed electoral competition to elect the legislature and high executive positions. Even if most of the elections in regimes considered fully democratic are not completely fair, minor liberalization may signal important changes in the distribution of power. Moreover, many transitions occur gradually, so the initiation of electoral competition may be indicative of future democratizations.

  To explore minor reforms, I have employed the Polity Score developed in the Polity Project of Marshall and Jaggers (2004). This measure is a continuous approximation that allows us to capture smaller regime changes, whether or not they end in democratization. Specifically, the Polity Score is a 20-point scale (ranging from –20, for a full autocracy, to 20, the score of a full democracy) measuring various facets of democracy and autocracy. The components of the scale include competitiveness and openness of the executive recruitment, constraint on the executive, and competitiveness of political participation. Figure A.4 presents the evolution of the world average Polity Score.

  FIGURE A.4. EVOLUTION OF DEMOCRACY: 1970–2008

  SOURCE: Adapted from Monty Marshall, K. Jaggers, and T. R. Gurr, 2010. Polity IV Project, “Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2010,” http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity4.htm.

  Figure A.4 is fully consistent with Figure A.1. In 1972, the world average was – 1.76 for 130 countries; in 2007, it was 3.69 for 159 countries.* Arguably an even more interesting exercise is to examine region-specific trends using the Polity Score. Figure A.5 presents the same world average disaggregated by region. (Note that the countries of East Asia and the Pacific are also included here.) Figure A.5 is analogous to Figures A.2 and A.3, but instead of radical reforms it shows average movements in the democracy scores by region, regardless of whether or not these regimes have become (or stopped being) democratic.

  As illustrated in Figure A.5, the positive trends in the Polity Score over the last four decades, which indicate that countries are becoming more democratic over time, are global. This figure also indicates that the pace of democratic improvement differs across regions. The Latin American and the ex-Soviet countries exhibit the greatest improvements in their democracy scores, the East Asian and the Pacific countries and sub-Saharan Africa exhibit significant improvements, and the North African and the Middle Eastern countries exhibit the least improvements. All three trends are more pronounced during the post-1990 period than during the pre-1990 period.

  FIGURE A.5. REGIONAL TRENDS IN DEMOCRACY: POLITY SCORE

  SOURCE: Adapted from Monty Marshall, K. Jaggers, and T. R. Gurr, 2010. Polity IV Project, “Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2010,” http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity4.htm.

  PROXIES OF LIBERALIZATION AND DEMOCRATIZATION

  The above indicators are based on qualitative characteristics of the regimes observed, whereas in this section I have focused on characteristics that are directly related to political liberalization (or to democratization). First, I looked at the level of political competition. For many political theorists, the level and the type of political competition are the fundamental features of any democratic regime (see Dahl 1971). A simple approximation to the level of competition is to examine the party composition of legislatures across regimes. In one-party regimes like China or Cuba, the incumbent party monopolizes all seats in the legislature and the opposition’s candidates are not allowed to run at the national level. The number of seats held by opposition parties in the legislature could be a good proxy for how competitive and democratic the electoral process is. Moreover, the introduction of party competition in the legislature (as opposed to the executive) is generally the first step in a full-scale democratization. For instance, the Mexican transition of 2000 started in the early 1980s, when the ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), allowed for meaningful congressional elections and reserved a certain number of seats for opposition parties in the lower chamber.

  Next, as a proxy for competitiveness I calculated the percentage of seats in parliament held by all minority parties and independents, as in Vanhanen (2002). In cases where the legislature composition is not available, I used the vote share of all the small parties, also as in Vanhanen (2002). Formally, the measure of political competitiveness (PC) is given by the following equation:

  PC = (100 – %SeatsMajorityParty)/100

  In this operationalization, political competition ranges from 0 cases in which the government party controls all seats in the legislature to values close to 1, cases in which the dominant party is very small. Thus, low (high) values of PC are associated with less (more) competition. For simplicity, countries in which there is no elected legislature in any given year are coded as 0. Note that these numbers are available for the entire postwar period so that we can see both the medium- and long-term trends. Figure A.6 presents the world average, and Figure A.7 presents the regional averages.

  As we can see from these figures, the immediate postwar years and the entire Cold War period are associated with an overall decline in political competition. This trend continues until the late 1970s. Then, in the 1980s, it reverses and we observe an increase in the global average of our variable: political competition. This positive trend in the post-1970s is consistent with Figures A.1 through A.4. Clearly, democratization tends to promote party competition and political divisions (arising from opposition groups) in the legislature.

  FIGURE A.6. POLITICAL COMPETITION, WORLD AVERAGE: POSTWAR PERIOD

  SOURCE: Adapted from Tatu Vanhanen. 2002. “Measures of Democratization 1999–2000.” Unpublished manuscript.

  Figure A.7 gives us an even better understanding about the general decline in political competition during the 1945–1975 period. Here, I show the averages for the same regions as those highlighted in Figures A.2 and A.3—Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East—as well as the average for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.* This graph shows that the global decline in political competition was caused by a sharp decline in the developing world. While the OECD competition remained stable, Latin America and Africa experienced a wave of authoritarianism in the period between 1945 and 1975. However, the positive tendency in political competition in these countries during the post-1970s is consistent with the positive trends in democracy presented in the previous section.

  FIGURE A.7. POLITICAL COMPETITION, REGIONAL AVERAGES: POSTWAR PERIOD

  SOURCE: Adapted from Monty Marshall, K. Jaggers, and T. R. Gurr, 2010. Polity IV Project, “Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2010,” http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity4.htm.

  REFERENCESr />
  Dahl, Robert A. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

  Freedom House. 2010. Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties 2010. New York: Freedom House.

  Huntington, Samuel P. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Normal: University of Oklahoma Press.

  Marshall, Monty G., K. Jaggers, and T. R. Gurr, 2010. “Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2010.” Polity IV Project, http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity4.htm.

  Przeworski, A., M. Alvarez, J. A. Cheibub, and F. Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990. New York: Cambridge University Press.

  Schumpeter, Joseph. 1964. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers.

  Vanhanen, Tatu. 2002. “Measures of Democratization 1999–2000.” Unpublished manuscript. University of Tampere, Finland.

  *The start point of 1972 corresponds to data availability. The Freedom House Index covers the period from 1972 to 2008.