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Crucial Elements for Understanding Democratization and Autocratization
Ekkart Zimmermann
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DOI:10.17265/2328-2134/2024.05.001
Technical University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany
Aristotle related both dependent variables: democratization and autocratization in his broader explanation of regime change. For him two factors were crucial, the number of rulers (one, a few, the masses) and their values and behavior in terms of normal times and in crises periods. Here we try to be as parsimonious as possible emphasizing the size of the selectorate, as Aristotle knew already. The selectorate comprises the people who have a say in selecting political leaders. In this respect selectorate theory (Bueno de Mesquita et al.) is purely formal and helps to explain both, the origins of democracy and autocracy as well as their dismissal. The size of the selectorate is the crucial intervening variable in linking more specific causes and circumstances for bringing about the respective states on the dependent variables. Other theoretical glimpses will be taken at crises of democracies and autocracies. The size of the electorate can be limited by (brute) force or even through abstaining from the right to vote or using it to abolish democracy for autocracy (Przeworski, Zimmermann, and Saalfeld). Here we emphasize four major blocs of variables: (1) economic success (Lipset, Huntington), (2) the relative size of the consenters, dissenters, and assenters (Easton, Wright, Linz) bolstering even badly performing democratic and autocratic regimes, (3) the exit options and alternatives created for and by political and economic elites, possibly tied to potential mass mobilization and protest action, and (4) democratic peace theory as to external challenges to regime change. A causal model will be developed around those factors hopefully bringing about a consistent understanding of the basic processes of democratization and autocratization.
Political Regimes, Selectorate Theory, Economic Development, Public Goods Production
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