Democratization

Democratization has established itself as perhaps the most normatively persuasive and contested concept in current political discourse. Both as a process and a concept, democratization draws on a long history. The intellectual origins of the concept of democracy stretch back to Athenian ideals of city governance and Roman republicanism. During the 1700s, the notion that sovereignty lay with the people, which emerged from Athens and Rome, became coupled with the modern ideologies of the Enlightenment, especially liberalism and socialism. The emergence of modern nation-states and capitalist social relations created the conditions under which ideals of citizenship, governmental accountability, and civil society established themselves as the common sense of Europe and later America. Democratization, then, might be most [Page 213]readily understood as a concept that encapsulates the expansion of a set of related political ideals with different intellectual vintages that gain public prominence during the emergence of capitalist modernity. Relatedly, democratization is also a process in which various social groups have made claims on the state through protests, riots, strikes, and lobbies. The discourse of democracy had infused many struggles against monarchical absolutism, working class struggles, and the suffragette movement.

Out of this complex intellectual and political history has emerged a commonly accepted and simple formula that is closely associated with democratization: universal franchise, or “one person, one vote.” Other aspects of democratization include the rise of a multiparty constitution, rights of expression and assembly, and mandated periodic elections.

But democratization is not just a story of political change in “the West”; rather, it has become a key reference point in understanding political change throughout the world. Some of the most prominent questions discussed in global politics today rely on the purchase of democratization as a concept; for example, how globalization might be regulated, whether countries have achieved democratic consolidation, or whether democratization enhances the prospects for peace. In essence, democratization contains at its core two distinct but closely related aspects: a process by which political life changes, and a normative view of political life making statements about how political communities should behave.

Defining is always closely related to understanding. Although democratization has currently accrued a widely held and relatively straightforward definition, this has not closed off theoretical or analytical controversy. There is no space to deal with this fully, but we can review some key points of departure here to reveal the different emphases and nuances that can be given to the meaning of democratization.