This document summarizes key points from a chapter about the role of mass beliefs and value change in democratization. It makes three main points:
1) Mass beliefs are critically important for a country's chances of becoming and remaining democratic, as they determine whether a political regime is accepted. Modernization changes mass orientations in ways that support democratic principles.
2) Structure-focused theories of democratization overlook the role of mass beliefs in translating structures into collective action. Emancipative values that prioritize individual freedoms are the most reliable indicator of genuine mass support for democracy.
3) Growing access to resources empowers ordinary people and gives rise to emancipative values, fueling demands for
This document summarizes key points from a chapter about the role of mass beliefs and value change in democratization. It makes three main points:
1) Mass beliefs are critically important for a country's chances of becoming and remaining democratic, as they determine whether a political regime is accepted. Modernization changes mass orientations in ways that support democratic principles.
2) Structure-focused theories of democratization overlook the role of mass beliefs in translating structures into collective action. Emancipative values that prioritize individual freedoms are the most reliable indicator of genuine mass support for democracy.
3) Growing access to resources empowers ordinary people and gives rise to emancipative values, fueling demands for
This document summarizes key points from a chapter about the role of mass beliefs and value change in democratization. It makes three main points:
1) Mass beliefs are critically important for a country's chances of becoming and remaining democratic, as they determine whether a political regime is accepted. Modernization changes mass orientations in ways that support democratic principles.
2) Structure-focused theories of democratization overlook the role of mass beliefs in translating structures into collective action. Emancipative values that prioritize individual freedoms are the most reliable indicator of genuine mass support for democracy.
3) Growing access to resources empowers ordinary people and gives rise to emancipative values, fueling demands for
Overview • The role of mass beliefs and value change in democratization. • The congruence thesis: mass beliefs are of critical importance for countries’ chances to become and remain Democratic. For mass beliefs determine whether a political regime is accepted. • Major thinkers claimed that whether or not a political system emerges and survive in a country depends on the orientations prevailing among its people. Whether a nation is constituted as tyranny, monarchy, or democracy depends respectively on the prevalence of anxious, honest, or civic orientation. • According to Tocqueville, flourishing of democracy in the US reflects the liberal and participatory orientations of American people. • Democracy is fragile when it is a democracy without Democrats. Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e Overview • Modernization changes mass orientations in ways that make people supportive of such key Democratic principles as ideological pluralism, peaceful opposition, separation of powers, and popular control of government. • Congruence claims that political regimes become stable only insofar as their authority patterns meet population’s firmly encultured authority beliefs, regardless of regime type. • Authoritarian regimes are stable when the people idolize strong leaders who exercise unchecked powers, as Democratic regimes are stable when people believe that political authority ought to be subject to horizontal checks and popular controls.
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
The Role of Mass Beliefs—The Missing Link between Structure and Action • Most of the recent democratization literature has paid surprisingly little attention to the role of mass beliefs in democratization • Structure-focused approaches emphasize structural aspects of society Such as modernization , income inequality , group divisions, religious composition, etc. and specify no mechanism by which structures such as translate into the collective action by which democratization is initiated. • Action -focused approaches emphasize human action through the elite and mass actions that make democratization happen but does not explain them . How democratization happens, but not why it comes about. • Both have a common blind-spot, how to get from structure to action • Mass beliefs are needed to translate ‘structure into action’. Structures must give rise to orientations that make people believe that democracy is desirable goal.
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
Mass Demands for Democracy
• There is a tendency to equate popular preferences for
democracy with actual mass demands for democracy, but these are often superficial or purely instrumental • If essential preferences for democracy are weak, the actual level of democracy is low; but if basic preferences for democracy are strong, the actual level of democracy is generally high • Congruence theory argues that in order to be stable, the authority patterns characterizing a country’s political system must be consistent with the people’s prevailing authority beliefs
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
Centrality of Emancipative Values • Democracy is based on empowering human conditions in a society • Emancipative values constitute the cultural component in the human empowerment process • They do not only help to undermine authoritarianism, they also help to consolidate and deepen existing democracies • Emancipative values motivate people to put pressure on elites to establish, retain, or deepen democratic institutions • Explicit preferences for democracy are no reliable indicator of people's genuine demand for democracy because these preferences are often detached from a firm belief in democracy defining qualities. • Emancipated values are the single most reliable indicator of peoples demand for democracy because people who emphasized these values support democracy out of a genuine belief in its defining qualities, most notably freedoms.
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
Measuring Emancipative Values
• Based on data from the World Values Surveys, the
12-item index of emancipative values reliably and validly measures people’s support of universal freedoms • Emancipative values vary massively across national populations from different culture zones, and they vary more between nations than over societal cleavages within nations, thus representing a key element of national mentalities
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
The Role of Religion
• Religiosity, religious denomination, and a society’s
religious demography have all been identified as important cultural factors in influencing democracy • A demographic dominance of Protestants has been said to favour democracy, whereas a Muslim dominance has been claimed to be unfavourable • However, when one takes into account a population’s overall emphasis on emancipative values, the effect of religious demography becomes weak
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
The Importance of Regime Legitimacy • Democratic freedoms are by no means valued to the same extent all over the world. In culture zones in which authoritarian regimes prevail and oppressed Democratic freedoms, the value that most people place on this freedoms is low , which helps explain why authoritarian persists in these societies. • Some scholars assumed that autocracies are always illegitimate as far as the general public is concerned, because overwhelming majorities of ordinary people almost always prefer democracy to Autocracy primarily out of an interest in material redistribution. but this economic theory of democracy is flawed. Among hundred countries with 90% of humanity, there is not a single society in which people define democracy primarily as a means of economic redistribution.
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
The importance of regime legitimacy: • Outspoken supporters of democracy in authoritarian regimes frequently misunderstand democracy in authoritarian ways and misperceived their regimes as Democratic despite the fact that they are not. In these cases, support for democracy means the exact opposite of what the intuition suggests: support for authoritarian rule. After all, among the roughly 200 independent states recognized by the UN, very few do not describe themselves as Democratic . Even people in non-Democratic countries are exposed to abundant rhetoric about democracy. • What really matters is how strongly this preference for democracy is linked with emancipative values, because the strength of this link determines how firmly people resist authoritarian re-definitions of democracy • Rising emancipated values make people immune against authoritarian misunderstandings of democracy and against misperceiving non- Democratic regimes as Democratic.
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
The Emancipatory Impulse of Action Resources Action resources, which include material means (Food , shelter, household equipment and monetary incomes), cognitive skills (Information, education, and knowledge), and connective opportunities (Modernization in transportation and communication), elevate ordinary people’s agency in pursuing purposes of their choice • Emancipative values rise on the basis of growing action resources among large population segments. • growing action resources in the hands of ordinary people infuses societies with greater self coordinating capacities. • Emancipated values are most widespread in western societies because these societies have experienced the most massive growth of action resources in the hands of ordinary people.
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
Some Key Qualifications • Several qualifications are required for action resources to give rise to emancipate the values: 1- human mentalities shift naturally from preventive closure to promotive opponents. No authoritarian regime and no totalitarian propaganda can prevent emancipative values from rising. democracy itself does not need to be in place for these values to emerge. • 2- The utility logic that guides the emancipatory impulse of action resources is one of socially shared utilities, rather than individually isolated utilities; Do not emphasize one's own freedoms but equal freedoms for all. • 3- The action resources that individuals currently command may not be as important as the action resources during their upbringings • 4- Emancipative values remain weak when their psychological counterforces remain strong Such as religion and family. • 5- Under certain conditions the emancipatory impulse of action resources can be disrupted: The state can subsidize its loyal citizens with a greater action resources (such as benefits with no taxes), when people's action resources depend on such system, they are unlikely to instill emancipative values.
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
The ‘Tectonic Model’ of Regime Change • The link must be strong between the emancipative values (The mass side demand ) and civic entitlements (The elite side supply of Democratic freedoms). • Between 1980 and 2010 , countries like Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Venezuela starting out with the freedom supplies largely exceeding freedom demands in 1980, experienced a supply drop until 2010 . These are cases of Democratic backsliding. Countries like Slovenia and Taiwan starting out with the freedom supplies far short of demands in 1980, experienced a corresponding supply jump until 2010 . Finally, countries with supplies starting out at Equilibrium with demands in 1980, experienced little shift in supply until 2010, which is typical for most Western countries with sustained Democratic equilibrium and Middle Eastern countries with sustained and non-Democratic equilibrium . • The ‘Tectonic Model’ of Regime Change suggests that, in the congruent relationship between cultures and regimes, culture is the driver • Accordingly, regimes change in response to their misfit to culture, whereas culture does not change in response to its misfit to regimes Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e Updated Evidence • Growing action resources, and rising emancipative values, an expanding civic entitlements work together in enhancing ordinary people's agency in pursuing purposes of their choice. Emancipative values rise in response to growing action resources while civic entitlements expand in response to reason emancipative values and growing action resources • Updated evidence based on simulated data confirms the Tectonic Model of Regime Change. The primary flaw of impact in the relationship between emancipative values and civic entitlements runs from values to entitlements , much more so than the other way around. thus, the direction and scope of regime change operate largely as a function of the regime's initial misfit with their surrounding culture. • People’s values have mostly turned more emancipative, regardless of whether they were not congruent to the regime’s civic entitlements a generation ago • Cultures and regimes co-evolve; regimes adjust to changing cultures much more than the other way round Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e Finally • Emancipative values emerge as part of a broader process of a human emancipation that evolves naturally as economic development puts more resources into the hands of ordinary people. These values provide the key selective force in the evolution of political regimes and build the grassroots motivations that Channel mass support toward pro Democratic actors and away from anti Democratic ones. • Democracy remains a fragile achievement that is in danger of backsliding where these values are weak. Therefore, they are the most important aspect of political culture concerning a population's readiness for democracy.
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e