Political Parties within Democratic Transitions:
Setting the Ground for a New Research Agenda
Valeria Resta
Introduction
Thus far the relationship between political parties and democratizations has been approached only as a matter of party system institutionalization during democratic consolidation phases. Yet, recent cases of autocratic collapses demonstrated the salience of parties also as far as transitions in its narrow sense and democratic installations are concerned. In light of this, the present paper makes the point about the necessity of studying political parties also during the earlier phases of the democratic transition, when doing so may appear “less obvious”. As a matter of fact, engaging in this new research agenda will contribute to democratization studies in several ways. Fist, it will further unfold the dynamics, i.e. strategic interactions, underneath democratic transitions and breakdowns. Second, this study will help to disclose the intrinsic nature and functioning of democratic parties, which are far from being mere representative vehicles of pre-constituted social aggregates. Third, and most important, differently from the mainstream studies on the topic, i.e. those on party system institutionalization, this kind of works collocates itself in a temporally and functionally antecedent phase; therefore, it will contribute to illuminate and solve some of the impasses that affects this literature.
This is a starting point of huge work that goes beyond the scope and space limitations of the present paper. Here, I will limit to first expose the empirical reasons why this is needed. Secondly, a proposal in how this study might be done will be sketched.
I. Political parties in transition and installation phases
The vast majority of studies concentrating their attention to the role of parties in democratization processes temporally cover only the consolidation phase. It is so for obvious reasons: first, parties’ formation and organization usually occur within the transition in its narrow sense. Second, the contribution of parties to democracy can be appreciated only if considered as a system interacting with its external environment. Overall, what just described is referred to as the structuring of the party system (Morlino 1995) and needs a span of time that cannot be covered by the transition. Therefore, in countries where democracy is not consolidated, the case for studying parties is less obvious (Mainwaring and Scully 1995).
Nonetheless, parties remain salient in the earlier phases of the democratization process, both for the intrinsic features of these processes and both for a set of particular circumstances that might apply, as the cases of Tunisia and Egypt show.
The characteristic feature of transitions, as O’Donnell and Schmitter’s well-known definition recalls (1986)[1], is the absence of structures identifying a precise political regime. Then, in dealing with these processes actors’ agency is a fruitful unit of analysis, as large part of the literature has proved (Kitschell 1992; Przeworski 1991). However, what is missing in extant studies is a focus on political parties as loci of agency at this stage of democratizations. This lack is not without justification because political parties are understood as a result of political liberalization: how can they form and organize lacking the freedoms of speech and association, as it is the case in authoritarian regimes? (Dahl 1971; Gunther, Diamandouros, and Puhle 1995; O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986). In line of principle this claim is certainly true. However, as a matter of fact, transitions do not occur in-between perfectly typified and binary categories of authoritarianism and democracy. Indeed, the empirical reality returns us a great variety of hybrid regimes that are not yet democratic, but no longer authoritarian for they display some features of inclusion and competition (Diamond 2002; Levitsky and Way 2002; Morlino 2008; Ottaway 2013). Among these, elections –fake elections, to be sure- are not infrequent, for they serve a variety of scopes even in the context of authoritarian regimes (Geddes 2006; Schedler 2006). As consequence, political parties, even though extremely weak and poorly organized, are already present when undemocratic regimes collapse, and this makes them a constant and salient component of transitions affecting the dimensions of variations displayed by the processes of transition and installation (Morlino 2011). Above all, what is of foremost importance it’s parties’ capacity to steer the transition so as to prevent other actors not bound to any kind of accountability, such as the military, to infiltrate and drive this process with democratically uncertain results, as the case of Egypt shows.
The second reason for focusing on political parties within transitions has to do with the centrality of the constitution making within transitions. As a matter of fact, “constitutions may not always lead to democracy, but it is nearly unthinkable – or at least unprecedented in modern era- that a state would achieve democracy without a constitution” (Elkins 2010, 972). It discloses the democratic structures and procedures to which elite and people will possibly habituate to during the consolidation phase. At the hardcore of these structures and procedures relies the guarantee of freedom and equality provided the limited power of the ruling elite. This is achieved by the settlement of focal points, i.e. is a set of action that triggers citizens’ reactions facing violations of the constitutional chart by the sovereign, which will constitute the equilibrium underneath the exiting political regime (Przeworski 1991; Weingast 1997). Here again, if the importance of constitution making has captured the attention of scholars, the same cannot be said, with due exceptions, for the actual process underling it (Elster 1995). How is the process of constitution making achieved? Which role do political parties play within it? Which party politics configuration is more apt to arrive to an agreed constitution? These kinds of questions deserve more attention from scholars, especially if the founding free and fair elections are aimed at the establishment of a national constituent assembly, as is the case of Tunisia and Egypt.
Moreover, political parties are as much intriguing as the transitional phase, and in particular the constitution making process, is characterized by religious or ethnical cleavages. Here, political parties face a twofold liability deriving from intra-party and inter-parties bargain. On the hand, they are supposed to agree on a constitutional text with their competitor, on the other, they have to decide whether to reproduce or to overcome the existent cleavage in their relations with other parties. The cases of Tunisia and Egypt might be illuminating in this regard for in both countries religion represents a source of social and political division. This can easily bring to polarization, defined as “a process through which individuals cluster around mutually exclusive positions while the number of those who maintain conciliatory positions between them decrease” (Tepe 2013, 833). Within this context, it is difficult to see how sources of a constitutional agreement can be pinpointed. Studies dealing with divided societies have produced lot of literature in the attempt of theorizing the possibilities of democracy in these contexts. Driving on Rabushka and Shepsle (1972) and Horowitz (1985), lot of scholars deny divided societies any successful cooperation among different (ethnic and/or religious) groups. In contexts where there are two ethnic groups whose respective individuals carry the same, intense and formalized preferences on alternatives at stake, then cooperation, it is argued, is “strategically vulnerable to flame fanning and to the politics of outbidding” (Rabushka and Shapsle 1972: 86). Therefore, the relation between divided societies and the “viability of democracy remains obscure” (Przeworski 2005). What makes a difference between the installation of democracy and the return to a non-democratic regime seems to be the presence of “countervailing mechanisms” (Tepe 2013). These are represented as parties’ elites moderating the preferences of their constituencies. Aware that whether a religious cleavage is intrinsically different form the other cleavages still remains an open questions, I adopt here an agnostic attitude without any pretention of investigating its inner nature. This account for the religious one is based on the fact that it appears to divide the political space of the countries considered, suggesting that a closer analysis on the role of parties at this stage of the democratization process is worth needed.
II. A theorization for political parties and democratizations: party institutionalization and democratic consolidation
Provided that political parties deserve special attention during the transitional phase, which are the instruments at disposal to deal with them? This section is aimed at exploring the extant theoretical framework for party politics and democratization.
In the aftermath of the Third Wave of democratization, political parties have been put front and centre in the context of democratic consolidations allowing the development of a useful theoretical framework in dealing with fluid party systems. The equation underneath the studies that spread at that time is that parties stand to democracy as party institutionalization stands to democratic consolidation. The first part of the equation represents one of the pillars of political science. Democracy, as we know it, is representative democracy, therefore, it goes by saying that parties fulfill a set of vital functions for its working (Lipset 2000). They provide interests articulation and aggregation thus structuring the political debate; they drop citizens’ costs of information, allowing them to take part in the public discourse, moreover; they guarantee the popular control of the government trough the recruitment and selection of candidates (Morlino 2011; Sartori 1976, 1987; Schumpeter 1942). The second part of the equation is the straightforward consequence of the previous one: if parties are vital to democracy, then democratic consolidation needs party institutionalization, for only once institutionalized political parties will be able to perform the aforementioned tasks. However, as will be showed in what follows, there are cases of party institutionalization not followed by democratic consolidation that require further research efforts.
Mainwaring and Scully’s outstanding contribution broke up with the dichotomy between consolidated party systems and fluid party systems (Sartori 1976). These latter, falling beyond the reach of existent theoretical framework, were not even perceived as political objects. In contrast, the two authors worked out the concept of party system institutionalization, which applies for both kinds of party systems, and correlated it with the viability of democratic politics in both cases. In their account, institutionalization refers to a “process by which a practice or organization becomes well established and widely known, if not universally accepted” (Mainwaring and Scully 1995, 4). Party system institutionalization then involves on the one hand the physical establishment of political parties, and, on the other hand, actors’ adaptation to and reification of political parties. This process consists of four dimensions, namely: (i) stability in patterns of interparty competition; (ii) party roots in society; (iii) legitimacy of parties and elections, and, (iv) party organization (Mainwaring and Scully 1995). Subsequent studies on political parties in new democracies revolved around this work and this conceptualization recognizing in it a major analytical tool to deal with the study of party systems in new democracies. However, such a usage has been sometimes confusing. On the one hand, some scholars used the concept of party system institutionalization and party institutionalization interchangeably without making any critical differentiation between them (Morlino 1998). On the other hand party system institutionalization was conceived as the direct result of individual party institutionalization (Kuenzi and Lambright 2005; Mainwaring and Torcal 2006; Mainwaring 1998).
In light of recent developments in the literature, the two concepts are now treated separately and individual party institutionalization has gained the momentum. In Randall and Svåsand account, this is conceived a process characterized by four dimensions taking in consideration the structural and attitudinal elements underpinning consolidation both internally and externally to the party (2002). These are: (i) systemness; (ii) values infusion; (iii) decisional autonomy; and, (iv) reification. This work has the merit to get rid of the vagueness surrounding the notion of party system thus allowing for more precision of analysis. Out of this, contrary to what previously held, party institutionalization proved to be in some cases antithetical to party system institutionalization, thus denying the correlation between party institutionalization and democratization. The cases outlined by the authors in which this can happen are when party institutionalization is uneven, that is when during democratic transitions certain parties enjoy distinct institutional advantages, or when the “major source of institutional strength for a party is its identification with an exclusive ethnic or cultural grouping” (2002, 8–9). This is for instance the case of Turkey wherein party institutionalization stems from a set of institutional incentives leading to an uneven representation of political factions, or where the institutionalization of parties is fostered by an underlying ideological polarization (Yardimci-Geyikci 2015).
Even if the concepts of party institutionalization, party system institutionalization and democratic consolidation remains interrelated, far from what theorized thus far not all kinds of party institutionalization pave the way to democratic consolidation. It might be the case then to ante pone this kind of analysis to the time when all plausible ways of parties and party system development are potentially all possible: that is to the transition phase. The next paragraph will be devoted to investigate how this can be done.
III. Political parties and constitution making processes: proposing a theoretical framework for analysis
What said insofar confirms the point made elsewhere that parties matter even if not fully institutionalized (Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Morlino 2011). In addition, it makes the case for pushing further their analysis to the earlier stages of democratic consolidation, namely the transition and installation phases. This kind of work has already been done elsewhere, but only to provide a descriptive account of the dimensions of variation of transition and installations (Morlino 2011). Instead, the questions posed by this paper are aimed at disclosing the features of party politics that favor the installation of democracy, which is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for democratic consolidation.
Within democratic consolidation, party system institutionalization has been conceptualized in several ways so as to measure and to correlate it with the democratic enhancement. Within democratic transitions too, a pertinent conceptualization correlating political parties with democratic installation has to see the light in order to provide the required analytical tools enabling its measurement and its correlation with democratic installation. In particular, undertaking a theoretical effort to inquiry what are the features in transitional party systems more likely to be conducive to democratic installation implies working out a subset of parties’ functions that meet the exigencies of democratic installation. The remaining part of the paragraph will be devoted to provide an understanding of both the democratic installation within its broader environment of democratization and of political parties. From the appreciation of these letters in the context of installations, a set of party systems’ features favoring these processes will emerge. This will finally allow the envisagement of a proper method to appraise them that will be discussed in the next section.