Abstract
Guillermo O’Donnell, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 75, was a central figure during the three phases of comparative research on democracy, theorizing on its breakdown during the 1970s, spearheading work on democratic transitions in the 1980s, and contributing to debates over its consolidation and quality starting in the 1990s. Reflections on Uneven Democracies contains an impressive collection of essays assessing O’Donnell’s oversized impact on the field of comparative politics as well as original research inspired by his work.
Put succinctly, O’Donnell’s research (1) was inspired by his deep-seated personal commitment to contributing to the survival and quality of democracies, (2) addressed pressing issues of major political relevance, (3) was both theoretically ambitious and skeptical of universal theories, (4) demonstrated a willingness to challenge his earlier theories and assumptions, and (5) relied on in-depth knowledge of Latin America to challenge dominant theories and raise new questions (Mainwaring, Brinks and Leiras: p. 353).
O’Donnell’s explicit normative preference for democracy inspired him to tackle the ‘big political issues’ surrounding regime change in developing countries in real time as they emerged. Contributors to the volume highlight his efforts to challenge the dominance and assumed universalism of theories developed to explain industrialized countries (see Whitehead: pp. 333–352; Mainwaring, Brinks and Leiras: pp. 353–366). This goal motivated his initial work on the breakdown of relatively prosperous democracies in the Southern Cone during the 1970s, which went against the dominant modernization theory’s prediction that economic development would bring about and ensure the survival of democracy (O’Donnell, 1973).
The fluid nature of new democracies forced O’Donnell on several occasions to rethink the direction of his research. He was, as Power (pp. 173–188) aptly puts it, ‘theorizing a moving target’. Following his work on democratic transitions (see O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986), O’Donnell focused on how to ensure democracy’s survival (see Power: pp. 175–178). Counter to his expectations, survival was the easy part. Latin America’s nascent democracies were protected by the combination of discredited militaries, an increasingly pro-democracy international climate, and the ‘dirty secret’ that democratization did not in fact bring about ‘significant changes in power relations, property rights, policy entitlements, economic equality and social status’ (Schmitter: p. 78).
As elected governments became the norm, O’Donnell focused on the pathologies that afflicted them. He extended the frontiers of democracy research by shedding light on issues such as hyper-presidentialism, the persistence of sub-national areas subject to limited state control (‘brown spots’), weak rule of law, and the persistence of informal institutional arrangements (see O’Donnell, 1993, 1994, 1998). Transition turned out to be just one step in an open-ended process of perfecting democracy. And thus, having popularized the concept of democratic consolidation in the 1980s, O’Donnell (1996) denounced it as being overly teleological in the 1990s (for a detailed discussion, see Wilson: pp. 183–186). The intellectual courage to admit mistakes and start over was one of his most notable virtues as a scholar.
Several contributions to Reflections focus on O’Donnell’s approach to conducting research, which relied heavily on case-specific knowledge of his native Argentina and Latin America more broadly. He proceeded inductively, theorizing up from the cases he knew and understood before generalizing more broadly. Although ‘intellectually unfashionable’ by today’s standards (Whitehead: p. 333), O’Donnell’s approach produced concepts that proved applicable beyond their original context. For example, bureaucratic-authoritarianism (O’Donnell, 1973) helped explain dictatorship in South Korea (Whitehead: p. 338), and the transitions paradigm (O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986) served as a blue print for ending communism in Poland and Hungary (Schmitter: p. 80) and apartheid in South Africa (Whitehead: p. 341).
His later work on the quality of democracy is even applicable to today’s rich countries. On this note, I highly recommend Fishman’s chapter (pp. 106–120) on the constraints globalized markets have imposed on democracies in the European Union’s periphery in the wake of the European Debt Crisis and Karl’s chapter (pp. 121–146), which offers stern warnings about the threat that Latin Americanesque levels of income inequality pose for US democracy. The latter’s predictions have proven particularly prescient at a time when outsider candidates utilizing populist rhetoric have achieved impressive electoral results.
The enduring relevance of O’Donnell’s work is further highlighted by empirical chapters that rigorously test his inductively generated theories. Pérez-Liñán and Mainwaring (pp. 21–43) assess the determinants of democratic collapse among 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries during 1945–2005. Their statistical analysis finds no support for modernization theory – a higher gross domestic product (GDP) per capita does not improve a democracy’s prospects. The existence of major political actors espousing radical policy preferences does, however, increase the likelihood of breakdown. Thus, just as O’Donnell theorized, it is not economic development but rather the preferences of major political actors that most influences democracy’s trajectory. Furthermore, in line with the transitions literature, the likelihood of breakdown decreases when the major political actors possess a normative preference for democracy – when ‘democracy is the only game in town’. Building off these data, Leiras (pp. 147–170) demonstrates, contrary to O’Donnell and much of the democratization literature, that, although bad economic times increase the likelihood of coups against non-democratic regimes, this is not the case for democratic regimes. The existence of a credible mechanism for replacing elected leaders sharply reduces the need for coups. The opposite occurs in authoritarian regimes, where hard times provide ambitious elites with opportunities to jockey for power.
González (pp. 240–268) responds to O’Donnell’s (1994) appeal for more refined research on delegative democracy. This ‘species’ of democracy, defined by presence of only minimal counter-weights to the executive, ‘rest[s] on the premise that whoever wins the election to the presidency is thereby entitled to govern as he or she sees fit, constrained only by […] existing power relations and by a constitutionally limited term of office’ (O’Donnell, 1994: 59). González translates this rich and nuanced concept into an 8-point index of ‘delegativeness’ for 11 Latin American countries during 1980–2010. Subsequent statistical analyses support O’Donnell’s original sketch: delegation is most likely in countries with low growth, high inflation and low public support for democracy. Additionally, González finds U-shaped relationships between delegativeness and party system fragmentation and polarization. Taken together, O’Donnell’s context-heavy theory building and González’s rigorous theory testing demonstrate the benefits of combining qualitative and quantitative methods.
Overall, Reflections does a masterful job of summarizing and expanding upon O’Donnell’s contributions to democracy research and comparative politics more broadly. This volume is highly recommended for graduate students seeking an introduction to O’Donnell’s work and as a reference source for comparatists, particularly those specializing in Latin America.