Abstract
Kay Lawson has devoted her career to studying parties and democracy and encouraging scholars from remote corners of the world to tell us about them. Political Parties and Democracy is the latest product of her drive and energy. Part of a larger series, Political Parties in Context, its five volumes offer us forty-six chapters about parties in democracies, semi-democracies and authoritarian states. All six co-editors and all contributors are ‘indigenous’ scholars; the only exception is Lawson herself. Political Parties and Democracyis a feast for those seeking more knowledge about parties in less studied parts of the world. However, the set is not as well organized or signposted as effectively as it might have been, making this smorgasbord difficult to digest. Here, we consider volumes I (The Americas), III (Post-Soviet and Asian Political Parties) and V (The Arab World)dealing with the Americas, the post-Soviet countries and Asia, and the Arab world. Separate reviews of volumes II (Europe) and IV (Africa and Oceana)follow. 1
If an edited volume is to be more than the sum of its parts, it requires a well-cast introduction indicating what the editor is trying to do, what the reader can expect and pathways through the material. Lawson explains what she is up to in a short introduction, reprinted in each of the five volumes, and a longer conclusion at the end of volume V. However, parts of the conclusion have to be read in conjunction with the Introduction; it is there that Lawson explains not only how the set came about, but also what she has been trying to do throughout her career. For those who know Lawson’s work, it will come as no surprise that she believes that parties don’t do enough to promote or practise democracy and that we must study them not only in the well-established democracies, about which most of the literature is written, but throughout the world. Her interest was sparked at Berkeley when she had to review Duverger’s Political Parties.Reading Ostrogorski and Michels, she learned about parties’ seamier side: despite their overt commitment to democracy, they did not practise it. Reading Schattschneider, Key and later Sorauf, she learned how crucial to democracy they were. Surveying the post-war literature, she was dismayed by its preoccupation with political stability. Flirting with behaviouralism and quantitative analysis, she found neither to her liking. Not content to study parties only in the United States, she studied them in France and then in Guinea. Exploring what it meant to say that parties were engaged in linkage, Lawson (1980) distinguished four types: participatory, responsive, clientelistic and coercive linkage. Although the terminology is awkward, this is one of her lasting contributions. Realizing that we needed to know about parties throughout the world, Lawson sought out people who knew their parties and countries first hand. Involvement with IPSA’s Committee on Political Sociology helped her do so.
Political Parties and Democracyis organized around the premise: (1) that we need to study parties at three stages of power – liberation, democratization and de-democratization, and (2) that if we want to understand parties, we need the insights of indigenous authors. On first reading, Lawson’s three stages of power jar our sensibilities. The language is strong and, arguably, loaded. Beneath it lurks a unilinear theory of development that few of us accept. Disregarding the language and the assertion that all countries require liberation, we find a concern about parties and democracy, which many of us share, albeit not necessarily in the way that Lawson does. Echoing Schattschneider (1942), we believe that ‘democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties’. Many of us also think that contemporary parties do not frame choices as effectively as they should or recruit the kinds of leaders we need. The frequency with which we cite Katz and Mair’s (1995) assertion that many parties have become cartel parties, happier to share power rather than compete for it, is an indicator of deeper disquiet.
Lawson’s second premise is that we need to learn about parties and how they operate from indigenous scholars. Only they can tell us the truth about parties and the context in which they operate. Lawson uses the term to denote people native to the country or area they are writing about and not ethnic groups or aboriginals. However, if we extend her logic, insisting on ‘indigeneity’ denies the possibility of comparative politics; no outsider – including Kay Lawson – can know or understand enough. Is indigenousness as important as Lawson thinks? Yes, if an insider’s perspective is required, no if an analytical perspective is also required. At its core, we have an argument about the practice of comparative politics: older scholars were taught that we had to learn the language, talk to the politicians and gain some of the insights into politics, institutions and political culture that insiders had. Younger scholars rely more on quantitative analysis and formal models. Both have their place. I share Lawson’s preference for knowing the cases, but inside knowledge and verstehenare of no use if they produce only description. If we want to answer questions like those Lawson has proposed, we need not only concepts and classifications but also well-focused research questions. Here, the well-trained outsider has an advantage over insiders, who may lack the tools needed to extract what is relevant, draw comparisons and reach theoretically interested conclusions. Arguably, hypothesis testing is not Lawson’s primary concern, but if we want to know how and when parties democratize and want to discourage ‘de-democratization’, then we need to know about the circumstances under which both occur.
Against this backdrop we can consider the volumes and what they accomplish. Predictably, the result is not only uneven – it is hard to think of an edited volume where that is not the case – but also more uneven than it needed to be. The three volumes we are considering contain several chapters that are excellent as well as some that are not. More important is the set itself, and the extent to which Lawson and her co-editors have not only assembled good material, but also organized it in ways that readers can make use of it. Editing an anthology requires choices: an editor can issue strict marching orders, but doing so can straitjacket authors and prevent them from writing as effectively as they might. Alternatively, an editor can give contributors a free hand. Individual pieces may soar but the collection will not be as integrated as it should. A skilled editor compensates by arranging chapters so that they flow and highlighting common themes. The more material there is, the more important editing, mapping and signposting becomes.
Lawson organizes the five volumes geographically, enlisting co-editors to help with the task. However, as she notes in her conclusion, geography does not necessarily bring similar systems together; grouping chapters by party system – an aspect conspicuous by its absence – or whether countries were considered to be liberal democracies, semi-democracies or authoritarian systems might have helped highlight differences and similarities among parties and the settings in which they operate. Several of the volumes have separate sections with their own co-editors and introductions. On the whole, these are good, if not excellent. Lawson and Lanzaro’s introduction to Volume I, The Americas, is straightforward but provides little more than capsule summaries of the chapters. Lanzaro makes up for this when he explores differences between Uruguay and other Latin American countries. Volume III is two volumes in one. Introducing the post-Soviet section, Anatoly Kulik previews the four chapters which follow, commenting both on their expertise and differences in how they define democracy. Introducing Asian parties, Baogang provides a comparative overview and justifies the inclusion of his chapter on the PRC. Introducing the seven chapters on Arab countries as well as Israel and Turkey, Saad Eddin Ibrahim explores the constraints that parties operate under when they contest elections in authoritarian or semi-democratic systems. These impede democratic development. Ibrahim’s essay is interesting in light of recent developments: although neither Ibrahim nor his co-authors predicted the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’, their chapters offer insight into the context in which protests erupted and some of the political forces emerged.
Neither Lawson nor her co-editors suggest comparisons among chapters in the set and none of the introductions explain why some cases were included while others were not. Both are serious omissions. Lawson has assembled rich material, some of which is not readily available elsewhere. Much of it cries out for comparison. However, doing so is not easy. Readers wanting to do so must thread their own way through the forty-six chapters. Few share a common format. Obvious comparisons are not possible because chapters about their parties were not included: Volume 1, The Americas includes chapters on the United States and Canada, reproducing material readily available elsewhere. However, there is no chapter on Costa Rica, one of Latin America’s few stable democracies, to which Uruguay might readily have been compared, nor is there a chapter on Venezuela, an obvious comparator to Peru, on the circumstances leading to party system collapse, and to Bolivia, on the uses of populism. In a different vein, the difficulties of establishing party competition in the post-Soviet area – ably treated by Anatoloy Kulik, George Tarkhn-Mouravi on Georgia and Andrey A. Meleshevych on Ukraine – can be compared not only to Russia or the Arab countries treated in volume V, but also the three Baltic States. However, the first is un-heralded, the second impossible because none of the three were included.
Neither space nor readers’ patience allow detailed comments about specific chapters. Some are better than others. Among the former are Martin Tanaka’s chapter on Peru (volume I, chapter 8), exploring the circumstances leading to the collapse of the party system, Jairo Nicolau’s exposition of Brazil’s parties and the rules under which they are registered, unusual because it includes clearly organized tables (volume I, chapter 7) and the three post-Soviet chapters. In addition, several chapters in Volume V, The Arab World are noteworthy. These include Emad El-Din Shahin on Egypt (chapter 1), highlighting functions that parties can and cannot perform operating under an authoritarian regime; Mokhtar Beabdallouni on Morocco (chapter 4), showing how parties operating under a more open regime are forced either to play along with the monarchy or operate on the margins; Saleheddine Jourchi on Tunisia (chapter 5); and Abderrazak Makri on Algeria (chapter 6). Makri explains how the military-backed regime maintained power and shows how parties operated in the changing political space allowed them. Both involve manoeuvre. Altering the rules under which parties compete, the regime expands or narrows political space, favouring some parties over others. Parties can play along or move to the margins of the system. The chapter is masterful. Interestingly, the author is not a political scientist but rather a medical doctor.
Some chapters are weaker because authors state conclusions without demonstrating them or because they have not written as clearly as they should. Both reflect a laissez faireapproach to editing when stronger guidance was needed. A weakness throughout the three volumes is the absence of clearly drawn tables and charts. Only in Jairo Nicolua’s chapter on Brazil are tables as clearly and professionally presented as they are in articles or books relying on the presentation and analysis of quantitative data. This might have been avoided if Lawson and her co-editors had taken a more ‘hands-on’ approach to editing, gently nudging and persuading. Light-touch editing has produced a treasure trove less accessible than it should have been. Without the guideposts that effective editing provides, readers are left to rummage though the chapters, drawing their own comparisons. There is nothing wrong with this, but the task is made more difficult because there are no standardized formats and little has been done to ease the cognitive burden readers face when they try to absorb complex material. As anyone who has taught party systems knows, it is difficult to present their detail without ordering devices. Left–right placement is unlikely to work for the variety of parties treated in the set, but good writing, tables indicating party strengths and charts reminding us which parties are which can help.
One consequence is that it is difficult for readers to form their own judgments about the relationships between parties and democracy. Schattscheider’s dictum – no parties, no democracy – has become a mantra recited by both political scientists and party specialists. Few of us believe that democracy is possible without parties, but Lawson is right to query not only the popular input parties permit, but also whether processes of de-democratization are underway. Unfortunately, neither she nor her co-editors and contributing authors explore either the degree to which this is occurring or the circumstances under which such processes are more or less advanced, if they are indeed occurring. Perhaps it is self-evident. Lawson implies as much in her comments on Canada and other countries in her conclusion to the set (see volume V, pp. 197–202), but this cannot do justice to so important an assertion. We need to know more. One thing to consider is the extent to which intra-party democracy is possible or even desirable. Some is, but there is a trade-off between internal voice, privileging members and the ability of parties to act effectively and present voters with coherent alternatives among which they can chose. However, even if there are limits to internal democracy, parties are only one of several channels through which citizens can make their voices heard. We need to know more about the circumstances under which parties maximize debate and choice, but the viability of democracy depends not only on parties but also on the ability of citizens to make their voices heard. Typically, this occurs through multiple channels. Not everything can be treated in a multi-volume set, but Political Parties and Democracy would have been stronger if some of these questions had been addressed.
Edited volumes stand or fall not on quantity but on what they contain. Those that succeed do so either because the editor(s) skilfully introduce the material and extract conclusions for them, or because successive chapters, memorable in their own right, build on each other. Despite rich material, Political Parties and Democracy does not measure up. This is a shame. Lawson is correct when she argues that we need to know more about parties not only in better off democracies, but also throughout the world. However, if we are to make sense of them, we need to use comparative analysis to our advantage. Here I mean not only large datasets and macro-comparative analysis, but also systematic comparison of similar and different systems. Lawson and her colleagues deserve credit for what they have done. I expected better, but paraphrasing the statement sometimes attributed to Dr. Seuss, I won’t cry for what might have been, but rather applaud what is. Even if the set is a disappointment, some chapters and some volumes are not.