Month: September 2017

I am proposing to research the worldwide decline of liberal democracy in recent years because I want to find out under what conditions does a liberal democracy transition to an authoritarian regime in order to help readers understand what explains the regression of several liberal democracies in recent years.

In their 2017 Report on Freedom in the World, Freedom House noted that 2016 was the sixteenth straight year in which the level of political freedom in the world had declined.[1] Strikingly, in 2016 the declines were concentrated not among states that were already authoritarian but instead among the ranks of already established democracies.[2] However, while this recent acceleration of democratic decline has made the issue more urgent, scholars have taken note of the puzzle of democratic decline over the past decade as former liberal democracies like Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela began moving in distinctly illiberal directions. Scholars have proposed several different explanations for this democratic backsliding and the exact causes of this phenomena are up for debate.

One school of thought regarding democratic decline has to do with the effect of geopolitics and the power of example on voters and elites in liberal democracies. This is the school of thought subscribed to by Robert Kagan who posits that the increasing geopolitical heft of authoritarian regimes like China as compared to the declining power of the United States and European Union is the primary culprit when it comes to the decline in the level of democracy worldwide.[3] This is also the theory that underlies Andrew Nathan’s exploration of the role an increasingly powerful China plays in undermining democracy in his article China’s Challenge.[4] While Nathan also discusses how China actively promotes its authoritarian values overseas, props up fellow authoritarian regimes, and seeks to limit the emphasis international institutions place on democracy, he is clearly places the power of example at the forefront of his argument.[5] This primacy makes sense given that leaders of liberal democracies that have moved their states in decidedly illiberal directions have cited the example of successful illiberal regimes as part of their justification.

One example of this phenomena is a 2014 speech given by Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, in 2014.  In it, he claims that the dominant issue of the day was finding a method of organizing government that can compete in the global system and furthermore that “systems that are not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies and perhaps not even democracies, can nevertheless make their nations successful. The stars of the international analysts today are Singapore, China, India, Russia and Turkey.”[6] Clearly, the example of these other regimes, though I would disagree with his assessment that India is not a liberal democracy, had an influence on Orban’s decision to move Hungary in an illiberal direction. Curiously, the example of China, Russia, and others has seemingly had an influence on voters in Hungary as well. Orban opens his speech by noting the recent strong performance of his party, Fidesz, in national and European elections. Additionally, he looks forward to upcoming municipal elections, elections that Fidesz also won quite handily.[7] These electoral results indicate that there is a substantial number of Hungarians who have lost faith in liberal democracy, which adds another interesting wrinkle to my puzzle.

Of course, the argument that shifting geopolitics and the power of the authoritarian example is the primary cause of democracy’s decline is not the only theory out there. Other scholars, like Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way in their article The Myth of the Democratic Recession, deny that there is even anything approaching a general decline in democracy going on.[8] Instead, they claim that the level of democracy worldwide has been stable for the last decade.[9] They view the recent furor over “democratic decline” as a response to scholars, in the euphoria that accompanied the democratic expansion in the 1990s ,overestimating the level of democracy achieved by various countries.[10] If their school of thought is the correct one, than my research will be less salient that I initially thought but it is of course important to keep in mind the possibility that the phenomena you are researching may not be as widespread as initially thought.

The significance of my topic area is to help readers understand how liberal democracies turn into illiberal regimes in the hope that greater understanding can lead to an arrest in the decline of democracy. While it is of course possible that Levitsky and Way are correct and no overall decline is occurring, even they acknowledge that there are several countries which were in fact unambiguous democracies that have made the transition to autocracy in recent years.[11] Even if democratic decline is only limited to a few cases, understanding those cases and their implications for our knowledge of how states change their forms of government are essential to comprehending the international system. And if democratic decline is in fact a worldwide phenomenon, then understanding this transition in particular, from liberal democracy to illiberal regime, will be even more important.

Question 1: Under what conditions does a liberal democracy transition into an illiberal regime?

Question 2: What explains Hungary’s transition from liberal democracy to illiberal state?

[1] “Freedom in the World 2017,” last modified January 24, 2017, accessed September 30, 2017, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Robert Kagan, “The Weight of Geopolitics,” Journal of Democracy 26, no. 1 (January 7, 2015): 21–31.

[4] Andrew J. Nathan, “China’s Challenge,” Journal of Democracy; Baltimore 26, no. 1 (January 2015): 157–170.

[5] Ibid. 158-162, 165-167.

[6] “Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Speech at the 25th Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp,” Government, accessed September 30, 2017, http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-25th-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp.

“National Election Office – Local Elections 2014,” accessed September 30, 2017, http://valasztas.hu/en/onkval2014/443/443_0_index.html.

[8] Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Myth of Democratic Recession,” Journal of Democracy 26, no. 1 (January 7, 2015): 45–58.

[9] Ibid. 48.

[10] Ibid. 50.

[11] Ibid. 47.

In his article The Weight of Geopolitics, Robert Kagan seeks to answer the question of why democracy is in retreat worldwide.[1] The main claim he makes to answer this question is that political ideas within nations follow the relative success of countries holding those ideas within the geopolitical sphere.[2] In his telling, this is both because of hard power considerations, like the U.S. imposing democracy on Japan in the aftermath of World War II, and soft power aspects, like the idea that the success or failure of other democratic regimes in geopolitics impacts people’s perceptions of democracy as “people tend to follow winners.”[3] However, it is important to note Kagan never uses the specific phraseology of soft and hard power. The methodology used is that of small-n analysis. Kagan analyzes a number of case studies various periods in history that democracy either advanced or retreated worldwide and their connection to shifting geopolitics.[4] The data he uses in analyzing these case studies is sourced from a number of historical works and scholarly articles on waves of democratization and periods of democratic retreat throughout history. The conclusion he reaches at the end of his analysis is that if the United States or other liberal democracies don’t reassert themselves on the world stage, both in promoting democracy and in making democracy appealing through their example, past waves of democracy will be reversed. [5]

 

[1] Robert Kagan, “The Weight of Geopolitics,” Journal of Democracy 26, no. 1 (January 7, 2015): 21–31.

[2] Ibid. 21.

[3] Ibid. 23.

[4] Ibid. 22-26.

[5] Ibid. 29.

I understand the concept of ontology to be how a researcher views the world they are studying. Basically, what a researcher believes that we can learn about the world through research. Meanwhile, methodology is the set of assumptions about the world and the nature of knowledge that inform what tools we use to get at whatever knowledge we believe to be out there.

When we were initially discussing the different ontological outlooks in class, I instinctively found myself drawn to the neo-positivist/realist/transcendent knowledge side of the debate. After subsequent readings and discussions, I am even more convinced that it is possible to ascertain objective knowledge about the social world. That is not to say that researchers are free from bias but I do think those biases can be accounted for and dealt with in a way that moves us closer to objective knowledge.

Interpretivists argue that an objective social world cannot be studied since researchers, being part of the social world, cannot possibly separate their values and biases from what they are studying. For example, in his article The Subjectivity of the “Democratic” Peace, Ido Oren argues that the democratic peace theory is less about democracy, or any other trait of government, and more about political scientists redefining the values they judge governments so as to emphasize what makes us similar to our allies and different from our adversaries.[1] However, I find this argument unconvincing as it is possible to test for many variables in assessing the strength of a hypothesis. That can include variables designed to assess various understandings of “our kind” in order to determine whether values stressed at different times in history have different impacts on the propensity of nations to go to war with each other. In that way, one can control for the values the researcher may bring into a study.

I think it is possible to make valid knowledge claims about all the things listed in the prompt to this question. The one thing a researcher has to be concerned about is mixing normative value claims with knowledge claims, something that could influence the objectivity of the research produced by that researcher. This is something I will have to be careful with regards to my own research because, from a normative perspective, I value democracy and view it as a good thing. However, if I allow that to influence the process by which I make knowledge claims it will undermine the validity of my research.

[1] Ido Orren. “The Subjectivity of the ‘Democratic’ Peace.” International Security Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall 1995): 147-188.  (Accessed September 18, 2017).