Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy

By Mohammad Ali Kadivar

A groundbreaking account of how prolonged grassroots mobilization lays the foundations for durable democratization

When protests swept through the Middle East at the height of the Arab Spring, the world appeared to be on the verge of a wave of democratization. Yet with the failure of many of these uprisings, it has become clearer than ever that the path to democracy is strewn with obstacles. Mohammad Ali Kadivar examines the conditions leading to the success or failure of democratization, shedding vital new light on how prodemocracy mobilization affects the fate of new democracies.

Drawing on a wealth of new evidence, Kadivar shows how the longest episodes of prodemocracy protest give rise to the most durable new democracies. He analyzes more than one hundred democratic transitions in eighty countries between 1950 and 2010, showing how more robust democracies emerge from lengthier periods of unarmed mobilization. Kadivar then analyzes five case studies—South Africa, Poland, Pakistan, Egypt, and Tunisia—to investigate the underlying mechanisms. He finds that organization building during the years of struggle develops the leadership needed for lasting democratization and strengthens civil society after dictatorship.

Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy challenges the prevailing wisdom in American foreign policy that democratization can be achieved through military or coercive interventions, revealing how lasting change arises from sustained, nonviolent grassroots mobilization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9780691229140

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Cover: Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy

POPULAR POLITICS AND THE PATH TO DURABLE DEMOCRACY

Princeton Studies in Global and Comparative Sociology

Andreas Wimmer, Series Editor

Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy, Mohammad Ali Kadivar

Mapping the Transnational World: How We Move and Communicate Across Borders, and Why It Matters, Emanuel Deutschmann

Agents of Reform: Child Labor and the Origins of the Welfare State, Elisabeth Anderson

Persuasive Peers: Social Communication and Voting in Latin America, Andy Baker, Barry Ames, and Lúcio Rennó

Give and Take: Developmental Foreign Aid and the Pharmaceutical Industry in East Africa, Nitsan Chorev

Citizenship 2.0: Dual Nationality as a Global Asset, Yossi Harpaz

Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart, Andreas Wimmer

The Paradox of Vulnerability: States, Nationalism, and the Financial Crisis, John L. Campbell and John A. Hall

Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy

Mohammad Ali Kadivar

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright © 2022 by Princeton University Press

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Cover image: Rally in Vancouver, BC, Canada (June 5, 2020). Michal Urbanek/Shutterstock

To Effat joon

My late beloved grandmother, who always showed us endless love, compassionate support, and warm nurturing

CONTENTS

Prefacexi

1 Introduction1

Democracy2

Democratic Durability3

Popular Mobilization and Democratic Transitions5

Mobilization and Organization Building under Dictatorship8

Mobilization, Organization, and New Democracies14

Looking Ahead18

Case Selection21

Sources23

Summary24

2 Contentious Mobilization and Democratic Outcomes in a Cross-National Perspective25

The Universe of Cases26

Measures29

Outcomes29

Mobilization at Democratic Transitions30

Controls32

Quantitative Methods34

Democratic Survival35

Armed Insurgency38

Other Explanations39

Democratic Quality and Civil Society40

The Determinants of Sustained Mobilization40

Summary44

3 Mechanisms of Success and Failure in South Africa, Poland, and Pakistan45

South Africa47

Campaign48

Transition51

Leadership Change52

Civil Society52

Political Outcome53

Poland54

Campaign54

Transition58

Leadership Change60

Civil Society60

Political Outcome61

Pakistan62

Campaign63

Transition64

Leadership Change64

Civil Society65

Political Outcome66

Mechanisms of Success and Failure66

Conclusion68

4 Predicaments of Rapid Success: Egypt’s Failed Democratization 2011–1371

Other Explanations73

Civil Society and Democratic Failure74

January 25 Rebellion: Too Short to Endure76

The Negative Coalition Crumbles79

The Old Regime Strikes Back86

The Treacherous Alliance: Civil Society and Old Regime Versus the Elected Government88

Conclusion91

5 The Anomalous Case of Tunisia93

The Ancien Régime and Postdictatorship Civil Society95

Other Explanations99

UGTT Background101

The Revolution103

A Weak Political Society106

Polarization, Ennahda, and the UGTT110

The UGTT Takes Initiative111

The Threat of a General Strike112

The Final Escalation and Compromise113

Learning from Egypt114

Conclusion117

Conclusion121

Appendix131

Notes137

Bibliography153

Index169

PREFACE

There is an old Arabic saying, One can learn about things from their opposites.¹ That is how I first learned about democracy and democratization growing up under an authoritarian regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where I observed and experienced how it felt to live under a political regime that enforces constraints on elections, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly. For most of the twentieth century, autocratic rulers have governed Iran; Iranians, however, have continued to struggle and strive for freedom, equality, and democracy. Subsequent governments have responded to such aspirations with violence and repression. My grandfather was jailed for several days after Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, was overthrown in a CIA-sponsored coup in 1953. Mosaddeq had nationalized Iran’s oil industry and put limits on King Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who wanted to expand his power beyond the ceremonial role defined for him by Iran’s constitution at the time. That constitution itself was the outcome of a democratic revolution in Iran earlier in the twentieth century. The 1953 coup brought the shah back to the country and helped him consolidate his autocratic rule for the next twenty-five years, until the Iranian Revolution in 1979 toppled his monarchy. My father, a young college student at the time, was arrested during the revolutionary protests and jailed for several days. My mother, a high school student, participated in antiregime demonstrations. The revolution of 1979 did not, however, bring freedom and democracy to Iran. One form of authoritarianism simply gave way to another.

I was born a few years after the revolution, during the early stages of the Iran–Iraq War. As the war ended, Iranian society gradually regained its strength to once again demand freedom and democracy in what is called the Reform Era, from 1997 to 2005. This time, my father was imprisoned for a year and a half for criticizing the government over the lack of political freedoms in the country. He was a university professor, and I was a high school student. During this period, I developed an interest in Iranian politics. I remember skipping class once to attend a political meeting in Laleh Park in the center of Tehran. The pro-Reform meeting was attacked by thugs and militias backed by conservatives and hard-liners in the government.

Soon after, I started my undergraduate studies in political science. I wanted to find out how popular demands for freedom could result in democratization despite resistance and repression from authoritarian governments. In college, I was involved in Iran’s student movement and participated in prodemocracy protests on campus. I also learned more about democratic theory and the literature on the transition to democracy based on experiences drawn from southern Europe and South America. Later, I wrote my master’s thesis at the University of Tehran on why Iran’s Reform movement failed to produce democratization. I argued that those efforts failed during that period due to the weakness of grassroots pressure in the form of protests or strikes. Indeed, the leaders of the Reform movement discouraged their supporters from pursuing tactics of protest mobilization, as they were afraid the movement would radicalize and thus provoke a repressive backlash that would undo all the movement’s achievements. In that period, I translated several articles about democratic transitions into Farsi for a book and then left Iran for the United States to continue my graduate studies.

Shortly thereafter, Iran witnessed a massive uprising in the wake of the fraudulent presidential election of 2009. The government cracked down on protesters, killing more than a hundred people on the streets and arresting many more. Several of my friends and acquaintances were imprisoned, tortured, and forced to give false confessions. The Iranian regime started a campaign against social science, in which they accused Iranian social scientists and intellectuals of being behind the upheaval by spreading ideas about democracy, civil society, human rights, and nonviolent resistance. I was named a few times in that campaign, along with other Iranian social scientists. A hard-line journalist at Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, labeled my master’s thesis an action plan for the 2009 protests.² It was clear that my return to Iran would be risky, at least in the near future.

I switched from political science to sociology in 2009 and began a doctoral program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I found a strong and welcoming intellectual environment to pursue my questions about protest movements and democratization in Iran and beyond.

At the end of 2010, a series of uprisings broke out, first in Tunisia and then in several other Arab countries. As I observed events unfolding in the Arab world, I was also broadening the scope of my research from Iran to the Middle East and even beyond the region, to a global scale. In the first step of this research project, I documented the positive association between protest mobilization and the odds that an authoritarian regime would experience a democratic breakthrough.³ Next, I asked how protest mobilization affects the durability and survival of new democracies. This was the crux of my doctoral dissertation, from which this book manuscript developed. Part of this manuscript was published in an article in American Sociological Review.⁴ Even though my questions and concerns about protest and democracy are rooted in my experiences and observations of Iranian politics, in this book, I do not directly speak about Iran for the simple reason that Iran has not experienced the complete democratic transition that would have allowed it entry into the pool of cases. Nonetheless, I hope that the discussions and conclusions of the book will prove relevant to the struggle of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy. Meanwhile, I rely on events in Egypt and Tunisia to formulate a solution to the major puzzle that drives this book. I offer a global argument that I test at the cross-national level, then I come back to Egypt and Tunisia to assess my argument in these Middle Eastern cases.

Like any other work of scholarship, this book has been developed in part through conversations with many brilliant friends and colleagues, who have pushed me to dig deeper and to think about various aspects of the processes of mobilization and democratization. First, I must thank my mentor and adviser, Charles Kurzman. Studying social movements with him underpinned my decision to transition from political science to sociology—a turning point in my intellectual journey. Charlie taught me how to think critically and systematically, how to write clearly, and how to engage with criticism in a constructive way. Throughout my graduate studies, he encouraged me to be ambitious and meticulous in my work. It was with his support and encouragement that I developed the mixed-method design to fulfill a research objective that would require a novel theoretical argument and the analysis of an original quantitative and qualitative dataset at different levels of analysis.

I also wish to acknowledge the teachings of Kenneth (Andy) Andrews. I had previously studied research methodology, but his seminar on social movements produced a deep understanding of the importance of good research questions in doing good research projects, especially in the context of the social movements literature. I want to thank Neal Caren, a member of my dissertation committee, with whom I shared the authorship of my first quantitative article. This collaboration allowed me to learn coding and to acquire the statistical skills that I use in this book. I thank Graeme Robertson and Christopher Bail, also members of my dissertation committee, who posed critical questions while I developed this treatise. I have benefited from the comments and feedback of several friends and colleagues, notably Christopher Barrie, Benjamin Bradlow, Shawn Bauldry, Chantal Berman, Gerald Easter, Shane Elliot, Robert Fishman, Brandon Gorman, Patrick Heller, Ahsan Kamal, Neil Ketchley, Rehan Rafay Jamil, Andrew Perrin, Thoraya El-Rayyes, David Rigby, and Charles Seguin. I would like to thank Christpher Barrie for sharing his analysis of Arab Barometer survey data, which I use in chapter 5. Finally, I want to thank Sarah Babb, who read the manuscript carefully and provided me with detailed, formative feedback, as well as Peter Rosenbaum and Leah Caldwell, who skillfully edited the manuscript. I also thank Meagan Levinson for her editorial support throughout the process.

POPULAR POLITICS AND THE PATH TO DURABLE DEMOCRACY

1

Introduction

Less than a decade ago, as protests swept through the Middle East, the world appeared to be on the verge of a wave of democratization. Today, however, many of those democratic breakthroughs have failed, and it has become clear that the path to democracy is strewn with obstacles. Why do some new democracies survive, while others fail? During the Arab Spring, for example, Tunisia completed its transition to democracy, and the ensuing democratic regime in the country lasted for about a decade. Egypt’s democratic experiment, however, was short and ended with a coup in 2013. Does the success or failure of Tunisia and Egypt reflect broader patterns of democratic survival or failure? In this book, I grapple with this puzzle and propose a novel theory regarding the durability of new democracies. I argue that democracies that emerge from long periods of protest mobilization have a better chance of survival and improvement in democratic quality than democracies that emerge out of quiescence or short episodes of protest mobilization. This is because, when movements mobilize over a long period, they are required to build an organizational infrastructure that provides a firmer foundation for democratic institutions. These movements are also characterized by a more solid leadership during the transition period, for the new democracy itself, and a strengthened civil society in the postdictatorship period.

I begin this chapter with brief definitions of democracy and other related concepts and a review of the major explanations for democracies’ survival or collapse. I adopt a minimalist definition of democracy and then focus my argument and its underlying questions on the minimal institutions necessary for a political regime to qualify as a democracy. I then explore theories that address the relation of democracies’ origins to their subsequent trajectories. These theories highlight the importance of mass mobilization to the process of democratization. Describing next the effects of protest mobilization in democratic transitions, I conclude the chapter by elaborating my theory of the relation of protest mobilization to the success or failure of democratic transitions, with subsequent chapters presenting quantitative and qualitative evidence for the theory’s descriptive and explanatory power.

Democracy

Scholars have debated the definition of democracy for centuries. As with other major debates in political theory, reflections on this definition can be traced back to the writings and teachings of Aristotle and Plato, and subsequently to the works of modern classic thinkers such as Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. While pre–twentieth-century discussions treated democracy as an abstract phenomenon, today’s debates are more concrete, taking into account the realities of mass politics in the contemporary era.

Contemporary definitions of democracy are bounded by minimalist and maximalist approaches. The minimalist approach defines democracy as being based on a minimum number of procedures for selecting political leaders—often including fair and free elections and civil liberties such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.¹ Maximalist or substantive approaches define democracy in terms of idealistic principles such as political equality, according to which, regardless of socioeconomic inequalities, citizens should be equal in exercising political power. Maximalist approaches contend that procedures like executive and legislative elections are not sufficient conditions for democracy. Instead, substantive democracy requires the participation of all citizens in shaping the political and policy agendas in the public sphere.² Limiting democracy to procedures of representative institutions, such as competitive elections, is not sufficient to achieve the ideals of equal participation for all citizens, but by no means does such criticism suggest the insignificance of electoral democracy. Forging the procedures of such features of electoral democracy as competitive elections and the political freedoms of speech and association creates venues and opportunities to achieve the ideals of democratic participation and political equality. In other words, electoral democracy is not a sufficient condition for reaching the ideals of political equality, but it is nonetheless a necessary part of the process by which such ideals are reached. Procedures of electoral democracy create the possibility for excluded groups to organize and compete for political office. Through organizing, mobilizing, and forging alliances, activists can use institutions of electoral democracy to broaden inclusion and participation in the democratic polity.³ While recognizing the importance of substantive freedoms, the ideas presented herein converge on the formal dimensions of democracy.

Accordingly, we can define concepts of democratic transition, consolidation, quality, and deepening in relation to the formal and substantive dimensions of democracy. A democratic transition occurs when a nondemocratic regime meets the minimum requirements of a formal democratic regime, such as the transfer of executive power through fair and free elections. Democratic consolidation and democratic survival occur when these minimum requirements endure. While all democratic regimes meet the minimum criteria for holding fair and free elections and ensuring various political freedoms, there is considerable variation in the competitiveness of elections and respect for political freedoms across democracies. Put simply, some democracies are more democratic than others. In this book, I refer to this as democratic quality (see chapter 2 for more details on the definition and operationalization of the concept). There are both theoretical and empirical reasons to presume that democracies with higher quality democratic institutions are also more likely to survive.⁴

Democratic Durability

What factors determine whether newly born democracies survive or die? Political theorists and social scientists have long pondered this question. Plato and Aristotle considered the possibility that democracies give way to the rule of tyrants and demagogues.⁵ In Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli asked how democracies could be prevented from devolving into elite-dominated tyrannies.⁶ He recommended institutional constraints and emphasized that citizens should distrust the elite and take direct action against injustice and abuses of power.⁷ With the advent of modern social science and the expansion of mass politics in the nineteenth century, the breakdown and decay of democracies were major topics of inquiry. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx posited the specific conditions of class struggle that led to the failure of the French Republic of 1830 and the absolutist rule of Louis Bonaparte.⁸ In both of Alexis de Tocqueville’s major works, the author expressed concern that growing homogeneity and individualism in new democracies could set the stage for the return of tyranny and despotism.⁹ To address such threats, Tocqueville emphasized the importance of civic associations mediating between individuals and the state. More recently, in the mid–twentieth century, sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset¹⁰ identified economic development as an important factor for democratic longevity. In his longue durée study of democracy and contention in Europe, Charles Tilly noted, Although democracy has, indeed, become more prevalent in recent centuries, de-democratization still occurs frequently and widely.¹¹

Why do some democracies break down, but others survive challenges of de-democratization? Contemporary research on democratic breakdown focuses on the strategic choices and preferences of elites, as well as economic development, natural resources, institutional design, the international context, and the institutional form of the antecedent regime.¹² The existing scholarship indicates that democracies with higher levels of national income are more likely to survive, even though the mechanisms underlying such occasions are not clear. Notwithstanding, research suggests that revenues from natural resources such as oil could be damaging for democracy, as incumbent leaders occasionally turn such resources into personal resources, strengthening their grip on power and thereby undermining democratic institutions. In terms of institutional design, some political scientists point to a higher likelihood of democratic breakdown for presidential systems due to a higher concentration of executive power in such systems when compared to parliamentary systems. Other scholars contend that democracies that emerge in the wake of military regimes are more vulnerable to failure, as militaries that may have previously been politicized often succumb to the tendency to reseize power from newly established civilian authority and, in so doing, violate democratic norms. Finally, a body of scholarship elaborates on the effect of the international context and suggests that democracies in regions with more democratic regimes have a better chance of survival than those in regions with more authoritarian regimes. While expanding our understanding of democratic durability, these studies leave untouched the possibility of still different pathways to democracy, whose circumstances might have significantly different effects on their success and hence the probability of democratic consolidation.

As Tilly¹³ once commented, democracy is like a lake: water may fill it from different origins and along distinct routes. Democratic transitions may occur as a result of international intervention and brokerage among elites.¹⁴ Popular uprisings are thus another pathway toward democratization. For instance, South Africa democratized in 1994 following a massive uprising and the collapse of the apartheid regime. However, a democratic transition occurred in Pakistan in 1988, when the country’s dictator died in an airplane crash and the military held competitive multiparty elections. One may ask, accordingly, whether democracies emerging from popular mobilizations possess characteristics dissimilar to other democratic regimes. More specifically, are such democracies more or less durable? Some years ago, an important body of work proposed that the mode of transition also affects the fate of democratic regimes—namely, that democratic transitions led through elite pacts resulted in more sustainable democracies.¹⁵ I refer to this literature as the elitist approach to democratization. Samuel Huntington, a major figure in this approach, affirms this elitist bias against mass mobilization, writing, Democratic regimes that last have seldom if ever been instituted by mass popular actors.¹⁶ In this view, stable democracies are built when soft-liners in the regime and moderates in the opposition agree on certain parameters of transition and the form of the new democracy. At this stage, the negotiation skills of the political elite are significant in the success or failure of the new democracy.

Popular Mobilization and Democratic Transitions

A recurring theme in studies of democracy is the role of protest mobilization. Some scholars consider mass mobilization to be conducive to democratization, but others see unrest and upheavals as harmful to the prospect of a complete democratic transition and consolidation. The elitist approach suggests that mass mobilization is harmful to democracy, since it may destabilize the political order and threaten the interests of authoritarian elites, such as the armed forces, and encourage them to reverse the newly initiated democratic process.¹⁷ Additionally, a contentious civil society might overload the political regime with various demands. In Huntington’s view, when political institutions are weak, civic organizations might undermine political stability and democracy by deepening cleavages, furthering dissatisfaction, and providing rich soil for oppositional movements. A flourishing civil society under these circumstances signals governmental and institutional failure and bodes ill for political stability and democracy.¹⁸ Since political institutions are often underdeveloped in new democracies, one might expect to see such antidemocratic tendencies from protest movements in these regimes. Similarly, Guillermo O’Donnell and Phillipe Schmitter wrote in their seminal comparative study of democratic transitions in southern Europe and Latin America that the threat of popular mobilization with radical demands could backfire and lead to the abortion of democratic transitions.¹⁹ The failure of the Arab Spring uprisings to create stable democracies could serve as an example for the elitist approach. The uprising that initially brought down the long-standing Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in