Some Social Requisites of Democracy Economic Development and Political Legitimacy Review

This is a summary, with selected quotes and commentary (mine), of Seymour Martin Lipset'southward seminal commodity on democracy.  Why are we interested in Lipset on democracy?  He is considered to accept formulated the modernization hypothesis — roughly (very roughly) understood as the idea that economic development and democracy become hand in manus.  If we want to sympathise what is happening in Western democracies today, we need to sympathize one of the nigh important theories explaining how they are thought to work.

Seymour Martin Lipset, "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economical Evolution and Political Legitimacy," The American Political Science Review, Vol. 53, No. i (Mar., 1959), pp. 69-105.

Direct quotations are bolded, summary is in regular confront, and comments (mine) are italicized.

Disinfobabel's Introduction

It is often said that this article sets out the "modernization hypothesis."  So what is the modernization hypothesis? Beneath are some ways that Lipset's thesis has been described past other scholars.  Information technology's of import to ask how it has been understood, for 2 reasons:  1)  Lipset's thesis "has generated the largest body of research on whatsoever topic in comparative politics" (Przezorski and Limongi); and two)  "it appears that Lipset is more widely cited than read" (Wucherpfennig and Deutsch).

According to Acemoglu et al (2009), "the widely-accepted modernization hypothesis…claims that per capita income causes the creation and the consolidation of democracy."

Przezorski and Limongi draw it every bit the claim "that democracy is related to economical development."

Boix & Stokes refer to it as the "classic proposition that economical development favors commonwealth."

O'Donnell paraphrases it equally saying, "if other countries go as rich as the economically advanced nations, it is highly probable that they volition go political democracies."

Wucherpfennig & Deutsch warn that Lipset is often over-simplified as "positing a uncomplicated correlation between per capita income and democracy" when in fact he had a much broader understanding of economic development (including, industrialization, urbanization, wealth, and education) and he saw all of those factors equally closely interrelated.

But they likewise over-simplify, recognizing his insight that democracy needs "legitimacy" to survive only reducing legitimacy to "continuous economical development (effectiveness)."

These descriptions, from important articles testing, refuting, confirming, the modernization hypothesis advise that Lipset has been reduced to a fortune-cookie.  His statement is much subtler.

Article Summary and Comments

I. Introduction

This is how Lipset states his inquiry:

"Two main circuitous characteristics of social systems will be considered here every bit they impact the trouble of stable democracy: economical development and legitimacy. These will be presented as structural characteristics of a club which sustain a autonomous political organization. Subsequently a word of the economic development circuitous (comprising industrialization, wealth, urbanization, and education) and its consequences for democracy, we shall move to ii aspects of the problem of legitimacy, or the degree to which institutions are valued for themselves, and considered right and proper."

Thus, economical evolution is only ane of the two "complex characteristics" that Lipset examines in his essay — legitimacy is given equally much attention, if not more.  The nature of these 2 characteristics is reminiscent of the base-superstructure relationship in Marxism (annotation to self, learn about Lipset's relationship to Marxism).  Legitimacy concerns developments that take place in a political organisation that is singled-out from economic developments.

II. Economic Development and Democracy

Though known for the merits that democracy is linked to economic development, Lipset saw this as an sometime idea dating back to Aristotle and saw himself equally only testing it empirically.

"From Aristotle down to the present, men take argued that but in a wealthy society in which relatively few citizens lived in existent poverty could a situation exist in which the mass of the population could intelligently participate in politics and could develop the self-restraint necessary to avoid succumbing to the appeals of irresponsible demagogues. A order divided between a large impoverished mass and a small favored elite would result either in oligarchy (dictatorial rule of the pocket-size upper stratum) or in tyranny (popularly based dictatorship)."

The way he tested it was to classify European and Latin American countries according to their forms of government  — interestingly, European countries were classified every bit having either "stable democracies" or "dictatorships," while Latin America had either "democracies" or "stable dictatorships" — and then to correlate these classifications with diverse measures, which included "per capita income, number of persons per motor vehicle and per md, and the number of radios, telephones, and newspapers per thousand persons."  This is thus a comparative, cantankerous-sectional, structural analysis at a indicate in time; Lipset looks at countries with democratic or undemocratic governments and examines their characteristics along several measures.

Lipset himself does not have a developmental perspective on democratization.  (He mainly seems to speculate on what it would take democracies to neglect.)  When he refers to a evolution perspective, he borrows from Lerner, 81:

Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Club, (Glencoe: The Gratuitous Press, 1958).

"The secular evolution of a participant society appears to involve a regular sequence of three phases. Urbanization comes first, for cities alone accept adult the complex of skills and resources which characterize the modern industrial economy. Within this urban matrix develop both of the attributes which distinguish the next 2 phases-literacy and media growth….Non until the 3rd phase…does a lodge begin to produce newspapers, radio networks, and motion pictures on a massive scale. This in turn, accelerates the spread of literacy. Out of this interaction develop those institutions of participation (e.g., voting) which we discover in all advanced modern societies," (quoted on 82).

Lipset comments that Lerner's theory "is by no means established by his data, just the material presented in this paper offers an opportunity for inquiry forth these lines," 82.

Lipset and then moves on to talk over the processes underlying the correlates of commonwealth he finds. The crux seems to exist that wealth changes the course relations in a society:

"Increased wealth….affects the political role of the middle class through irresolute the shape of the stratification structure so that it shifts from an elongated pyramid, with a big lower-form base, to a diamond with a growing heart-form. A large centre class plays a mitigating role in moderating conflict since it is able to reward moderate and autonomous parties and penalize extremist groups…

….For the lower strata, economic evolution, which ways increased income, greater economic security, and higher didactics, let those in this status to develop longer time perspectives and more than complex and gradualist views of politics. A belief in secular reformist gradualism tin only be the ideology of a relatively well-to-exercise lower course," 83.

It might be objected that per capita income is actually not a expert measure; if the wealth accumulated is concentrated in a corrupt elite hierarchy or oligarchy, increased income does not necessarily mean that the "lower" strata volition have admission to that income, as Lipset seems to assume.  Marx predicted that capitalism would lead to the "progressive immiseration" of workers.  Other data may have been hard to obtain at the time.

But information technology is an interesting idea, to map inequality with diagrams (pyramids, diamonds) and illustrate what proportion of the population is at what median level.  Are stats available to do that?

"Increased wealth and pedagogy also serve democracy by increasing the extent to which the lower strata are exposed to cross pressures which will reduce the intensity of their commitment to given ideologies and make them less receptive to sup-porting extremist ones. [This happens]…through enlarging their involvement in an integrated national civilisation as singled-out from an isolated lower class 1, and hence increasing their exposure to middle-class values," 83.

The main threat to democracy when Lipset was writing (1959) was considered to exist the proletariat as a revolutionary forcefulness.  He paraphrases Marx ("[workers] accept aught to lose but their chains") but counters him with de Tocqueville ("only those who take nothing to lose ever revolt"). The thought seems to be that if workers (or any poorer socio-economic class) become isolated from the rest of society merely peculiarly the center course, they volition be more probable to adopt extremist ideologies.  Only just if extremist ideologies are culturally available — the dalit form in India is a counter-case.  Now, today, dalits in India may be adopting more extremist ideologists (mail service-Marx) but the dominant cultural credo of Hinduism enforces compliance with their subordinate role.

"The poorer a state, and the lower the absolute standard of living of the lower classes, the greater the pressure on the upper strata to care for the lower classes every bit beyond the pale of human social club, as vulgar, every bit innately inferior, equally a lower caste. The sharp difference in the style of living betwixt those at the top and those at the bottom makes this psychologically necessary," 83.

This is an insightful comment merely it seems like a hypothesis needing farther testing.  A literary insight.  I imagine that in that location might exist cases where this is not truthful.

"The upper strata not just resist democracy themselves, but their often arrogant political behavior serves to intensify extremist reactions on the office of the lower classes," 84.

Seems true.  But less and then when there is a cultural worship of wealth and an ideology of meritocracy.  The lower classes may revere the wealthy for their success.

Lipset notes that most of what he is talking most in discussing democracy and the atmospheric condition relate only to "the countries of northwest Europe and their English-speaking offspring in America and Australasia," 85.  He seems to concur with Max Weber's (and others) hypothesis "that the factors making for commonwealth in this area are a historically unique concatenation of elements, part of the complex which also produced capitalism in this area," including "economic evolution, Protestantism, monarchy, gradual political alter, legitimacy and democracy," 85.

3.  Legitimacy and Democracy

Then Lipset turns to some of the requisites of democracy thatare historical, simply not in Lerner's sense.  These elements are correlated with economic development but are distinct from it and are function of the political system itself.  And so hither he is looking at legitimacy and at factors at the ideological or political level (superstructure) that have an bear on on whether commonwealth develops or not.  Wucherpfennig and Deutsch reduce this thought to "effectiveness" defined as "continuous economical development" only that is not a correct reading of Lipset.

Legitimacy and Effectiveness.

Lipset'southward definition of legitimacy: "Legitimacy involves the capacity of a political organization to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the near appropriate or proper ones for the order," 86.  Legitimacy is "affective and evaluative," 86, a part of how the values of a political arrangement fit with the primary values of the grouping governed, 86-87.

Lipset's definition of effectiveness (a specifically political course of effectiveness):"By effectiveness is meant the actual performance of a political system, the extent to which it satisfies the bones functions of regime every bit defined by the expectations of nigh members of a order, and the expectations of powerful groups within it which might threaten the arrangement, such equally the armed forces," 86.  Effectiveness is "instrumental," 86, are the bureacracies and decision-making institutions working.

The most of import part of an constructive autonomous political system, for Lipset, is its ability to "resolve political problems," 86.

Here is a cardinal insight:

"The extent to which gimmicky democratic political systems are legitimate depends in large measure upon the ways in which the central issues which have historically divided the society have been resolved," 86.

In the sections of the paper on legitimacy, Lipset sets out two tasks:

1_ to show "how the degree of legitimacy of a autonomous system may affect its capacity to survive the crises of effectiveness," 86, (e.g., depressions or lost wars);

ii. to show how the resolution of historical cleavages (the measure of legitimacy) can strengthen or weaken democracy.

Even oppressive political systems may exist seen as legitimate (east.g., feudalism).  Crises of legitimacy are a more than contempo historical phenomenon, "following the rise of precipitous cleavages amidst groups which accept been able, because of mass advice resource, to organize around dissimilar values than those previously considered to exist the only legitimate ones for the total society."

"A crunch of legitimacy is a crisis of modify," 87.

In the modern age, a crisis of change typically involves a) access to the political organization and b) threat to conservative institutions.  Crisis may sally over again if the "new system is unable to sustain the expectations of major groups (on the footing of "effectiveness") for a long enough period to develop legitimacy upon a new basis).

Re b)

Lipset finds it significant that so many European democracies are really constitutional monarchies (despite the French and American examples).  He sees this as an example of a political transition avoiding b) to a higher place — threat to bourgeois institutions.  Gradual evolution to republic seems to ensure its stability, he seems to recall.

"The preservation of the monarchy has apparently retained for the arrangement the loyalty of the aristocratic, traditionalist, and clerical sectors of the population which resented increased democratization and equalitarianism. And, by more graciously accepting the lower strata, by not resisting to the point that revolution might be necessary, the conservative orders won or retained the loyalty of the new 'citizens.' Where monarchy was overthrown by revolution, and orderly succession was broken, those forces aligned with monarchy have sometimes continued to reject legitimacy to republican successors downwardly to the 5th generation or more," 88.

Lipset then discusses the case of Italy, the one constitutional monarchy that became fascist, explaining that the House of Savoy alienated Catholics.  Something like happened in France, then those democracies were forced to operate without the support of of import segments of their societies.

Re a)

Lipset discusses the problem of new social groups entering into the political life of a state; in the 19th C, this was the workers; in the 20th C, this was colonial peoples and peasants.  Where access is easier, this tends to win over groups to the new system.  He discusses the example of Frg, where first the bourgeosie, and then the workers.

"A major test of legitimacy is the extent to which given nations have developed a common 'secular political culture,' national rituals and holidays which serve to maintain the legitimacy of various autonomous practices."

Lipset gives the U.S. as a positive example (Founding Fathers, Lincoln, etc — but notes the race problem in a footnote on p. ninety), in contrast to some European countries where "the Left and the Right have a different set of symbols, and unlike historical political heroes" (France is an example), 89.

Knowing the degree of legitimacy of a political system gives an idea whether it will survive when it faces a crunch of effectiveness.  He puts the potential relationships into graph form.

A = high legitimacy + loftier effectiveness (U.s., Sweden, Britain); B = legitimate but ineffective; C = illegitimate but effective; D = illegitimate and ineffective (would break down if non dictatorships by force)(Hungary, East Deutschland under USSR).

"When the effectiveness of the governments of the diverse countries broke down in the 1930'south, those societies which were high on the calibration of legitimacy remained democratic, while countries which were low such every bit Germany, Austria, and Spain, lost their freedom, and France narrowly escaped a similar fate," xc.

"…a highly effective but illegitimate system, such as a well governed colony, is more unstable than regimes which are relatively low in effectiveness and loftier in legitimacy," 91.

In fairness to his interpreters cited above, Lipset does say that in the modernistic globe "effectiveness mainly ways constant economical development. Thus those nations which adapted virtually successfully to the requirements of an industrial arrangement had the fewest internal political strains, and either preserved their traditional legitimacy, the monarchy, or developed new strong symbols of legitimacy, 91.

Legitimacy and Cleavage.

Lipset sees democratic systems as characterized by conflict among different groups.  This is the "life-blood" of democracy but at that place is a "constant threat that the conflicts amongst different groups which are the life-blood of the system may crystallize to the indicate where societal disintegration is threatened," 91.  Successful democracies must accept conditions that moderate the intensity of partisan battle.  Cleavages are residues from historical factors related to how major bug dividing society have been solved or not solved.

This is the office of his essay that is most relevant to today's situation in the Usa.

For modern societies, Lipset sees 3 major conflicts: one) the place of faith within the lodge; 2) the admission of "lower strata" to "citizenship," universal suffrage; iii) distribution of wealth.

Where workers got the vote early (United states of america, Britain), there was less radicalism among the working classes.  Sweden and other European countries resisted, thus revolutionary socialism was born.  In France, workers got suffrage but were refused basic economic rights until WWII, became more extremist, 93.

Neumann'due south distinction:

"parties of representation" (strengthen republic):  "view the party function as primarily one of securing votes around election fourth dimension."

vs.

"parties of integration" (weaken democracy): "The parties of integration, on the other hand, are concerned with making the earth adapt to their bones philosophy or Weltanschauung. They do non see themselves every bit contestants in a give-and-take game of pressure level politics, in which all parties accept the rules of the game. Rather they view the political or religious struggle equally a contest between divine or historic truth on one side and fundamental mistake on the other. Given this conception of the world, it becomes necessary to preclude their followers from being exposed to the cross-pressures flowing from contact with falsehood, which will reduce their organized religion."

Sigmund Neumann, Die Deutschen Parteien: Wesen und Wandel nach dem Kriege (2d ed., Berlin, 1932).

Weltanschauung politics is created past "cumulation of unresolved issues."  Intense cleavages are "sustained past the systematic segregation of different strata of the population in organized political or religious enclaves."  Lipset notes that this tin also happen "naturally" — "whenever the social structure operates so every bit naturally to 'isolate' individuals or groups with the same political disposition characteristics from contact with differing views, those so isolated tend to back political extremists."

"A stable democracy requires relatively moderate tension among the contending political forces. And political moderation is facilitated by the capacity of a system to resolve central dividing issues earlier new ones ascend. To the extent that the cleavages of religion, citizenship, and 'collective bargaining' have been allowed to cumulate and reinforce each other every bit stimulants of partisan hostility, the system is weakened. The more than reinforced and correlated the sources of cleavage, the less the likelihood for political tolerance."

These two relationships, 1 on the level of partisan issues, the other on the nature of party back up, are linked together past the fact that parties reflecting accumulated unresolved bug will seek to isolate their followers from conflicting stimuli, to prevent exposure to "error," while isolated individuals and groups will strengthen the intolerant tendencies in the party system. The atmospheric condition maximizing political cosmopolitanism among the electorate are the growth of urbanization, education, communications media, and increased wealth. Almost of the obvious isolated occupations, mining, lumbering, agriculture, vest to the category of "primary" occupations, occupations whose relative share of the labor force declines sharply with economical development. 97-98

"Thus, nosotros see once more how the factors involved in modernization or economic evolution are linked closely to those involved in the historic institutionalization of the values of legitimacy and tolerance."

But this is relative. "Correlations are only statements apropos relative degrees of congruence, and that some other status for political activeness is that the correlation never be and so lucent that men cannot feel that they can change the direction of affairs by their actions."

It helps to go along the variables singled-out.  The assay of cleavage shows  that different electoral and constitutional arrangements may touch on the chances for democracy.

Iv. Systems of Government and Democracy

Lipset makes a few generalizations to support the view that "cross-cutting bases of cleavage are better for the vitality of democracy"; and so two-party systems are better than multi-political party systems, territorial based systems are improve than proportional systems; federalism is amend than a unitary state.All other things beingness equal.

Federalism strengthens commonwealth by increasing the opportunity for multiple sources of cleavag (adding regional to course, religion and ethnicity, also cross-cut).

"A major exception to this generalization occurs when federalism divides the country according to lines of basic cleavage, e.g., between unlike ethnic, religious, or linguistic areas. In such cases, as in Bharat or in Canada, federalism may and so serve to accentuate and reinforce cleavages."

V.  Bug of Contemporary Democracy

This last department discusses prospects for democracy in contemporary (1959) culture.  Lipset says contemporary stable western democracies in mid-20th C are in a "post-politics" phase.

"…there is relatively little difference betwixt the autonomous left and right, the socialists are moderates, and the conservatives accept the welfare state.  In big measure this reflects the fact that in these countries the workers have won their fight for citizenship and for political access, i.e., the right to take part in all decisions of the torso politic on an equal level with others," 100.

The merely remaining consequence?  Redistribution in framework of a Keynsian welfare state.

The residual of the section discusses the prospects for stable democracies in other regions of the world.  In Latin America and Eastern Europe, the presence of Communist parties presents an intractable cleavage.  In mail service-colonial Asia (and Africa), the Left is in power (which was not the example in Europe equally it adult stable democracies).  The countries with the best prospects — State of israel, Japan, Lebanon, Turkey, and the Philippines — tend to resemble Europe.

He ends with some qualifications as to what he has actually shown but concludes that the information supports an "upwards-to-date version of Aristotle's hypothesis."  Information technology does not automatically hateful that a spread of wealth, size of the middle grade, education will result in democracy or stabilized democracy (cf. Russia).  But nosotros shouldn't be likewise pessimistic either, as republic as existed "in a variety of circumstances."

He concludes with an invocation of human agency:

"Democracy is non achieved by acts of will alone; simply men'southward wills, through activity, can shape institutions and events in directions that reduce or increase the chance for the development and survival of republic. To aid men's actions in furthering commonwealth was in some measure out Tocqueville's purpose in studying the operation of American democracy, and it remains perhaps the almost of import substantive intellectual task which students of politics can still set before themselves," 103.

Methodological Appendix

On this view, it would exist difficult to place any ane factor crucially associated with, or "causing" any complex social characteristic. Rather, all such characteristics (and this is a methodological supposition to guide research, and not a substantive point) are considered to have multivariate causation, and multivariate consequences.

This diagram represents conditions and consequences of commonwealth.  The reverse arrow point where a consequence may stop up undermining commonwealth.  Note that Lipset did not see equalitarian value organisation equally a consequence that could be changed by democracy or lead to its reversal.

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Source: https://desertrose10967.wordpress.com/2018/12/01/the-modernization-hypothesis-seymour-martin-lipset-on-democracy/

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