be contaminated by practice (pp. 6–8). Rueschmeyer et al. (1992) look for
realistic possibilities rather than philosophical ideals: ‘modest’ popular par-
ticipation in government through representative parliaments, the responsi-
bility of government to parliament, regular free and fair elections, freedom
of expression and association, and an extensive suffrage (pp. 10, 41– 4).
One of the reasons why understanding democratization is so difficult is
the variability of regimes that are labelled democratic, and the nature of the
democratic deficit found in so many. Regimes may be classified as new or
restored democracies despite the circumvention by parliaments of presiden-
tial decrees (for example, Argentina), disregard of constitutional boundaries
by the executive branch (for example, Taiwan), the award of veto powers to
non-elected bodies such as the military (Chile and Thailand) and other devi-
ations from the democratic ideal. Such variations make it problematic to
relate democratization as a dependent variable to factors believed hypothet-
ically to explain the process, especially consolidation (O’Donnell, 1998;
Merkel, 1999).
Another problem with the analysis of democratization arises from the
contested nature of the concept of democracy. Definitions often refer to the
presence of different phenomena: procedures (such as the holding of free and
fair elections), recognized human rights (such as freedom of association and
speech), extensive participation, and material equality (because economic
deprivation leads to political disempowerment). There are both formal and
substantive conceptions of democracy. For some, democracy means ‘mean-
ingful political citizenship’ (Grugel, 2002, p. 5). Analysis of democratization
is affected by whatever view of democracy is held by the investigator.
The transition to democracy
Transitions from authoritarianism to democracy have been extremely var-
ied, making it difficult to discern patterns that aid explanation. This com-
plexity is sometimes compounded by confusion between the causes of
authoritarian breakdown and the processes by which democratic replace-
ments are introduced. For example, the three ‘routes’ to democracy are cat-
egorized in Potter et al. (1997) as ‘modernization’, which stresses the
economic prerequisites of democracy; the ‘structural’, which focuses on the
effects on authoritarianism of changes in class and power; and ‘transition’,
which focuses on the bargaining between élites which negotiate the transi-
tion to democracy. Such confusions make it difficult to distinguish between
the definition of a phase such as transition, and its causes. Furthermore,
252 Understanding Third World Politics