Democratization – Getting Europe Right

Conditions of Democratic Backsliding

Shop Talk at Pew Research Center, Washington DC

Democratic backsliding can be defined as the gradual weakening of checks on government and civil liberties by democratically elected governments. In my talk I discussed potential causal paths likely to trigger and support backsliding. By comparing episodes of democratic decline over time and with countries not affected by backsliding, I investigated the extent to which weaknesses of particular democratic institutions, economic crises, exposure to globalization, the presence of populist political actors and polarized political communication in a digital public sphere contribute to backsliding. My empirical analysis was based, amongst others, on the Digital Society Survey and the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Indices, an set of composite indicators that measure democratic performance across 158 countries from 1975 to today. read more

Rising Exclusivity and Declining Democracy

Panel Debate at the Bali Civil Society and Media Forum, Bali, Indonesia

The Bali Civil Society and Media Forum (BCSMF) took place in the framework of the 12th Bali Democracy Forum, a large meeting of governmental and non-governmental representatives mainly from Asian and Pacific countries. Its organizers, the Djakarta-based Institute for Peace and Democracy and the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs seek to make democracy a strategic agenda in the Asia-Pacific.

Line-up of foreign ministers and participants

My contribution focused on how increasing social inequality contributes to weaken democratic accountability. Other panelists included Peter deSouza and Nejib Friji. The subsequent discussion was quite diverse, ranging from the role of technology in democracies over the accommodation of minorities, the rise of ethno- and religious nationalism, the participation of youth in democracy to the relationship between democracy and capitalism. read more

Demokratisierungsprozesse und ihre Akteure

Ein Überblick zum Stand der Theoriebildung

in: Protest im langen Schatten des Kreml. Aufbruch und Resignation in Russland und der Ukraine, hg. v. O. Zabirko und J. Mischke, Stuttgart: Ibidem 2020, 17-36

Seit den Übergängen zur Demokratie in Ostmitteleuropa 1989/90 ist eine umfangreiche sozialwissenschaftliche Literatur zur Demokratisierung entstanden. Diese Arbeiten haben die Bedingungen, Verlaufsmuster und Ergebnisse von Demokratisierungsprozessen rekonstruiert und im Ländervergleich analysiert. Sie sind bisher jedoch noch nicht so weit fortgeschritten, dass man eine bestimmte Anzahl von Akteurkonstellationen und Strategien benennen könnte, die für die Errichtung und Konsolidierung demokratischer Institutionen notwendig und hinreichend sind. Während modernisierungstheoretische Studien die für eine stabile Demokratie erforderlichen ökonomischen und gesellschaftlichen Strukturbedingungen hervorhoben, betrachteten Studien zu den lateinamerikanischen und südeuropäischen Demokratie-Übergängen Abkommen (“Pakte”) zwischen Reformern innerhalb der herrschenden Elite und moderaten Oppositionsführern als die entscheidenden Weichenstellungen für die neue Demokratie. Die spätere Forschung argumentierte dagegen, dass stabile Demokratien sich nicht aus Kräftegleichgewichten bildeten, sondern dort, wo demokratische politische Akteure über die Kräfte des autoritären Regimes triumphierten. read more

The Conditional Impact of Democracy Conditions

How the European Union interacts with political competition in Eastern Partnership countries

Studia Europaea, 62 1 2017, 141-160

In the debate about the European Neighbourhood Policy, two positions may be distinguished: those who propose a stricter and more consistent use of democratic conditionality, prioritizing democracy over other EU objectives – and those who refuse to set compliance with democratic standards as a precondition for support, expecting democracy to emerge from closer linkages. The paper argues that both positions do not sufficiently recognize the selective effectiveness of EU conditionality. Democracy conditions can become effective if (1) dense societal, economic and cultural ties with the EU support their domestic acceptance and (2) ruling political elites are faced with a competitive opposition.

While the EU can not generate or reinforce domestic political competition in Eastern Partnership countries, its democracy conditions can become effective in competitive constellations by helping domestic political actors to agree on institutional constraints to executive authority or on mechanisms of executive accountability. The EU’s democracy conditions remain ineffective in less competitive political systems, because their ruling political elites lack incentives to cooperate with the opposition.

Download the full paper: Brusis_StudiaEuropaea

BTI 2018 Kick-Off and Concept Paper

On 12/13 September the core group behind the Transformation Index (BTI) met at Bertelsmann Stiftung’s always impressive Gütersloh headquarters to prepare the new survey wave.

BTI is a global expert survey on the quality of democracy, market economy and governance, now in its eighth edition (!) scheduled for publication in 2018. Questionnaires will be sent to country experts at the end of October. The submission of country reports will trigger off an elaborate procedure of reviewing, revising, calibrating, editing and lesson-drawing, keeping us busy throughout the next year.

The meeting was a first occasion for Peter Thiery and me to present the draft of a comprehensive paper that situates the concepts guiding the BTI in the scholarly literatures on democratic theory, democratization, policy reform, good governance, economic transformation and aid effectiveness. Our paper also uses unpublished data from the BTI production process to evaluate the validity of the measurement and aggregation techniques underlying the composite indicators in the BTI dataset. Author-reviewer differences are studied across subsequent BTI editions. Various statistical models are constructed to assess the impact of changes among authors, reviewers and coordinators and to compare the effects of different aggregation rules. We plan to complete and publish the paper during the next months.

Zur Umsetzung der Minsker Abkommen

Ein Interview zur aktuellen Lage in der Ukraine und zum Treffen der Trilateralen Kontaktgruppe, ARD Tagesschau 24, 3.8.2016

Geht es in der Ukraine voran? Reformen in Justiz, bessere Korruptionsbekämpfung, eine bessere Wirtschaftslage geben aus Sicht von Martin Brusis von der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Grund zur Hoffnung. Sorge bereiten ihm unter anderem die Kämpfe im Osten des Landes.

Minsker_Abkommen

Die Minsker Abkommen scheinen gescheitert, die Zivilbevölkerung im Osten der Ukraine ist in Gefahr, aber es gibt auch Hoffnungsschimmer für das Land – so schätzt zumindest Martin Brusis von der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München im Gespräch mit tagesschau24 die Situation in der Ukraine ein. read more

Теории демократизации: состояние исследований

Статья в сборнике “Беларусизация.
Можно ли завершить процесс институционального
строительства независимого государства?”, под редакцией Андрея Шутова, Вильнюс: Центр европейской трансформации 2014, 45-58. Belarusizatsiya

После целого ряда политических переходов, произошедших в Восточной Европе в 1989-90 годах, объем сравнительных исследований на тему демократизации значительно рос. Однако ученые до настоящего времени не пришли к согласию относительно комплекса созвездий действующих лиц и стратегий, которые являлись бы необходимыми и достаточными для установления и упрочения демократических институтов. В ранних исследованиях подчеркивалось значение заключения пактов между реформаторами внутри правящей элиты и умеренными лидерами оппозиции. В более поздних исследованиях упор делался на том, что стабильная демократия возникла только на базе таких созвездий, в которых демократические политические деятели доминировали над силами авторитарного режима. Явная консолидация после второй половины 1990-х годов политических режимов, расположенных между полной демократией и полной автократией, привела к возрождению структурных подходов. Такие попытки объяснения рассматривают конфликты государственности, социально-экономические условия и культурное наследие в качестве более важных факторов смены режимов, чем деятельность политических элит.

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Trade Liberalization and Democracy

A Research Note for the Policy Planning Staff, Federal Foreign Office of Germany, 10 June 2013

Summary:

The aim of the proposed study is to analyze whether trade liberalization has facilitated market economy and democracy, how to reinforce this impact through complementary policies and how to use trade liberalization to achieve a democratization in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. This study is to be elaborated in a cooperation between economists and political scientists, and its findings / policy recommendations are to be discussed and agreed with scholars from France and Poland. To organize this cooperation, the research questions need to be addressed and operationalized in different modules.

The present notes describe how a political analysis module could contribute to this study. The analysis proposed here should discuss the plausibility of the different causal mechanisms that link trade liberalization to democratization, in view of the political situation in Russia and the other post-Soviet states. There is a significant body of quantitative, large-n research on the relationship between trade liberalization / globalization and democratization. Based upon a cursory review of the literature, one can state that existing studies do not unequivocally confirm a positive impact of trade liberalization on democracy (see table). This is, inter alia, due to the underspecification of the response variable and the causal heterogeneity associated with variable-centered quantitative research. Since these studies are designed to identify mean effects for a large number of cases, they do not explore country-specific configurations of causal factors.