Democracy and its Recent Surge in the World

Democracy and its Recent Surge in the World

By: Krisna Mendoza

     What is a liberal democracy? It divides in two components the democratic institutions and the political rights.  Only a small number of the world’s democracies are stable and groups must agree to accept the democratic bargain. There are different explanations for democracy’s recent surge.  One explanation is in the relationship between democracy and individual freedom and democracy and capitalism.

      The institutional component also called democratic hardware consists of: fair and institutionalized elections, self- initiated and controlled interest groups, autonomous and strong multi- party system, autonomous and self- regulated means of mass communication, mutual balance and checks among the three mayor branches of government, peaceful and periodic alternation of power and constitutional and legal system that guarantees equality and rule of law.  The second one is the liberal rights and freedom entail that talks about the freedoms of thoughts, association, speech, petition, participation, run for office and other personal freedoms such as the right of abortion, homosexual practices, non-religious beliefs, etc. These two types of components are germane to each other in liberal societies.

    The third wave of democratization is a book by Huntington that he identifies a wave of democratization as a group of transitions from nondemocratic to democratic regimes that occur within a specific period of time. In the first wave of democratization during the years 1828 to1926. On a long period of time USA, Britain, Argentina, France and Italy became democracies. During the years 1922 to 1942 Italy, Germany and Argentina backed down to totalitarianism. On the second wave of democratization West Germany, Italy, Japan, India and Israel moved to democracy. The third wave of democratization is from 1974 till now countries such as Portugal, Spain, most Asia, East Africa, European and Latin American moved to democracy.

       There are four possible explanations for democracy: Fatigue of some authoritarian regimes, international pressures, people’s desire for security against arbitrary abuse and people’s desire for economic development. Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism these terms are used to describe tyranny, absolutism, dictatorship, monocracy they all are used to describe non- democracies.  Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy is a book by Carl Friedrich that identifies the six characteristics of totalitarianism that are: an official ideology directed to perfectionist end which is required for mobilization of masses, a single mass party led by an individual, a technically assisted monopoly of control of weapons, monopoly of the means of mass communication which is used for mass mobilization, the application of terror as a means of police control,  and the central direction of the economy. 

     There are Crisis and Non- crisis transitions. The Crisis transitions are the east European transitions on 1989- 1991, The ruling authoritarian governments often has little credibility or capacity to influence the path of transition, no place for pacts with the opposition, democracy will be open to all political parties and movement of the left without mayor constraints. The non – crisis transitions are Asian transitions of Thailand and Korea in addition to Spain, Turkey and Chile, huge influence for old regime and military; the resulting democracies have had to constantly look over their shoulders to see how the military viewed decisions, possible pacts, some constraints on who legally participate in politics may apply.

        In this chapter there are different possible explanations for democracy’s recent surge. A book of third democratization people can see how through years countries have become democratize. The crisis and non crisis tell people how the transitions from democratize and no democratize has worked.