Alfred Stepan

Federalism and Democracy: Beyond the U.S. Model

For those of us interested in the spread and consolidation of democracy, whether as policy makers, human rights activists, political analysts, or democratic theorists, there is a greater need than ever to reconsider the potential risks and benefits of federalism. The greatest risk is that federal arrangements can offer opportunities for ethnic nationalists to mobilize their resources. This risk is especially grave when elections are introduced in the subunits of a formerly nondemocratic federal polity prior to democratic countrywide elections and in the absence of democratic countrywide parties. Of the nine states that once made up communist Europe, six were unitary and three were federal. The six unitary states are now five states (East Germany has reunited with the Federal Republic), while the three federal states—Yugoslavia, the USSR, and Czechoslovakia—are now 22 independent states. Most of postcommunist Europe’s ethnocracies and ethnic bloodshed have occurred within these postfederal states.

Authoritarian Brazil : origins, policies, and future

The development model followed by the military regime that came to power in Brazil in 1964 is one of the most controversial among the less developed countries. The regimes authoritarian structure, combined with a GNP growth rate that is one of the highest in the world, raises extremely disturbing yet fundamental questions about the relation between political authoritarianism and economic dynamism. In this book, social scientists from three continents assess the major political and economic characteristics of the Brazilian model. Because events there have important implications for other countries, throughout the volume there is a deliberate search for new conceptual frames of reference to help put the Brazilian process in a larger comparative perspective. Because of the important normative issues raised by the Brazilian style of development, there is also an attempt to be explicit about what values the regime promotes and what values it denies. Each of the contributors is a distinguished scholar in his field. They are Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Alber Fishlow, Juan J. Linz, Samuel Morley, Philippe C. Schmitter, Thomas E. Skidmore, Gordon W. Smith, and Alfred Stepan. From their different perspectives, they help us to understand how political repression and economic boom have gone hand in hand in this important Latin American country.

Comparative Perspectives on Inequality and the Quality of Democracy in the United States

When Jeffrey Isaac approached us to review some recent works in American politics from a comparative perspective, we gladly accepted the task, believing it important to help overcome what some see as the “splendid isolation” of American politics. Indeed, the invitation arrived at a propitious time because, after completing our most recent book, we critically reflected on the fact that we had unfortunately written almost nothing on the oldest, and one of the most diverse, democracies in the world, the United States. We thus agreed to contribute some thoughts on the matter, recognizing the limits of our knowledge of the entire field of American politics, but acknowledging, too, our belief that the current distancing of the study of America from the analysis of other democracies impoverishes modern political science.

Arab, not muslim, exceptionalism

Abstract:The non-Arab Muslim world has exhibited a much higher degree of electoral competition than the Arab Muslim world, both over time and in the contemporary period. 396 million Muslims, about half of the world’s Muslim population who live in Non-Arab League Muslim majority states, live in states with competitive elections. By contrast, none of the 270 million Muslims in Arab League member states live under electorally competitive regimes. Arab League member states have increasingly become a distinctive political community within the Muslim world, while non-Arab Muslim majority states are a far more diverse group. As such they are more open to a range of political communities, and consequently to international election observers and other initiatives promoting democracy.

The Rise of "State-Nations"

Must every state be a nation and every nation a state? Or should we look instead to the example of countries such as India, where one state holds together a congeries of “national” groups and cultures in a single and wisely conceived federal republic?

Bringing the Russian State Back in: Explanations of the Derailed Transition to Market Democracy@@@Kremlin Capitalism: Privatizing the Russian Economy@@@Democracy from Scratch@@@Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation@@@Russia's 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Polarized Politics

In June 1996, for the first time in thousand years, Russian citizens were given the chance to select their head of state in a democratic election. Michael McFaul analyzes three major factors that combine to explain why Boris Yeltsins victory, should have been expected, discusses the reasons behind Yeltsins victory, and examines its impact on electoral politics in post-Soviet Russia.

Ukraine: Improbable Democratic ‘Nation-State’, but Possible Democratic ‘State-Nation’?

The contrasting political evolution of Ukraine and Russia since 1991 poses one of the most intriguing puzzles of the last 20 years. The two countries began the post-communist transition with broadly similar institutional inheritances and comparable levels of socio-economic development. During the 1990s, the economic reforms implemented in the two countries were also similar and generated similar results, although Ukraine was reckoned to lag behind Russia in many areas. These reforms resulted for a time in remarkably similar political economies, often referred to as ‘oligarchic capitalism’. In each state, asset ownership was concentrated in the hands of a small number of politically well connected oligarchs and the arbitration of conflicts among rival oligarchs constituted at once a major source of presidential power and one of the president’s principal functions. Yet since the end of the 1990s, Russia and Ukraine have taken divergent political paths, the former towards increasing centralisation and authoritarianism, the latter towards a frequently unstable, often corrupt but nevertheless competitive democratic system.

Parlamentarismo x presidencialismo no mundo moderno: revisão de um debate atual

presente trabalho trata de quatro temas centrais:— relacoes civico-militares;— a queda da democracia;— a dimensao institucional na politica;— e a problematica da consolidacao democratica.Vou continuar tratando desses quatro temas, mas o foco especifico deminha pesquisa atual e uma analise comparativa entre opresidencialismo e o parlamentarismo.Nesta sala, ha gente que tem interesse neste tema e, no mundo, meuscolegas academicos — como o professor espanhol Juan Linz, oprofessor alemao Dieter Nohlen, o professor brasileiro BolivarLamounier, o professor chileno-americano Arturo Valenzuela e quasevinte outros — tambem estao trabalhando nele.No mundo politico ha igualmente muito interesse. Por exemplo, noChile, a consideracao do parlamentarismo e um ponto importante doprograma do PPD de Ricardo Lagos.Eu ainda tenho oito meses de meu sabatico para fazer pesquisas para olivro em tempo integral. Portanto, para mim e uma honra e umaoportunidade valiosa passar essa tarde com voces no Instituto deEstudos Avancados, para explorar o meu proximo livro em sua formapreliminar.Por enquanto, na minha cabeca, o livro tera seis capitulos e umapendice, mas, obviamente, se eu for um pesquisador serio, esseesquema ainda vai mudar. Comecei, entretanto, com o seguinte planode pesquisa.

A life in comparative politics: Chasing questions in five continents

Why, as a comparativist, did I find it compelling to carry out field research in over 20 countries on five different continents? Because comparative politics should be question-driven, not driven by methodology or existing data. Good questions led to new countries. My book on how Brazilian civilian elites were complicit in coups led to a comparative book on how to transform such civil–military relations in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. My colleague Juan J Linz and I broadened the scope of questions of democratic transition theory by adding post-communist countries to the transition set. New questions and relevant new countries continue to emerge. What to do if more than one nation exists in a polity pursuing ‘nation-state’ policies? I helped create the concept of ‘state-nation’ and documented how ‘multiple but complementary identities’ were fostered in India. How did polities that respected the ‘twin tolerations’ emerge in Muslim-majority Indonesia, Senegal, and Tunisia?

Transition Leaders Speak

It is a sobering truth that most attempts at democratic transition fail, with disappointment and reversal their unhappy lot. Sergio Bitar and Abraham Lowenthal refuse to take this as a counsel of despair, however. Instead, they see it as all the more reason to study the cases of democratization that did work, in hopes of learning how they beat the odds and managed to implant government by consent and the rule of law in places where these had been absent and indeed denied. To that end, they have produced this volume of probing and meticulously prepared interviews with thirteen presidents and prime ministers from nine countries, all of which, in Bitar and Lowenthal’s judgment, “achieved democratic governance—uneven and in some senses incomplete—but without reversal.” There might have been more than nine countries chosen, but the deaths of some leaders, such as the Czech Republic’s President Václav Havel (1936–2011), precluded their inclusion. Students of democratic transition will note with delight the extensive new material that this book gives us on some of the classic cases of successful democratization, including those of Brazil, Chile, Poland, and Spain. That would be cause enough for celebration, but beyond this, the book covers countries that are missing from older standard works on democratic transition. Such works include the four volumes on Transitions from Authoritarian Rule edited by Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Stepan.NEW saved by BK on 11/12/15; 2,775 words, including notes; TXT created from NEW by PJC, 11/23/15 (2,215 words); MP edits to TXT by PJC, 11/25/15 (2,235 words); AAS entered from author’s email directly into TXT to create FIN, PJC, 12/2/15 (2,319 words)