Overview

"This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The last fifteen years have witnessed a ""democratic recession."" Democracies previously thought to be well-established--Hungary, Poland, Brazil, and even the United States--have been threatened by the rise of ultra-nationalist and populist leaders who pay lip-service to the will of the people while daily undermining the freedom and pluralism that are the foundations of democratic governance. The possibility of democratic collapse where we least expected it has added new urgency to the age-old inquiry into how democracy, once attained, can be made to last. In Democracy in Hard Places, Scott Mainwaring and Tarek Masoud bring together a distinguished cast of contributors to illustrate how democracies around the world continue to survive even in an age of democratic decline. Collectively, they argue that we can learn much from democratic survivals that were just as unexpected as the democratic erosions that have occurred in some corners of the developed world. Just as social scientists long believed that well-established, Western, educated, industrialized, and rich democracies were immortal, so too did they assign little chance of democracy to countries that lacked these characteristics. And yet, in defiance of decades of social science wisdom, many countries that were bereft of these hypothesized enabling conditions for democracy not only achieved it, but maintained it year after year. How does democracy persist in countries that are ethnically heterogenous, wracked by economic crisis, and plagued by state weakness? What is the secret of democratic longevity in hard places? This book--the first to date to systematically examine the survival persistence of unlikely democracies--presents nine case studies in which democracy emerged and survived against the odds. Adopting a comparative, cross-regional perspective, the authors derive lessons about what makes democracy stick despite tumult and crisis, economic underdevelopment, ethnolinguistic fragmentation, and chronic institutional weakness. By bringing these cases into dialogue with each other, Mainwaring and Masoud derive powerful theoretical lessons for how democracy can be built and maintained in places where dominant social science theories would cause us to least expect it."

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9780197598764

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Democracy in Hard Places emphasized fragile democracies that find ways to persevere. It's a novel way to think about democracy that challenges many of our natural assumptions. It's an absolute must read for those who haven't already. * Justin Kempf, Democracy Paradox * We are living through a democratic recession, reversing a decades-long expansion of elections and democratic governance around the world. Why is this happening and what could be done to arrest the decline? This compelling volume tackles this question in an unusual way-by looking at cases (such as India, South Africa, and Indonesia) where democracy has endured, despite having few of the pre-conditions that tend to be associated with success. These rich and carefully researched accounts remind readers that not everything is determined by economic development and other such structural factors. Broadly shared norms and values and specific policy choices all make a difference. Above all, political leaders matter. You cannot have democracy without democrats. * Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post * We are living through an era when it is hard not to be aware of democracy's fragility and concerned about its future. Rather than provide another study of democratic decay, Democracy in Hard Places offers us analyses by some of political science's most eminent scholars of how democracy manages to survive, even in ostensibly inauspicious settings. Democracy in Hard Places will be invaluable to those seeking to understand democracy's contemporary problems as well as come up with solutions to them. * Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University * The recent scholarly turn to more structuralist explanations of regime change has left an important question unanswered: many democracies in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America continue to 'overperform' the expectations of existing theories. Why-and how-do fragile democracies survive despite daunting domestic and international conditions? This volume offers some important answers. * Steven Levitsky, David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government, Harvard University *

Democracy in Hard Places emphasized fragile democracies that find ways to persevere. It's a novel way to think about democracy that challenges many of our natural assumptions. It's an absolute must read for those who haven't already. * Justin Kempf, Democracy Paradox * We are living through a democratic recession, reversing a decades-long expansion of elections and democratic governance around the world. Why is this happening and what could be done to arrest the decline? This compelling volume tackles this question in an unusual way-by looking at cases (such as India, South Africa, and Indonesia) where democracy has endured, despite having few of the pre-conditions that tend to be associated with success. These rich and carefully researched accounts remind readers that not everything is determined by economic development and other such structural factors. Broadly shared norms and values and specific policy choices all make a difference. Above all, political leaders matter. You cannot have democracy without democrats. * Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post * We are living through an era when it is hard not to be aware of democracy's fragility and concerned about its future. Rather than provide another study of democratic decay, Democracy in Hard Places offers us analyses by some of political science's most eminent scholars of how democracy manages to survive, even in ostensibly inauspicious settings. Democracy in Hard Places will be invaluable to those seeking to understand democracy's contemporary problems as well as come up with solutions to them. * Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University * The recent scholarly turn to more structuralist explanations of regime change has left an important question unanswered: many democracies in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America continue to 'overperform' the expectations of existing theories. Why—and how—do fragile democracies survive despite daunting domestic and international conditions? This volume offers some important answers. * Steven Levitsky, David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government, Harvard University *

Democracy in Hard Places emphasized fragile democracies that find ways to persevere. It's a novel way to think about democracy that challenges many of our natural assumptions. It's an absolute must read for those who haven't already. * Justin Kempf, Democracy Paradox * We are living through a democratic recession, reversing a decades-long expansion of elections and democratic governance around the world. Why is this happening and what could be done to arrest the decline? This compelling volume tackles this question in an unusual way-by looking at cases (such as India, South Africa, and Indonesia) where democracy has endured, despite having few of the pre-conditions that tend to be associated with success. These rich and carefully researched accounts remind readers that not everything is determined by economic development and other such structural factors. Broadly shared norms and values and specific policy choices all make a difference. Above all, political leaders matter. You cannot have democracy without democrats. * Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post * We are living through an era when it is hard not to be aware of democracy's fragility and concerned about its future. Rather than provide another study of democratic decay, Democracy in Hard Places offers us analyses by some of political science's most eminent scholars of how democracy manages to survive, even in ostensibly inauspicious settings. Democracy in Hard Places will be invaluable to those seeking to understand democracy's contemporary problems as well as come up with solutions to them. * Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University * The recent scholarly turn to more structuralist explanations of regime change has left an important question unanswered: many democracies in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America continue to 'overperform' the expectations of existing theories. Why—and how—do fragile democracies survive despite daunting domestic and international conditions? This volume offers some important answers. * Steven Levitsky, David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government, Harvard University *

We are living through an era when it is hard not to be aware of democracy's fragility and concerned about its future. Rather than provide another study of democratic decay, Democracy in Hard Places offers us analyses by some of political science's most eminent scholars of how democracy manages to survive, even in ostensibly inauspicious settings. Democracy in Hard Places will be invaluable to those seeking to understand democracy's contemporary problems as well as come up with solutions to them. * Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University * The recent scholarly turn to more structuralist explanations of regime change has left an important question unanswered: many democracies in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America continue to 'overperform' the expectations of existing theories. Why-and how-do fragile democracies survive despite daunting domestic and international conditions? This volume offers some important answers. * Steven Levitsky, David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government, Harvard University *

Author Information

Scott Mainwaring is the Eugene and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. His research and teaching focus on democratization, party systems, and Latin American politics. His book with Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall, won the Best Book Prizes of the Democracy and Autocracy section of the American Political Science Association and the Political Institutions section of the Latin American Studies Association. Mainwaring was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010. In April 2019, PS: Political Science and Politics listed him as one of the fifty most cited political scientists in the world. He served as the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor for Brazil Studies and as faculty co-chair of the Brazil Studies program at Harvard University from 2016 to 2019. Tarek Masoud is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the co-Editor of the National Endowment for Democracy's Journal of Democracy. At the Harvard Kennedy School, he directs the Middle East Initiative and the Initiative on Democracy in Hard Places. He is the author of Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt; The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform with Jason Brownlee and Andrew Reynolds; as well as several articles and book chapters. He is a 2009 Carnegie Scholar, a trustee of the American University in Cairo, and the recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation and the Paul and Daisy Soros foundation, among others.

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