comparative political systems

Student’s name
Teacher’s Name
Student’s Group
12 April 2018
Problems of democratic transition in “Delegative Democracy” by G. O’Donnell
In his article, Guillermo O’Donnell discusses the development of the newly democratic countries in the first years after the end of the Cold War and underlines the key features of the process of democratization. The paper was written in the period when processes of democratic transition were of a great importance as different transitions occurred simultaneously in Latin America (after demolition of military juntas system in the 1980s), Eastern Europe (democratic revolutions of 1989 and dissolution of the Soviet Union) and East Asia (soft democratization of the frontline countries from both socialist and western blocs). The key conclusions of the paper are as follows (O’Donnell, 56):
It is wrong to assume that the democratic transition occurs in a single way, as the development of the democratic society may take different forms. It is important to create a classification of different types of democratic transition.
The transition to democracy is not a one-stop shop and rather takes two key steps to be performed. The first step is the creation of poliarchy which generally resembles previous authoritarian regimes but with shifting governments and changing leaders.
The second stage of the transition to the democratic society is the establishment of the democratic regime, rather than just popularly elected government. The difference of such regime lies in a manner of state administration and implementation of democratic processes into all the spheres of life.

The examples of attempts of democratic transitions in some countries of Latin America and East Asia show that nothing guarantees the evolution of representative proto-democracies to the second stage. Moreover, sometimes the first stage of democratic transition may devolve to the authoritarian regime again.
The crucial moment of the evolution from the first stage to full-scale democratization is the formation of the network of representative democratic institutions, independent from the central power, even though democratically elected. Such set creates a system of checks and balances preventing elective democracy to degrade to short-time authoritarian regimes with the elements of oligarchy.
The successful outcome of such transitional processes may be evidence in the countries where governmental institutions decentralize their functions and transfer part of their authorities to communities and independent civil agents, preserving rather regulative than an executive influence on the society.
The most prominent cases of the successful transition are Chile after the resignation of Augusto Pinochet, the long transitional process in post civil war Uruguay, development of democratic institutions in Portugal after the Carnation Revolution and the dismantling of military junta system in post-Franco Spain.
The lack of public authorities initiative to transfer their competences to civil society, as well as insufficient interest of the civil society in undertaking such initiatives, leads if not to the restoration of one-party authoritarian rule, but at least to high level of corruption, power of a very narrow group of people and further occupation of private spheres by public authorities.
The key threats to democratic transition in the post-authoritarian countries are the existence of a large layer of former elite, struggling to turn back its positions; social instability, large monetary (hyperinflation) and socio-economic (unemployment) problems of the transition period leading to the risks of political unrests; lack of democratic experience in society and possible risk of popular sympathies to radical, totalitarian or populist parties; and finally the danger of the transformation of centralized authoritarian power into semifeudal locale authoritarism of regional leaders in the absence of strong democratic communities.

Works cited
O’Donnell, Guillermo. “Delegative democracy.” Journal of Democracy, 1994, pp. 55-69