Todd Sechser

Political Science 311

Response Paper #1

25 October 2001

Guarding the Transition to Democracy

An authoritarian state’s transition to democratic governance is fraught with dangers. Democratic regimes are often born into chaos, facing tattered economies, despondent post-authoritarian electorates, and an old guard displeased with its newly disempowered status. The risk that a newly democratized state will backslide into autocratic rule through a military-led coup d’etat is high.

Two particular problems face states transitioning from authoritarian to democratic rule. First, how can an authoritarian government be persuaded to step down from power? Particularly when autocratic governments have committed serious human rights transgressions against their citizens, they may be reluctant to cede power for fear of being prosecuted after the new government takes over. Even in cases where outgoing authoritarians do not fear prosecution for human rights abuses, however, they will seek to ensure that their interests are protected even after their direct control over policy is gone. Without such an assurance, they will be reluctant to step down in favor of democracy.

Second, how can new democratic leaders prevent the armed forces from seizing power in a future coup? Even after the transition to democracy has been made, this in itself is no guarantee of democratic survival. The state’s arbiters of force must be contained while fragile democratic institutions develop. Below I consider each question in turn and offer examples of solutions that contribute to more stable and successful democratic transitions.

Commitment Problems in Ushering Out the Old Guard

The first challenge for a nascent democracy is the problem of creating an environment in which a state’s former autocratic rulers are willing to relinquish power. This is a difficult task. Autocratic governments incur a number of risks by walking away from power. First, they face the possibility of prosecution for human rights abuses, corruption, or other charges relating to acts committed while the regime was in power. Depending on the harshness of the regime’s rule, the magnitude of this fear can vary widely. A benign monarch may have little to fear, but a cruel tyrant will likely be very worried about post-transition reprisals. Second, even benevolent dictators will worry that their interests – whether ideological or material – may not be protected after they relinquish control to a democratically-elected regime. As Terry Moe and Michael Caldwell have argued, “public authority is inherently coercive. The winners get to use public authority to design new structures for the polity as a whole, and the losers have to accept what the winners impose, even if it makes them worse off.”[1] It is unlikely that the new government will share the same ideological beliefs as the outgoing regime; as a result, the exiting government will seek to “lock in” as many policies as it can by blocking avenues to future change.

In short, the new government must be able to credibly commit to not exploiting the old government after the reins of power are handed over. This is not a problem unique to new democracies – it faces any democratic regime that expects to be out of power in the near future. But in a state transitioning to democracy, the transition cannot occur until the outgoing regime obtains a credible guarantee that it will not be exploited or punished by the new regime.

The work of John Londregan on democratic transition in Chile offers some insight into how outgoing authoritarian governments can obtain the guarantees they need in order to voluntarily relinquish power. The constitution imposed by Pinochet’s regime in 1980, initiating Chile’s transition to democracy (though it did not take full effect until after the regime stepped down in 1990), contains a variety of important institutional features that protected the interests of the military regime and permitted that regime to quietly exit from power.

To lock in one’s preferred policies, an exiting regime should seek to obstruct future change by distributing power widely across governmental institutions, thereby increasing the odds that a party closely aligned with the exiting regime will control one of the policy-making veto points. This is exactly what Pinochet’s regime did. The constitution it left behind reduced the prospects for change and helped to lock in its preferred policies during the transition to democracy. First, the power of the executive was significantly reduced. The number of elected Senators was increased, thereby “diluting” the strength of the bloc of Senators appointed by the President.[2] Further, the President’s power to recall legislation previously rejected by the Senate was weakened, loosening his grip on the legislative agenda.[3] Finally, as in the United States, the majority approval of each of two houses of Congress – as well as the approval of the President – is required to enact legislation, thereby creating three major veto points that reduce the likelihood of any given piece of legislation being adopted, and extending the lifespan of policies enacted under the authoritarian regime.[4]

The election process also contributes to government division, and thus, gridlock. Electoral districts are represented by two members of the Chamber of Deputies, but election rules are structured so that one party rarely wins both seats.[5] The result is that obtaining a party majority in the Chamber is extremely difficult, further reducing the chance that any single party will control both the executive and legislature.

In addition to weakening the executive and ensuring legislative gridlock, the post-Pinochet constitution makes constitutional change extremely difficult, requiring a four-sevenths supermajority to adopt any constitutional amendment. The institutional changes that help protect the military regime’s interests are thus themselves locked in.[6]

The structure of the post-Pinochet government provided an institutional guarantee against prosecution for human rights violations committed during the 1970s. Such a guarantee essentially resided in the protection of a 1978 decree explicitly giving amnesty to members of the armed forces for all previous human rights violations.[7] Protection of this decree was accomplished in part by ensuring division and gridlock at the policy-making level, as noted above. In addition, however, the new constitution retained the independence of military courts and limited civilian control over the military, adding to the difficulties in prosecuting military officials in civil courts even if the 1978 decree could be overturned. As a result of these guarantees, the military regime was willing to respect the results of the 1988 plebiscite that threw it from power.

Preventing Future Coups

A second problem faced by a new democratic government is how to prevent future military takeovers. How can democratic institutions be safeguarded against military coups? Research on the causes of military coups in Africa has offered a number of theoretical reasons for their occurrence. These include factors such as ethnic fractionalization, economic stagnation, electoral turnout, and social mobilization.[8] But this research is of little use to a democratic leader attempting to craft institutions that guard against military takeover. Such factors are, at least in the long term, largely out of a government’s control. Rather, an organizational perspective on the causes of military coups can offer more insight into potential methods for preventing them in nascent democracies.

What organizational factors increase the likelihood of military coups? Researchers have identified at least three. First, cohesion within the armed forces generally increases the likelihood of military coups by promoting internal loyalty and increasing the likelihood that a power grab by military elites will be broadly supported within the armed services.[9] Second, militaries that are not professional are more likely to attempt coups than well-trained militaries.[10] Third, inward-looking militaries are more likely to perceive a legitimate political role for themselves, whereas forces whose mission is external security are more likely to submit to civilian control.[11]

The implications of this research for democratic leaders are straightforward. The organizational structure of the military is much easier for a leader to influence than are economic and cultural factors that contribute to the likelihood of coups.

  1. Division. In order to reduce cohesion – and to divide the loyalty of the officer corps among a number of top military leaders, democratic leaders can divide the armed forces into a number of branches. While many states have done this, the army is generally dominant and other branches are consigned to subordinance. While it may not make sense for a small West African state to have a large department of the air force, the army can nevertheless be divided into functional divisions that compete for resources. This increases the likelihood that a significant portion of the military will oppose a coup, even in the unlikely event that one military leader is able to garner broad support across branches.
  2. Professional training. Democratic leaders should take great pains to ensure that officers are trained as professionals rather than political actors, oriented toward politically-neutral service to the civilian government. This task is much easier said than done, but can be aided by drawing military recruits from across all social groups to widen the spectrum of soldiers’ political orientation and reducing political unity within the services.
  3. Military mission. Militaries can be divided into domestic and foreign security forces. As domestic security forces are much more likely to attempt political takeovers, orienting a portion of the military strictly toward external security would increase the likelihood that part of the armed services would remain steadfast in support of the civilian government and thus deter a coup.

Unfortunately, I lack the evidence with which to support these recommendations. But this logic suggests that even if democratic leaders cannot control the numerous economic and social variables that affect the probability of coups, they can craft military institutions that help to ensure civilian control and help keep the military out of domestic politics.

Conclusion

Democracies transitioning from authoritarianism face dual challenges to their stability. First, they must be able to credibly commit to not exploiting the exiting regime after obtaining power, or the transition may never begin. Second, democratic governments must be protected against military coups, or their reign will be shortlived. Even if the stability of a new democracy can never be assured, the above logic suggests that democratic governments can nevertheless craft institutions that increase the likelihood of their survival. To this logic, however, empirical support must be added. The next step is locating examples of states that crafted such institutions, whether accidentally or otherwise, and testing the existence of those institutions against the stability of the democracy that crafted them. My intuition is that, as in the case of Chile, states that craft such institutions will experience greater democratic success than those that do not.

1

[1] Terry Moe and Michael Caldwell, “The Institutional Foundations of Democratic Government: A Comparison of Presidential and Parliamentary Systems,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 150:1 (1994), p. 175.

[2] Londregan, p. 81.

[3] Londregan, pp. 80, 96.

[4] Londregan, p. 98.

[5] Londregan, p. 86.

[6] Londregan, p. 80.

[7] John Londregan, Legislative Politics and Chile’s Transition Toward Democracy (Cambridge, UK: 2000), p. 188.

[8] See Robert Jackman, “The Predictability of Coups d’Etat: A Model with Africa Data,” American Political Science Review 72 (1978), pp. 1262-1275; Thomas Johnson, Robert Slater, and Pat McGowan, “Explaining African Military Coups d’Etat, 1960-1982,” American Political Science Review 78 (1984), pp. 622-640; John Londregan and Keith Poole, “The Seizure of Executive Power and Economic Growth: Some Additional Evidence,” in Alex Cukierman, et.al., ed., Political Economy, Growth, and Business Cycles (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 51-79.

[9] Johnson, Slater, and McGowan, p. 632.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.