Democracies Today: Constitutions, Cultures, Practices
CSMN Public Discussion and Workshop April 10 – 12, 2013 in Oslo, Norway
Workshop, April 11 – 12
University of Oslo, Blindern Campus, Helga Engs Hus, Auditorium 2
Abstracts of papers
Pranab Bardhan (Berkeley)
Democracy and Corruption – A Complex Relation
In my talk I shall discuss various ways democracy checks corruption, but also about ways and
circumstances in which it may even exacerbate corruption, particularly in poor countries.
Katarina Barrling (Uppsala)
Exploring the Inner Life of the Party: An Empirical Application of a Framework for
Analyzing Elite Party Culture
Classical accounts of party theory stress that organization is fundamental for
understanding political parties (Michels 1911/1962; Duverger 1964, xv). Indeed, since the late
1980s, scholars of party theory have been examining the question of party organization more
closely (Katz & Crotty 2006; Harmel & Janda 1994; Katz & Mair 1994). However, the scope
of this research has been restricted to the formal structure of party organization; by contrast,
party culture has remained largely unexplored (Krouwel 2006, 249; Searing 1994, 5; cf
Kitschelt 1994, 257). The purpose of this article is to contribute to this neglected area by
answering the question: How can we investigate party-organizational culture on the elite
level? This is done by developing an analytical framework which is also applied on the
organizational cultures of the seven parties in Swedish parliament (PPG) (Barrling
Hermansson 2004). The Swedish PPGs thus serve the purpose to illustrate the framework. My
intention is to determine the potential validity of the analytical framework suggested and I
would contend that – given the ‘full-party-spectrum’ offered by the Swedish case – we have
good reason to believe that the Swedish case is relevant for the study of parties in other
settings than the Swedish one. Still, since the comparison is between parties within one
country (Sweden), the study of this article is best described as a plausibility probe (Eckstein
1975). The study is purely descriptive and classificatory.
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Ludvig Beckman (Stockholm)
Are democrats required to exclude? Democratic inclusion and the implied right to exclusion
The desire to insulate collective decisions from unwelcome influences is a permanent feature
of political life. Though democracy is sometimes characterized as the “philosophy of
inclusion”, even democrats need to consider who should not be entitled to participate in the
making of collective decisions. Rights to inclusion are related to rights to exclusion and yet
the relationship is rarely explored and remains ambiguous. From the fact that some people
have rights to be included we cannot justifiably infer that they also have rights to the
exclusion of others. Nevertheless, the argument I shall pursue is that a right to exclusion does
follow given certain assumptions about the nature of rights to political participation and the
interests that justifies them in a democracy. The position defended is that people subject to
collectively binding decisions have a justified claim to the exclusion of people who are not
subject to such decisions. Denying access to the process of law-making of anyone not subject
to the law, is necessary in order to preserve collective interests in self-rule.
Sirianne Dahlum (Oslo)
Democracy by Demand: Reinvestigating the effect of liberal values on political regime type
(co-authored with Carl Henrik Knutsen)
The notion that democracy thrives (only) in countries where liberal or freedom-oriented
values are widespread has long been highly popular among political scientists and
sociologists. The perhaps most eloquent argument for such a relationship is proposed by
Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel in various publications. They find a positive effect of
liberal values on level of democracy, mainly drawing inferences from cross-sectional data.
We re-investigate this relationship, employing methodological advances used in other areas of
the democracy literature. More specifically, we present analyses accounting for sampleselection bias, omitted variable bias related to country-specific effects, and endogeneity of
values to democracy. Generally, the results of Inglehart and Welzel are very sensitive to
changes in model specification. For instance, the result that liberal values enhance level of
democracy disappears when accounting for country-fixed effects. We also present results
separating between effects on democratization and democratic stability. There is no robust
evidence that liberal values stabilize existing democracies or enhance democratization
prospects. In contrast, we find indications that liberal values reduce the probability of
democratization in harshly authoritarian contexts. This may, in part, stem from autocrats
increasing repression and co-optation when faced with more liberal populations.
Jean-Pascal Daloz (Strassbourg)
Machiavellians or ‘Homeboys’? On elite manipulation and cultural constraints
In spite of the emergence of hybrid models aiming to go beyond the old structure/agency
dichotomy, the social science literature still betrays a tendency to consider societies and
political systems as being shaped to a large degree by the views of their dominant groups.
One need only mention the ease with which terms such as ‘construct’, ‘invention of’,
‘production of’ are used. There is no denying that elites often manipulate representations to
suit their own best interests. However, this is only part of the picture. Can the way in which
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social meanings are generated be reduced to the mere strategic manoeuvring of leading actors
and ideologues? The following paper does not intend to cast doubt over the fact that
approaches focusing on the purposive construction of socio-political realities have some
validity. What I would like to draw attention to here is another key, yet somewhat neglected,
dimension in the study of elites: the constraints that weigh on prominent groups due to the
cultural universes they are embedded in. By culture, I refer (in a Geertzian way) to patterns of
meaning that are deeply ingrained in the minds of all social actors, from the bottom of society
all the way up to its apex. For the comparativist, that what is self-evident in one environment
can fail to make sense in another is a frequently encountered fact which similarities of
language tend to conceal.
Sverker Gustavsson (Uppsala)
Legitimate opposition and legitimate protectionism – what will it take to restore the European
informal pact of confidence?
As we all know, the European Union is in a period of deep constitutional crisis – not to say
emergency politics (White 2013). My argument in this paper does not deal with the specifics
of the many positions taken on the acute crisis. Instead, I will dwell upon the problem as such.
In my view, it is shared by all current and potential Member States.
Bård Harstad (Oslo)
Bribes, Lobbying and Development
(co-authored with Jakob Svensson)
When faced with a regulatory constraint, firms can either comply, bribe the regulator to get
around the rule, or lobby the government to relax it. We analyze this choice, and its
consequences, in a simple dynamic model. In equilibrium, when the level of development is
low, firms are more inclined to bend the rule through bribery but they tend to switch to
lobbying when the level of development is sufficiently high. Bribery, however, is associated
with holdup problems, which discourage firms from investing. If the holdup problems are
severe, firms will never invest enough to make lobbying worthwhile. The country may then
be stuck in a poverty trap with bribery forever. The model can account for the common
perception that bribery is relatively more common in poor countries, whereas lobbying
is relatively more common in rich ones.
Carl Henrik Knutsen (Oslo)
Reinvestigating the Reciprocal Relationship between Democracy and Income Inequality
Plausible theoretical arguments indicate that low income inequality induces democracy,
and equally plausible arguments indicate that democracy reduces income inequality.
The existing empirical evidence is mixed for both hypotheses, but this could stem from
previous contributions employing statistical models based on problematic assumptions. This
paper reinvestigates the effects of income inequality on democracy, and vice versa, by
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applying models that control for country- and timespecific effects and account for sampleselection and endogeneity biases. The effect of inequality on level of democracy is far from
robust. Furthermore, whereas some models replicate the result that low inequality enhances
democratic stability, this result depends critically on choice of democracy and inequality
measures. There is some evidence that democracy reduces income inequality when inequality
is proxied by share of income going to wages. However, also this estimated effect is highly
contingent on choice of income inequality measure. Importantly, democracy does not seem to
reduce inequality in disposable income, and this seems to, in part, be due to the redistributive
policies pursued by one-party dictatorships.
Raino Malnes (Oslo)
Reckless Voting
For many years, Front National (FN) has been kept out of the French legislature by
mainstream political parties, which have seen to it that frontist candidates who got through the
first round of the parliamentary election were defeated in the second round. If not for this socalled cordon sanitaire, FN would, in all likelihood, have gained representation on several
occasions. (In 2012, a breach in the barrage resulted in two representatives for FN.) It is
arguable that democratic values have been violated. Socialists and conservatives have
conspired to make sure that many votes were cast in vain. Thus, some citizens’ right to vote
has been rendered virtually useless. One may retort that democracy is at one with political
competition, which takes many forms. Thus, the (perfectly legal) ostracizing of FN is no more
problematic than, say, some party’s exclusion from the legislature for lack of popular support.
The validity of this argument is not beyond doubt, and anyway there comes a further question:
Is a political system that, like the French, allows political competition to take the form of a
cordon sanitaire in good democratic order? I think it is. On the one hand, the right to vote is
inviolable and citizens are within their rights whatever party they vote for. On the other hand,
reckless voting should be discouraged and reckless voters are better deprived of political
clout. The reason voting for FN is reckless is not that the political preference behind the vote
is inadmissible. One should be wary of disparaging anyone for what they believe. People may,
however, be held to account for their political conduct. This goes for both parties and voters.
During the time FN has been ostracized, it has taken an extremely confrontational stand on
many issues and been disturbingly insensitive to the exigencies peaceful democratic politics.
This argument has no ideological bias. It may be leveled against parties on the left and the
right alike. (It is arguable, for example, that the recklessness of leaders and voters on the left
paved the way for fascist dictatorship in Italy.) The argument is bound up with an ideal of
political culture that may be controversial: It is best that parties as well as voters put a
distance between belief and practice, and it is sometimes right for parties to cloak their
ideology and for voters to shelve their preferences.
Kalle Moene (Oslo)
Political Reinforcement: How Rising Inequality Curbs Manifested Welfare Generosity
(co-authored with Erling Barth, Henning Finseraas)
We propose a political reinforcement hypothesis, suggesting that rising inequality moves
party politics to the right on welfare state issues, strengthening the impact of inequality rather
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than modifying it. To establish the hypothesis we model policy platforms by incorporating
ideology and opportunism of party members, and interests and sympathies of voters. If
welfare spending, such as social insurance, is a normal good within each income class, a
majority of the electorate moves rightwards when wage inequality increases. As a response
the left bloc, and to a lesser extent the right bloc, shift their welfare policy platform towards
less generosity. Confronting our arguments with data on the welfare policy platforms of
political parties in 22 OECD countries prior to 120 elections, we find strong support for a
rightward shift of the left bloc, while the shift is less clear for the right bloc.
Konstantinos A. Papageorgiou (Athens)
Integrated Equality – Preliminary notes on equality, luck, participation and solidarity
In my paper I will discuss some difficulties concerning the value and the scope of the idea of
equality. Although everybody underwrites its importance in normative discourses, we do not
necessarily share a common understanding of why and how it means what it means. I will
claim that an argument from equal moral worth has a fundamental role to play but its field of
application is not as broad as some moral theories consider it to be. We will examine some
classical and some more recent contributions favoring an extended reading of equality as a
primarily distributive principle, in particular the so-called “luck egalitarian approach”. This
latter trend introduces conceptual distinctions that are not only difficult to apply but are also
broadly untenable in their normative consequences. Equality has to be understood not as an
abstract moral idea but rather as a principle integrated in a moral, political and legal context of
a democratic polis of free citizens committed to live with each other.
Kerstin Reibold (Mannheim)
The majority's well-being or the minority's rights? The case of resource rights of indigenous
peoples
In many resource conflicts there are two competing claims, both of which by themselves seem
justified: One is the demand of indigenous peoples that their right to self-determination should
be respected so that they can sustain their traditional ways of living and their identity. The
other, competing claim is that the state should be allowed to use these resources in order to
advance the welfare of its citizens that are in need. While it seems to give way to very
utilitarian politics to argue that the well-being of many should outweigh the rights of the few,
it does not seem right to endow a minority with rights that allow them to stop the majority of
citizens from getting a decent life.
Anne Julie Semb (Oslo)
Who Owns the Land? Norway, the Sami and the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples
Convention
In order to contribute to the understanding of why instruments for the protection of
indigenous peoples were developed and how Western governments dealt with the challenges
of having parallel national and international processes on the rights of indigenous peoples,
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this article focuses on the decision-making processes of the Norwegian government. Why did
Norway support the ILO process, and how did domestic and international processes interact
during the ILO negotiations and through to its decision to ratify C169?
Svend-Erik Skaaning and Jørgen Møller (Aarhus)
Economic Crisis and the Breakdown of Democracy in the Interwar Years: A Reassessment
The relationship between economic crisis and democratic breakdown has received renewed
attention as a consequence of the financial crisis of 2008. A number of scholars have warned
that the Interwar relationship between economic crisis and democratic breakdown might
repeat itself today. The notion that the economic crisis of Interwar Europe caused the
democratic rollback fits well with some of the democratization literature's general theoretical
arguments and empirical findings. Yet the scholars who have actually analyzed the
relationship between economic crisis and democratic breakdown in the Interwar period have
been hugely skeptical. However, so far no-one has carried out a systematical statistical
assessment of the relationship between economic crisis and Interwar democratic breakdown.
In this paper, we use event history analysis to analyze the effect of economic crisis on
breakdown in 27 countries. We test both the direct effect of crisis and whether the effect of
crisis is conditional upon prior experience with democracy. On this basis, we discuss the
likely contemporary consequences of economic crisis for democratic breakdown.
Ioannis Tassopoulos (Athens)
On Constitutional Impartiality: Claims of Justice and Claims of Justice, in Europe
In my presentation, I am going to discuss two different criteria with respect to which claims of
impartiality can be raised, and three conceptions of democratic power-structures, purporting
to validate, sustain, and fulfill these claims of impartiality. The connection of claims of
impartiality with power structures has a legal and political framework, whose proper name is
a Constitution. You notice the reversal of a lawyer’s conventional approach, which is to take
for granted, or to presuppose like Kelsen, the validity of the Constitution, and then to address
questions of legality from this starting point. My suggestion is that our modern notion of a
Constitution results out of the combination of the most innovative moral and political value of
modernity, which is impartiality, with the proper structure of power, for its realization.
Øyvind Østerud (Oslo)
Democracies Today: Constitutions, Cultures, Practices
The major focus of the presentation is the political ramifications of the economic crisis in
Europe during the last five years. There is a variety of possible relationships between
democracy and economic crisis. One may ask if democratic rule is more prone to economic
crisis than authoritarian regimes. In the research literature, there is some support for a link
between crisis and certain characteristics of democratic rule – the time horizon and the degree
of liberalization and openness.
The major question in the presentation, however, is whether democracies are vulnerable in
economic crises. Are there parallels between the economic-political trajectories of the 1920s
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and -30s on the one hand, and the consequences of the economic crisis in Europe from 2008
on the other?
The economic meltdown of 1929 was heralded by severe problems from the mid-1920s, or
even from the economic consequences of the First World War. A cluster of economic
problems – hyperinflation, declining productivity, negative economic growth, financial panic,
debt crisis and mass unemployment – led to political polarization and further, in parts of
central Europe, to democratic breakdown and authoritarian regimes. Deflationary policies and
the gold standard contributed to the crisis. World War II was a turning point, with national
planning, an expanded public sector and central stimulation of demand as major factors in the
post-war order, combined with external liberalization and increased trade across borders.
In the period between the wars, democracies were recent and shallow, with political
skepticism from the Left and the Right. In major parts of Europe, democratic stability was not
deeply entrenched; the public sector was small, with weak welfare policies. The political
systems were vulnerable to economic backslides.
Both politically and economically, the situation in Europe to-day is different in crucial
respects. Democracy is more entrenched and supported on a far wider part of the political
landscape. The public sector in most of Europe is bigger, with more extensive welfare policies
for social shock absorption and a minimum of security. Still, part of the present crisis is a
dismantling of the systems of social security.
Democratic accountability is weakened from below and from above. The strain on democracy
from below comes from disillusion, lack of trust in the political class, mass protest and
support for extreme movements. Democratic accountability is also undermined from above,
with infringement on response to public demand, decision-making power to non-elected
bodies, forced austerity measures and introduction of technocratic governments for shorter or
longer periods. There is a mutual causal string between these developments from below and
from above, making for an acceleration of the crisis in substantial parts of Europe.
The final part of the presentation will be a discussion of the euro trap as a contribution to the
double politico-economic crisis – the excessive public debt, the bail-out conditions, the
monetary union without a fiscal union, and the democratic barriers to a fiscal union.
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