Course: POLSCI 353-01 Globalization of Democracy, Duke University
Instructor: Herbert Kitschelt
Teaching Assistant: Peng Peng
Both the development’s theory contended in Lipset (1959) and the social origin theory introduced in Moore (1966) and reviewed in Skocpol (1973) discuss on various preconditions of establishing democracies. This article will examine on the mechanisms to establish democracy that Lipset and Moore argued, as well as the evidence and comparative design that their studies engage.
Trend of Industrializing the Agricultural Society
Both studies support the transition from agricultural society to a much more industrialized or at least proto-industrialized one as a condition of democracy.
Lipset (1959) compares the statistics of “average percentage of employed males working in agriculture and related occupations” between democratic and less democratic countries both in Europe and Latin America (Lipset 1959: 76). The comparison demonstrates a negative correlation between the percentage of agricultural workers and the level of democracy. This suggests that a transition of labor force from agricultural sector to industrial sector is an indicator of democratic development, if not a cause. It satisfies that a country’s economic development is a precondition of its establishment of democracy, as claimed by Lipset.
Lipset also argues that the emergence of industrial working class is the major force of “entering into politics” in the 19th century, the society’s level of acceptance of whom is a crucial determinant of the legitimacy of a regime (Lipset 1959: 88). It is also argued in the study that the countries which “adapted most successfully to the requirements of an industrial system had the fewest internal political strains,” meaning that they can either inherit their traditional legitimacy or develop a new, stronger representation of legitimacy (Lipset 1959: 91). Bear in mind that “legitimacy” is one of the two fundamental preconditions of democracy (Lipset 1959: 86). Therefore, it is reconfirmed in the Lipset article that the industrialization of a society is crucial for establishing a democracy.
In Moore’s theory, all three routes of modernization of a society are constructed on the macroscopic background of “transformation from agrarian societies … to modern industrial ones” (Skocpol 1973: 4). Moore argues that the upgrading from subsistence agricultural to the commercialization of agriculture, as a solution to the feudal crisis of the Malthusian cycle, leads to increasing demands of consumer goods – the market – and the transformation of landowners to industrial capitalists – the proto-industrialization. This is evident in England and British American colonies around the 18th century, which is later concluded in Moore’s argument as the only route of modernization that leads to “democratic capitalism” (Skocpol 1973: 10). All these demonstrate that, in Moore’s theory, the trend of industrialization is not only intrinsic but also determinant in the process of democratization. This is consistent to Lipset’s conclusion that industrialization is crucial for democracies.
Statistical Analysis Versus Historical Materialist Reasoning
In his argumentation around development theory, Lipset makes use of statistical evidence from a relatively wide range of cases (Lipset 1959: 74). With the grand table of data and figures compiled by Lipset (Lipset 1959: 76-77), we can see from footnotes that the majority of these data are derived from reports, surveys, and statistical yearbooks of the United Nations and affiliated institutions. Nearly all of these data are collected to describe the country-specific economic conditions around the beginning of the 1950s, as seen from the dates marked by footnotes (Lipset 1959: 77). Moreover, his discussion on Middle Eastern countries are also constructed upon four statistically formulated “coefficients”, drawn from a survey of six Middle Eastern countries by the Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research, which was specifically conducted in the year of 1950 and 1951 (Lipset 1959: 80-81).
Consequently, Lipset’s inferences of the economic development’s role on establishing and sustaining democracies strongly rely on static point data, instead of tendencies. Rather than analyzing the exact processes of economic development and those of democratization in individua case countries, Lipset attempts to focus on how the resulting level of economic development can cause the resulting level of democracy, at a specific point of time.
Moore’s argumentation, on the contrary, barely touches on statistical evidence. Instead, he predominantly utilizes historical observations and analysis of specific cases, such as the 18th century England, to attempt to generalize a universal theory of social preconditions of democracy. His methodology of using certain segments of past events to generally explain the overall tendency of human development is highly consistent with the materialist conception of history, which is advanced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Moore’s findings generalize the development path from agricultural bureaucracy to our contemporary political regimes with only three routes, after closely examining parts of the histories of only two to three case countries with each route. Distinct from Lipset’s inferences on static evidence, Moore attempts to project a general pattern of movement using several samples of movements in the history. Interestingly, Moore’s findings of class struggle as a condition to democracy also matches the core argument of historical materialism.
Question of Case Comprehensiveness
Apparently, there are several limitations of data collection both geographically and chronologically.
Moore’s argumentation is heavily focused on the pre-modern historical era, where he closely examines the development trajectories of several cases from the time of feudalism and agricultural bureaucracy until the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, showing the pattern of differentiation among the three routes. However, he stops his examination without considering the dynamics of the Industrial Revolution, where the importance of social class and the struggles among them started to further evolve and make bigger impacts on democratization. Therefore, this lack of chronological continuation would potentially compromise the comprehensiveness of the conclusions Moore makes. There may be something more about these social preconditions of democracy shown in the Industrial Revolution era’s close study.
In Lipset’s argumentation of development theory, he includes a relatively broad examination of the correlation between economic development and democracy level in European, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries, also mentioning North America and Australia (Lipset 1959: 76-77, 81-86). However, Asian and African countries are largely missing from his collection of data as well as his examination of correlation, though he does talk about the “bleak future” of Asia and Africa (Lipset 1959: 101). He endeavors to turn Asian and African countries into “outliers” of his inferences and the preconditions he presumed, but never enough try to construct a broader and more inclusive picture of region-specific standards of conditions, where Asian and African countries can be fitted inside the theory framework. As a result, the inferences of democratic preconditions that Lipset makes might be compromised by his overemphasis on the “European way of democratization” and his reliance on geographically partial range of data collection.
This paper has references from 3 external sources. Please see the original document to view the full list.
