Alfred Stepan

• Managing Director at Columbia University

It is a sobering truth that most attempts at democratic transition fail, with disappointment and reversal their unhappy lot. Sergio Bitar and Abraham Lowenthal refuse to take this as a counsel of despair, however. Instead, they see it as all the more reason to study the cases of democratization that did work, in hopes of learning how they beat the...

While recent research on Indonesian Islam considers the context of changing state–society relations in the post-authoritarian era, the author of this review essay challenges many of those studies' empirical findings on the basis of the weaknesses of the studies' dated theoretical assumptions.

It is disturbing to acknowledge here, as we mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Journal of Democracy, that the question addressed by this special issue of the Journal is whether the trend toward democratization in the world has peaked and begun to recede. In the July 2014 issue, Marc F. Plattner noted that Freedom House’s “measurements of vari...

In this essay, the authors propose a three-part ideal-type typology that distinguishes between “ruling monarchy,” “constitutional monarchy,” and what they call “democratic parliamentary monarchy” (or DPM for short). For us, the defining characteristic of a DPM is that only the freely elected parliament forms and terminates the government. In a cons...

This introductory chapter details the strides made by Indonesia in achieving a rapid democratic transition compared to its fellow Islamic nations. As the world's most populous Islamic nation, it has somehow reconciled its primary religion with the ideals of democracy and achieved significant progress in securing its citizens' political rights no ma...

Indonesia's military government collapsed in 1998, igniting fears that economic, religious, and political conflicts would complicate any democratic transition. Yet in every year since 2006, the world's most populous Muslim country has received high marks from international democracy-ranking organizations. In this volume, political scientists, relig...

A specialist on the comparative analysis of states and polities provides a framework for investigating the extent to which federal states are democratic in their operations. The article outlines propositions derived from data on eleven continuously democratic federal systems in the world during the 1990s. Russia is then compared systematically with...

More than twenty-five years have passed since the publication of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy, the four pioneering volumes edited by Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead that inaugurated third-wave democratization theory. More than fifteen years have passed since the 1996 publication of...

"Rituals of respect" are recurrent, public, and reciprocal political practices. In Sufi-majority Senegal, such practices first facilitated accommodation among a variety of groups in potential conflict, and later facilitated tolerance, then respect, and eventually democracy. The social construction of horizontal rituals of respect between religious...

Eminent political scientist Alfred Stepan analyzes the subjective responses of individuals when asked how their conditions have changed and how they see the future without necessarily connecting them to the policies. His findings unequivocally show that a rising proportion of the people say their fortunes are improving while a declining proportion...

In 2011, Tunisia achieved a successful democratic transition, albeit not yet a consolidation of democracy. It did so while adhering to a relationship between religion and politics that follows the pattern of what I have called the "twin tolerations." The first toleration is that of religious citizens toward the state. It requires that they accord d...

When Jeffrey Isaac approached us to review some recent works in American politics from a comparative perspective, we gladly accepted the task, believing it important to help overcome what some see as the “splendid isolation” of American politics. Indeed, the invitation arrived at a propitious time because, after completing our most recent book, we...

The global democratic resurgence of the past three-and-a-half decades has been accompanied by a boom in the publication of scholarly work on democracy. Studies of democratic breakdowns, crises, transitions, and consolidation came to dominate the field of comparative politics. During this extraordinary period, no one in the academic book-publishing...

Must every state be a nation and every nation a state? Or should we look instead to the example of countries such as India, where one state holds together a congeries of “national” groups and cultures in a single and wisely conceived federal republic?

Political wisdom holds that the political boundaries of a state necessarily coincide with a nation's perceived cultural boundaries. Today, the sociocultural diversity of many polities renders this understanding obsolete. This volume provides the framework for the state-nation, a new paradigm that addresses the need within democratic nations to acco...

1. The book, delayed, enriched, and expanded by my involvement at CEU was, Linz and Stepan (1996). 2. One of the first big conferences at the incipient CEU was on precisely this topic, with the participation of András Sajó from Hungary, Klaus Offe from Germany, and Jon Elster from Norway and the University of Chicago Law School. 3. Bak and Klanicza...

Some polities have strong cultural diversity, some of which is territorially based and politically articulated by significant groups that, in the name of nationalism, and self-determination, advance claims for independence. In this article such polities are defined as ‘politically robustly multinational’. If the goal is peace and democracy in one s...

Democracy cannot flourish in complex modern societies without its own legitimate state coercive apparatus. Normally, in democracies, the only part of the state that is authorised to use force against its own citizens is the police. They are part of the apparatus of social control. Without such an apparatus private force might be used against the ci...

A political scientist uses the familiar "nation-state" ideal type and the new "state-nation" type to explore the prospects for democracy in multinational societies. Are the ideal type distinctions between "nation-state" and "state-nation" strategies a useful way to analyze Ukraine's situation at independence in 1991? Data from public opinion survey...

A political scientist uses the familiar “nation-state” ideal type and the new “state-nation” type to explore the prospects for democracy in multinational societies. Are the ideal type distinctions between “nation-state” and “state-nation” strategies a useful way to analyze Ukraine's situation at independence in 1991? Data from public opinion survey...

The non-Arab Muslim world has exhibited a much higher degree of electoral competition than the Arab Muslim world, both over time and in the contemporary period. 396 million Muslims, about half of the world’s Muslim population who live in Non-Arab League Muslim majority states, live in states with competitive elections. By contrast, none of the 270...

Re-examining the debate on Islam and democracy, the authors look at the relationship between competitive elections and levels of economic development in both Arab Muslim majority countries and non-Arab Muslim majority countries. While the performance gap in terms of electoral competition in Arab Muslim majority countries is widely recognized, less...

It is well known that the “democracy gap” is particularly wide in the countries of the Arab world, not one of which is democratic, and all of which have predominantly or overwhelmingly Muslim populations. Indeed, the 16 Arab countries form the largest single readily identifiable group among all those states that “underachieve” (relative to what one...

Journal of Democracy 12.4 (2001) 95-108 In June 2001, Burma's long-ruling military regime began to intensify its on-again, off-again talks with the leader of the country's largest democratic opposition party, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Observers have split over the meaning of this move. Some see the renewed dialogue as potentia...

In recent years, the importance of religion in the study and conduct of international affairs has come precipitously into view. This book seeks both to interrogate the problematic neglect of religion in extant scholarship and to take the first steps towards its rectification. Drawing on the work of leading scholars across many disciplines as well a...

Journal of Democracy 10.4 (1999) 19-34 For those of us interested in the spread and consolidation of democracy, whether as policy makers, human rights activists, political analysts, or democratic theorists, there is a greater need than ever to reconsider the potential risks and benefits of federalism. The greatest risk is that federal arrangements...

The fundamental problem in Russia's derailed transition is its enfeebled and profoundly dysfunctional state. The collapse of Soviet financial and state structures, polarized elite combat, and social weakness provided governing elites few opportunities or incentives to build state capacity. Instead, the domestic and international structure of incent...

This paper will develop three themes. First, I show that the democratization, federalism, and nationalism literatures have been developed in relatively mutual isolation and that we can only make more meaningful and powerful statements about comparative federalism if we relate the three literatures to each other. Second, I demonstrate that all feder...

This paper will develop three themes. First, I show that the democratization, federalism, and nationalism literatures have been developed in relatively mutual isolation and that we can only make more meaningful and powerful statements about comparative federalism if we relate the three literatures to each other. Second, I demonstrate that all feder...

Introduzione In questo articolo proporrò alcune riflessioni sul rapporto fra democratizzazione, federalismo e nazionalismo, prendendo spunto da lavori già avviati su questa tematica insieme a Juan Linz (Linz 1997).

Journal of Democracy 7.2 (1996) 14-33 It is necessary to begin by saying a few words about three minimal conditions that must obtain before there can be any possibility of speaking of democratic consolidation. First, in a modern polity, free and authoritative elections cannot be held, winners cannot exercise the monopoly of legitimate force, and ci...

L'A. etudie les concepts d'Etat, d'Etat-nation et de democratie a travers la cas specifique d'une des republiques socialistes sovietiques, l'Estonie. Il s'interroge sur la facon dont les identites politiques peuvent etre construites (et detruites) et se demande comment les logiques de l'Etat et de la democratie peuvent en arriver a se detruire mutu...

A fundamental political-institutional question that has only recently received serious scholarly attention concerns the impact of different constitutional frameworks on democratic consolidation. Little systematic cross-regional evidence has been brought to bear on this question. This article reports the findings of the analysis of numerous differen...

Neste artigo os autores levantam a seguinte tese: os países constituídos por federações multiétnicas, em processo de transição de autoritarismo para a democracia, têm maior probabilidade de manter sua união política se as primeiras eleições e tomadas de voto, desse período transacional, forem eleições de caráter nacional (geral, de toda a União) ao...

While a growing literature addresses the difficulties of achieving democratic consolidation, there has often been little clarity over the meaning of this notion, and over the process by which it is achieved. Therefore, building on a minimal formal definition of democracy, this paper presents a delimited conception of democratic consolidation and of...

Para analizar el tema de las prerrogativas militares y su relación con el control civil, el autor construye una matriz que vincula el grado de conflicto -alto, moderado O bajo- entre la posición de los jefes militares y los dirigentes democráticos. Ello le permite analizar comparativamente los casos de Brasil, la Argentina, Uruguay y España. El aut...

What is the variety of possible, and actual, democratic patterns of state-religion –society relations? I suggest seven responses, not all of which I have space to fully develop, and I focus on four in particular: 1) “separatist”, 2) “established religion”, 3) “positive accommodation” and 4) “respect all, positive cooperation, and principled distanc...

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Thesis--Columbia University. Bibliography: l. 444-473.

Traducción de: The military in politics Incluye bibliografía e índice