Capitalist Development and Democracy

I agree with the first review posted on this book, but I think there is an important point of the book missing there. Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens emphasize the pivotal role of the middle class in the emergence and persistence of democracy, just as Seymour Lipset and Barrington Moore did before, but they add something new. In their studies in Latin America, they found that the middle class was a positive factor for democratization only when it aligned with the popular sectors. But if the working class is too large or too powerful and the middle class feels threatened, it aligns with the military or the landing elites, with the opposite result: democracy doesn't emerge, or if it exists, it breaks down. This is a key finding that ratifies a study by Jose Nun about Latin America, published in 1967, called "Middle Class military coup." It is important to keep this in mind, especially when in the US Congress the arguments to vote for the Free Trade Agreement with Central America (CAFTA) were that it will promote a strong middle class and therefore the consolidation of democracy. Nun's study first and now this book by Rueschemeyer et al are important alerts for us to keep in mind that this argument is true, but has to be qualified. Not always the middle class will be a positive force for democracy.

In this groundbreaking work, Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens establish not only a strong correlation between capitalist development and democracy, but also a convincing causal mechanism by which this development can bring about democracy. The authors choose to focus on a relative class power model in their account of democracy: capitalist development initiates a profound shift in the class structure and the relative power of each class. According to the authors, in a pre-capitalist society the subordinate classes are most likely to support a transition demoracy because they essentially have nothing to lose and everything to gain. They are opposed in this respect by the landowning aristocracy, the dominant class in pre-industrial society and the class that has everything to lose in a democratization of the political system. Thus, the strenghtening of the subordinate (working) class brought about by industrialization bodes well for democracy. Capitalism also brings about an entirely new player--the middle class--that, when it allies with the interests of subordinate classes, intensifies the push for democracy. The analysis of social actors is joined by an analysis of social structure. That is, Rueschemeyer, et al believe that a balance between the state's power and the power of social actors must be established in order for democracy to become a possibility. A strong state counters the power of the elites while a strong landowning class prevents a totalitarian state from forming. The key to creating this balance is the development of a strong civil society between these two forces. Autonomous of both the government and the class system, civil society consists in the aggregation of social actors in various organizations (such as community-based or religious groups and trade unions). Capitalist development frees people from their preoccupation with subsistence agriculture, allowing them to join in such associations and increasing thier power in voicing their collective interests. The most significant contribution of this account is the reassertion of individual agency in the process of democracy, a concept that is often ignored in purely structural accounts of democratization.