5
Mild crises can result from demands for changes within the system, such as when
Brazilian labor unions called for national strikes in the 1980s and 1990s to pressure the
government to rescind austerity measures. Or, severe crises can arise when groups try to
replace the government by force, such as in the Philippines when the democratic
opposition and the military rebels tried to remove President Marcos from office in 1986.
Regardless of whether the crisis is mild or severe, specific events include elections,
strikes, demonstrations, corruption charges, terrorist activities, separatist movements,
coup attempts, and weakening authoritarian regimes.
The ultimate goal of this research project is to understand whether actors can
learn to consolidate democracy.
3
We define democracy as a government that is
responsive to its citizens (Dahl 1971, 1), with rules that are accepted by the political
actors (Przeworski 1991, 14). Democratic consolidation is reached when these rules
become self-reinforcing: “when compliance – acting within the institutional framework –
constitutes the equilibrium of the decentralized strategies of all the relevant political
forces” (Przeworski 1991, 26). To the extent that actors prefer democracy over another
type of regime, they will be willing to negotiate with each other to resolve crises in a way
that distributes benefits to both sides, thus reinforcing democracy (Wood 2000, 214).
Likewise, democratic consolidation is more likely when elites agree to
encapsulate conflict (Levine 1978) and continue to negotiate with each other even after a
democratic government is installed (Casper and Taylor 1996). On the other hand,
democratic collapse can result from extremists hindering negotiations between groups
3
For an overview of the democracy literature, see Huntington (1991), Remmer (1995), and Geddes (1999).
Convention