Democracy [Paperback]

Charles Tilly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0521701538 | ISBN-13: 978-0521701532 | Edition: 1

Charles Tilly's Democracy identifies the general processes causing democratization and de-democratization at a national level across the world over the last few hundred years. It singles out integration of trust networks into public politics, insulation of public politics from categorical inequality, and suppression of autonomous coercive power centers as crucial processes. Through analytic narratives and comparisons of multiple regimes, mostly since World War II, this book makes the case for recasting current theories of democracy, democratization, and de-democratization.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Charles Tilly in Democracy greatly enriches the literature on transitions in and out of democracy by combining conceptual clarity with an enormously broad knowledge of comparative history, and in the process answers some key questions about the way that institutions interact with social processes."
Francis Fukuyama, Johns Hopkins University

"Tilly's trenchant new book brings his forceful insights about politics together in a cogent theory. Tilly revolts against mechanistic theories, describing democratization as an ongoing process of progress and reversal. To replace the simple recipes of the past, Tilly proposes three master processes that shape democracy: the suppression of independent powers, the elimination categorical inequality, and the integration of trust networks into the polity. In a historical tour of the last fifty years, Democracy shows that his process model works for Kazakhstan, South Africa, and beyond. Tilly has thrown down the gauntlet. It is up to the stalwarts of classical democracy theory to read and respond."
Frank Dobbin, Harvard University

"In a field teeming with first-rate scholarship, Democracy stands out as a deeply original and exciting contribution. Tilly seeks out the profoundly contentious processes that have slowly moved states along a democratic path or that have moved them -- alas, generally much more rapidly -- away from democracy. Scholars will be debating this book's provocative propositions for a long time."
John Markoff, University of Pittsburgh

"In this compelling work, Charles Tilly brings his unrivaled historical knowledge to bear on fundamental questions of democracy. His argument focuses on long-run social processes, not only those that further democratization but also those that often rapidly undermine it. In restoring the centrality of history to scholarship on democratization, he sets a research agenda that will occupy scholars for some time to come."
Elisabeth Jean Wood, Yale University and the Santa Fe Institute

"Democracy is more celebrated than understood. This inquiry by the great historical sociologist offers an important reinterpretation of the global advancement and retreat of democracy. Drawing on several decades of work on collective action in modern societies, Tilly fashions an innovative framework to track the processes of democratization and de-democratization across the centuries... This book is essential reading for those eager to see democracy spread further around the world. But its message is sobering: outsiders can make a difference, but their efforts must be aimed at strengthening the deep building blocks of open, trusting, accountable, and noncoercive societies."
Foreign Affairs

"Building upon decades of pioneering work in the study of collective action, Tilly considers whether, where, and how democracy can be created - and dismantled, too. This is not a brief introduction to the concept, but an original rethinking of the contingency of democratic processes. As usual, Tilly combines an easy sense of humor with historical depth and a fearless range across cases in Europe and beyond. There is a kind of practicality about Tilly's work that makes it eminently accessible and equally essential. He shows us that social movements and the habits they foster do matter and that, in short, democracy can happen." European Studies Forum

"Tilly has written a lively and eminently readable study of democracy and democratization...In a field experiencing renewed interest in the topic of democracy, Tilly's book is a groundbreaking contribution that will no doubt attain the status of a classic."
Jose A. Aleman, Journal of Politics

"Over the years, Tilly has accumulated impressive historical and theoretical knowledge, and this new book is yet another testimony of his lasting contribution to the fields of historical, comparative, and political sociology."
Daniel Beland, Canadian Journal of Sociology

Book Description

Democracy identifies the general processes causing democratization and de-democratization at a national level across the world over the last few hundred years. Through analytic narratives and comparisons of multiple regimes, mostly since World War II, this book makes the case for recasting current theories of democracy, democratization, and de-democratization.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (April 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521701538
• ISBN-13: 978-0521701532
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #681,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An ambitious but incomplete undertaking April 25, 2008

By David D. Yang

Format:Paperback

Chuck Tilly's latest book is an ambitious work, and sets out to provide an explanatory account of the emergence of democracy in the modern world. In short, Prof. Tilly argues that there are three key processes crucial to the emergence of democracy - these being the integration of trust-based social networks into public politics, the insulation of public politics from the major inequalities in society, and the reining-in of "autonomous centers of power" by which he means private militias, religious sects and the like. As always, Prof. Tilly's work is highly readable, often entertaining, and chockfull of rich historical details. This relatively slim book is well-organized into 8 intuitive chapters, and amply illustrated with easy-to-understand diagrams and boxes.

The book's greatest strengths are its conceptual clarity (succinctly laid out in the opening chapters) and sweeping historical perspective (examples cited range from peasant protests in contemporary China to the failed negotiations in 431 BCE that led to the Second Peloponnesian War). Unfortunately, with regard to the main explanatory objective of the book, the author fails to fully deliver.

Part of the problem is the analytical style adopted by the author. While I believe that a rigorous historical analysis can be as compelling as the most sophisticated statistical model, analysis also has to far transcend mere narrative. Consider for instance the chapter on trust. The author provides a colorful narrative of the growth of ethnic/religious social networks in 19th century America and their role as vote-getting mechanisms in the party machines.... While the author's argument that such networks helped strengthen American democracy seems plausible, to convincingly establish the point the author would have to address the counter-factual - which is that American democracy would have been weakened if such networks were not integrated into the political machines. Or at least, for those of us who dislike counterfactual speculation, it should be shown that democracies which attempted to segregate such networks proved more fragile. Instead, the chapter went on to a meandering discussion of social networks in Argentina and Mexico, which only gives the impression that despite the integration of trust networks into politics, these countries still went down the authoritarian path. Strictly speaking, the Latin American examples do not refute the original point, which never claims that trust networks are sufficient for democracy. But if these later cases do not strengthen the argument, why bring them in at all? Similar problems also plague the chapters on inequality and non-state centers of power.

These issues are related to a more fundamental problem, which is the logical constraint that the author places on his project. From the outset the author firmly declares that no sufficient condition for democracy exists. He also declares that no necessary condition exists although he later concedes that there are "necessary processes" which can be thought of as necessary conditions. The problem is as J.L. Mackie points out, when peple speak of "causes", they have in mind INUS conditions - i.e. conditions which are not sufficient by themselves, but are necessary to some broader combination of conditions which in turn are sufficient. Conditions which are merely necessary in the strict logical sense are seldom satisfactory, because there are always a large number of necessary conditions from the profound to the trivial (e.g. air is necessary for democracy), which are often not far removed from the tautological. Especially if one is interested in providing answers to prognosticators and promoters of democracy, I doubt that any answer can be satisfactory without some reference, however fuzzy, to sufficiency.

To put this issue in a more concrete context, note that trust in public politics (for example) is not just necessary for democracies, but also necessary for any state with a reasonable level of capacity especially if "trust" is defined to include sending one's children to public schools. In that sense the condition verges on the tautological. Now, if high state capacity is shown to be a sufficient cause for democracy, and trust is a key ingredient to capacity, then we have a far more interesting causal condition. Of course high state capacity is not sufficient for democracy. If it were, the author's arguments would be far more compelling, because most of the conditions identified are more directly necessary for high state capacity, the other key dimension in all of the discussions which really should have been included in the title of the book. In essence, many of the conditions are necessary for democracy because they are necessary for state capacity, and a successful democracy requires some reasonable level of state capacity. Except what's good for state capacity is not always good for democracy. The chapter on non-state centers of power, for instance, would have benefited greatly from a more explicit and conscious discussion of the relationship between democracy and state capacity. While private militias and recalcitrant religious sects are major obstacles to democracy in many developing countries, in totalitarian "mass societies" it's precisely autonomous centers of non-state power that are needed to counteract an over-abundance of state capacity.

Nonetheless, one always learns a great deal from reading Chuck Tilly. Although it falls short of its ambitions, the book is never short on provocative ideas and stimulating insights. Among the recent crop of books on the subject focusing on societal conditions with a macro-theoretical bent, this book provides a useful counterpoint from the perspective of the state and mid-level conditions, a domain arguably of the greatest interest to political forecasters and would-be democratizers alike.

***

April 29th, 2008 Addendum:
It's with great sadness that I learned today of Prof. Tilly's passing. I have only had the privilege of meeting Prof. Tilly once at a conference. I was a graduate student completely unknown to him, yet he was kind enough to sit with me for 20 minutes and gave me many valuable advices on my research. I gave him a fairly long paper I've been working on, and to my great surprise, an email arrived from him the very next day providing a detailed critique of my work.

I will always remember his kindness. He will be missed. Read more ›

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough and thoughtful perspective on democracy October 20, 2008

By Stephen B. Parliament

Format:Paperback

Prof. Tilly's analysis of democratic theory and practice was insightful and supported by excellent historical examples. I highly recommend it to students and scholars of democratic theory.

Steve Parliament
University of Wisconsin River Falls