Huntington: The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century

Huntington, S., 1993. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, University of Oklahoma Press.

Ch. 1: What?

“The transitions to democracy between 1974 and 1990 are the subject of this book” (5).

Huntington posits that the third wave of democratization began with the military take-over of the Portuguese Caetano dictatorship in 1974.

First off, Huntington must explain what he means by democracy, as many studies of, say, democratic peace suffer from an ambiguous or overly rigid metric. “Serious problems of ambiguity and imprecision arise when democracy is defined in terms of either source or authority or purposes, and a procedural definition is used in this study” (6). The core of democracies is the fact that leaders are selected not through means of heredity or power, but rather through competitive elections of the subjects who are to be ruled over. This procedural definition is not, however a panacea. There are many problems with its operationalization, though these may be less acute than other democracy definitions (such as those that rely on concepts of will, for example). The “minimal” definition of democracy used by Huntington is also not useful when exploring political stability or competence.

“A wave of democratization is a group of transitions from nondemocratic to democratic regimes that occur within a specified period of time and that significantly outnumber transitions in the opposite direction during that period of time. A wave also usually involves liberalization or partial democratization of political systems that do not become fully democratic. Three waves of democratization have occurred in the modern world” (15).

The first wave of democratization described by Huntington occurred in the 1800s and lasted until the end of the first world war. This is described as a “long wave”. The reasons for this wave were increased voter participation, a decrease in restrictions to the ballot box and a general trend against monarchic rule. This wave was halted during the rise of the second World War, which saw a general rise in fascism and communism. The second wave of democratization occurred directly after the end of WWII. This represented a marked rise in democracies that were previously fascist during the war. Eastern European countries, however, remained clearly authoritarian. There were signs of democratic growth in Latin America. This all turned around in the “second reverse wave” which, according to Huntington, lasted from 1958-75. There was a increase in authoritarianism and military coups through Latin America and Africa. However, Huntington sees this as being turned around, as noted at the beginning of this abstract, with the overthrow of the Portuguese government in 1974. This brought about a third long-wave of democratization that involved anti-colonial democratic and anti-authoritarian democratic movements throughout the world, eventually bridging with the fall of the USSR and the increased democratization of many of the former Eastern Bloc states.