Feckless Pluralism (Encyclopedia entry)

FECKLESS PLURALISM Feckless pluralism refers to political systems that fall short of democratic standards, but contain contested elections and alternation of power between different political groups. It is a form of government that is neither democratic nor autocratic. Hybrid regimes of this sort caught the attention of political scientists in the wake of the third wave of democratisation, as a number of countries in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America seemingly got stuck along the road towards democracy. Some political regimes in the grey zone between democracy and autocracy are referred to as dominant power politics systems. This entry introduces Thomas Carothers’ concept of feckless pluralism and its relation to the wider notion of hybrid regimes.

Hybrid regimes are not really new. Analysing multi-party politics in Eastern Europe in 1900– 1939, political scientists have found that incumbents seldom allowed themselves to lose elections. Undemocratic regimes, elected through multi-party elections, were also present in Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, and in several Latin American countries during the 1960s and 1970s. The current debate on hybrid regimes developed against the backdrop of the transition paradigm. Transitologists expected transition processes, if managed correctly, to generate democracy. But there is considerable evidence that some hybrid regimes cannot be dismissed as transitional phenomena. Analysing a worldwide sample of such hybrid regimes in 1989–2007, Morlino (2009) finds no less than 26 ‘stable hybrid regimes’, i.e. regimes that had been ‘partially free’ for 15 years or more, and nine cases of ‘less persisting hybrid regimes’ where the regime had survived for more than ten years. Of these 35 hybrid regimes, only ten made transitions, most of them to democracy (7) and a few to authoritarianism (3).

In order to better understand hybrid regimes on their own terms, Thomas Carothers’ diagnosed them as suffering from two syndromes, one of which is feckless pluralism. His description thereof deserves to be quoted at some length:

Countries whose political life is marked by feckless pluralism tend to have significant amounts of political freedom, regular elections, and alternation of power between genuinely different political groupings. Despite these positive features, however, democracy remains shallow and troubled. [...] Political elites from all the major parties or groupings are widely perceived as corrupt, self-interested, and ineffective. The alternation of power seems only to trade the country’s problems back and forth from one hapless side to the other. [...] The public is seriously disaffected from politics, [even though] it may still cling to a belief in the ideal of democracy [...] (Carothers 2002, 10).

Feckless pluralism comes in many forms depending on the nature of the party system and the way in which opposition and incumbents relate to each other. In some cases, tensions between parties run so high that political parties use their time out of office to prevent their antagonists from governing. In other cases, the political parties collude to the extent that alternation becomes fruitless. Political competition may also run between deeply entrenched parties that operate as patronage networks, which are incapable of reforming themselves. In other cases, the alternation occurs between fluid political groupings, short-lived parties led by charismatic individuals or temporary alliances. But whatever the format might be, the root of the problem remains the same. The political elites, Carothers (2002, 11) argues, are ‘profoundly cut off from the citizenry, rendering political life an ultimately hollow, unproductive exercise’.

The second type of hybrid regime identified by Carothers, which he labels dominant power politics, comes with a different set of problems:

Countries with this syndrome have limited but still real political space, some political contestation by opposing groups, and at least most of the basic institutional forms of democracy. Yet one political grouping – whether it is a movement, a party, an extended family, or a single leader – dominates the system in such a way that there appears to be little prospect of alternation of power in the foreseeable future (Carothers 2002, 11–12).

Although elections are the source of political legitimacy in countries characterised by dominant power politics, the playing field is uneven. Incumbents utilise state funds to the benefit of their own political group, and use police and prosecutors to dole out punishment and protection according to a partisan formula. Even the electoral process tends to be organised in a manner that more or less subtly tilts the outcome in favor of the ruling party.

Certain problems are common in both dominant power politics and feckless pluralist systems. There is little participation beyond voting. Disaffection from politics tends to be widespread, and political elites are generally perceived as corrupt. Like feckless pluralism, dominant power politics also manifests itself in many guises. Some countries with this form of governance have very limited political space and are close to outright autocracy. Belarus and Russia would be cases in point. Others have a much wider political space and are more akin to feckless pluralism. An example is Georgia, where an electoral change of power took place in 2012, but democracy remains troubled. Classification of political regimes is always a delicate

task and the grey zone between democracy and dictatorship is no exception from this rule. It too has its grey zones – not least that between feckless pluralism and dominant power politics.

Christofer Berglund & Sten Berglund See also: Democracy, Dictatorship, Hybrid Regimes, Dominant Power Politics, Competitive Authoritarianism, Transitology.

FURTHER READINGS Berglund, C. (2014). Georgia Between Dominant-Power Politics, Feckless Pluralism, and Democracy. Demokratizatsiya 22, 3. Carothers, T. (2002). The End of the Transition Paradigm. Journal of Democracy, 13, 1. doi: 10.1353/jod.2002.0003. Hale, H. (2015). Patronal Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Morlino, L. (2009). Are There Hybrid Regimes? Or are They Just an Optical Illusion? European Political Science Review, 1, 2. doi: 10.1017/S1755773909000198.