UC Berkeley - HIST 186 - 2012 Spring - Sargent - International and Global History Since 1945 - Lecture 19 - Democracy Resurgent - 01h 21m 01s

Lecture Overview: Democracy Resurgent

[0:00]

Okay, today I'm going to be talking about democratization. I hope that's it's a suitably uplifting and optimistic theme for the first lecture after the spring break vacation. We have a lot of really depressing themes to talk about from genocide in the 1990s to the origins of the financial crisis but we'll try to deal today with something a little bit more positive just as a way of easing ourselves back in.

[00:24]

I hope you all enjoyed your spring breaks by the way. Got a lot work done on your senior theses for the seniors and those of you who are not seniors hopefully did something a little more relaxing.

The Definition of Democracy

[00:35]

Okay, let's start by asking the question: What is democracy? If we're going to talk about democratization it's appropriate to begin with the question of definitions.

[00:47]

How did we define democracy? What is a democracy as a type of political regime?

[00:54]

There are no you know singular answers to this question, you know, scholars of democracy will disagree as to what exactly democracy constitutes. But we might start by sort of proposing a categorical distinction between two you know sort of different concepts of democracy.

[01:11]

You know one is procedural the other is substantive. And the procedural definition of democracy simply emphasizes the processes of arriving at collective decision via broad based collective political participation.

[01:27]

Joseph Schumpeter↗, the you know great economist, described democracy as a system for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote. This is democracy in which rivals for power compete for popular sanction.

[01:46]

This is somewhat distinct from Athenian democracy in which the people collectively partake of decision-making.

[01:54]

Right in the classical Athenian model of democracy the polity was sufficiently small that all free citizens, which is to say free men, were able to participate in the making of public decisions. Representative democracy in its modern form is distinct from Athenian democracy in that we elect representatives to make decisions on our behalf. But a procedural definition of democracy would emphasize the process of elections as the defining attribute of democracy as a regime type.

[02:26]

But many scholars would say that this procedural definition is insufficient. Because there are many attributes to democracy which the procedural aspects of electoral politics do not encompass, right. When we think about democracies we also think about regimes in which law is supreme over man. The supremacy of law under the United States Constitution for example is a defining attribute of American republican democracy.

[02:52]

We might think about human rights -- the equal protections accorded to individuals under the law -- as a defining aspect of a democracy. Can a country be a democracy if...you know, as in the case of South Africa, before the end of apartheid, some people have rights but many others do not. Is that country really democratic?

[03:11]

It might have elections -- indeed South Africa did have elections. But only the white minority were allowed to vote. So do we consider that country a democracy or not?

[03:20]

Well, in some ways it is. If you use a strict procedural definition, if the presence of elections is sufficient justification for calling the state a democracy then South Africa might have been a democracy. But a society in which a majority of the population is not allowed to vote, on the grounds of skin color, is not a country that looks very democratic to most observers.

[03:42]

So equal protection is a crucial sort of aspect of what compromises or constitutes democracy. We might also think about democracies as being oriented towards the maximization of individual liberty. Is a country in which a majority of voters is able to oppress minorities of all kinds really democratic? Or does a democracy need to have some basic orientation towards liberty as an ulterior political goal and purpose?

[04:09]

We could you know sort of argue and disagree at great length as to what the substantive attributes of democracy are. And it's really not my intent to do that today because we have other things to talk about -- like the history of democratization.

[04:22]

The point that I want to convey is just that we can think about democracy as involving a set of substantive attributes as well as involving sort of a process of election by popular consent. These procedural and substantive definitions of democracy are sort of different ways of defining the quandary which we're trying to explain today.

[04:44]

It might be useful to sort of take a compound term -- liberal democracy -- as a shorthand for the kind of regime that we think about when we talk about sort of democracies in the world of the late 20th century. When we talk about democratization we're not just talking about elections we're also talking about the development of liberal protections, liberal, sort of in the classical sense: under the law.

[05:11]

It's not just that countries are implementing elections when they democratize they're also establishing the supremacy of law and the equal protection of individual rights under law. So democratization is about more than simply the introduction of elections it's about the creation of...liberal political regimes.

[05:31]

So that's the definitional part of the problem. We can define democracy in procedural fashion or we can define it in a substantive fashion. And I would suggest that the substantive definition of democracy is more useful to keep in mind when we try to explain the phenomenon of democratization in the last decades of the 20th century.

The Prevalence of Democracy in the Early 1970s

[05:52]

But let's...reflect upon the situation of democracy in the early 1970s. Let's look at the world circa 1973, or 1974, and ask ourselves what is the situation of democracy? What do the historical prospects for democracy look like in the early 1970s? Say in 1973?

[06:14]

Well, in 1973, less than a quarter of the world's countries could be construed as democracies. These countries that are democracies are for the most part rich and Western. And democracy is also something which is very regionally specific.

[06:30]

In 1973 democracy flourishes in Western Europe, North America, and Australasia and that's about it. Outside of the sort of core regions of the West democracy is sparse -- even rare.

[06:47]

The world in 1973 is for the most part not democratic. Most people are governed by authoritian regimes whether of the left or of the right.

[06:57]

In this context contemporary commentators argue that democracy might be culturally specific. That democracy might be a...unique product of Western history, a form of government that is particularly and uniquely suited for Western countries, but not necessarily for other countries. This is an assumption which is you know fairly pervasive in the world of the early 1970s.

[07:20]

Scholars of democracy will even argue that Latin America, as a Catholic sort of society as distinct from protestant North America, is inhospitable to democracy. So arguments about the cultural specificity of democracy are fairly prevalent at the beginning of the 1970s.

[07:39]

We could look at the farm policy of the United States in the early 1970s if we wanted a sort of illustration of the...era's orientation towards authoritianism even autocracy. American farm policy in the early 1970s aligns the United States very closely with authoritian reactionary even despotic regimes of the right.

[08:07]

In Latin America of course the United States is a strong supporter of the Pinochet↗ Regime. In Brazil the United States supports the military dictatorship that comes to power in 1964. The United States supports the authoritian regime of Shah Pahlavi↗ in Iran, the Indonesian dictatorship of Suharto↗ and so on. I could go on.

[08:25]

But the point is that democracy is rare. It's really restricted to the West in the early 1970s. And even the United States, the leading nation-state of the West, aligns itself quite closely with non-democratic regimes in the developing world in the pursuit of its Cold War foreign policy interests.

[08:44]

This is a time even when some social scientists argue that authoritianism as opposed to democracy may be useful, or desirable. Arguments are made that authoritian regimes are better positioned than democratic regimes to modernize and develop. And there are some salutary examples in the world of 1973 that might be construed to support that point.

[09:08]

Singapore, by 1973, is an exemplary developmental success. But Singapore is by no means a democracy. And the defenders of authoritarianism are able to argue that Singapore has modernized and developed economically in part because it has strong centralized somewhat authoritian political leadership. So the world of the early 1970s is a world that does not particularly hospitable to democracy.

[09:34]

There aren't that many democracies, the democracies that do exist are largely confined to the West. Even in the West political scientists and social scientists argue that democracy may not be particularly suitable to the needs of a majority of the world's people. So this is a era in which democracy is in a sort of recession.

[09:57]

And you can see that you know fairly well on the chart. If you look at the number of free regimes as classified by Freedom House↗, a US based NGO, the world of the early 1970s looks much less democratic than the contemporary world would become -- with you know following the turn of the 21st century.

Waves of Democratization Throughout History

[10:20]

One of the striking aspects of the democratic recession of the early 1970s is that it comes after...a series of expansions in the global reach of democracy, as a form of government. And this is something that the political scientist Samuel Huntington↗ recognizes in a really seminal book on democratization titled The Third Wave↗.

[10:49]

What Huntington is concerned with is not the democratic recession of the early 1970s but rather the sort of reinvigoration of democracy that follows it. But Huntington argues that the embattled plight of democracy in the early 1970s needs to be understood as a sort of recession or retreat from an earlier peak.

[11:12]

And Huntington argues that the history of democratization, when it's written on a very large canvas, can be understood, should be understood, as a series of advances and retreats. Huntington offers a sort of historical schema which is a useful sort of vantage point from which to approach the history of democratization writ large.

[11:34]

And he argues that we should think about the history of democratization as unfolding as a series of historical waves. The first of these he argues begins in the late 1820s. He takes Andrew Jackson's election as the President of the United States as a symbolic point of departure for what he calls a first wave of democratization -- a wave of democratization beginning in the late 1820s during the course of which the United States becomes a you know very democratic, very actively, democratic society.

[12:05]

Of course the emancipation of the slaves is a you know central aspect of the history of democratization in the United States. It happens in 1863.

[12:14]

Western Europe democratizes during this first wave of democratization. But the first wave of democratization Huntington argues comes to an end in the 1920s. Mussolini's↗ installation as Prime Minister Duce↗ of Italy in 1922 is for Huntington the symbolic point of closure for the first wave of democratization.

[12:36]

Whether we agree with the particular you know historical point or not that Mussolini installation marks the end of the first wave, you know we can contest that, but it seems fairly clear when you look at the world in the 1920s and 1930s that democracy is experiencing a series of setbacks that collectively constitute something like a global democratic recession.

[12:58]

The installation of the Hitler regime in Germany in 1933 would be another sort of symbolic moment of rupture in the sort of end of the first wave of democratization.

[13:11]

Subsequent to the Second World War something like a second wave of democratization takes shape. This is Huntington's point. The advent of decolonization of course produces an expanding number of countries in the international system. You know from South Asia to Souteast Asia to Africa colonized peoples win their national independence in the decades subsequent to the Second World War.

[13:41]

We've already talked quite a lot about decolonization. It's a process that is substantially complete by the early 1970s. And decolonization at least in its early phase gives birth to democratic regimes. When colonized nation-states become independent they for the most part hold elections -- free elections -- democratic elections.

[14:02]

Of course the history of postcolonial democracy will be fraught. You know this is a theme which we've already discussed at some length. By the late 1960s postcolonial countries like Nigeria are finding it very difficult to sustain themselves as sort of democratic polities. They are fighting civil wars; they are lapsing into authoritianism. The crisis of democracy is a great tragedy for the postcolonial world from the mid-1960s onwards.

[14:29]

And this tragedy marks for Huntington the end of the second wave. The rise of authoritarianism in the developing world is what follows upon the second wave of democratization; it is what causes a second democratic recession.

The Resurgence of Democracy in the mid-1970s

[14:46]

But what Huntington is principally concerned to explain, and what we should be principally concerned to explain today, is the surprising, perhaps surprising, resurgence of democracy from the mid-1970s.

[14:59]

By the early 1970s, as I have already emphasized, democracy has substantially retreated particularly in the developing world. Democracy in 1973, 1974, is at a historical low point. So why does democracy come back? Why is democracy resurgent as a you know sort of system of government in the decades after 1974?

[15:24]

How do we explain what Sam Huntington calls the third wave of democratization? A wave of democratization that unfolds not only in the sort of authoritarian developing world, but also from the 1980s onwards in core regions of the Communist world -- in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

[15:44]

This is one of the really big problems of contemporary global history. Why does the world become more democratic from the mid-1970s? Of course we could debate whether the third wave of democratization is continuing to unfold or whether it has retreated and that's really a question that bears upon present day politics and maybe we could talk about that at the end of the lecture.

[16:04]

But I would...prefer right now to focus on the third wave in the 1970s and the 1980s and to ask you know sort of why did it happen? How do we explain this third wave of democratization?

The Nature of Democracy

[16:15]

This is one of the really core questions in social science. How do we explain democracy? What factors sustain democracy? What factors imperil it? There's very little agreement among social scientists as to what produces democracy. Is it wealth that produces democracy? Development? Some social scientists would argue so.

[16:41]

But others would say that we have to pay attention to the way in which wealth is distributed. Is a country in which wealth is great in the aggregate but also grossly unequal in its distribution likely to be a democracy? Well, we could look at the Gulf Emirates perhaps for an answer to that question.

[16:59]

But there are factors besides economics which in the you know eyes of social scientists affect the prospects for democratization. What about literacy? Religion? Political pluralism? Does history shape the prospects for democratization? Does a history of British imperialism as opposed to say French or Belgian imperialism make a country more likely to become a democracy? You know some historians of imperialism would argue so.

[17:27]

Do international institutions even superpowers have an influence in shaping the prospects for democracy? You know these are arguments that historians and political scientists have offered. Are socially and culturally heterogeneous countries more likely to become democracies or is it homogeneous countries that are more likely to democratize? -- you'll find social scientists who will argue both sides of this issue. So this question what produces democracy is very fraught and very contested. There are no sort of easy answers.

[18:00]

(student question)

[18:13]

We're going to talk through all of those key specific cases. Yes, absolutely. The national cases are really important.

[18:21]

So I think one of the points which is really sort of important to bear in mind, when you think about the sort of big theoretical question what produces democracy, is that the answer to that question, as you absolutely correctly point out, has to be grounded in specific historical cases.

[18:39]

But whether we can generalize based upon the diverse experience of countries from Iberia to Latin America to Southeast Asia to the Soviet Union -- because these are all countries, you know regions of the world, that experience democratic transformation during the 1970s -- is a very difficult question.

[18:56]

Are there really factors in common that apply across the very diverse range of cases that we're going to survey during the course of today's lecture?

Five Factors Leading to Democracy

[19:04]

Well, Sam Huntington, and we're going to start with the hypothesis before delving into the cases, Sam Huntington argues that there are five factors that can help us to explain and understand the third wave of democratization -- and we're going to come back to these in the last section of the lecture. I just want to sort of sketch out Huntington's five variables for you so that you can have them at the backs of your mind as we walk through the case studies.

[19:27]

Huntington argues that there are five things that really affect the prospects for democratization in the third wave. The first of these he argues is the crisis of legitimacy that authoritian regimes experience during the 1970s.

[19:42]

We have already talked to some extent about this, right. The rise of concern in the international arena with human rights is something that we'll help to discredit authoritarian regimes that brutalize their citizens. The oil crisis undermines the economic prospects for authoritarian regimes that depend upon cheap energy to sustain economic growth.

[20:03]

So the crisis of legitimacy of authoritarian regimes is for Huntington very important in explaining the third wave of democratization from the '70s.

[20:12]

Economic growth is also important.The developing world has in some contexts grown at a fairly impressive rate during the 1950s and the 1960s. ISI led growth in Latin America might be flagging, by the end of the 1960s, but through the 1950s and the 1960s ISI led growth in places like Brazil and Argentina has bolstered and expanded an urban middle class. So economic growth is an important factor for Huntington in any explanation of democratization from the mid-1970s onwards.

[20:50]

Changes that occur within the Catholic Church are also very, very important. Huntington emphasizes, you know, sort of the transformations in Catholic doctrine and practice from the 1960s onwards as one of his sort of key variables in the...his explanation for the third wave of democratization.

[21:11]

In the mid-1960s the Vatican holds a sort of major convention on Catholic doctrine -- it becomes known as the Vatican II↗ reforms. This convention prioritizes social and political amelioration as a major goal for the Catholic Church.

[21:29]

Well, I don't want to get too deep into the history of Vatican II, but the Vatican II reforms in essence reorient the Catholic Church towards the promotion of social reform and human rights.

[21:41]

During the third wave, Catholic leaders, you know bishops and cardinals, will become very important figures in the push for democratic reform within authoritarian societies.

[21:53]

And this is very consequential. In Latin America and in Spain and Portugal, which are key sites for the third wave of democratization, the Catholic Church had been closely associated with regimes of the authoritarian right from the 1920s through to the 1960s. In Spain for example the Catholic Church is an important pillar of the Francoist Regime↗.

[22:17]

But in 1971 in Spain actually the Catholic Church breaks with the Francoist Regime. It argues that authoritarianism is not, you know, desirable from a Church perspective. The Church would prefer to see democratization and expanding respect for human rights. So the Catholic Church is a very important, very dynamic element, in the history of democracy's third wave.

[22:40]

Huntington also alludes, or emphasizes, the role of external actors. International institutions, like the United Nations, regional organizations like the European Union, which provide protection and encouragement to democratization upon their peripheries are very important in Huntington's explanatory model.

[23:03]

Huntington also argues that we should pay attention to the role of the United States. The United States in the early 1970s, as I've already mentioned, was closely associated with authoritarian right-wing regimes -- particularly in Latin America but also in other regions of the world.

[23:20]

From the late 1970s onwards the United States begins to chart a new course in its relationship to authoritarianism. Jimmy Carter, who is President from 1977 to 1981, makes the promotion of human rights a central foreign policy objective.

[23:34]

The Reagan administration provides extensive support for democratization. It creates the National Endowment for Democracy↗ in 1983 to support democratization on the global scale. And the United States will end up in some key cases like South Korea and the Philippines pushing authoritarian regimes to reform themselves.

[23:55]

And the United States is a good position to do this because it often has close relationships with the authoritarian regimes that have to decide whether or not to reform -- whether or not to democratize. So external actors are important.

[24:09]

The fifth factor that Sam Huntington highlights is what he calls snowballing. If you think about a snowball rolling done the hill. I don't know if you any went skiing for spring break but...sort of have an idea of what this looks like. The snowball rolling down the hill expanding and gathering weight and mass as it you know sort of proceeds. Well, this is the power of example.

[24:32]

Democratization is a process that sustains its own momentum. The example of one country then two countries then three and then six and then nine becoming democratic give democratization a sense of historical momentum. And this will inflict the decision-making of leaders within authoritarian regimes who have to decide whether to reform or not -- whether to democratize or not.

[24:56]

The snowballing effect of democratization may be sort of really important to explaining the unfolding of this very big consequential historical dynamic.

[25:08]

So this is Sam Huntington's explanatory model. We'll come back to it towards the end of the lecture. But what I would like to do sort of for the central portion of the lecture is just to take you through some of the case studies. We'll talk about countries that experience democratizing change during the 1970s and 1980s and then we'll return to the sort of more theoretical, generalizations and ask what patterns we might be able to infer from this broad variety of cases. Okay.

Case Studies in Democratization

The Iberian Peninsula

[25:36]

Where to become the history of the third wave? And the answer to that question, fortunately, is fairly simple. And the answer is Iberia. Spain and Portugal, the Iberian Peninsula, are sort of the critical location for the third wave's beginning.

Portugal

[25:54]

Portugal, precedes even Spain, as a sort of prototypical case of third wave democratization.

[26:05]

What kind of society is Portugal in 1974? What is Portugal's political situation? What is its economic situation? Politically Portugal in 1974 is an anachronism in Europe. Portugal is situated culturally and geographically in Western Europe but it is a reactionary, anti-liberal, ultraconservative state.

[26:29]

Portugal is ruled, at the beginning of 1974, by a military dictatorship, by...a long autocratic regime which had been basically unchanged since the 1920s. Even Portugal's borders you know had remained unchanged for a very long time. Portugal, actually as a nation-state, has sort of the oldest, unaltered borders in Europe. Portugal looked old: out of date, outmoded, conservative, reactionary -- in the Europe of the 1970s.

[27:03]

But political change came to Portugal and it came fairly rapidly. What were the factors that produced political reform in Portugal and then sustained it?

[27:13]

Well, the first key development that helps to precipitate Portugal's democratization in the 1970s is the death of António Salazar↗. Salazar was the sort of dictator who ruled Portugal until, for a long, over a period of several decades until 1968 when he finally dies.

[27:33]

The death of Salazar, a dictator who had long sort of personified Portuguese autocracy, expands the opportunities for political reform. It takes some time though from, for Salazar's death, to produce real change. It's not until 1974, six years after Salazar dies, that the regime that Salazar constructed begins to crumble.

[27:58]

Intriguely the Portuguese military is the principle site of transformation within the Portuguese state. The Portuguese military was a crucial political pillar of the regime, but younger military officers favor democratic change. They recognize that autocracy means that Portugal will be enduringly separated from sort of...the European region of which it is part. That Portugal will to some extent be closed off from the world so long as it remains a reactionary throwback.

[28:34]

So younger military officers begin to agitate during 1974 on behalf of democratic change. Because the military is such a powerful institution within Portuguese political life the younger military officers, the members of Movement of the Armed Forces, Movimento das Forças Armada↗ are in a strong position to push for political reform.

[28:58]

The young military officers push for an opening of politics to pluralism to political debate and they even ally with members of the Portuguese Communist Party which was formerly outlawed to fight for political change.

[29:12]

Radicals within the military also favor land redistribution. So there is a sort of groundswell of progressive left-wing politics within the Portuguese military that produces the Portuguese Revolution -- the so-called Carnation Revolution of 1974↗.

[29:30]

This revolution opens up Portugal to plural politics and it leads in 1976 to democratic elections which will be freely contested. And these elections bring to power a socialist, Mário Soares↗, who becomes President, sorry, becomes President following you know Portugal's first free and open elections.

[29:59]

This is a major transition. An autocratic regime, a closed regime, a regime dominated by the military sort of transforms itself. It's not overthrown. But it transforms itself from the inside out. Reform minded leaders within the Portuguese military push for change and in doing so they sort of unilaterally cede power to a civilian political opposition -- to Soares↗ Socialist Party.

[30:26]

This Portuguese transition which unfolds really very rapidly over just a couple of years provide a template for democratic reform in Portugal's much larger Iberian neighbor -- Spain.

Spain

[30:38]

In Spain -- the character of the authoritarian regime is similar to the you know character of the Salazar dictatorship. Francisco Franco↗ came to power in the Spanish Civil War↗ which began in 1976. Franco unites Spain under his leadership in 1939 and rules Spain with a sort of iron fist until 1975 when he dies.

[31:05]

Franco's leadership in Europe in 1975 looks highly anomalous. After all Franco had been closely associated with Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s. The only reason that Franco won the civil war was that Hitler and Mussolini provided him with extensive political and military support. So in 1975 it looks highly anomalous for Spain to be governed by a man who is, you know on the face of things, a survivor of fascism.

[31:32]

But Franco dies in 1975 and his death opens up opportunities for political reform. However we shouldn't see the causes of political reform as being exclusively political. There are other structural factors which produce circumstance within which Spain can reform itself politically.

[31:54]

Spain is not entirely static in the Franco years. Franco rules for a long time -- from 1939 through to 1975. But during these years Spain grows quite quickly. Spain modernizes economically -- sort of during the Franco dictatorship. And this modernization makes the fact of Franco's political leadership even more anomalous.

[32:22]

By 1975 Spain is a fairly substantial economy. It's actually the world's tenth largest economy by 1975. So the fact of this country which is beneath the surface of its you know political stasis modernizing and developing economically the death of the dictator in this you know sort of circumstance creates opportunities for political reform.

[32:49]

But individual leaders are very important in shepherding Spain's transition from authoritarianism to democracy. Franco's death sort of expands the opportunities for political change but capitalizing upon those opportunities will depend upon individual choices.

[33:06]

Probably no single Spaniard is more consequential at this juncture than is Juan Carlos↗ -- who is inducted as King of Spain in 1975 following Franco's death.

[33:19]

Franco had been head of state from the civil war through to his death. On Franco's death the role of head of state reverted to the Spanish monarchy. So there was a complex arrangement between the Spanish monarchy and the Franco regime whereby Franco was head of state but the monarchy still endured as an institution.

[33:39]

We don't need to you know sort dwell too deeply, too long, on the technical aspects of that, but the point is that Franco is succeeded as Spain's head of state by Juan Carlos.

[33:50]

And Juan Carlos is a modernizer and is a reformer. Juan Carlos is very concerned to democratize Spain following Franco's death. Juan Carlos lends his personal legitimacy to the cause of democratization.

[34:06]

And he does this in tandem with a reformist Prime Minister -- Alfonso Suárez↗ -- a Prime Minister who will reform Francoist political institutions from within -- gradually expanding the scope for political pluralism ultimately opening Spain to contested elections.

[34:26]

Now the processes of political reform do not go uncontested. Reactionaries within the regime try to roll back the clock to the Francoist Era. In 1981 reactionary military officers very briefly try to sort of overthrow the reforming regime and to reestablish a Francoist dictatorship. But this coup d'etat fails and instead peaceful elections take place in 1981.

[34:54]

These elections bring to power the Spanish Socialist Party↗. And this is a major, major transformation -- Felipe González↗ pictured in the slide becomes Prime Minister in 1981.

[35:07]

And this is a huge shift when you situate it in the context of Spain's very fraught political history. The Spanish Civil War had been an ideological civil war fought between the forces of the left and the forces of the right.

[35:20]

González is the lineal heir to the Spanish Republic -- to the forces of the socialist and Communist and Trotskyite↗ parties that rallied on behalf of the Republic to fight against Franco and the forces of the Spanish Nationalists in the 1930s.

[35:37]

So the election of González as Spain's Prime Minister in 1981, from a certain vantage point, you know, sort of closes the wounds of the civil war. It...normalizes Spanish politics and lets the left, which had been excluded from the political arena for forty years, back into the realm of contested plural politics.

[35:58]

Of course Spain's tradition -- transition from authoritarianism to democracy -- is incomplete and remains you know in some respects incomplete through to the present day. And what I mean by that is that Spain experiences a transition from within -- an authoritarian regimes reforms itself and opens Spanish politics to political pluralism.

[36:25]

But unlike in South Africa, for example, which we'll talk about a little later, Spain makes very little effort to grapple with the historical crimes of the Francoist regime. And this is the price that Spain will have to pay for a relatively peaceful democratic transition. The Francoist regime transforms itself; it's not overthrown.

[36:44]

But as a consequence of it transforming itself there will be no exercise in truth and reconciliation such as that which takes place in South Africa in the early 1990s. The Spanish state for example will continue to maintain you know monuments that glorify the Franco, the Franco Era.

[37:03]

The Valle de los Caídos, the Valley of the Fallen↗, outside of Madrid, is a sort of shrine to soldiers who fought on Franco's side during the civil war and it continues to receive state support. So that's one example of...sort of the partial or incomplete nature of Spain's democratic transition. Spain opens up to democracy but there's no historical reckoning with the sort of crimes of the Francoist Era.

[37:32]

And those crimes were very substantial. You know this monumental site -- the Valle de los Caídos, it's a vast sort of underground crypt in which the remains of Nationalist soldiers are interned, was built with the slave labor of sort of Republican prisoners -- of left-wing opponents of the Francoist regime.

[37:50]

So unlike you know Germany which experienced a sort of reckoning with its Nazi past after the Second World War Spain doesn't go through a sort of historical reckoning, but it does make a transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

[38:06]

Spain's transition is extremely important. Spain's democratic transition coming right after Portugal's democratic transition has a global impact.

[38:17]

Spain will have an impact on the Soviet Union. I'm not going to talk about the Soviet Union today. That comes on Thursday when we talk about the end of the Cold War. But I'll simply point out, at this point, that Mikhail Gorbachev↗, the great Soviet reformer, described Felipe González, the Spanish Prime Minister, as the foreign leader who was most influential on him. -- upon his decision to pursue perestroika↗ -- a process of political reform in the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Latin America

[38:45]

So Spain's example echoes elsewhere. And it echoes in particular in Latin America. It's in Latin America that the experience of the Iberian transitions from authoritarianism to democracy is most immediately felt.

[39:03]

By the late 1970s...the opportunities for democratization in Latin America are very quietly beginning to expand. The first countries to experience the stirrings of a third wave of democratization in Latin America will be fairly small countries -- the Dominican Republic and Peru.

The Dominican Republic

[39:24]

In 1978 the Dominican Republic which had been ruled for some decades by a regime of the authoritarian right holds an election. The regime decides to hold an election as it comes under mounting sort of political pressure for reform.

[39:42]

This election brings to power a reformer -- Antonio Guzmán↗. Guzmán becomes President following a contested election. The outcome of that election is sort of interesting if we want to understand the factors that produce democratization.

[39:56]

Well, the reason that the regime held an election in the first place is that it was fairly confident that it would win -- that Guzmán would not prevail against the military regime's chosen candidate.

[40:07]

As it became clear, as the election in the Dominican Republic unfolded in 1978, that Guzmán was doing very, very well -- that he was likely to triumph in the election -- the military tried to step in to stop the count. To undo what it had initiated and to reverse the process of democratization so as to preserve its own hold on power.

[40:28]

But the Dominican Republic is a very small country. And the military regime came under very quick pressure from external actors including the United States not to halt the election count -- to let the election go ahead as scheduled and to permit Guzmán to assume the leadership of the Dominican Republic.

[40:49]

As a consequence of this external intervention Guzmán will be elected President in 1978. And he's the first, and this is the first democratic sort of transfer of power in the history of the Dominican Republic, so it's a very important shift and harbinger of future sort of democratic transformations in Latin America.

Peru

[41:07]

The next major shift in Latin America occurs you know far away from the Dominican Republic in Peru. Here economic developments play a key role in precipitating political change. Peru experiences a serious deterioration in its economic well-being during the 1970s -- long decline in real wages spurs a series of strikes and industrial unrest.

[41:36]

This pushes the military regime that came to power in 1968 into a series of negotiations with its opponents. A constituent assembly is convened and it drafts a new constitution for Peru. Under the terms of this new constitution which is, sort of the drafting of which is superintended by the military regime, a civilian government is elected in 1980.

[42:00]

The man pictured in on the right of the slide Fernando Belaúnde↗ comes to power in 1980. Belaúnde is a really interesting character because he had previously been President of Peru in the 1960s before he was overthrown in the 1968 coup that installed the military regime in power.

[42:20]

So Belaúnde's reelection to a Presidency which he had previously held sort of underscores the restorative aspects of Peru's democratic transition at the end of the 1970s. Belaúnde had been President, but he's overthrown, he's exiled to the United States in the 1970s, but in 1980 he returns and he reestablishes the rule of law in Peru.

Argentina

[42:43]

Before long the third wave of democratization will be affecting much larger Latin American countries. The overthrow of the Argentinian Junta in 1982 is a landmark.

[42:56]

Argentina for decades had been dominated by sort of two competing political elements. The Argentinian military on the one hand and the Peronist Movement↗ on the other hand. Peronism was a movement, you probably have some knowledge of Peronism if you've taken any Latin American history because it's a very important -- I mean crucially important political movement in the history of the that country.

[43:23]

But Peronism was a sort of populist but -- anti-democratic would be too strong but mildly authoritarian would be more accurate -- political movement that developed around the personality of Juan Perón↗ in the 1930s. And the contest between the military on the one hand and the Peronist Party on the other hand had seemed for decades to be the sort of key dynamic to Argentinian politics.

[43:52]

The collapse of the junta in 1982 is really important because it brings to power not the Peronist Party but a third political force, the Radical Party↗, a political force that is committed to institutionalizing democracy, to institutionalizing the rule of law.

[44:07]

So how does this happen? How does Argentina experience a democratic transition in 1982 and 1983?

[44:15]

Argentina, like most of its neighbors in Latin America, was beset by the early 1980s by serious economic difficulties. Economic difficulties created socioeconomic unrest.

[44:29]

International indebtedness exacerbated Argentina's crisis. Amidst rising popular discontent, amidst growing economy uncertainty, General Leopoldo Galtieri↗ the leader of the Argentinian Junta, gambled on a patriotic war.

[44:47]

What better to unify a country, a country in the throes of you know serious social polarization, than a war? This was Galtieri's calculation. And in 1982 Galtieri decided to invade the Falkland Islands↗ -- the Malvinas Islands↗ as they're called in Argentina, small set of islands owned by Great Britain, a British colony off the coast of Argentina.

[45:11]

Galtieri's purpose in doing this was entirely political. So too was the purpose of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher entirely political. You know Thatcher at this stage was experiencing serious opposition within her own party. Critics within the Conservative Party wanted to sort of you know push back against Thatcher's radical commitment to deregulation and structural economic reform.

[45:38]

So Thatcher seizes upon Galtieri's invasion of the Falkland Islands as an opportunity to solidify her own political base. And two leaders go to war for reasons that have a great deal to do with domestic politics. Fortunately for Thatcher, and unfortunately for Galtieri, the Falkland War ends with a smashing sort of victory for Great Britain.

[46:00]

This victory discredits Galtieri. Galtieri had promised that the military campaign would be easy. The Falkland Islands are after all just a couple hundred miles off the coast of Argentina, a couple of thousand miles actually, more than that, about six or seven thousand miles from the British Isles. So Galtieri didn't believe that the British would be able to maintain an effective sort of military operation to recapture the islands following his seizure of them, but they did.

[46:27]

And the outcome is humiliating and discrediting for the Argentinian Junta. This misbegotten war, as it was on both sides, discredits the military regime and forces it to hold elections amidst street protests, amidst demands for democratization the junta holds an election and the election is won by Raúl Alfonsín↗..

[46:53]

And Raúl Alfonsín is not a member of the military junta nor is he a Peronist. Alfonsín, as I've already emphasized, is a Radical. He's a candidate for the Radical Party↗ and he's committed above all to establishing and entrenching the rule of law and human rights.

[47:12]

His accomplishment will be to facilitate the stabilization of democracy in Argentina despite ongoing economic turmoil. This is a really big shift. Argentina has remained democratic ever since this 1983 election. It's a very key turning point in Argentina's political history.

Brazil

[47:31]

Similar developments proceed elsewhere including in Brazil -- the largest and most powerful country in Latin America. Brazil had been ruled by the military since the 1964 coup that had overthrew João Goulart↗.

[47:48]

In Brazil military rule was never quite so brutal, never so quite authoritarian as it was in Argentina. The Argentinian Junta was a particularly nasty military regime even by the standards of its time. In Brazil the transition to democracy will be somewhat more gradual, somewhat more less dramatic, than the transition from authoritarianism to democracy was in Argentina.

[48:13]

But once again key choices are made within the regime. The Brazilian military junta decides in the early 1980s to permit free elections to take place. But it does so with a strategy of maintaining power. The regime doesn't want to you know sort of cede power to its opponents rather it hopes to maintain its political power while orchestrating a gradual stage managed transition to democracy.

[48:40]

So the military government hopes that it can fragment the political opposition such that it will be able to maintain power for itself in a more democratic guise. This plan doesn't work out so well in practice. In 1982 the military junta loses its majority in the Brazilian parliament and this creates space for political opponents to exert influence through the legislature.

[49:03]

In 1985, an opponent of the military regime, Tancredo Neves↗, wins the Presidential election. And this a really key turning point. As in Peru Tancredo Neves had formally been active in the democratic regime that preceded the military coup. He had been a Prime Minister before the 1964 coup. So his election as President is suggestive of a democratic restoration.

[49:31]

Democracy in Brazil is not a new departure so much as a you know sort of form of government that is being restored following an intermission of military dictatorship.

[49:43]

Tancredo, I should just acknowledge, doesn't get to be inaugurated as President. He dies before he can be inaugurated. But his election in 1985 nonetheless marks -- the turning point in Brazil's democratization following an, eleven, sorry it's not eleven, following a twenty-one year phase of military dictatorship.

[50:07]

These are really substantial changes. The advent of democracy in Argentina as well as Chile during the 1980s in Brazil, in Peru, marks a sort of seismic shift in the political cartography of Latin America.

East Asia

[50:25]

But in 1985 democratization looks very much to be an Iberian and Latin American phenomenon. Democratization hasn't really affected the world beyond Latin America, beyond Iberia. There's been very little change in East Asia which is still overwhelmingly authoritarian, apart from Japan.

[50:46]

Communist regimes in China, in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union still in 1985 look to be very firmly entrenched. So all that democratization through to 1985 seems to have accomplished is to have expanded the scope of democracy from Western Europe and North America to include Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula.

[51:09]

But the third wave of democratization will very quickly spill over into sort of new contexts. East Asia will be the first sort of region to be outside of the Americas and Iberia to be afflicted by the third wave.

The Philippines

[51:27]

In the Philippines, as in all of the Latin American cases which we have discussed, democracy predated the establishment of authoritarianism. The Philippines became independent from the United States in 1946 as a democracy. But Filipino democracy fell under the sway of Ferdinand↗ and Imelda Marcos↗ during the 1960s.

[51:56]

Ferdinand and Imelda developed a highly personalized system of authoritarian rule, a system of government characterized not only by the centralization of authoritarian power but also by extensive corruption.

[52:11]

During the 1970s the Marcos regime became increasingly authoritarian. It made increasing recourse to political violence as a way of controlling its opponents.

[52:23]

The government of the United States was fairly complicit in this. Richard Nixon, who was President from 1969 through to 1974, saw Marcos as a strong man, as a man who would guarantee American interests and would stamp out sort of you know Communist influence, pro-Soviet influence, wherever it reared its head in the Philippines.

[52:46]

So the United States for much of the 1970s was supportive of Filipino authoritarianism. Ronald Reagan, the man who would become President of the United States in 1981, was in fact a personal friend of the Marcoses. And Reagan's sort of relationship with the Marcoses was just illustrative of the connections between the Marcos regime and the United States of America.

[53:08]

Still the 1980s brought rising political opposition within the Philippines -- rising opposition to the Marcos regime. An insurgency by armed Communist guerillas in Luzon↗ spread in the 1980s. Meanwhile student protests mounted. Students demonstrated for democracy; students went on strike.

[53:32]

The Catholic Church became a critical sort of crucible of political dissent. Probably no single individual...was more sort of responsible for the crystallization of a Filipino opposition, an organized Filipino opposition, than the Catholic Cardinal Jaime Sin↗, the cardinal who became sort of singularly associated with democratic reform in the Philippines.

[54:00]

But what brings the democratic mobilization in the Philippines to a head? What accounts for its ultimate success?

[54:08]

There was in 1983 a major political crisis, or a major political crisis unfolded, after Ferdinand Marcos arranged for the murder of a political rival -- Benigno Aquino↗ -- opposition leader who was killed in 1983 by associates of the Marcos regime.

[54:28]

Aquino's funeral becomes a rallying point for democratic opponents of the Filipino dictatorship. Aquino in death becomes a martyr to the cause of democracy and helps to galvanize an even bigger, even more powerful opposition, than the one that he had previously led.

[54:49]

There are international aspects to this and economic aspects too. As the Philippines became divided between an entrenched dictatorship and a mobilizing ambitious opposition international capital fled from the Philippines. You know bankers withdrew loans and didn't extend new loans because they were you know fearful of political dissent.

[55:12]

The Philippines is a country that depended upon foreign lending to balance its budget -- was seriously afflicted by the withdraw of foreign capital. As economic and political disarray mounted Marcos decides in 1986 to call an election.

[55:28]

But he does so not with the purpose of transferring power but with the belief that holding an election, which he will rig, will solidify his power. That an election will lend a sort of credibility to his regime that will cause the opposition to dismantle itself and go away.

[55:46]

Of course things don't turn out quite like that. Cardinal Sin rallies the opposition. The Catholic Church plays a crucial role in mobilizing an organized political opposition to the Marcos regime. The opposition candidate will be the widow of Benigno Aquino -- his widow Cory Aquino↗ becomes the candidate for the Philippines democratic opposition party.

[56:11]

Despite endemic corruption and electoral fraud on an epic scale Marcos is unable to purchase victory. He tries at the very end to sort of maintain power through sort of an outright seizure of power to nullify the results of the election. But a massive campaign of civil disobedience, which Cardinal Sin sort of orchestrates through the Catholic Church's radio station, brings Filipinos onto the streets and ultimately ensures that Marcos cannot remain in power.

[56:45]

Intriguely the United States plays a central role in the final disillusion of Filipino authoritarianism.

[56:54]

Ronald Reagan despite being a personal friend of the Marcoses acts to help ease the Marcos regime out of power. Coming under pressure from Secretary of State George Shultz↗, who is committed to using American power to promote democratization in the developing world, the Reagan administration tells Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos that it will not stand by them.

[57:21]

That the United States wants the Marcos regime to cede power to the democratic opposition. So after, you know, for a long time being associated with the Filipino dictatorship, the United States at the very end switches sides. And it does so at a very crucial moment -- at a moment that helps to leverage the Marcoses out of power and to ensure a peaceful transition to democracy.

South Korea

[57:47]

In South Korea the story will be very similar. South Korea, long been a right-wing dictatorship, never been a democracy, unlike the Philippines.

[57:57]

It was a close ally of the United States in the Cold War. Subsequent to the Korean War the United States was the principle sort of protector of South Korea and the primary sponsor of economic and social development -- modernization in South Korea.

[58:14]

The South Korean military regime orchestrated impressive sort of accomplishments in economic development. But it was unable to create sort of opportunities for political pluralism and debate.

[58:29]

In South Korea, as in the Philippines, the collapse of military authoritarianism came fairly quickly. A military dictator -- Chun Doo-hwan↗ initiated a process of constitutional reform in 1987 following the eruption of street protests that drew in members of a middle class far more affluent than the South Korean middle class had been in the 1960s.

[58:53]

South Korea's impressive economic accomplishments consolidate the growth of an urban, you know, politically literal middle class, which becomes in the 1980s an important social base for democratic reform.

[59:09]

Street protests erupt and the people who are protesting in the streets are not for the most part the poorest and the neediest; they are rather the educated -- people with university degrees who are tired of living in a society which affords them no opportunity for political expression or participation.

[59:25]

The United States once again plays a crucial role. The United States was very closely related to the South Korean military junta. In South Korea, as in the Philippines, the United States warns the military regime against using force.

[59:41]

The United States tells Chun Doo-hwan not to turn the tanks on the demonstrators and instead to cede power in a peaceful process of sort of democratic transition. Chun Doo-hwan is replaced in 1987 by another sort of insider -- Roh Tae-woo↗ who is more committed than Chun had been to the process of political reform.

[1:00:06]

Amidst rising international pressure for change the...South Korea holds an election in 1987. Now interestingly in the case of South Korea the insider reformer, Roh Tae-woo, actually wins the election.

[1:00:23]

The democratic opposition doesn't win the election because the democratic opposition is divided between two different factions. But despite the outcome being a little bit different, with the sort of lineal successor of the authoritarian regime holding on, democracy is nonetheless achieved. Roh Tae-woo despite winning the election remains committed to the process of democratization which he had helped to initiate from within the regime.

[1:00:50]

Democracy endures and in 1998, Kim Dae-jung↗, who's one of the key orchestrators of the democratic opposition in South Korea, will be elected President. So in South Korea, as elsewhere, sort of the leading democratic reformer does eventually get to be President; it just takes a little bit longer in this particular case.

Taiwan

[1:01:09]

In Taiwan we see a similar you know sort of process of opening from within. Taiwan had been an authoritarian state since its creation in 1949. The Kuomintang↗ ruled Taiwan as a single party-state implementing a sort of extensive and ambitious program of top-down modernization, but without substantial democratic reform or change.

[1:01:36]

Reforms begin in Taiwan as in South Korea within the regime. Chiang Ching-kuo↗, who is the son of Chiang Kai-shek↗, lifts martial law and permits the organization of opposition political parties in 1986.

[1:01:49]

Why does he do this? He's in part influenced by the example of the People's Republic↗, which during the 1980s, is opening to the world. Chiang doesn't want to be sort of left beyond the People's Republic in a process of you know political opening. Of course the People's Republic doesn't open politically. We know that now. It only opens economically but in 1986 it's not -- not -- so clear.

[1:02:13]

Chiang is also affected by the growth of civil society organizations within Taiwan -- by the growth of political organizations that rally for change and reform.

[1:02:25]

Chiang sets reform in motion. After his death in 1988 another Kuomintang insider, Lee Teng-hui↗, consolidates and builds upon the processes of reform that Chiang initiated.

[1:02:39]

Under Lee's guidance the first democratic elections for Taiwan's Presidency will be contested in 1996. And here you see in the photograph Lee himself contesting election for the role of President.

[1:02:56]

So you know this is in some ways a striking photograph. Lee, who was an authoritarian insider, voluntarily decided to put himself through the indignity of running for election.

[1:03:09]

But the dynamic is much the same way as the one that occurs elsewhere. An authoritarian regime reforms itself from within because reformers inside the regime like Lee Teng-hui become convinced that the costs of maintaining authoritarianism far outweigh the benefits. The cost-benefit analysis shifts in favor of democratization and reform.

South Africa

[1:03:32]

Perhaps the most dramatic process of democratization that unfolds in the 1980s and into the 1990s takes place in South Africa.

[1:03:43]

South Africa in the 1970s and into the 1980s was a very unpleasant place indeed. The apartheid state was refined and consolidated after the Sharpeville massacre↗ of 1960. The Sharpeville, an event that we've already talked about, involved the murder of unarmed demonstrators by the South African constabulary. .

[1:04:07]

After Sharpeville the apartheid state works very hard to stabilize and make permanent the system of racial apartheid. The state removes black residences from major urban centers. It forces black people to live in townships -- sort of ghettos on the outskirts of major cities. They will only be allowed into the urban centers during daylit hours to perform domestic services for South Africa's white population.

[1:04:34]

The state introduces an elaborate system of internal passports to limit the spatial mobility of black people within South Africa.

[1:04:43]

During the 1960s and 1970s what South Africa becomes is in effect an utterly bifurcated society, a society in which the white minority enjoys high standards of living, standards of living that are you know sort of affluent by global standards, while the black population languishes in a condition of abject poverty.

[1:05:06]

The black population of South Africa is not just poor but also politically oppressed: confined to very limited you know sort of spaces -- to the townships that exist on the outskirts of major cities -- and the so-called homelands which the South African state sets up in parts of the South African interior.

[1:05:24]

Besides confining the sort of physical mobility of South African black people the South African government pursues a campaign of sort of vicious oppression against the black political movement -- the African National Congress↗ or ANC. Nelson Mandela↗, the leader of the ANC, is arrested and imprisoned in 1962.

[1:05:48]

The small number of...ANC activists who try to sort of continue to wage a struggle against the apartheid state are subjected to ruthless oppression -- to sort of infiltration by the South African police authorities by ruthless and illegal violence.

[1:06:07]

Apartheid, at the end of the 1970s, looks fairly stable. The South African whites have implemented a system of radical and authoritarian repression and it seems at the end of the 1970s to be fairly secure.

[1:06:22]

The opportunities for political reform, change, even revolution, do not seem to be obvious at the end of the 1970s.

[1:06:32]

But small changes do begin to occur around this time. Economic growth opens up fissures within the white minority. As the white middle class expands some of the beneficiaries of South African apartheid begin to argue that apartheid is not so desirable as they thought it was.

[1:06:56]

That apartheid, you know, require, you know, people recognize, South African whites recognize, that apartheid will entail, into the indefinite future, South Africa's exclusion from the larger international community.

[1:07:10]

As South Africa becomes subject to boycotts, you know, travel boycotts, trade boycotts, and so on the costs of apartheid seem to mount. Isolation becomes sort of the obvious cost of apartheid.

[1:07:24]

Liberal progressive whites within the apartheid regime will begin to press for minor reforms of the apartheid laws -- reforms that will make the apartheid system a little bit less less intolerable for the South African black population.

[1:07:38]

This is not to say that liberals were pressing for full equality; they really weren't at the end of the 1970s. But there is the beginnings of a sort of movement to expand the domain of sort of freedom for South African blacks albeit you know very incrementally.

[1:07:55]

The international climate is really important. During the 1980s South Africa becomes -- South Africa becomes as international pariah state. Some financial institutions in the West will withdraw investment from South Africa. Divestment becomes a weapon for promoting political change within the South African state.

[1:08:15]

The African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's ANC, is embattled and beleaguered within South Africa, but in the larger international arena the ANC enjoys tremendous support. The ANC is able to raise funds from you know West European and North American supporters. There's tremendous goodwill towards the ANC Movement outside of South Africa.

[1:08:40]

The movement to free Nelson Mandela becomes a particular focus of international concern. It becomes...Mandela becomes a powerful symbol of the struggle against apartheid even though he's been languishing in jail for two decades.

[1:08:54]

And this is really interesting. Because nobody by 1982, twenty years after Mandela was sent into jail, really knows who Nelson Mandela looks like. So the image of Mandela that becomes iconic in the early 1980s as the campaign against apartheid globalizes is the image of Nelson Mandela as he looked when he was taken into custody in 1962.

[1:09:15]

Because the apartheid state is so determined to suppress Mandela's influence that it even suppresses his image. But Free Mandela becomes a sort of focal point for the international mobilization against apartheid.

[1:09:28]

You know there are buildings in the city, right. Streets in the city named for Nelson Mandela, and the naming of these sites for Mandela dates back to the globalization of the apartheid campaign in the early 1980s.

[1:09:40]

I have a video that I want to show you -- like a music video -- from Steve Van Zandt↗ -- the Sun City video↗ -- which I don't really have time for but I'll show you thirty or forty seconds of it. Because this music video is a terrific artifact from sort of the globalization of the anti-apartheid struggle.

[1:09:57]

And what it -- let me tell you a little bit about the backstory. Sun City↗ was a sort of international resort that was set up in South Africa in the interior with the purpose of attracting international tourists.

[1:10:10]

Sun City was a very big, very ambitious development, sort of like a Los Vegas style casino. The owners of Sun City worked very hard to recruit Western artists to perform concerts at Sun City. Like Elvis at Los Vegas, you know, the idea being that having big musical acts from the West would attract Western tourists to visit Sun City and that tourism would become a major industry for South Africa.

[1:10:34]

In the early 1980s a bunch of you know sort of musical artists organized a sort of boycott campaign to commit not to play concerts at Sun City. Steve Van Zandt was sort of instrumental in this and it was Steve Van Zandt who wrote the song "Sun City"↗ which became sort of the protest song against the apartheid regime.

[1:10:54]

There was some artists that did play Sun City. The British rock band Queen↗ -- very infamously played -- this is why it's okay to really despise Queen and you shouldn't listen to "Bohemian Rhapsody"↗. Not just because it's a horrible song but also because Queen were horrible people who played apartheid South Africa. (laughter from the class).

[1:11:11]

But Steve Van Zandt sort of in reaction to this issue writes a song and organizes a sort of international movement of artists against apartheid and I'm just going to play a few moments of this. I'll put the whole thing on the Internet.

[1:11:23]

[1:11:27]

(Intro Clip)

[1:11:46]

("Sun City" song from Artists Against Apartheid)

[1:13:22]

Alright, we'll leave it with Bruce Springsteen↗. (laughter from the class).

[1:13:25]

But you probably saw besides Springsteen -- Bono↗ and a bunch of other musical celebrities of the 1980s in the video. And this is you know sort of evocative of the breadth of the anti-apartheid movement in the West.

[1:13:38]

And this affected decision-making within South Africa. P. W. Botha↗, the Afrikaans↗ Prime Minister of the apartheid regime, recognized in the 1980s that international isolation was costly, that South Africa could not prosper over the long term in isolation from the larger international community.

[1:13:57]

So he initiated a two pronged strategy. He sought on the one hand to modernize and to some extent to moderate apartheid, while on the other hand waging a violent and secret war against the anti-apartheid movement -- against the African National Congress. So Botha tries to you know sort of moderate the apartheid system while viciously suppressing the political opponents of apartheid.

[1:14:20]

As a consequence of this a violent conflict between the guerilla forces of the ANC, the armed forces of the anti-apartheid movement, and the government rages and expands during the 1980s.

[1:14:33]

By the late 1980s the conflict between the ANC and the South African government is beginning to look like the early stages of a civil war. And the apartheid government decides to take a bold step.

[1:14:48]

In the late 1980s it begins to consider sort of freeing Nelson Mandela, pictured here, and negotiating with him. The rationale for this is that Mandela sort of uniquely in South African politics has credibility with both black Africans and with liberal whites.

[1:15:06]

Mandela is also the focus of international attention. The campaign in the West is to free Mandela as much as it is a campaign to end apartheid. So Mandela is this iconic figure within and beyond South Africa. And South Africa's leader, F. W. de Klerk↗, the man who succeeds P. W. Botha as President, gambles that he can sort of, build an alliance with Mandela to surmount the threat of civil war and to build a sort of peaceful transition to a more democratic society.

[1:15:40]

In 1988 Mandela meets not with F. W. de Klerk but with Botha because Botha sort of also explores the possibility of some accommodation with Mandela. This meeting occurs in secret and it ultimately doesn't lead anywhere because Mandela is not prepared to accept the conditions that Botha would attach to his release from prison. It's F. W. de Klerk who makes the bold move. In 1990 he decides to release Nelson Mandela from prison.

[1:16:09]

He decides to release Mandela because he gambles that the South African National Party↗, the party of the white Afrikaans will be able to hold on to political power even subsequent to the initiation of political reforms and more fundamentally because he is concerned about the costs of international sanctions and boycotts on the South African economy.

[1:16:31]

After Mandela is released from prison in 1990 he will resume the leadership of the African National Congress. So Mandela does become this sort of preeminent political figure in the negotiation of democracy's return.

[1:16:46]

Formal multiparty negotiations between the ANC and the Afrikaans National Party begin in 1992. And these negotiations will be interrupted by recurrent violence. Forces from below, sort of guerilla forces on the ANC side, white supremacist forces on the Afrikaans side, will try to thwart the negotiating process and violence becomes a sort of recurrent tool of political intimidation throughout the orchestration of South Africa's democratic transition.

[1:17:18]

But agreement will finally be achieved to hold free and democratic elections, which are convened in 1994 and of course result in Nelson Mandela's election as President of South Africa. And this is by far sort of the most dramatic of the democratic transitions that constitute the third wave.

[1:17:35]

In the South African case power is contested from without and is ultimately win by an outsider -- a man who had for some twenty-five years been a political prisoner of the regime. After Mandela's election Mandela moves decisively to sort of reconcile between the black South African community and the white Afrikaans community.

[1:18:01]

Mandela does not use the Presidency as an opportunity to enact sort of retribution; rather, he works to build sort of unified South African society.

[1:18:13]

He reaches out boldly to white South Africa -- welcomes F. W. de Klerk to become a member of his cabinet. Mandela frequently speaks publicly in Afrikaans, the language of the white minority, rather than in English, which is a sort of deliberate sop to Afrikaans opinion. He works very hard to reconcile a bitterly divided community.

[1:18:36]

I don't know if any of you have seen the recent sort of Clint Eastwood movie about Nelson Mandela but it actually gives I think a pretty good representation of the efforts that Mandela made to promote reconciliation and of Mandela's centrality to its accomplishment.

[1:18:51]

Of course Mandela is not the only proponent of reconciliation. Archbishop Desmond Tutu↗, the Bishop of Johannesburg, is a...almost as vital as Mandela is to the accomplishment of post-apartheid you know stabilization and normalization.

[1:19:12]

Desmond Tutu chairs the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission↗ -- a commission that hears evidence on crimes perpetrated during the apartheid era. Importantly Tutu's commission hears evidence not only concerning crimes that were perpetrated by the state but also acts of violence that were perpetrated by ANC guerillas.

[1:19:32]

There are no sort of prosecutions for people who testify at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They will be given amnesty in exchange for their testimony. The purpose of the exercise is to achieve a sort of national coming to terms with the violence that has been perpetrated during the apartheid era.

Exceptions to Democratization During the Third Wave

[1:19:50]

With South Africa's democratization in 1994 the third wave appears to be sort of triumphal. But there are of course exceptions.

[1:20:02]

We haven't talked much today about the Communist world. We're going to talk about the Communist world on Thursday when we talk about the end of the Cold War. But by way of conclusion I would like to just draw your attention to the view from Tiananmen Square in 1989↗.

[1:20:15]

An uprising that could be construed as an uprising on behalf of democracy or expanded political freedom in China. This does not of course lead to democratization. In the world's largest country the authoritarian state will clamp its authority down very harsh.

[1:20:32]

There are also other, you know, exceptions to this general pattern of democratization. The Middle East has been conspicuously absent from the case studies that we have talked about.

[1:20:43]

This is a point on which we might reflect. We'll return to the theme of democratization on Thursday when it will be situated in the context of the Cold War's end and when our focus will be in particular on the end of the Communist party-state's rule in the Soviet Union.