Abstract (may include machine translation)
Competitive political elections are frequent objects of cynicism, but also carriers of great transformative expectations. This chapter reviews the comparative literature about their transformational power in three realms. It discusses the democratizing power of multiparty elections in electoral authoritarian regimes; the capacity of elections to deepen the democratic quality of minimal democracies; and their civilizing power in the face of democratic state repression and societal violence. In all three areas, the balance is sobering. The mere existence of competitive elections does not lead to either democratizing or civilizing progress. Their actual transformative power depends on the willingness and capacity of democratic actors to exploit the institutional opportunities they offer.
Original language | American English |
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Title of host publication | The Handbook of Political, Social, and Economic Transformation |
Editors | Wolfgang Merkel, Kai Kollmorgen, Hans-Jürgen Wagener |
Place of Publication | Oxford |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 486–491 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780191868368 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2019 |