DEMOCRACY ‘WITH ADJECTIVES’:

Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research

David Collier
and
Steven Levitsky

Working Paper #230 - August 1996

David Collier is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is

coauthor of Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime
Dynamics in Latin America (1991), and his recent articles include “Trajectory of a Concept:
‘Corporatism’ in the Study of Latin American Politics” (1995) and “Insights and Pitfalls: Selection
Bias in Qualitative Research” (coauthored, 1996).
Steven Levitsky is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
He is coauthor of “Between a Shock and a Hard Place: The Dynamics of Labor-Backed
Adjustment in Argentina and Poland” (forthcoming, Comparative Politics), and he is currently
conducting research on the transformation of Peronism in the contemporary neoliberal era in
Argentina.
In writing this paper, we have incurred a special intellectual debt to Guillermo O'Donnell, Giovanni
Sartori, Philippe Schmitter, Terry Karl, and Larry Diamond, as well as to our cognitive science
colleagues George Lakoff and Mark Turner. We can only mention a few of the many colleagues
who have made valuable comments: Ruth Berins Collier, Andrew Gould, Marcus Kurtz, David
Laitin, Arend Lijphart, James Mahoney, Scott Mainwaring, Carol Medlin, Gerardo Munck, Samuel
Valenzuela, and participants in the Berkeley Working Group on Comparative Method. Steve
Levitsky's participation in this research was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate
Fellowship, and David Collier's work on this project at the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences was supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. SBR-9022192.
 ABSTRACT

The recent trend toward democratization in countries throughout the globe has challenged
scholars to pursue two potentially contradictory goals: to develop a differentiated
conceptualization of democracy that captures the diverse experiences of these countries; and to
extend the analysis to this broad range of cases without ‘stretching’ the concept. This paper
argues that this dual challenge has led to a proliferation of conceptual innovations, including
hundreds of subtypes of democracy—i.e., democracy ‘with adjectives.’ The paper explores the
strengths and weaknesses of three important strategies of innovation that have emerged:
‘precising’ the definition of democracy; shifting the overarching concept with which democracy is
associated; and generating various forms of subtypes. Given the complex structure of meaning
produced by these strategies for refining the concept of democracy, we conclude by offering an
old piece of advice with renewed urgency: It is imperative that scholars situate themselves in
relation to this structure of meaning by clearly defining and explicating the conception of
democracy they are employing.

RESUMEN

La reciente corriente de democratización en países de todo el mundo ha movido a los

especialistas a perseguir dos metas potencialmente contradictorias: desarrollar una
conceptualización diferenciada de la democracia que capture las diversas experiencias de estos
países; y extender el análisis a este amplio rango de casos sin ‘estirar’ el concepto. Este texto
sostiene que este doble desafío ha llevado a la proliferación de innovaciones conceptuales,
incluyendo cientos de subtipos de democracia—esto es, democracia ‘con adjetivos.’ El texto
explora las fortalezas y debilidades de tres importantes estrategias de innovación que han
emergido: ‘precisar’ la definición de democracia; cambiar la noción abarcadora con la cual se
asocia a la democracia; y generar varias formas de subtipos. Dada la compleja estructura de
significado producida por estas estrategias de refinamiento del concepto de democracia,
concluimos ofreciendo, con renovada urgencia, un viejo consejo: Es imperativo que los
especialistas se sitúen en relación a esta estructura de significado a través de una definición y
explicación claras de la concepción de democracia que están empleando.
 The recent global wave of democratization has presented scholars with a major
conceptual challenge. As numerous countries have moved away from authoritarianism, the
concept of democracy has been applied in many new settings. Although the new national political
regimes in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the former communist world share important attributes
of democracy, many of them differ profoundly from the democracies in advanced industrial
countries. Some, it is widely agreed, cannot be considered fully democratic. Others are often
viewed as meeting minimal criteria for democracy, yet still exhibit features that scholars find
problematic.
This paper argues that as scholars have attempted to deal analytically with these new
cases of democracy, they have pursued two potentially contradictory goals. On the one hand,
they seek to increase conceptual differentiation in order to capture the diverse forms of
democracy that have emerged. On the other hand, they seek to avoid conceptual ‘stretching,’ in
the sense of applying the concept of democracy to cases that exhibit a constellation of attributes
that do not correspond to their definition of democracy. An important consequence of the pursuit
of these goals has been a proliferation of alternative forms of the concept, including a surprising
number of subtypes, such as ‘authoritarian democracy,’ ‘neopatrimonial democracy,’ ‘military-
dominated democracy,’ and ‘protodemocracy.’ An examination of the literature reveals over 550
such examples of democracy ‘with adjectives,’i i.e., many times more subtypes than countries
being analyzed.
This proliferation of subtypes is particularly interesting in light of the effort by leading
analysts of this recent episode of democratization to standardize terminology, most notably
through ‘procedural’ definitions in the tradition of Joseph Schumpeter and Robert A. Dahl.ii This
standardization has, in important respects, been successful. Yet as the process of
democratization has continued, and as attention has shifted from the initial transitions from
authoritarian rule to issues of democratic consolidation, the proliferation of subtypes and other
conceptual innovations has persisted. Consequently, the earlier effort to standardize usage must
now be supplemented by an assessment of the structure of meaning that underlies these diverse
forms of the concept.
Focusing on studies concerned with recent cases of democratization at the level of

i A parallel expression, “democracy without adjectives,” appeared in debates in Latin America

among observers concerned with the persistence of incomplete and ‘qualified’ forms of
democracy. See, for instance, Enrique Krauze, Por una democracia sin adjetivos (Mexico City:
Joaquín Mortiz/Planeta, 1986).
ii Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (NY: Harper, 1947); and Robert A.
Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).
national political regimes, with particular attention to work on Latin America,iii this paper seeks to
initiate such a process of assessment. To provide a base line for the discussion, we first introduce
the different definitions and conceptions of democracy found in this literature. We then explore
alternative strategies that scholars have employed in refining the concept of democracy as they
have pursued the two-fold goal of capturing the diverse experience of these new cases of
democracy while seeking to avoid conceptual stretching.
A central concern of the analysis is with the fact that these two goals are at times
contradictory. In Sartori’s well-known formulation, conceptual stretching is to be avoided by
moving up a ‘ladder of generality,’iv in the sense of shifting to concepts that have fewer defining
attributes and that, correspondingly, refer to a larger number of cases. Moving up a ladder based
on this pattern of ‘inverse variation’ between the number of defining attributes and number of
cases yields concepts that may be less vulnerable to conceptual stretching. Yet precisely
because they are more general, such concepts have the drawback of providing less, rather than
more, differentiation. On the other hand, Collier and Mahon recently pointed to the alternative
procedure of creating what we will call ‘diminished’ subtypes, which can serve both to provide
greater differentiation and to avoid conceptual stretching.v
Against the backdrop of these alternatives, we examine three strategies of conceptual
innovation that seek to address these competing goals of differentiation and avoiding conceptual
stretching: ‘precising’ the definition of democracy by adding defining attributes; shifting the
overarching concept (e.g., political ‘regime’) with which democracy is associated; and generating
various forms of subtypes. In analyzing this last strategy, we first explore how subtypes may be
used in both descending and climbing Sartori’s ladder of generality. We then consider the
approach of generating diminished subtypes. Because diminished subtypes increase
differentiation at the same time that they help to avoid conceptual stretching, they are particularly
useful. Possibly for this reason, they are by far the most common strategy of conceptual
innovation found in this literature.

iii We are thus not primarily concerned with the literature on advanced industrial democracies,
although this literature is an important locus of intellectual reference in the studies we are
examining. In a few places we have included conceptions of historical forms of democracy that are
used as points of comparison in studies of contemporary cases. We also have included studies of
countries that are not actually part of the recent episode of democratization but whose relatively
new democracies are frequent points of comparison in the literature under review—for example,
Venezuela and Colombia.
iv Giovanni Sartori, “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science
Review 64 (1970). Sartori actually refers to a ladder of “abstraction” (p. 1040). However, because
the term ‘abstract’ is often understood in contrast to ‘concrete,’ this label can be confusing. We
therefore find that it expresses the intended meaning more clearly to refer to a ladder of
generality.
v David Collier and James E. Mahon, Jr., “Conceptual ‘Stretching’ Revisited: Adapting
Categories in Comparative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 87 (1993), 850–52.
 The larger goal of the analysis is to clarify and place in perspective the diverse usages of
the concept of democracy that have emerged in these studies. Scholars often employ different
forms of conceptual innovation intuitively rather than self-consciously, and one of our basic
purposes is to encourage the more self-conscious use of these strategies. In addition, it
becomes clear that these authors have gone far beyond offering only broad categorical contrasts
between democracies and nondemocracies, in that they have provided numerous distinctions
regarding different aspects and gradations of democracy. These distinctions represent an
important innovation in the description of democracy, which in turn has fundamental implications
for how scholars analyze the causes and consequences of democracy.
Two initial caveats are in order. First, scholars introduce conceptual and terminological
innovations for various reasons, and not only in pursuit of the two-fold goal just discussed. For
example, they sometimes produce new terms to provide synonyms that they can use to
overcome the rhetorical problem of numerous repetitions of the same term in the course of an
analysis. However, the analytic goals of conceptual differentiation and avoiding conceptual
stretching appear to be central to understanding the proliferation of conceptual forms observed
here. Second, along with the ‘qualitative’ literature that is the focus of the present discussion,
valuable quantitative indicators have been developed that also provide a basis for comparing
recent cases of democratization. vi Ultimately, it will be productive to integrate the insights
contained in these two literatures. However, an essential prior step, which is our present concern,
is to learn more about the complex structure of meaning that underlies the treatment of
democracy in the qualitative literature.

Definitions and Conceptions of Democracy

in Research on Recent Democratization

The conceptual innovations analyzed in this paper are introduced with reference to the
concept of democracy as it has been applied to the structure of national politics. To discuss these
innovations an appropriate first step is to summarize the definitions and conceptions of
democracy found in research on recent democratization.
In his famous analysis of “essentially contested concepts,” the philosopher W.B. Gallie

vi Alex Inkeles, ed., On Measuring Democracy: Its Consequences and Concomitants (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1991) brings together an important part of this work. Kenneth A.
Bollen, “Liberal Democracy: Validity and Method Factors in Cross-National Measures,” American
Journal of Political Science 37, no. 4 (1993), is a particularly important effort to evaluate alternative
quantitative measures. For a somewhat skeptical view of these quantitative measures, offered by
scholars whose focus is more centrally on Western Europe, see David Beetham, ed., Defining
and Measuring Democracy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994).
argues that democracy is “the appraisive political concept par excellence.” vii Correspondingly,
one finds endless disputes over appropriate meaning and definition. However, the purpose of
Gallie’s analysis is not to legitimate such disputes but to show that a recognition of the contested
status of concepts opens the possibility of understanding each meaning within its own framework.
With reference to democracy, he argues that “politics being the art of the possible, democratic
targets will be raised or lowered as circumstances alter...,” viii and he insists that these alternative
standards should be taken seriously on their own terms.ix In this spirit, our analysis focuses on
the particular set of standards for evaluating democracy that have emerged for the purpose of
studying the specific domain of cases that are of concern here.
As a point of entry, we examine a spectrum of definitions that have appeared in these
studies. We cannot do justice to all the nuances of meaning, yet we are convinced that this
summary identifies certain definitional and conceptual benchmarks that have played a crucial role
in orienting these studies. The definitions examined here are primarily ‘procedural,’ in the sense
that they focus on democratic procedures rather than on substantive policies or other outcomes
that might be viewed as democratic. Many are also ‘minimal’ definitions, in that they deliberately
focus on the smallest possible number of attributes that are still seen as producing a viable
definition (although, not surprisingly, one finds disagreement about how many attributes are
needed for the definition to be viable). For example, most of these scholars differentiate what
they view as the more specifically political features of the regime from characteristics of the society
and economy, arguing that the latter are more appropriately analyzed as potential causes or
consequences of democracy rather than as features of democracy itself.x Much of the usage by
these authors is linked to explicit definitions that are easy to situate within this spectrum. Other

vii W. B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 51

(London: Harrison and Sons, 1956), 184. Emphasis in original.
viii Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” 186.
ix Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” 178, 189, 190, 193.
x For discussions of procedural definitions, see Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter,
Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), chap. 2; Samuel P. Huntington, “The Modest
Meaning of Democracy” in Robert Pastor, ed., Democracy in the Americas: Stopping the
Pendulum (NY: Holmes and Meier, 1989); and Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, “What
Democracy Is...and Is Not,” Journal of Democracy 2 (1991). The origin of this approach is found in
Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Regarding minimal definitions, see Giuseppe
Di Palma, To Craft Democracies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 28; and Samuel
P. Huntington, The Third Wave (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 9. An excellent
example of a minimal definition is found in Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 10. On the argument about treating
characteristics of the society and economy as a cause or consequence of democracy, see Juan J.
Linz, “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes” in Fred Greenstein and Nelson Polsby, eds.,
Handbook of Political Science 3 (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975), 182; and Terry Lynn Karl,
“Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America” in Dankwart A. Rustow and Kenneth Paul
Erickson, eds., Comparative Political Dynamics: Global Research Perspectives (NY: Harper
Collins, 1991), 165.
authors are less explicit, but on the basis of the larger framework within which they discuss
democracy and the way they apply the concept to particular cases, it is possible to infer the
meaning they are employing.
 These definitions, along with the attributes entailed in each and examples of authors who
employ them, are arrayed in Figure 1. We have also placed within this spectrum what we will call a
‘prototypical conception’ of established industrial democracy which, although almost never
explicitly defined, serves as an analytic benchmark in these studies. We include it here not
because we consider the distinction between formal definitions and informal conceptions
unimportant, but because it is useful to locate this conception within the spectrum to provide a
basis, later in the analysis, to make clear its role in the formation of subtypes.
Looking first at the left side of Figure 1, we find scholars who follow Schumpeter in
employing a narrow definition that equates democracy with elections. This approach, which may
be called ‘electoralism,’xi defines democracy as holding elections with broad suffrage and the
absence of massive fraud. Second, many scholars argue that without effective guarantees of civil
liberties, elections do not constitute democracy, and that a ‘procedural minimum’ for defining
democracy must include not only elections, but reasonably broad guarantees of basic civil
rights—e.g., freedom of speech, assembly, and association.
Third, beyond this procedural minimum, various scholars have identified further
characteristics that must be present for these basic procedures to meaningfully constitute a
democracy, thereby creating an ‘expanded procedural minimum’ definition. Most importantly,
some scholars have added the requirement that elected governments must (to a reasonable
extent) have effective power to govern. This issue may arise, for example, when civilian rulers lack
a meaningful degree of control over the military. This expanded definition has gained substantial
acceptance, especially in the literature on Latin America.xii The next column in Figure 1
corresponds to a prototypical conception of established industrial democracy, which entails a
constellation of political, economic, and social features commonly associated with these regimes.
This prototypical conception, which plays an important role in the formation of subtypes, goes well
beyond the procedural definitions just discussed. Finally, the ‘maximalist’ approach is based on
attributes widely understood to exist in few if any cases in the real world. These include equality of
social and economic relations and/or broad popular participation in decision-making at all levels of
politics. Some of the authors who follow this usage distance themselves from the rest of the

xi This term is found in Terry Lynn Karl, “Imposing Consent: Electoralism vs. Democratization in
El Salvador” in Paul W. Drake and Eduardo Silva, eds., Elections and Democratization in Latin
America, 1980–1985 (La Jolla, CA: Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, University of
California, San Diego, 1986), 34.
xii As noted below in the discussion of ‘precising,’ other analysts have proposed additional
definitional requirements that could lead to a further expansion of the procedural minimum
definition. However, these innovations have not been adopted by enough scholars to be
included in the figure.
 Figure 1

Definitional and Conceptual Benchmarks in Research on Recent

Democratization*
(Bibliographic references are in Appendix.)

Terms Used to Designate Alternative Definitions and Conceptions

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Electoralist Procedural Expanded Prototopical Maximalist

Definition Minimum Procedural Conception of Definition/
Definition Minimum Established Conception
Definition Industrial
Democracy

These are the principal definitions employed in Not defined; Often not
this literature; often presented and applied with plays important explicitly
Associated Meanings considerable care role in forming defined
subtypes

Reasonably Often
competitive elections, Yes Yes Yes Yes not
devoid of massive included
fraud, with broad
suffrage.

Basic civil liberties: Yes Yes Yes Often

Freedom of speech, not
assembly, and included
association.
Often
Elected governments Yes Yes not
have effective power included
to govern.

Additional political, Often

economic, and social Yes not
features associated included
with industrial
democracy.

Socioeconomic equal-
ity; and/ or high levels
of popular participation Yes
in economic, social,
and political
institutions.

Kirkpatrick 1981; O'Donnell and Karl 1991; Not explicitly Fagen 1986;
Vanhanen 1990; Schmitter 1986; Schmitter and discussed. See Harding and
Fukuyama 1992; Diamond, Linz, Karl 1991; analysis below of Petras 1988;
EXAMPLES Chee 1993; also and Lipset 1989; Huntington the subypes Jonas 1989;
Schumpeter Di Palma 1990; 1991; presented in Miliband 1992;
1947. Mainwaring Valenzuela Figure 6. Gills, Rocamora,
1992; also Linz 1992; and Wilson 1993;
1978. Rueschemeyer, Harnecker 1994.
Stephens, and
Stephens 1992;
Loveman 1994.

*Heavy line in figure brackets those definitions and conceptions that form an ordered scale.
literature by explicitly rejecting the idea of a procedural definition,xiii and often they do not include
the procedural guarantees that are central to the other definitions just discussed. Because many
of these authors do not present a formal definition, we refer to this in the figure as a
‘definition/conception.’
These alternative definitions are not equally prevalent. In the literature we examined, the
electoralist definition has been used by a number of scholars. However, this usage raises
concern about overextending the concept of democracy by applying it to countries—such as El
Salvador, Mexico, and Singapore in the 1980s—that satisfy the criterion of elections yet where
the violation of civil liberties is common. In light of this concern, a substantial consensus has
emerged around a procedural minimum or expanded procedural minimum definition.
Furthermore, scholars who employ a procedural minimum definition would generally have no
objection to including some reasonable criterion of effective power to govern (as specified in the
expanded procedural minimum approach) as a defining attribute.xiv Maximalist definitions, which
correspond to a conception of democracy that was common in the field of Latin American studies
in the 1960s and 1970s, have continued to be employed. However, a great many scholars who
work on the recent wave of democratization have deliberately avoided this approach.
It merits emphasis that a clear ordering is present within this set of definitions and
conceptions. Although this spectrum of meanings does not form a perfect ‘cumulative scale,’xv
with the exception of the last column on the right each subsequent definition or conception
includes all of the attributes entailed in the previous ones (see heavy line in the figure). This
ordering plays a critical role in giving structure to the conceptual innovations analyzed in the
remainder of this paper.

xiii Susanne Jonas, “Elections and Transitions: The Guatemalan and Nicaraguan Cases” in John
A. Booth and Mitchell A. Seligson, eds., Elections and Democracy in Latin America (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 129–30; and Ralph Miliband, “The Socialist
Alternative,” Journal of Democracy 3 (July, 1993), 120–21. Critiques of this rejection are found in
Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1987); and
Huntington, “The Modest Meaning of Democracy.”
xiv Some other authors have discussed the importance of these aspects of democracy, but
without taking the step of entering them into the formal definition. See J. Samuel Valenzuela,
“Democratic Consolidation in Post-Transitional Settings: Notion, Process, and Facilitating
Conditions” in Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O’Donnell, and Valenzuela, eds., Issues in Democratic
Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1992); William C. Smith and Carlos H. Acuña, “Future Politico-
Economic Scenarios for Latin America” in Smith, Acuña, and Eduardo A. Gamarra, eds.,
Democracy, Markets, and Structural Reform in Latin America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction,
1994); and Terry Lynn Karl, “The Hybrid Regimes of Central America.” Journal of Democracy 6,
no. 3 (July 1995).
xv See Delbert C. Miller, Handbook of Research Design and Social Measurement, 5th edition
(Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991), 177–78; and R. J. Mokken, A Theory and
Procedure of Scale Analysis with Applications in Political Research (The Hague: Mouton, 1971).
 Though identifying this spectrum of definitions is a useful step toward understanding the
meanings of democracy in this literature, such definitions do not fully govern usage. Democracy is
a complex concept, and the various formal definitions presented by different authors do not
resolve, once and for all, what democracy really ‘is.’ Rather, these definitions and conceptions
commonly serve to provide a meaning that is useful in relation to the specific research goals of a
given author and the specific cases under analysis. As we show in the following sections, when
these goals change, or when different cases become the focus of analysis, authors introduce a
variety of conceptual innovations and shifts in meaning.

Strategies of Conceptual Innovation

The conceptualizations of democracy found in this literature are complex, in part due to
the great heterogeneity of cases on which analysts have focused. While the presence of
relatively competitive elections in many postauthoritarian settings suggests that the concept of
democracy is relevant, the obvious difference between these regimes and well-established
democracies both creates the need for concepts that provide more fine-grained distinctions
regarding different kinds of democracy and also raises a concern about avoiding conceptual
stretching. Our central argument is that the complex usage of this concept reflects the alternative
approaches adopted by different authors in addressing these two problems. We now turn to an
examination of three basic strategies they have employed.

Precising the Definition

One strategy of conceptual innovation is that of ‘precising,’ or ‘contextualizing,’ the

definition of democracy. xvi As the concept of democracy is extended to new settings,
researchers may confront a particular case that is classified as a democracy on the basis of a
commonly accepted definition yet that in light of a larger shared understanding of the concept
does not appear from the perspective of some analysts to be fully democratic. This situation may
lead them to make explicit one or more criteria that are implicitly understood to be part of the
overall meaning but that are not included in the formal definition. The result is a new definition
intended to change the way a particular case is classified. Although this procedure could be seen
as raising the standard for democracy, it can also be understood as adapting the definition to a

xvi A ‘precising definition’ is one that is designed to include or exclude specific cases. See
Giovanni Sartori, “Guidelines for Concept Analysis” in Sartori, ed., Social Science Concepts: A
Systematic Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1984), 81; and Irving M. Copi and Carl
Cohen, Introduction to Logic, 9th ed. (NY: Macmillan, 1994), 173–75. In Social Science
Concepts (42), Sartori also uses this as a verb, as in ‘to precise’ a definition.
new context. This strategy of precising addresses the issue of conceptual differentiation, in the
sense of adding a further differentiating criterion for establishing the cut-point between
democracy and nondemocracy. The strategy may thereby also address the issue of conceptual
stretching, because it avoids applying the label ‘democracy’ to cases that, in light of this new
criterion, the analyst sees as incompletely democratic.
In contrast to some of the other strategies, precising is undertaken by scholars who have
a strong interest in formal definitions and who, as the concept of democracy is applied to a wider
range of cases, become concerned about the appropriateness of available definitions. For
example, the emergence of the expanded procedural minimum definition presented above in
Figure 1 involved precising. In several Central American countries, as well as in South American
cases such as Chile and Paraguay, one legacy of authoritarian rule is the persistence of ‘reserved
domains’ of military power over which elected governments have little or no authority.xvii Hence,
despite free or relatively free elections, civilian governments in these countries are seen by some
analysts as lacking effective power to govern. In light of these authoritarian legacies, and often in
response to claims that because these countries have held free elections they are ‘democratic,’
some scholars have modified the prior definition of democracy by specifying as an explicit criterion
that the freely elected government must to a reasonable degree have effective power to rule.
With this revised definition, even though they held relatively free elections, countries such as
Chile, El Salvador, and Paraguay have thereby been excluded from the set of cases classified as
‘full’ democracies. xviii It could be argued that these scholars did not create a more demanding
definition of democracy but rather adapted the definition to explicitly include an attribute that we
may take for granted in advanced industrial democracies. In this manner, they avoided treating as
full democracies those countries that lacked this attribute.
A second example of precising is found in discussions of what might be called a
‘Tocquevillean’ definition of democracy, which includes a focus on selected aspects of social
relations. In analyzing postauthoritarian Brazil, scholars such as Weffort and Guillermo O’Donnell
have been struck by the degree to which rights of citizenship are undermined by the pervasive
semifeudal and authoritarian social relations that persist in some regions of the country. In light of
this concern, Weffort added the definitional requirement of “some level of social equality” for a
country to be considered a democracy, and O’Donnell introduced a closely related stipulation.xix

xvii Valenzuela, “Democratic Consolidation in Post-Transitional Settings,” 70.

xviii See Karl, “Dilemmas of Democratization,” 165; Humberto Rubin, “One Step Away from
Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 1 (1990); Valenzuela, “Democratic Consolidation”; and Brian
Loveman, “‘Protected’ Democracies and Military Guardianship: Political Transitions in Latin
America, 1979–1993,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 36 (1994).
xix Francisco Weffort, “New Democracies, Which Democracies?” Working Paper No. 198, Latin
American Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington, DC, 1992),
18; Weffort, Qual democracia? (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992), 100–1; Guillermo
In adopting this usage, these authors view themselves as remaining within the procedural
framework. Yet introducing issues of social relations nonetheless represents an important
departure from earlier procedural definitions. This approach has not been widely adopted, and as
we will suggest in the next section, O’Donnell subsequently arrived at an alternative means of
incorporating this set of concerns into his conceptualization of democracy.
A third example of precising arose from a concern that in many new democracies in
Eastern Europe and Latin America elected presidents at times make extensive use of decree
power, circumvent democratic institutions such as the legislature and political parties, and govern
in a plebiscitarian manner that is seen as having strong authoritarian undercurrents. In the Latin
American context prominent examples include Carlos Menem in Argentina, Fernando Collor de
Mello in Brazil and, in the most extreme case, Alberto Fujimori in Peru. The concern with these
authoritarian tendencies has led a few authors to include checks on executive power in their
procedural criteria for democracy.xx However, this practice has not been widely adopted, and as
we will see below, scholars such as Jonathan Hartlyn and O’Donnell, who have been concerned
with these ‘neopatrimonial’ and ‘delegative’ patterns of executive rule, have approached this issue
through the alternative strategy of creating new subtypes.xxi
Precising the definition of democracy thus has the merit of addressing both goals
discussed above: i.e., not only achieving finer differentiation but also avoiding conceptual
stretching vis-à-vis a larger shared understanding of the concept, given that the meaning and
functioning of specific democratic procedures can vary considerably in different political contexts.
At the same time, three points of caution are in order. First, not surprisingly, any particular
innovation based on ‘precising’ may make sense to one scholar but not necessarily to another.
For example, a recent analysis of Chile takes exception to the usage adopted by scholars who
introduced the expanded procedural minimum definition, arguing that the problem of civilian
control of the military does not represent a sufficient challenge to the democratically elected

O’Donnell, “Challenges to Democratization in Brazil,” World Policy Journal 5, no. 2 (1988), 298;
and O’Donnell, “Transitions, Continuities, and Paradoxes” in Mainwaring, O’Donnell, and
Valenzuela, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation, 48–49.
xx Authors who have included horizontal accountability in their definitions include Karl,
“Dilemmas of Democratization,” 165; and Alan R. Ball, Modern Politics and Government (Chatham,
NJ: Chatham House, 1993), 45–46.
xxi Jonathan Hartlyn, “Crisis-Ridden Elections (Again) in the Dominican Republic:
Neopatrimonialism, Presidentialism and Weak Electoral Oversight,” Journal of Interamerican
Studies and World Affairs 36, no. 4 (Winter 1994); and Guillermo O’Donnell, “Delegative
Democracy?” Journal of Democracy 5 (1994). Other authors who have addressed the issue of
checks on executive power include Luis Abugattas, “Populism and After: The Peruvian
Experience” in James Malloy and Mitchell Seligson, eds., Authoritarians and Democrats: Regime
Transition in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987); and G.M. Tamás,
“Socialism, Capitalism, and Modernity,” Journal of Democracy 3, no. 3 (July 1992).
government to qualify post–1990 Chile as a ‘borderline’ democracy. xxii

xxii Rhoda Rabkin, “The Aylwin Government and `Tutelary’ Democracy: A Concept in Search of a
Case?” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 34, no. 4 (Winter 1992–93), 165.
 Second, more broadly, one must recognize the potential problem of ‘definitional
gerrymandering,’ xxiii in which definitions become excessively flexible to the point where a basic
consistency of meaning is lost. Thus, it would hardly be productive if scholars created a new
definition every time they encountered a somewhat anomalous case. However, the contrast
between the first and third examples of precising discussed above shows that scholars may in fact
impose constructive limits on precising. In the first example, the inability of elected governments
to exercise effective power was seen as invalidating their democratic character. By contrast, in the
third example involving heavy-handed assertions of power by the president, a crucial point is that
these presidents are elected leaders. Hence, it appears more plausible to treat these cases as
democratic and to avoid precising—as long as a general respect for civil liberties and ongoing
presidential elections is maintained and the legislature and opposition parties are not banned or
dissolved (as did occur in Peru in 1992).
Finally, excessive contextualization also poses the risk of bringing back into the definition
of democracy attributes that authors had initially decided to exclude. An example is the concern
with social relationships in the Tocquevillean approach. These authors could be seen as
remaining within a procedural framework, in the sense that they argue that political participation
becomes less meaningful in the context of extreme social inequality. Nonetheless, this
conceptual innovation reintroduces features of social relations in a way that does represent a
major shift in relation to earlier recommendations about which attributes should be included in
definitions of democracy.

Shifting the Overarching Concept

A second strategy of conceptual innovation is to shift the overarching concept in relation

to which democracy is seen as a specific instance. In using the concept of democracy to
characterize particular countries, scholars most commonly view it as a specific type in relation to
the overarching concept of ‘regime.’ Yet the recent literature has also understood democracy as a
specific type in relation to several other overarching concepts, including ‘government,’
‘governance,’ ‘governability,’ ‘moment,’ ‘order,’ ‘polity,’ ‘rule,’ ‘situation,’ ‘society,’ ‘state,’ and
‘system.’ Hence, when a given country is labeled ‘democratic,’ the meaning can vary greatly
according to the overarching concept to which the term is attached.
Correspondingly, a shift in the overarching concept can yield an alternative standard for
declaring a particular case to be a democracy but without either modifying, or stretching, the
concept of ‘democratic regime.’ As can be seen in Figure 2, scholars can use this strategy to

xxiii Jennifer Whiting, in a personal communication, suggested this term.

create either a less or a more demanding standard. For example, if democracy is so poorly
institutionalized in a given country that it seems inappropriate to use the overarching label
‘regime,’ scholars may refer to a democratic ‘situation’xxiv or a democratic ‘moment’ (see Figure 2).
Similarly, several analysts have referred to democratic ‘governments,’ which implies that although
a particular government has been elected democratically, the ongoing functioning of democratic
procedures is not necessarily assured. By shifting the overarching concept from regime to
government in this way, scholars lower the standard for applying the label ‘democratic’ and thus
may avoid conceptual stretching.

Figure 2

Shifting the Overarching Concept: Examples with Reference to Post-1985 Brazil

(Bibliographic references are in Appendix.)

Democrati Democratic Democratic Democratic Democratic

Author c Moment Government Regime State
Situation
Duncan Baretta/ Yes No
Markoff (1987)
Malloy (1987) Yes No
Hagopian/ Yes No
Mainwaring
(1987)
O'Donnell (1988) Yes No
O'Donnell (1993) Yes No

Alternatively, by shifting the overarching concept from ‘regime’ to ‘state,’ O’Donnell

establishes a more demanding standard for labeling particular countries ‘democracies.’ Writing
after Brazil’s presidential election in 1989, which led many scholars to reinterpret Brazil as having a
democratic ‘regime,’ O’Donnell suggests that the legal apparatus of the Brazilian ‘state’ does not
adequately guarantee the rights of citizens to fair and equal protection in their social and
economic relationships. While he believes that this inadequacy may not directly affect the
functioning of the regime, he is convinced that it has important implications for the larger
understanding of democracy. Thus, although he recognizes that Brazil has a democratic ‘regime,’
he excludes Brazil from the set of countries he considers to have democratic ‘states.’ This shift in

xxiv This follows the example of Linz’s analysis of what he viewed as a poorly institutionalized
case of authoritarianism in post–1964 Brazil, which led him to speak of an authoritarian ‘situation.’
See Juan J. Linz, “The Future of an Authoritarian Situation or the Institutionalization of an
Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Brazil” in Alfred Stepan, ed., Authoritarian Brazil: Origins,
Policies, Future (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973).
the overarching concept constitutes another way of limiting and refining the claims about what is
deemed to be an incomplete case of democracy. In this manner, O’Donnell seeks to avoid
conceptual stretching by establishing a higher and a lower standard for democracy and declaring
that Brazil meets only the lower standard.xxv
From the standpoint of a concern with maintaining a procedural definition of democracy,
this innovation can be seen as a better solution to the problem that O’Donnell and others had
initially tried to address by creating the Tocquevillian definition through precising. Thus, in
conjunction with shifting the overarching concept, democratic ‘regime’ continues to have a
procedural definition, and this concern with the broader functioning of citizenship in the context
of authoritarian patterns of social relations is addressed via the concept of the state.
The strategy of shifting among alternative overarching concepts thus usefully serves to
avoid conceptual stretching at the same time that it introduces finer differentiation—in this
instance by creating an additional analytic category. The disadvantage of this approach may well
be that because so many different overarching concepts have been employed, the potential for
scholarly confusion is enormous—especially if one considers the possibility of combining eleven
or more overarching concepts with the hundreds of adjectives employed in forming subtypes of
democracy.

Forming Subtypes

The third and most important strategy of conceptual innovation is the creation of
subtypes. A ‘subtype’ is understood here as a derivative concept formed with reference to and as
a modification of some other concept. The most common means of forming subtypes is by adding
an adjective to the noun ‘democracy,’ as in ‘competitive democracy,’ and the subtypes we have
examined are generally formed in this manner. In other cases, the subtype appears to be created
with reference to the concept of democracy, but the term democracy is not used in the name of
the subtype—e.g., ‘electoral regime.’ In analyzing these subtypes, it is essential to underscore
the fact that their meaning cannot necessarily be inferred exclusively on the basis of the specific
terms employed in naming the subtype. Terms that appear similar may be used to mean quite
different things, and the definitions and actual usage of each author must also be considered.xxvi
We first consider two approaches to forming subtypes that correspond to Sartori’s original
recommendations and then turn to diminished subtypes.

xxv O’Donnell, “On the State, Democratization, and Some Conceptual Problems,” World
Development 21, no. 8 (1993).
xxvi This is why we insist in the classification of subtypes presented below that the subtypes
cannot be evaluated on the basis of terms taken in isolation. Rather, the classification is based on
the usage of the specific authors whom we cite.
Sartori’s Strategy for Differentiation
In Sartori’s pioneering article on the use of concepts in comparative analysis, one of his
basic goals is to show how greater conceptual differentiation can be achieved by moving down
the ladder of generality to concepts that 1) have more defining attributes and 2) correspondingly
fit a narrower range of cases. These concepts provide the more fine-grained distinctions that for
some purposes are invaluable to the researcher. xxvii With reference to the concept of
democracy, this move down the ladder is often accomplished by the creation of what we will call
‘classical’ subtypes,xxviii which in the context of the present discussion are understood as
specific yet full instances of democracy. Thus, ‘federal democracy,’ ‘multiparty democracy,’ and
‘parliamentary democracy’ are seen as particular kinds of democracies at the same time that they
are viewed as definitely being democratic (by whatever standard the author is employing). In
research on recent cases of democratization, the use of classical subtypes to achieve
differentiation is found, for example, in the important debate on the consequences of
‘parliamentary’ versus ‘presidential’ democracy (see Figure 3). xxix Other classical subtypes refer
to additional aspects of political structure, as in ‘two-party’ democracy, and to the antecedents of
the current regime, as in ‘postauthoritarian’ democracy.
Descending the ladder of generality provides useful differentiation, and indeed these
subtypes have offered analytic distinctions of fundamental importance. Yet the classical subtypes
formed in this manner may leave the analyst more vulnerable to conceptual stretching, given that
they presume the cases under discussion to be fully democratic. If the particular case being
studied is marginally democratic, then the use of these classical subtypes as a tool of conceptual
differentiation may not be appropriate. Particularly in the first phase of this literature, when
scholars believed they were dealing with incomplete or ‘uncertain’ democracies,xxx there was a
strong inclination to use labels that signaled a recognition of these limits. To do this, analysts
needed concepts that distinguished among different degrees of democracy, in addition to

xxvii Sartori, “Concept Misformation,” 1041.

xxviii We refer to these as classical subtypes because they fit within the ‘classical’
understanding of categorization discussed by such authors as George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and
Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987), passim; and John R. Taylor, Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic
Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), chap. 2.
xxix Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, The Failure of Presidential Democracy: Comparative
Perspectives (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Alfred Stepan and Cindy Skach,
“Constitutional Frameworks and Democratic Consolidation: Parliamentarianism versus
Presidentialism,” World Politics 46, no. 1 (October 1993); and Giovanni Sartori, Comparative
Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives, and Outcomes (NY: New York
University Press, 1994).
xxx This expression was used in the subtitle of O’Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from
Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies.
different kinds of democracy. Because classical subtypes only contribute to the second of these
two goals, they have not been the most common strategy of conceptual differentiation.

Figure 3
Achieving Differentiation versus Avoiding Conceptual Stretching

(Meaning of subtypes must be understood in relation to usage by

the specific author. Bibliographic references are in Appendix.)

REGIME

Avoiding Conceptual Stretching

Using Classical Subtypes of Regime
Civilian regime (Booth 1989)
Competitive regime (Collier and Collier 1991)
Electoral regime (Petras and Leiva 1994)

DEMOCRACY

Achieving Differentiation
Using Classical Subtypes of Democracy
Parliamentary democracy (Linz 1994)
Two-party democracy (Gasiorowski 1990)
Postauthoritarian democracy (Lipset 1994)

Sartori’s Strategy for Avoiding Conceptual Stretching

Sartori’s proposal for avoiding conceptual stretching is to move up the ladder of generality
to concepts that 1) have fewer defining attributes and 2) correspondingly fit a broader range of
cases.xxxi In the present context, this involves using concepts located above democracy on the

xxxi Sartori, “Concept Misformation,” 140–44.

ladder of generality. As noted in the previous section, scholars commonly view democracy as a
specific type in relation to the overarching concept of ‘regime.’ Consequently, if analysts have
misgivings as to whether a particular case is really a democratic regime, they can move up the
ladder and simply call it a ‘regime.’
However, because shifting to a term as general as ‘regime’ entails an enormous loss of
conceptual differentiation, scholars have typically moved to an intermediate level (Figure 3).
Thus, in conjunction with dropping the term democracy, they have added adjectives to the term
‘regime,’ thereby generating classical subtypes of regime that differentiate specific kinds of
regime. The resulting subtypes remain more general than the concept of ‘democracy,’ in that the
subtypes encompass not only democracies but also some nondemocracies. Examples include
‘civilian regime,’ ‘competitive regime,’ and ‘electoral regime.’ In each case, scholars achieve some
conceptual differentiation in relation to ‘regime’ yet are not specifically committing themselves to
the idea that the case under discussion is a democracy. As noted in the previous section,
analysts have not restricted themselves to the overarching concept of ‘regime,’ and some
scholars make reference to ‘government,’ ‘rule,’ ‘polity,’ ‘system,’ or simply ‘ism.’ Corresponding
subtypes, which may serve in a parallel manner to avoid conceptual stretching, include ‘elected
government,’ ‘civilian rule,’ ‘competitive polity,’ ‘postcommunist system,’ and ‘post-
totalitarianism.’xxxii
Although climbing the ladder of generality usefully addresses the problem of conceptual
stretching, it has an important drawback. Because these subtypes remain more general than the
concept of democracy itself (in Figure 3, they are located above democracy on the ladder), this
approach leads to a loss of conceptual differentiation.
To summarize, Sartori’s two strategies of descending and climbing the ladder of generality
can serve well either for avoiding conceptual stretching or achieving differentiation but not for
both purposes at once. As a consequence, many scholars have turned to an alternative strategy
that can be used to pursue these two goals simultaneously.

Diminished Subtypes
Diminished subtypes have played a central role in this literature because they can
contribute both to avoiding conceptual stretching and to achieving greater differentiation. They

xxxii See, respectively, Laurence Whitehead, “The Consolidation of Fragile Democracies: A

Discussion With Illustrations” in Pastor, Democracy in the Americas, 82–83; Richard Wilson,
“Continued Counterinsurgency: Civilian Rule in Guatemala” in Barry K. Gills, Joel Rocamora, and
Richard Wilson, eds., Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order (London:
Pluto Press, 1993); Terry Lynn Karl, “Democracy by Design: The Christian Democratic Party in El
Salvador” in Giuseppe Di Palma and Laurence Whitehead, eds., The Central American Impasse
(NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1986); Ball, Modern Politics and Government, 45; and Juan J. Linz and
Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Eastern Europe, Southern
Europe, and South America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming), chap. 3.
have also been widely employed because they can be expressed in terms of compelling labels
that vividly draw attention to novel forms or features of democracy of concern to the analyst.
Two points are crucial for understanding how diminished subtypes can contribute both to
differentiation and to avoiding conceptual stretching. First, in contrast to the classical subtypes
discussed above, they are not ‘full’ instances of the overall type with reference to which they are
formed. For example, ‘limited-suffrage democracy’ and ‘semicompetitive democracy’ are
understood as less than complete instances of democracy because they lack some of the
defining attributes entailed in a full case of democracy. xxxiii Consequently, in using these
subtypes the analyst makes a more modest claim about the cases to which they are applied and is
therefore less vulnerable to conceptual stretching.
The second point concerns differentiation. Because diminished subtypes represent an
incomplete form of democracy, they might be seen as having fewer defining attributes, with the
consequence that they would be higher on the ladder of generality and would therefore provide
less, rather than more, differentiation. However, the distinctive feature of diminished subtypes is
that they generally identify specific attributes of democracy that are missing, thereby establishing
the diminished character of the subtype, at the same time that they identify other attributes of
democracy that are present. Because of this distinctive feature of specifying missing attributes,
they also provide greater differentiation, and the diminished subtype will in fact refer to a different
set of cases than does the overall concept of democracy.
To understand the use of diminished subtypes in this literature, it is essential to recognize
that the meaning of a subtype is generated in relation to the initial conception of democracy—i.e.,
the ‘root concept’—with reference to which the subtype is a diminished instance.xxxiv We will first
discuss diminished subtypes that have been generated in relation to the procedural minimum and
expanded procedural minimum definitions presented above in Figure 1, which we refer to as
‘partial’ democracies. We will then examine cases where the differentiating criteria have been
derived from the prototypical conception of established industrial democracy, which we refer to as
‘problematic’ democracies.

xxxiii Because they are less than complete instances, it might be objected that they are not
really ‘subtypes’ of democracy at all. Drawing on a term from cognitive linguistics, one can refer to
them as conceptual ‘blends’ which are derived in part from the concept of democracy. However,
to avoid referring repeatedly to ‘subtypes and blends,’ it seems simpler in the discussion below to
call them subtypes. See Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, “Conceptual Projection and Middle
Spaces,” Report No. 9401, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego,
1994.
xxxiv It merits emphasis that these authors may not think of themselves as forming subtypes of
democracy but rather as informally using an adjective in conjunction with the noun ‘democracy.’
However, from a linguistic or cognitive point of view they are thereby creating analytic categories,
and the fact that the resulting subtypes are often used in the title of their articles, or at key points
in the introduction or conclusion, suggests that these conceptual innovations do play an
important role in framing their research.
a. Partial Democracies: Subtypes Derived from Procedural Minimum and Expanded Procedural
Minimum Definitions
These subtypes tend to be employed by scholars studying cases that are either ‘in
transition’ or have remained only partially democratized, including a number of countries in Central
America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and much of the former Soviet Union. This form of subtype is
generally derived in relation to the procedural minimum definition presented in Figure 1, in that
these scholars treat free elections, universal suffrage, and the protection of basic civil liberties as
essential features of democracy. Most of these subtypes serve to differentiate cases on the basis
of a specific attribute that is missing or weakened—for example, free elections, full suffrage, full
electoral contestation, and civil liberties. Because each of these attributes is considered by the
author to be a defining element of democracy, the subtypes generated are necessarily seen as
less than fully democratic. Hence, these subtypes serve to distinguish different forms of ‘partial’
democracy.
Figure 4 presents selected examples of these subtypes. The organization of the figure is
intended to call attention to systematic correspondences between the meanings of the subtypes
and the spectrum of definitions of democracy discussed above. Beginning with the left column in
the figure, we find those subtypes that do not meet even an electoralist standard for being
democratic. The subtypes in the first group (a) in the left column refer to cases where elections
are basically fraudulent. Here, analysts see the missing attribute as fundamentally invalidating
democracy, and consequently they use dismissive terms such as ‘façade’ or ‘sham’ democracy.
Where elections are held and the missing attribute is full suffrage (b), we find terms such as
‘oligarchical’ or ‘proto-’ democracy. Where elections are basically competitive, but the attribute of
full contestation is missing (c), as when important parties are banned from electoral competition,
we find terms such as ‘controlled’ and ‘restrictive’ democracy.
Turning to the next group of subtypes (d), we find that one or more of these essential
features of democracy is missing but that the missing trait is not specified. It is clear from the
author’s usage that these subtypes at most correspond to an electoralist definition, but because
the exact placement on the spectrum of definitions is not clear, they have been placed between
the first and the second column. Examples of these subtypes include ‘partial,’ ‘quasi,’ and ‘semi’-
democracy.
Moving to the right in the figure, the subtypes grouped in the second column (e)
correspond in their meaning to the electoralist definition of democracy. Here, in dealing with
cases where elections are reasonably free and competitive but civil liberties are incomplete,
scholars have used terms such as ‘electoral’ and ‘illiberal’ democracy.
Finally, the subtypes in the group (f) located in the third column of Figure 4 correspond in
their meaning to the procedural minimum definition of democracy. The emergence of these
 19
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subtypes shows how the creation of diminished subtypes may occur in conjunction with
precising. Thus, scholars who created the expanded procedural minimum definition through
precising introduced new diminished subtypes in which the missing attribute was the effective
power of the elected government to govern. Examples include ‘protected’ and ‘tutelary’
democracy.
Having introduced the basic idea of how diminished subtypes work, we can now return to
the relationship between these subtypes and the ladder of generality. We have already argued
that if these subtypes simply had fewer defining attributes than does the concept of a full
democracy, then within the framework of the ladder of generality diminished subtypes should be
more general than the concept of democracy itself, i.e., they would refer to more cases. In this
sense, they would follow the pattern noted above of inverse variation between the number of
defining attributes and the number of cases referred to. However, the diminished subtype does
not merely have fewer defining attributes. Rather, it specifies certain attributes that are missing.
As a consequence of specifying these missing attributes, it refers to a particular type of partial
democracy and not to full democracy. The question of whether these diminished subtypes refer
to a larger or smaller number of cases than does the root concept of democracy is an empirical
one.
Figure 5 illustrates one possible pattern of inclusion and exclusion of cases that may
occur in conjunction with creating a diminished subtype, as opposed to climbing the ladder of
generality, using the illustrative cases of contemporary Spain and Guatemala. Whereas Spain, but
probably not Guatemala, would be seen as fully democratic in terms of the procedural minimum
definition, climbing the ladder of generality we find that the broader concept of ‘electoral
regime’xxxv encompasses both cases. On the other hand, the diminished subtype of ‘limited
democracy’ would include only Guatemala, and specifically not Spain. Thus, the diminished
subtype of limited democracy refers to a case that does not fit the root concept of democracy.

b. ‘Problematic’ Democracies: Differentiating Criteria Derived from a Prototypical Conception of

Established Industrial Democracy
Another set of subtypes refers to countries that the observer views as basically
‘democratic’ but that are differentiated in terms of the contrasting ways in which they are seen as
‘problematic,’ i.e., they do not meet a larger set of expectations about what democracies should
be like. These subtypes are commonly employed by scholars who study countries that have
completed a transition to some form of democracy, including cases found in Southern Europe,
much of South America, and parts of Eastern Europe. These scholars are centrally concerned
with providing a form of conceptual differentiation that highlights the particular political, economic,

xxxv This subtype is understood to have the meaning explained on pages 14–16 above in the
discussion of Figure 3.
 Figure 5

Inclusion and Exclusion of Cases in Climbing the Ladder of Generality versus

Creating Diminished Subtypes: The Example of Spain and Guatemala*

(Meaning of subtypes must be understood in relation

to usage identified in Figures 3 and 4 above.)

A More General
Concept

ELECTORAL
REGIME

Cases
Spain and
Guatemala

Root Concept Diminished Subtype

LIMITED
DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY

Cases Cases
Spain but not Guatemala but not
Guatemala Spain

* The diminished subtype is placed to the right side of ‘democracy’ in the figure, rather than above
or below it, to underscore the fact that it is not located on the ladder of generality.

and social problems faced by many democracies. The differentiating criteria employed in forming
these subtypes are derived not from elements of the procedural minimum or expanded
procedural minimum definitions, as is the case for the subtypes presented in Figure 4, but rather
from the prototypical conception of established industrial democracy introduced in Figure 1. This
conception is based on a constellation of attributes, listed in Figure 6, that are commonly
perceived to be found in the political and social systems of advanced industrial countries. As
 Figure 6

‘Problematic’ Democracies: Differentiating Criteria Derived from

Prototypical Conception of Established Industrial Democracy

(Meaning of each subtype must be understood in relation to usage by

the specific author. Bibliographic references are in Appendix.)

(a) Weakened Element: (f) Weakened Element:

Regime Consolidation National Sovereignty
Fragile democracy (Whitehead 1989) Controlled democracy (Hinkelammert 1994)
Immature democracy (Kelley et al. 1993) Internationally dependent democracy
Uncertain democracy (O'Donnell/Schmitter 1986) (Whitehead 1992)
Unconsolidated democracy (Higley/Gunther 1992) Neocolonial democracy (Whitehead 1992)
US-imposed democracy (Berntzen 1993)
(b) Weakened Element:
Horizontal Accountability (g) Weakened Element:
Caudillistic democracy (Hillman 1992) Favorable Socioeconomic
Delegative democracy (O'Donnell 1994) Conditions
Plebiscitarian democracy (Tamás 1992) Bankrupt democracy (Whitehead 1992)
Populist democracy (Schmitter/Karl 1992) Democracy without prosperity
(Torres Rivas 1994)
(c) Weakened Element: Low-income democracy (Diamond 1992)
Effective Citizen Participation Poor democracy (Weffort 1992)
Depoliticized democracy (Whitehead 1992)
Dual democracy (Smith/Acuña 1994) (h) Weakened Element:
Elitist democracy (Hagopian/Mainwaring 1987) Social and Political Stability
Low-intensity democracy (Stahler-Sholk 1994) Besieged democracy (Archer 1995)
Conflictive democracy (Weffort 1992)
(d) Weakened Element: Socially explosive democracy (Whitehead 1992)
Effectiveness and Responsiveness Unruly democracy (Leftwich 1993)
of Government and Regime
Blocked democracy (Lanzaro 1993) (i) Weakened Element:
Impotent democracy (Whitehead 1992) Generic
Overinstitutionalized democracy (Schedler 1995) Incomplete democracy (Hillman 1992)
Weak democracy (Weffort 1992) Problematic democracy (Hartlyn 1994)
Sick democracy (Stempel Paris 1980)
(e) Weakened Element: Tarnished democracy (Hellinger 1991)
Commitment to Sustaining Social
Welfare Policies
Conservative democracy (Karl 1991)
Input democracy (Black 1993)
‘Moderated’ democracy (Hillman 1992)
Neoliberal democracy (Whitehead 1992)

noted above, by including these attributes, which are seen as characteristic of democracies that
are understood to ‘function properly,’xxxvi this conception goes well beyond basic procedural

xxxvi It might be added that this prototypical conception typically does not take account of the
serious political and economic crises recently experienced by some of these advanced industrial
countries.
definitions. The subtypes formed in this manner are often presented with little attention to
definitions.xxxvii
We have identified more than one hundred of these subtypes, examples of which are
included in Figure 6. Most of the examples in the figure refer to cases in which one or more
specific elements in this prototypical conception are understood to be weakened or absent.
Some of these subtypes are concerned with basic features of the regime. Thus, where regime
consolidation is weak (a), scholars refer to ‘fragile’ and ‘insecure’ democracy. Where horizontal
accountability xxxviii—i.e., ‘checks and balances’ vis-à-vis the executive—is incomplete (b), one
finds such subtypes as ‘caudillistic’ and ‘delegative’ democracy.
Many subtypes in the figure refer not to the regime itself but to other features of the
political systems that are commonly found in industrial democracies. Thus, where the level of
effective citizen participation is low (c), scholars have used subtypes such as ‘depoliticized’ and
‘low-intensity’ democracy. If the government or the regime is seen as ineffective or unresponsive
(d), subtypes such as ‘blocked,’ ‘impotent,’ ‘overinstitutionalized,’ and ‘weak’ democracy are
employed. Where commitment to social welfare policies is weak or absent (e), one finds, for
example, ‘conservative’ and ‘neoliberal’ democracy. In cases where national sovereignty is weak
(f), scholars have used subtypes such as ‘internationally dependent,’ ‘neocolonial,’ and ‘US-
imposed’ democracy.
Subtypes associated with this prototypical conception at times include features of the
society and economy that advocates of minimal and procedural definitions have specifically
argued should be excluded from the definition of democracy (see again Figure 6). Thus, where
socioeconomic conditions are seen as unfavorable to democracy (g), one finds reference to ‘low-
income’ and ‘poor’ democracy, and for cases characterized by low levels of sociopolitical stability
(h), scholars refer to ‘socially explosive’ and ‘conflictive’ democracy. Finally, some of these
subtypes refer more generically to a weakened version of this prototypical conception (i) in which
the particular missing features are not clear: for example, ‘incomplete’ and ‘problematic’
democracy.
An ambiguity regarding this group of subtypes merits comment. In contrast to the
subtypes that represent a diminished form of a procedural minimum definition, this second group
consists of subtypes introduced by authors who explicitly or implicitly view them as referring to
regimes that meet basic procedural definitions of democracy. Because the differentiating
features are not explicitly treated by the authors as defining features of democracy, their absence

xxxvii As with other authors whose definitions are not explicit, we have often inferred the
meaning from the larger framework of the authors’ analysis and from the way the subtype is
applied to specific cases.
xxxviii This term was suggested by Guillermo O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy?” 61.
does not make the regime less democratic from a formal definitional standpoint. In this sense,
these might in fact be seen as classical subtypes vis-à-vis the procedural minimum definition. On
the other hand, these authors can be seen as creating diminished subtypes because they are in
effect treating these regimes as incomplete and problematic in relation to this often implicit
conception of advanced industrial democracy. Thus, in this case, the distinction between
classical and diminished subtypes depends on the perspective from which the subtypes are
viewed.

c. Evaluating the Use of Diminished Subtypes

In light of these examples, how should we assess the role of diminished subtypes? They
usefully provide further analytic categories for differentiating among the remarkable diversity of
new cases of democracy that have emerged in the past two decades and for avoiding conceptual
stretching. Within this framework, the two groups of diminished subtypes exhibit distinctive
strengths and weaknesses. In the first group, i.e., the subtypes in Figure 4 that identify partial
democracies in relation to procedural minimum and expanded procedural definitions, the
conception of democracy that is the point of departure for the subtypes, as well as the relation of
the subtypes to this conception, is generally presented in a clear and consistent manner. By
using these subtypes, the authors establish a useful and appropriate means of referring to
marginal cases. On the other hand, as with the other strategies discussed above, a good strategy
can be counterproductive if misused. It is not desirable to have numerous labels for what, with
regard to meaning, is the same diminished subtype. Figure 4 offers only a few examples of the
large number of subtypes that correspond to each weakened element, and as the number of
labels moves well into the hundreds there is certainly a loss in clarity of communication.
Furthermore, for some of the cases that are marginally democratic the issue arises as to
whether it would be better to avoid identifying them as types of democracy. In the Latin American
field, an example of such a step is Bruce Bagley’s decision to reject the numerous diminished
subtypes of democracy that have been used to label the case of Colombia during the National
Front period (e.g., ‘restricted,’ ‘controlled,’ ‘limited,’ ‘oligarchical,’ ‘elitist,’ ‘elitist-pluralist,’ and
‘consociational’ democracy) and to declare instead that Colombia was an “inclusionary
authoritarian regime.”xxxix Following a similar pattern, some scholars have created subtypes that
do not employ the noun ‘democracy’ but that in terms of their defining attributes correspond in
meaning to what we are calling diminished subtypes of democracy. Examples include
‘electrocratic rule,’ ‘semicompetitive polity,’ ‘competitive, partially illiberal regime,’ ‘hybrid regime,’

xxxix Bruce Michael Bagley, “Colombia: National Front and Economic Development” in Robert
Wesson, ed., Politics, Policies, and Economic Development in Latin America (Stanford: Hoover
Institution Press, 1984), 125–27.
and ‘hybrid democratic-authoritarian regime.’xl
The second group of diminished subtypes (Figure 6), which we have characterized as
identifying ‘problematic’ democracies, refers to cases that are understood as democracies in terms
of the procedural minimum definition yet are seen as problematic in relation to a prototypical
conception of advanced industrial democracy. On the positive side, one may argue that readers
of the literature on democracy readily understand these subtypes as conveying salient
information about the cases under discussion, and in this sense they are useful. Yet several
concerns may be raised about these subtypes. First, the root conception from which the
differentiating attributes are derived is generally not clearly stated by the authors. Although the
authors often provide enough information for us to be able to identify the conception of
democracy in relation to which the subtype is treated as a diminished form, there is often a lack of
explicit reflection on the part of the authors about the standard they are employing. Though many
of these authors purport to use a procedural minimum definition of democracy, it is clear that their
implicit understanding of ‘full’ democracy is actually far more elaborate. Indeed, many of the
diminished subtypes listed in Figure 6 introduce as criteria for differentiation some of the very
social and economic attributes that proponents of procedural and minimal definitions have argued
should be excluded from the definition of democracy. Hence, these social and economic
features are creeping back into many authors’ conceptions of democracy, although these
conceptions are rarely, if ever, made explicit. This implicit conception of ‘full’ democracy needs to
be more carefully examined.
Moreover, in some cases one observes an unfortunate interaction between the imprecise
character of these subtypes and their tendency to convey a negative evaluation of the case or
cases under discussion. They at times place scholars in the position of appearing to write critically
about given cases but without situating their negative evaluation in the context of a careful
conceptualization of democracy and its subtypes. This does not strike us as a productive route to
follow. O’Donnell’s analysis of delegative democracy is a good model for avoiding this problem, in
that he offers an intricate conceptualization of how the delegative character of these regimes
undermines democratic consolidation.xli For each of these subtypes, it is worth asking whether

xl These subtypes might appear to resemble those presented in the upper part of Figure 3. Yet
in terms of their meaning they correspond more closely to the examples in Figure 4—with the
crucial difference that they do not identify the cases to which they refer with the term democracy.
These examples are drawn from Karl, “Dilemmas of Democratization,” 180; Karl “Imposing
Consent,” 195; Larry Diamond, “Economic Development and Democracy Reconsidered” in
Diamond and Gary Marks, eds., Reexamining Democracy (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications,
1992), 99; Karl, “The Hybrid Regimes of Central America,” 72; and Catherine M. Conaghan and
Rosario Espinal, “Unlikely Transitions to Uncertain Regimes? Democracy without Compromise in
the Dominican Republic and Ecuador,” Journal of Latin American Studies 22 (October 1990),
555.
xli O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy?” 66–68.
there is an equivalent analytic payoff. In some cases, what is at least implicitly being treated as a
problem of democracy might be better understood as involving underlying problems of societies
that happen to have democratic regimes.

Concluding Observations

Scholars who study recent democratization have faced the two-fold challenge of
developing conceptualizations of democracy that not only achieve finer differentiation among
cases but also avoid stretching the concept. We have examined various strategies of conceptual
innovation employed to meet this challenge with the aim both of making more comprehensible
the complex structure of meaning that has emerged and of offering observations on the strengths
and weaknesses of the different strategies. The first two strategies—precising the definition of
democracy and shifting the overarching concept with which democracy is associated—can be
used both to avoid stretching the concept of democracy and to provide finer differentiation.
However, if either strategy is carried too far, it can lead to confusion about meaning and usage.
With regard to strategies based on the formation of subtypes, Sartori’s alternative approaches of
descending and climbing the ladder of generality can, respectively, help either in providing finer
differentiation or avoiding conceptual stretching, but cannot do both at once.
Finally, diminished subtypes can achieve both goals simultaneously, and they often serve
to provide vivid, compelling labels for the specific forms of democracy of concern to the analyst.
Consequently, the creation of diminished subtypes is the most common form of conceptual
innovation in this literature. At the same time, the value of diminished subtypes is greatly reduced
if scholars do not offer clear definitions and if they unreflectively separate the root conception
used in deriving subtypes from their own definition of democracy. It is similarly counterproductive
to generate numerous terms for subtypes that mean basically the same thing.
To conclude, four points should be emphasized. The first concerns the understanding of
democracy in graded, as opposed to dichotomous, terms. Various scholars have pointed to the
need to move beyond a dichotomous conceptualization of authoritarianism and democracy and
recognize the ‘hybrid’ or ‘mixed’ character of many postauthoritarian regimes.xlii As this paper
shows, this recognition has indeed occurred—and on a rather large scale. Not only have scholars
studying regimes in Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the former communist countries
emphasized the ‘partial’ or ‘hybrid’ nature of many new democracies, they have also identified,
often through the use of numerous subtypes, the diverse configurations of features found in

xlii James M. Malloy, “The Politics of Transition in Latin America” in Malloy and Seligson, eds.,
Authoritarians and Democrats, 236–57; Conaghan and Espinal, “Unlikely Transitions to Uncertain
Regimes?” 555; Hartlyn, “Crisis-Ridden Elections,” 94–96; Karl, “The Hybrid Regimes of Central
America”; and Weffort, Qual democracia? 89–90.
these regimes. What has been lacking is an effort to understand how the treatment of these
hybrid regimes has been organized conceptually.
This paper has sought to initiate that effort. It is evident that within the general framework
provided by the spectrum of definitions in Figure 1, analysts have introduced a series of
gradations into their conceptualizations—to such an extent that it may be appropriate to
reconsider the old distinction between quantitative researchers who think in terms of ‘degree’ and
qualitative researchers whose categories capture differences in ‘kind.’ Although the studies
under discussion here would conventionally be viewed as involving qualitative research, at a
number of points these analysts appear to be working with an implicit ordinal scale of degrees of
democracy rather than with a large number of nominal distinctions. To the extent that this ordinal
scale is made more explicit and is employed more systematically, the goal of conceptual
differentiation will be better served.
Second, this more differentiated understanding of democracy is important not only for the
purpose of description, but also because democracy is often used as a variable in causal analysis.
A large literature has treated democracy as an outcome to be explained, including both major
works of comparative-historical analysis and the old and new literature on ‘social requisites.’ Other
studies have looked at the impact of democracy, and also of specific types of democracy, on
economic growth, income distribution, economic liberalization and adjustment, and international
conflict. Given the diverse definitions of democracy found in these writings, as well as the
numerous subtypes that have been proposed, it is not surprising that these causal analyses have
often reached contradictory conclusions. We hope that the present discussion can serve as a
step toward a greater consistency of meaning and usage that will provide a more adequate basis
for causal assessment.
Third, our analysis suggests that although scholarship on the recent wave of
democratization initially embraced procedural and minimal definitions, recent work reflects a shift
toward more elaborate definitions and conceptualizations. This trend can be seen in many of the
innovations discussed in this paper, including the various efforts at precising, O’Donnell’s
distinction between democratic ‘states’ and democratic ‘regimes,’ and the widespread use of
subtypes to refer to new democracies that meet procedural minimum criteria for democracy but
lack other—often ‘substantive’—features that are viewed as characteristic of established industrial
democracies. Although many of these conceptual innovations may be criticized both for lack of
clarity and for adding attributes to the concept of democracy that are better kept distinct, they do
seem to reflect a growing concern that the mere existence (and persistence) of basic democratic
‘procedures’ does not guarantee the existence of the broader range of political, economic, and
social outcomes that we have come to associate with democracy as it is practiced in the
industrialized West. As many of the new democracies in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and
other parts of the world continue to survive but not thrive, these conceptual innovations are likely
to continue. At the same time, it is reasonable to raise again the issue posed above: Do the
‘problematic’ features that are the focus of these shifting conceptions of democracy really entail
attributes of democracy itself, or are they better understood as underlying problems of societies
that happen to be democratic?
We conclude by offering an old piece of advice with renewed urgency. The complex
structure of meaning generated by the strategies of conceptual innovation discussed above
offers scholars an impressive array of terms and conceptions that may be applied to the study of
democratization. Given this complexity, it is imperative that scholars situate themselves in relation
to this structure by clearly defining and explicating the conception of democracy they are
employing.
 A

Bibliographic References for Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6

 Figure 1

Definitions and Conceptions of Democracy

in Research on Recent Democratization

Electoralism: Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, “Democratic Elections, Democratic Government, and

Democratic Theory” in David Butler, Howard R. Penniman, and Austin Ranney, eds.,
Democracy at the Polls: A Comparative Study of Competitive National Elections (Washington,
DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1981), 326–27; Tatu Vanhanen, The Process of
Democratization (NY: Taylor and Francis, 1990), 17–18; Francis Fukuyama, The End of
History and the Last Man (NY: The Free Press, 1992), 43, 49–50; Chan Heng Chee,
“Democracy: Its Evolution and Implementation,” paper presented at a conference on Asian
and American Perspectives on Democracy (Singapore, 1993), 1. See also Schumpeter,
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 269.

Procedural Minimum: O’Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative
Conclusions, 8; Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Democracy in
Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy (Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner, 1989), 6–7; Giuseppe Di Palma, To Craft Democracies, 16; Scott Mainwaring,
“Transitions to Democracy and Democratic Consolidation: Theoretical and Comparative
Issues” in Mainwaring, O’Donnell, and Valenzuela, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation,
297–98. See also Juan J. Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1978), 5.

Expanded Procedural Minimum: Karl, “Dilemmas of Democratization,” 165; Schmitter and

Karl, “What Democracy Is...and Is Not,” 81; Huntington, The Third Wave, 9–10; Valenzuela,
“Consolidation in Post-Transitional Settings,” 70; Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber
Stephens, and John Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1992), 43–44; and Loveman, “Protected Democracies,” 108.

Maximalist: Richard Fagen, “The Politics of Transition” in Richard Fagen, Carmen Diana Deere,
and José Luís Coraggio, eds., Transition and Development: Problems of Third World
Socialism (NY: Monthly Review Press, 1986), 258; Timothy Harding and James Petras,
“Introduction: Democratization and Class Struggle,” Latin American Perspectives 15, no. 3
(1988), 3–4; Jonas, “Elections and Transitions,” 129–30; Miliband, “The Socialist
Alternative,” 122–23; Gills, Rocamora, and Wilson, Low Intensity Democracy; and Marta
Harnecker, “Democracy and Revolutionary Movement” in Susanne Jonas and Edward J.
McCaughan, eds., Latin America Faces the Twenty-First Century: Reconstructing a Social
Justice Agenda (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994), 64.
 Figure 2

Shifting the Overarching Concept

Silvio Duncan Baretta and John Markoff, “Brazil’s Abertura: Transition to What?” in Malloy and
Seligson, eds., Authoritarians and Democrats, 62; James M. Malloy, “The Politics of Transition
in Latin America,” 236; Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring, “Democracy in Brazil:
Problems and Prospects,” World Policy Journal 4, no. 3 (1987), 485; O’Donnell, “Challenges
to Democratization in Brazil,” 281; and O’Donnell, “On the State, Democratization, and Some
Conceptual Problems,” 1360.
 Figure 3

Locating Sartori’s Strategies on the Ladder of Generality

Civilian Regime: John A. Booth, “A Framework for Analysis” in Booth and Seligson, Elections
and Democracy in Central America 26.

Competitive Regime: Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena:
Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991), 354.

Electoral Regime: James Petras and Fernando Ignacio Leiva, Democracy and Poverty in
Chile: The Limits to Electoral Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994), 89.

Parliamentary Democracy: Juan J. Linz, “Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Does It

Make a Difference?” in Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, eds., The Failure of Presidential
Democracy, 3.

Two-Party Democracy: Mark J. Gasiorowski, “The Political Regimes Project,” Studies in

Comparative International Development 25, no. 1 (Spring 1990), 113.

Postauthoritarian Democracy: Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Social Requisites of Democracy

Revisited,” American Sociological Review 59 (February 1994), 8.
 Figure 4

Diminished Subtypes vis-à-vis Procedural Minimum

and Expanded Procedural Minimum Definitions of Democracy

Façade Democracy: Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited,”
17.

Phantom Democracy: Ralph Goldman, “The Nominating Process: Factionalism as a Force for
Democratization” in Gary E. Wekkin, Donald E. Whistler, Michael A. Kelley, and Michael A.
Maggiotto, eds., Building Democracy in One-Party Systems: Theoretical Problems and Cross-
Nation Experiences (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 66.

Pseudodemocracy: John Higley and Richard Gunther, eds., Elites and Democratic
Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992), 6.

Sham Democracy: Einar Berntzen, “Democratic Consolidation in Central America: A

Qualitative Comparative Approach,” Third World Quarterly 14 (1993), 590.

Exclusionary Democracy: Karen L. Remmer, “Exclusionary Democracy,” Studies in

Comparative International Development 20 (1986), 71.

Oligarchical Democracy: Jonathan Hartlyn and Arturo Valenzuela, “Democracy in Latin

America since 1930” in Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. VI
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 99.

Protodemocracy: Atul Kohli, “Democracy amid Economic Orthodoxy,” Third World Quarterly
14, no. 4 (1993), 677.

Stable Limited Democracy: Higley and Gunther, Elites and Democratic Consolidation, 5–6.

Asian-Style Democracy: Clark D. Neher, “Asian Style Democracy,” Asian Survey 34

(November 1994), 949–61.

Controlled Democracy: Bruce Michael Bagley, “Colombia: National Front and Economic
Development,” 125.

De Facto One-Party Democracy: Adrian Leftwich, “Governance, Democracy, and

Development in the Third World,” Third World Quarterly 14 (1993): 613.
Restrictive Democracy: Carlos H. Waisman, “Argentina: Autarkic Industrialization and
Illegitimacy” in Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin
America, 69.

Imperfect Democracy: Richard Sakwa, “Democratic Change in Russia and Ukraine,”

Democratization 1, no. 1 (Spring 1994), 68.

Partial Democracy: Robert Wesson, ed. Democracy: A Worldwide Survey (NY: Praeger,
1987), 9.

Quasi Democracy: Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman, “The Prospects for Democracy” in
Haggard and Kaufman, eds., The Politics of Economic Adjustment (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992), 326.

Semidemocracy: Vanhanen, The Process of Democratization, 33.

Electoral Democracy: Axel Hadenius, “The Duration of Democracy: Institutional vs.

Socioeconomic Factors” in Beetham, ed., Defining and Measuring Democracy, 69.

Formal Democracy: Larry Diamond, “Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors, Instruments,
and Issues,” revised version of a paper for the Nobel Symposium on “Democracy’s Victory
and Crisis” (Uppsala, Sweden, 1994), 1.

Illiberal Democracy: Donald Emmerson, “Region and Recalcitrance: Questioning Democracy

in Southeast Asia,” paper presented at the World Congress of the International Political
Science Association (Berlin, 1994), 14.

Limited Democracy: O’Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative
Conclusions, 9.

Guarded Democracy: Edelberto Torres Rivas, “La gobernabilidad centroamericano en las

noventa: Consideraciones sobre las posibilidades democráticas en la postguerra,” América
Latina Hoy 2 (June 1994), 27.

Military Democracy: Rubin, “One Step Away from Democracy,” 60.

Protected Democracy: Loveman, “‘Protected’ Democracy,” 6.

Tutelary Democracy: Adam Przeworski, “Democracy as a Contingent Outcome of Conflicts” in

Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad, eds., Constitutionalism and Democracy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), 61.
 Figure 6

‘Problematic’ Democracies: Differentiating Criteria Derived from Prototypical

Conception of Established Industrial Democracy

Fragile Democracy: Whitehead, “The Consolidation of Fragile Democracies,” 77.

Immature Democracy: Michael L. Kelley, Michael A. Maggiotto, Gary D. Wekkin, and Donald E.
Whistler, “The Democratic Impulse and the Movement toward Democracy: An Introduction” in
Wekkin, Whistler, Kelley, and Maggiotto, Building Democracy, 7.

Uncertain Democracy: O’Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule:

Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies.

Unconsolidated Democracy: Higley and Gunther, eds., Elites and Democratic

Consolidation, 24.

Caudillistic Democracy: Richard Hillman, Democracy for the Privileged: Crisis and Transition
in Venezuela (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 24.

Delegative Democracy: O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy?”

Plebiscitarian Democracy: Tamás, “Socialism, Capitalism, and Modernity,” 73.

Populist Democracy: Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, “The Types of Democracy
Emerging in Southern and Eastern Europe and South and Central America” in Peter M. E.
Volten, ed., Bound to Change: Consolidating Democracy in East Central Europe (NY:
Institute for EastWest Studies, 1992), 56.

Depoliticized Democracy: Laurence Whitehead, “The Alternatives to ‘Liberal Democracy’: A

Latin American Perspective,” Political Studies 40 (1992), 151.

Dual Democracy: Smith and Acuña, “Future Politico-Economic Scenarios for Latin America,”
20.

Elitist Democracy: Hagopian and Mainwaring, “Democracy in Brazil,” 512.

Low-Intensity Democracy: Richard Stahler-Sholk, “El Salvador’s Negotiated Transition: From

Low-Intensity Conflict to Low-Intensity Democracy,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and
World Affairs 36 (Winter 1994), 43.
Blocked Democracy: Jorge Lanzaro, “La transición en la transición: Los partidos uruguayos
ante la reforma del Estado y la reforma de la política” (Montevideo: Instituto de Ciencia
Política, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la Republica, 1993), 23.

Impotent Democracy: Whitehead, “The Alternatives to ‘Liberal Democracy’,” 151.

Overinstitutionalized Democracy: Andreas Schedler, “Under- and Overinstitutionalization:

Some Ideal Typical Propositions Concerning New and Old Party Systems,” Kellogg Institute
Working Paper No. 213 (University of Notre Dame, 1995), 3.

Weak Democracy: Weffort, Qual democracia? 110.

Conservative Democracy: Karl, “Dilemmas of Democratization,” 180.

Input Democracy: Jan Knippers Black, “Elections and Other Trivial Pursuits: Latin America and
the New World Order,” Third World Quarterly 14, no. 3 (1993), 545.

‘Moderated’ Democracy: Hillman, Democracy for the Privileged, 167.

Neoliberal Democracy: Whitehead, “The Alternatives to ‘Liberal Democracy’,” 155.

Controlled Democracy: Franz J. Hinkelammert, “Our Project for the New Society in Latin
America: The Regulating Role of the State and Problems of Self-Regulation in the Market” in
Jonas and McCaughan, eds., Latin America Faces the Twenty-First Century, 25.

Internationally Dependent Democracy: Whitehead, “The Alternatives to ‘Liberal

Democracy’,” 151.

Neocolonial Democracy: Whitehead, “The Alternatives to ‘Liberal Democracy’,” 146.

US-Imposed Democracy: Berntzen, “Democratic Consolidation in Central America,” 599.

Bankrupt Democracy: Whitehead, “The Alternatives to ‘Liberal Democracy’,” 151.

Democracy without Prosperity: Torres Rivas, “La gobernabilidad centroamericana,” 28.

Low-Income Democracy: Diamond, “Economic Development and Democracy

Reconsidered,” 115.

Poor Democracy: Weffort, Qual democracia? 110.

Besieged Democracy: Ronald Archer, “Party Strength and Weakness in Colombia’s
Besieged Democracy” in Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully, eds. Building Democratic
Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).

Conflictive Democracy: Weffort, Qual democracia? 31.

Socially Explosive Democracy: Whitehead, “The Alternatives to ‘Liberal Democracy’,” 151.

Unruly Democracy: Leftwich, “Governance, Democracy, and Development,” 619.

Incomplete Democracy: Hillman, Democracy for the Privileged, 169.

Problematic Democracy: Hartlyn, “Crisis-Ridden Elections,” 93.

Sick Democracy: Antonio Stempel Paris, Venezuela: Una democracia enferma (Caracas:
Editorial Ateneo, 1980).

Tarnished Democracy: Daniel Hellinger, Venezuela: Tarnished Democracy (Boulder, CO:

Westview, 1991).
 Figure 4. Diminished Subtypes vis-à-vis Procedural Minimum and Expanded Procedural Minimum Definitions
(Location of subtypes in the columns reflects their meaning in relation to the spectrum of definitions in Figure 1. The meaning
of each subtype must be understood in relation to usage by the specific author. Bibliographic references are in Appendix.)

Spectrum of Definitions

Nondemocratic Regime Electoralism Procedural Minimum Expanded Procedural Minimum

a. Missing Attribute: Free Elections

Façade democracy (Lipset 1994)
Phantom democracy (Goldman 1993)
Pseudodemocracy (Higley/Gunther 1992)
Sham democracy (Berntzen 1993)

Expanded
b. Missing Attribute: Full Suffrage Procedural Minimum Procedural Minimum
Exclusionary democracy (Remmer 1986) Definition Definition
Oligarchical democracy (Hartlyn and of Democracy of Democracy
Valenzuela 1994)
Protodemocracy (Kohli 1993)
Stable limited democracy (Higley/Gunther 1992) Elections, Full Suffrage,
Elections, Full Suffrage, Civil Liberties, and
Civil Liberties Effective Power to
c. Missing Attribute: Full Contestation
Govern
Asian-style democracy (Neher 1994)
Controlled democracy (Bagley 1984)
De facto one-party democracy (Leftwich 1993)
Restrictive democracy (Waisman 1989)

d. Missing Attribute: Generic

Imperfect democracy (Sakwa 1994)
Partial democracy (Wesson 1987)
Quasidemocracy (Haggard/Kaufman 1992)
Semidemocracy (Vanhanen 1990)

f. Missing Attribute: Elected Govern-

e. Missing Attribute: Civil Liberties ment Has Effective Power to Govern
Electoral democracy (Hadenius 1994) Guarded democracy (Torres Rivas 1994)
Formal democracy (Diamond 1994) Military democracy (Rubin 1990) Definitions of
Illiberal democracy (Emmerson 1994) Protected democracy (Loveman 1994)
.
= democracy that are the
Limited democracy (O’Donnell/Schmitter 1986) Tutelary democracy (Przeworski 1988) point of departure for
subtypes

= Subtypes