Andreas Schedler
Central European University, Democracy Institute, Faculty Member
The literature on democratic subversion has been actor centric. It has laid much emphasis on the causal weight of actors. At the same time, it has been ignoring the perspective of actors themselves. In this chapter, I bring participant... more
The literature on democratic subversion has been actor centric. It has laid much emphasis on the causal weight of actors. At the same time, it has been ignoring the perspective of actors themselves. In this chapter, I bring participant perspectives back into the picture by looking at democratic subversion. By putting ourselves in the shoes of actors, I propose, we can shed fresh light on some basic questions: What are the limits of structural approaches to the measurement and explanation of democratic subversion? How do we recognize a democratic crisis when we see one? How do we recognize processes of democratic subversion and their protagonists when we see them? And how should we think about resistance against democratic subversion?
Research Interests:
The comparative study of political polarization has been central to current debates on the global crisis of democracy. It has been built on uncertain conceptual foundations, though. Established uses of the concept lack a distinctive... more
The comparative study of political polarization has been central to current debates on the global crisis of democracy. It has been built on uncertain conceptual foundations, though. Established uses of the concept lack a distinctive semantic core as multiple meanings compete against each other. Based on a broad reading of the comparative literature, I seek to circumscribe the use and reconstruct the core of “political polarization” as an instance of “extraordinary” democratic conflict. In a first step, I delineate the basic parameters of debate by distinguishing between cluster-analytic and conflict-analytic approaches and by specifying the generic type of political conflict that characterizes the polarization of democratic polities. In a second step, I argue for political intolerance as the defining trait of both “ideological” and “social” polarization. In a final step, I introduce a third, democratic dimension into the debate: the breakdown of “basic democratic trust” that leads actors to view their adversaries as “enemies of democracy.” Such perceptions spell the end of democratic consolidation. When played among “democratic enemies,” democracy stops being “the only game in town.”
Research Interests:
The norm of reciprocity, though widely recognized as a fundamental principle of democratic politics, has been scarcely subject to systematic reflection. Its demands have remained opaque. What does it require and what does it allow... more
The norm of reciprocity, though widely recognized as a fundamental principle of democratic politics, has been scarcely subject to systematic reflection. Its demands have remained opaque. What does it require and what does it allow democratic actors to do? Striving to elucidate its normative logic, this paper conceives democratic reciprocity as a multi-layered, context-dependent norm. As it argues, it is not a simple principle that demands symmetrical moves of tit for tat. Rather, it is a complex principle that demands the self-restrained and self-reflexive balancing of conflicting imperatives. It responds to the competitive as well as to the cooperative demands of democracy. Accepting the logic of political self-preservation, it permits actors to protect their competitive capacities. Yet, imposing the primacy of regime-preservation, it compels them to protect the cooperative foundations of democracy. After outlining the animating logic of democratic reciprocity, the paper discusses its self-limiting demands in two contrasting contexts: democratic normality and democratic subversion.
Research Interests:
Is US president Donald Trump a threat to democracy? Alerting against his manifold transgressions of democratic norms, many comparative political scientists have thought so. Their practical worries, however, have been inconsistent with... more
Is US president Donald Trump a threat to democracy? Alerting against
his manifold transgressions of democratic norms, many comparative political scientists have thought so. Their practical worries, however, have been inconsistent with prevalent theories of democratic stability. As careful examination shows, his main democratic norm violations have been discursive, and they have revealed him to be, not an ideological enemy of democracy, but a self-centered actor without
deep democratic commitments. None of this should ring democratic alarm bells. But it does. As I suggest, Donald Trump has been conducting a kind of sociological “breaching experiment” on the political science community which has exposed a remarkable divergence between our main theories of democratic stability (which focus on structures, political behavior, and self-interest) and our tacit convictions (about the causal relevance of actors, political language, and normative commitments).
his manifold transgressions of democratic norms, many comparative political scientists have thought so. Their practical worries, however, have been inconsistent with prevalent theories of democratic stability. As careful examination shows, his main democratic norm violations have been discursive, and they have revealed him to be, not an ideological enemy of democracy, but a self-centered actor without
deep democratic commitments. None of this should ring democratic alarm bells. But it does. As I suggest, Donald Trump has been conducting a kind of sociological “breaching experiment” on the political science community which has exposed a remarkable divergence between our main theories of democratic stability (which focus on structures, political behavior, and self-interest) and our tacit convictions (about the causal relevance of actors, political language, and normative commitments).
Research Interests:
Even before the invention of modern democracy, political theorists have warned about the dangers of 'majoritarian tyrannies.' While the concept has been perennially suspicious of serving as an antidemocratic stratagem, I propose to... more
Even before the invention of modern democracy, political theorists have warned about the dangers of 'majoritarian tyrannies.' While the concept has been perennially suspicious of serving as an antidemocratic stratagem, I propose to revalue it as an antipopulist tool of horizontal accountability among citizens ('demos accountability'). Subverting the populist narrative of popular unity and virtue, it allows aggrieved minorities to call their majoritarian fellow citizens to account for the injustices they help to produce. Given its metaphorical quality, however, its rootedness in the image of the personal tyrant, the idea of majoritarian tyranny carries deep democratic ambiguities. To recognize these ambiguities, I argue, we need to resist the suggestive power of its animating metaphor and take the empirical complexities of its logical building blocks seriously: the exercise of tyranny, the exclusive targeting of minorities, and collective action by the majority. My stepwise analytical reconstruction of these three constitutive elements of majoritarian tyrannies reveals two metaphorical pitfalls that threaten the democratic fertility of the concept: its vilifying and its simplifying assumptions.
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: Since the inauguration of Mexican democracy in 2000, organised criminal violence had been leaking into the political arena. Yet, it escalated in the 2018 elections, when dozens of local candidates were killed. In most of these cases,... more
: Since the inauguration of Mexican democracy in 2000, organised criminal violence had been leaking into the political arena. Yet, it escalated in the 2018 elections, when dozens of local candidates were killed. In most of these cases, the concrete perpetrators and motives remained in the dark. How did Mexican society make sense of this opaque, unprecedented wave of electoral violence? On the basis of a qualitative content analysis of over 1,200 news reports, I examine the structuring power of a shared narrative: the frame of organised crime. By conceiving candidate killings as economic violence within the criminal community, this commonsensical frame of interpretation permitted Mexican society to ‘normalise’ these killings as ‘business as usual’ by criminal organisations.
Research Interests:
During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Mexico’s so-called drug war claimed around a quarter of a million lives. Adapting to this enduring epidemic of violence, the print media have adopted a minimalist reporting style... more
During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Mexico’s so-called drug war claimed around a quarter of a million lives. Adapting to this enduring epidemic of violence, the print media have adopted a minimalist reporting style that gives only thin, formulaic accounts of violent events. As I argue, established journalistic minimalism does more than provide little information about violence. With practised impassiveness, it frames violence in a way that creates a certain narrative: not of social actors to be understood but of natural events to be endured. Through a qualitative content analysis of over 1200 news reports, I examine the persistent force of this “natural” frame in the face of an extraordinary development: the unprecedented intrusion of political violence into the 2018 general elections, when forty-eight candidates were assassinated.
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Threats to the integrity of electoral democracy are manifold. The comparative literature has focused on “vertical” threats: the manipulation of elections by central governments. This article, by contrast, draws attention to “horizontal”... more
Threats to the integrity of electoral democracy are manifold. The comparative literature has focused on “vertical” threats: the manipulation of elections by central governments. This article, by contrast, draws attention to “horizontal” threats: the societal subversion of democratic elections by criminal violence. It analyzes the so-called drug war in Mexico to illustrate the chilling effects private organized violence has on electoral democracy. After tracing the origins of Mexico’s new internal war, the article documents the damages it bears on the democratic integrity of elections as well as on surrounding rights and liberties.
Research Interests:
Neither peace nor justice? On transitional injustice in economic civil wars: Given the persistence of organized criminal violence in Mexico, scholars have raised the possibility of overcoming it through transitional justice measures (TJ).... more
Neither peace nor justice? On transitional injustice in economic civil wars: Given the persistence of organized criminal violence in Mexico, scholars have raised the possibility of overcoming it through transitional justice measures (TJ). We try to assess the viability of such a strategy in two steps. First, we draw a conceptual map of organized societal violence that allows us to identify so-called narcoviolence as an economic civil war,distinct from political civil wars. We then discuss the applicability of TJ measures to the Mexican context. Although we identify important analogies, we end up highlighting an insurmountable obstacle: TJ can only work as a pacifying strategy if the state that strives to disarm criminal gangs had the capacity to ensure that their disarmament were permanent.
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After its successful transition to democracy, Mexico has experienced an epidemic of organized societal violence, known as the drug war, that to date has cost well over 100,000 casualties, most of them consigned to oblivion, without proper... more
After its successful transition to democracy, Mexico has experienced an epidemic of organized societal violence, known as the drug war, that to date has cost well over 100,000 casualties, most of them consigned to oblivion, without proper investigation or prosecution. Victims have been organizing and protesting, yet ordinary citizens have remained quiet, except for two short-lived waves of nationwide protest. As I hypothesize, a primary reason for their acquiescence is cognitive. The framing of organized violence as a self-contained war among criminals ("bounded violence") erodes the attitudinal foundations of citizen solidarity: sympathy with the victims of injustice. I explore the cognitive foundations of citizen attitudes towards victims on the basis of original data from the Mexican 2013 National Survey on Organized Violence. Logistic regression analysis confirms the expected framing effect. Even when controlling for alternative explanations, such as personal proximity to violence and social proximity to its victims, the notion of bounded violence among the criminal community induces citizens to view its victims with indifference.
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The common assumption that popular protests are rare under dictatorship as well as the related debate about their disruptive or reactive nature appear to be misleading. In many autocracies and most prominently in contemporary China,... more
The common assumption that popular protests are rare under dictatorship as well as the related debate about their disruptive or reactive nature appear to be misleading. In many autocracies and most prominently in contemporary China, citizens seem to be willing and capable of generating contentious challenges on a regular basis; and authoritarian rulers seem to be willing and capable of “normalizing” and absorbing these challenges into their operating routines. Rather than rare, disruptive events that provoke existential crises, or reactive moves that aggravate such crises, recurring popular protests seem to form an integral part of political normality in many authoritarian regimes.
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In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework to analyse the communicative imperatives authoritarian regimes face as a consequence of their self-inflicted opacities. The most important facts about the actors and factors that sustain... more
In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework to analyse the communicative imperatives authoritarian regimes face as a consequence of their self-inflicted opacities. The most important facts about the actors and factors that sustain authoritarian rule are unobservable. To demonstrate their power, authoritarian rulers have to render them visible. They have to dramatize their power and present on the front stage what they want people to know about the backstage of authoritarian politics. We conceptualize the communicative strategies of authoritarian rulers with a focus on the primary existential threats they face: the lateral threats that emanate from within the authoritarian elite. We illustrate dictators’ communicative repertoire with empirical material from communist Cuba from 2006 to 2011, during the critical juncture of leadership transition from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul.
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In recent years, we have seen the rise of a “new institutionalism” in the study of authoritarian regimes that takes seriously previously neglected pillars of non-democratic governance: nominally democratic institutions, such as... more
In recent years, we have seen the rise of a “new institutionalism” in the study of authoritarian regimes that takes seriously previously neglected pillars of non-democratic governance: nominally democratic institutions, such as legislatures, multiple parties, and elections, that form integral parts of most authoritarian regimes. Drawing together previously disconnected pieces of research, the paper provides an analytical topography of new institutionalist studies of dictatorship. It discusses four central issues: (a) institutional imperatives: the fundamental challenges authoritarian institutional designers address, (b) institutional landscapes: the fundamental institutional choices authoritarian rulers face, (c) institutional containment: the strategies of control they may deploy in various institutional arenas, and (d) institutional ambivalence: the tension between regime-supporting and regime-subverting roles authoritarian institutions tend to introduce.
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A specter is haunting contemporary party politics: the specter of anti-political-establishment parties. In old as well as in new democracies, fears run high and the literature is booming. Specters are evasive, however. Political... more
A specter is haunting contemporary party politics: the specter of anti-political-establishment parties. In old as well as in new democracies, fears run high and the literature is booming. Specters are evasive, however. Political scientists have tried to get hold of this one under labels like protest, populist or extremist parties. Yet the `anti-political' ideology which is central for many of these outsider parties has not received the systematic attention it deserves. The present piece of discourse analysis pretends to fill this gap. It argues that anti-political-establishment parties construct two specific cleavages. They contrapose the political elite against citizens, on the one hand, and against themselves, on the other. In its main part, the article analyzes the symbolic strategies anti-political-establishment parties employ in constructing this double conflict. It proceeds to describe their dilemmatic position in between normal and anti-democratic opposition, sketches the possible career paths of anti-political-establishment parties, and concludes with some notes on available counter-strategies.
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Electoral governance is a crucial variable in securing the credibility of elections in emerging democracies, but remains largely ignored in the comparative study of democratization. This article develops some basic analytical tools to... more
Electoral governance is a crucial variable in securing the credibility of elections in emerging democracies, but remains largely ignored in the comparative study of democratization. This article develops some basic analytical tools to advance comparative analysis and understanding of this neglected topic. It conceptualizes electoral governance as a set of related activities that involves rule making, rule application, and rule adjudication. It identifies the provision of procedural certainty to secure the substantive uncertainty of democratic elections as the principal task of electoral governance. It argues that electoral governance, while socially and institutionally embedded, matters most during the indeterminate conditions that typically attend democratization. Finally, it outlines a research agenda that covers the comparative study of the structures as well as the processes of electoral governance.
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Concepts are central to the enterprise of political science. The concepts we use shape the world we see. Without solid conceptual foundations, the edifice of political science is insecure. If we fail to develop clear and precise concepts,... more
Concepts are central to the enterprise of political science. The concepts we use shape the world we see. Without solid conceptual foundations, the edifice of political science is insecure. If we fail to develop clear and precise concepts, our theoretical insights and empirical discoveries will
fail to be clear and precise, too. This entry reviews major pitfalls for conceptual analysis as well as the fundamental challenges to concept formation and conceptual innovation in the study of politics.
fail to be clear and precise, too. This entry reviews major pitfalls for conceptual analysis as well as the fundamental challenges to concept formation and conceptual innovation in the study of politics.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Las principales encuestas comparativas de opinión pública miden el apoyo popular a la democracia a través de preguntas directas sobre la democracia en abstracto. Sin embargo, como los ciudadanos pueden tener ideas divergentes de... more
Las principales encuestas comparativas de opinión pública miden el apoyo popular
a la democracia a través de preguntas directas sobre la democracia en abstracto.
Sin embargo, como los ciudadanos pueden tener ideas divergentes de democracia,
no sabemos hasta qué punto las preguntas estándar captan su apoyo a la democracia liberal. Para resolver los problemas de validez que sufren las mediciones directas y abstractas, proponemos vincularlas con preguntas indirectas más concretas sobre principios e instituciones democráticos. Pare este fin, empleamos la técnica estadística
de análisis de conglomerados que nos permite captar perfiles ideológicos
complejos e contradictorios. Demostramos lo fructífero de este enfoque trazando
un mapa de “demócratas iliberales” en México, con base en la Encuesta Nacional
sobre Cultura Política 2005.
a la democracia a través de preguntas directas sobre la democracia en abstracto.
Sin embargo, como los ciudadanos pueden tener ideas divergentes de democracia,
no sabemos hasta qué punto las preguntas estándar captan su apoyo a la democracia liberal. Para resolver los problemas de validez que sufren las mediciones directas y abstractas, proponemos vincularlas con preguntas indirectas más concretas sobre principios e instituciones democráticos. Pare este fin, empleamos la técnica estadística
de análisis de conglomerados que nos permite captar perfiles ideológicos
complejos e contradictorios. Demostramos lo fructífero de este enfoque trazando
un mapa de “demócratas iliberales” en México, con base en la Encuesta Nacional
sobre Cultura Política 2005.
The quantitative study of comparative politics is often described as a data-driven enterprise. Employing an original dataset of comparative politics articles published in leading academic journals between 1989 and 2007, this article... more
The quantitative study of comparative politics is often described as a data-driven enterprise. Employing an original dataset of comparative politics articles published in leading academic journals between 1989 and 2007, this article offers the first empirical analysis of data usage in comparative research. Tracing potential biases induced by data
dependence, it assesses the structure of quantitative comparative research (by year, research design, geographic focus, and subject area), the use of country-specific and region-specific datasets, the introduction of original data, and the degree of concentration in data usage. Its empirical findings question cherished assumptions about the structure of the discipline.
dependence, it assesses the structure of quantitative comparative research (by year, research design, geographic focus, and subject area), the use of country-specific and region-specific datasets, the introduction of original data, and the degree of concentration in data usage. Its empirical findings question cherished assumptions about the structure of the discipline.