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Democratization and social policy development in advanced capitalist societies
Stephens, John D.
Stephens, John D.
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"In Capitalist Development and Democracy, we adopt a conventional definition of democracy: regular free and fair elections of representatives on the basis of universal suffrage; responsibility of the state apparatus to the elected representatives of the people; and guarantees for freedom of expression and association. We argue that the development of democracy is the product of three clusters of power: (1) the balance of class power as the most important aspect of the balance of power in civil society, (2) the nature of the state and state-society relations, or the balance of power between state and civil society, and (3) transnational structures of power, or the international economy and system of states, as they shape the first two balances and constrain political decision-making. The central thesis of our book is that capitalist development is related to democracy because it shifts the balance of class power by weakening the power of the landlord class and strengthening subordinate classes. The working and the middle classes -- unlike other subordinate classes in history -- gain an unprecedented capacity for self-organization due to such developments as urbanization, factory production, and new forms of communication and transportation. The working class was the most consistently pro-democratic force, whereas the middle classes at took an ambiguous position. As to the role of the bourgeoisie,2 we dispute the claims of both liberal and Marxist political theory that democracy is the creation of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie made important contributions to the move towards democracy by insisting on its share in political power in the form of parliamentary control of the state, but the bourgeoisie was also hostile to further democratization when its interests seemed threatened."(pg 2)
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2005-05
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With permission of the license/copyright holder