99
*
Harvard University – CIAS.
Sebastián Mazzuca
*
Resumen
El artículo define y muestra las conexiones entre los conceptos funda-
mentales del análisis de regímenes políticos, desde Schumpeter a Linz.
El análisis provee el contexto para resaltar cambios y continuidades en
el trabajo que Guillermo O’Donnell dedicó a la política post-transicio-
nal, incluidas las nociones de democracia delegativa, zonas marrones e
instituciones informales. El texto plantea que si estas nociones son
combinadas con la sociología política de Max Weber, el último trabajo
de O’Donnell en realidad implica una ruptura con el paradigma de la de-
mocratización. Su trabajo dejó de centrarse en cuestiones de acceso al
poder y pasó implícitamente a estudiar cuestiones de ejercicio del
poder.
Palabras clave: Régimen político – Democracia – Patrimonialismo –
América Latina
Abstract
This article defines and shows the connections between the essential
concepts of analysis of political regimes, from Schumpeter to Linz. The
analysis offers the context to stand out changes and continuities of the
O’Donnell and the Study of
Latin American Politics After
the Transitions
Código de referato: SP.158.XXVI/13
STUDIA POLITICÆ Número 26 ~ otoño 2012
Publicada por la Facultad de Ciencia Política y Relaciones Internacionales,
de la Universidad Católica de Córdoba, Córdoba, República Argentina.
26 - otoño 2012
100
STUDIA POLITICÆ
studies that Guillermo O’Donnell dedicate to post-transitional politic,
including notions such as delegative democracy, brown regions and
informal institutions. The text sets that if those notions are combined
with Max Weber’s political sociology, the latest study of O’Donnell
really implies a breaking with democratization paradigm. His labor
abandoned issues to power access and started to be implicitly related to
issues of exercise of power.
Keywords: Political regime – Democracy – Patrimonialism – Latin Ame-
rica
I
N 1956 the British philosopher W. B. Gallie referred to democracy as a
prominent example of an “essentially contested concept” (1956: 184).
Yet in the 1980s and 1990s, a relatively strong consensus about the
meaning of democracy emerged within the field of comparative regime
analysis. This has occurred specifically in conjunction with the
development of an extremely influential series of studies of the dramatic
regime changes experienced in Southern Europe, Latin America, and in
many other parts of the world between the mid-1970s and the early
1990s.
1
The point of departure for the “de-contestation” of democracy within
the study of national political regimes was the definition advanced
by Joseph Schumpeter.
2
Analyses of regime change sharing a
Schumpeterian understanding of democracy are usually characterized as
employing a procedural approach to the study of politics. However, this
paper suggests that the convergence in the views of regime analysts is
even stronger and more specific than has traditionally been recognized.
The key point is that the field of comparative regime analysis has not
focused on all political procedures, but only on the procedures related to
the access to political power. This comprises a subset of institutions that
can productively be distinguished from the institutions concerned
with the exercise of political power. This paper will show that the
distinction between procedures of access and procedures of exercise is
valuable in two ways. First, it helps to capture the full significance of a
1
Though this literature is immense, the inescapable references are LINZ (1978) on the
breakdown of democracy, D. COLLIER (1979) on the rise of authoritarianism in Latin
America, and RUSTOW (1970), and O’DONNELL and SCHMITTER (1986) on the transitions
from authoritarianism to democracy. PRIDHAM (1996) is a collection of the most influen-
tial articles on democratic transition and consolidation. For recent reviews of the literatu-
re on transitions, see SIN (1994), MUNCK (1994), and R. COLLIER (2000).
2
SCHUMPETER 1942/1947: 269. For the argument about “decontested concepts,” see
FREEDEN 1994: 156-158.
101
Schumpeterian approach to democracy; in particular, it provides a better
sense of what that approach includes and excludes, and adds precision
to the characterization of the literature on regimes. In addition, it helps
to clarify an important shift that has recently occurred in the analysis of
Latin American politics, especially the attempts at conceptualizing the
“post-transition” dynamics of new democracies in the region.
The argument of this paper is twofold. First, a shared concern about
the access to state power in different political settings is the single most
important common denominator in the field of comparative regime
analysis. Despite terminological variations and differences in emphasis,
following Schumpeter’s original definition, the concepts developed by
regime analysts seek to describe the diverse forms of access to state
power across countries and over time. To trace the emergence of the
focus on access to power within comparative regime analysis, this paper
will analyze Robert A. Dahl’s and Juan J. Linz’s discussion of the
concepts of polyarchy and authoritarianism, which clearly are the field’s
alpha and omega.
Second, an important shift of focus, including centrally Guillermo
O’Donnell’s recent contributions, has occurred in the study of Latin
American politics. The topics that have begun to concern an increasing
number of students of Latin American politics since the mid-1990s
—notably the institutionalization of clientelistic practices, political
corruption at the level of both national and local officials, and the tendency
of elected authorities to circumvent political and administrative controls on
their actions— are problems related to the exercise of state power. A central
goal of this paper is to show that there are good theoretical reasons to keep
these problems conceptually separated from the issues of access to
political power that have traditionally concerned regime analysts. In
addition, this paper will explore the theoretical gains of employing Max
Weber’s ideal types of patrimonialism and bureaucracy to deal conceptually
with the different ways in which power is exercised.
I. Focus on Access to Power
From Schumpeter’s Democracy to Dahl’s Polyarchy
The concept of democracy advanced by Schumpeter (1942/1947: 269-
283) was a major influence on the authors who established the field of
comparative regime analysis, such as Seymour Martin Lipset (1959: 71),
Linz (1964: 295), and Dahl (1971: 1-5). Schumpeter’s impact on these
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
26 - otoño 2012
102
STUDIA POLITICÆ
authors is usually characterized in two complementary ways. On the one
hand, Schumpeter’s contribution is described as the first systematic
presentation of a procedural definition of democracy, in the sense that his
concept of democracy deliberately avoided any references to substantive
policy outcomes.
3
On the other hand, his work is considered as the basis
of the competitive model of democracy, in that for him the specific
procedure that distinguishes democracy from other political regimes is the
competition for electoral support among a plurality of political actors.
4
These two ideas —democracy as procedure, and democracy as electoral
competition— became “ineliminable features” of the definition of
democracy employed by regime analysts.
5
However, a third, more implicit, contribution of Schumpeter is fully as
important as the other two for understanding the theoretical goals and
conceptual strategies of regime analysts. In the key passage of his
analysis, Schumpeter stressed that electoral competition, the distinctive
attribute of democracy, is a procedure for “producing governments,”
more precisely, a mechanism through which “individuals acquire the
power to decide.”
6
To use a term that O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986:
78) would employ three decades later, it may be argued that Schumpeter
viewed democracy as a particular solution to a central issue in any
political process: the access to political power. Thus, when a country is
characterized as a democracy in Schumpeterian terms, attention focuses
on the form of access to power: all that is said about that country is
how political actors reach the highest positions within the state, namely,
by competing in free and fair elections. Countries with any other form
of access to power —such as “military insurrections”— do not qualify
as democracies, and Schumpeter groups them together under the broad
category of “autocracies” (1942/1947: 275).
3
SARTORI 1987: 152; DAHL 1979: 97 ff.; HUNTINGTON, 1989: 15; COLLIER and LEVITS-
ky 1997: 431.
4
HELD 1987: 143-185; SARTORI 1987: 152-156; ARBLASTER 1987: 49-50.
5
On the notion of “ineliminable features,” see FREEDEN 1996: 60-64, esp. 61-62. Ac-
cording to Freeden, “ineliminable features” characterize de-contested concepts. It is con-
venient to insist that the de-contestation of democracy I am referring to is restricted to a
very specific intellectual current within comparative politics. In other intellectual cu-
rrents of the social sciences, in philosophy, and, most important, in everyday language
and political discourse, democracy remains an intensely contested concept.
6
Schumpeter’s complete definition of democracy is: “democracy is that institutional
arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to
decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote” (SCHUMPETER 1942/
1947: 269).
103
This observation adds precision to previous characterizations that depicted
Schumpeter’s work as a procedural/competitive approach. The crucial
point is that Schumpeter did not refer to all political procedures, but just to
a specific subset of them: by focusing on competition as a mode of access
to power, he was silent about a wide gamut of procedures related to the
exercise of power. In other words, Schumpeter’s democracy explicitly
describes a set of rules that determine how top governmental positions are
filled, but it has no implications about the rules, formal or informal, that
elected authorities follow in the exercise of power (except, of course, for
the respect of the rules of access).
It is important to note that the approaches to democracy criticized by
Schumpeter, which he grouped together under the label “classical theory,”
did not focus on the procedures of exercise either. Rather, they focused
on concrete policy outcomes, and defined democracy as the congruence
between those outcomes and citizens’ preferences. Hence, neither
Schumpeterian nor rival approaches to democracy have paid attention to the
institutions regulating the exercise of power.
Although Dahl’s famous concept of polyarchy is more specific than
Schumpeter’s democracy, it is squarely in the tradition of the focus on access
to power. Polyarchy is a mode of access to power that is not only competitive
but also inclusive, in that all adults have the opportunity to participate in the
electoral competition for governmental positions.
7
Hence, whereas
Schumpeter’s concept of democracy is defined solely by free competition,
polyarchy is two-dimensional: it includes free competition and universal
participation (Dahl 1971: 4-6; 1979: 110-112; 1989: 121-122, esp. 128).
One of the most influential contributions of Dahl’s discussion of polyarchy
was the identification of the concrete institutional features that set it apart
from other forms of access to power.
8
Access to power under polyarchy
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
7
Dahl specifically argues that “since a regime might permit opposition [competition]
to a very small or a very large proportion of the population, clearly we need a second
dimension [...] A scale reflecting the breadth of the right to participate in public
competition would enable us to compare different regimes according to their
inclusiveness” (1971: 4).
8
To a great extent, this contribution specified and systematized institutional conditions
already implicitly included in Schumpeter’s original formulation. Schumpeter mentioned
almost all the institutional requirements listed by DAHL (1956: 63; 1971: 3; 1989: 221) in
the course of a two-page long discussion of the “concept of competition for leadership.”
He stated: “If, on principle at least, everyone is free to compete for political leadership
by presenting himself to the electorate [conditions 1, 3-4 in Dahl’s formulation] this will
mean a considerable amount of freedom of discussion for all. In particular it will
26 - otoño 2012
104
STUDIA POLITICÆ
combines seven attributes: (1) elected officials; (2) free and fair elections;
(3) inclusive suffrage; (4) the right to run for office; (5) freedom of
expression; (6) alternative information; and (7) associational autonomy
(Dahl 1971: 6).
9
Obviously, these attributes derive from the dimensions of competition and
participation. Whereas attributes 1 and 2 characterize polyarchy as a mode
of gaining political power based on electoral competition, attributes 3 and 4
specify the element of participation: all adults may participate in the
competition for power not only as voters (3) but also as candidates (4). In
the context of Dahl’s conceptualization, the civil and political liberties
intuitively associated with the meaning of democracy (5-7) are viewed
from the perspective of the struggle for gaining access to power: they are
understood as the institutional conditions required for the electoral
competition to be free.
10
Democracy’s Surrounding Concepts: Linz on Authoritarianism and
Collier on Political Regime
If “authoritarianism” is the conceptual contrary of democracy par
excellence, it is precisely because it characterizes an alternate mode of
access to power. The systematization of the concept of authoritarianism is
due to Linz (1964; 1975), whose original objective was to call attention to
the political dynamics of certain countries, in particular Spain under
Franco, in relation to which other concepts were either too general (such
as autocracy) or inappropriate (totalitarianism). Linz’s focus on access to
power becomes clear if we analyze what he considered the key dimension
for differentiating authoritarianism from democracy, namely, pluralism.
According to Linz, in contrast to democracy’s “almost unlimited
pluralism,” the “limited pluralism” of authoritarian regimes means that the
normally mean a considerable amount of freedom of the press [conditions 5 and 6]” and
“freedom of assemble [condition 7]” (SCHUMPETER 1942/1947: 271-272).
9
This list reflects Dahl’s most recent formulation (1989: 121-122). With minor
differences, it first appeared in DAHL 1956: 63.
10
This conceptual connection between civil liberties and the competition for power
was even more emphatically pointed out by Linz, who defined democracy as that regime
that “allows the free formulation of political preferences, through the use of the basic
freedoms of association, information, and communication, for the purpose of free
competition between leaders to validate at regular intervals by nonviolent means their
claim to rule” (LINZ 1978: 5; emphasis added).
105
opportunities for opposing government and achieving political power are
legally or de facto controlled by the rulers and restricted to a small set of
political actors. “Monism,” in turn, is the complete elimination of pluralism
that characterizes totalitarian regimes. Linz claimed that in authoritarian
regimes “rulers ultimately define which groups are allowed to participate
[in politics] and under what conditions.” Moreover, in contrast to
democratic regimes, “in authoritarian regimes the men who come to power
do not derive their positions from the support of [electoral constituencies],
but from the trust placed in them by the leader, monarch or junta” (Linz
1964: 300; 1975: 266).
Hence, what distinguishes authoritarian regimes from democracies is the
form of access to political power. In the passage quoted above, the
mechanism of designation appears as the main alternative to free elections.
But, of course, the implicit idea is that authoritarian rulers in charge of the
designation were not themselves designated in the first place —but
probably were not chosen in free elections either. In the case of the juntas,
for instance, the mechanism of designation starts to work after the armed
forces gained access to power through a coup d’état.
11
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
11
It bears mention that Linz also employed two additional dimensions for building his
typology of political regimes that did not involve access, namely, mobilization vs.
demobilization, and ideology vs. mentalities. However, Linz’s additional dimensions
have received scant attention by subsequent studies on regime change. Several reasons
may help to explain why these dimensions did not crystallize as important conceptual
tools in the field of comparative regime analysis. First of all, both the mobilization/
demobilization dimension and the ideology/mentalities dimension are only relevant for
differentiating authoritarianism from totalitarianism, whereas studies of regime change,
both in Southern Europe and Latin America, focus particularly on the democracy/
authoritarian contrast, in relation to which the access variables are the only really crucial
ones. Besides, Linz himself hesitated about the viability of advancing an operational
definition of the ideology/mentalities distinction, and he did not deal with it in a
systematic fashion. In particular, he claimed that the difficulties of gathering empirical
data on mentalities make this “dimension turn out in practice to be less helpful” (1975:
277, see also 269). On the other hand, in many occasions Linz stated that pluralism was
the most important criterion within his typology, and that the scores of the regimes
along the mobilization dimension are the “result” of the degree of pluralism (1975: 270).
However, what seems to have been the strongest reason in the field of comparative
regime analysis for restricting the focus to issues of access is the well-known
recommendation of using “minimal definitions” (SARTORI 1975: 34; Linz 1975: 181; Karl
1990, 2; Alvarez, Cheibub, Limongi, and Przeworski 1996: 4; Di Palma 1998: 28).
According to this recommendation, forcefully defended by Linz himself, it is productive
to exclude from the definition of democracy and authoritarianism the characteristics of
the society and the economy that may be treated as potential causes or consequences of
the core features of each regime type (LINZ 1975: 181-182). Of course, what the
discussion of this paper reveals is that regime analysts excluded from the definitions of
26 - otoño 2012
106
STUDIA POLITICÆ
democracy and authoritarianism not only features of the society and the economy, but
also all political issues that are not strictly related to the procedures of access to power.
12
The different forms of access (dimension a) that O’Donnell and Schmitter consider in
their essay are free and fair elections versus coups d’État, which in turn determine the
The focus on the institutions of access to state power as a distinct sphere
within the political system was developed further in Collier’s discussion of
the concept of political regime (Collier 1979: 365-367). The concepts of
democracy and authoritarianism are conventionally viewed as hierarchically
subordinated to that of political regime, in relation to which they would be
specific forms or examples.
According to Collier, the central element of this overarching concept of
political regime is the “method of selection of the government,” with free
elections and military coups being alternative forms of that method, which
obviously constitute different modes of access to power (Collier 1979:
402-403).
In order to grasp the significance of Collier’s discussion of political regime,
it is important to remember that his analysis was motivated by the fact that,
following O’Donnell’s initial formulation (O’Donnell 1973), different
scholars used the concept of bureaucratic-authoritarianism to call attention
to many different traits of Latin American political systems, including the
governing coalition, the form of regime, prevailing public policies, and the
form of state. It was Collier who insisted in treating separately the regime/
access aspect of bureaucratic-authoritarianism, as opposed to its character
as a coalition, and to the public policies adopted. Given how important the
concept of bureaucratic-authoritarianism was in the field, this was in effect
an important further step in advancing a focus on an access conception of
regime —in contrast to other features of the political system that Collier
argued should be treated as conceptually distinct.
Putting the Access Framework into Work: the Study of Transitions
As noted above, O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986) were the first authors to
explicitly characterize their approach to regimes in terms of “access” to
power. In particular, they defined regime as the set of “patterns, explicit or
not, that determine: (a) the forms and channels of access to principal
governmental positions; (b) the characteristics of the actors who are
admitted and excluded from such access; and (c) the resources or
strategies that they can use to gain access” (1986: 78; emphasis added).
12
107
strategies of access (dimension c): electoral campaigns versus military insurrections. Di-
mension (b) in O’Donnell and Schmitter’s conceptualization is very similar to the notion
of participation/inclusion in Dahl’s typology. It basically distinguishes regimes that in-
clude all the adult population from those that exclude the people who do not have some
specific “characteristic”—such as being an affiliate to the dominant party or a member of
the armed forces.
13
Following what became a standard practice among regime analysts, they used
“polyarchy” and “democracy” interchangeably. Regarding the concept of authoritarianism,
they retained only the access dimension of Linz’s definition, and discarded the secondary
ones. The reasons for their choice appear to be parallel to Linz’s reasons for the same
choice discussed above.
14
Other works on the so-called “Third Wave of Democratization,” such as Diamond,
Linz, and Lipset (1990), and Huntington (1991), which are also considered pioneers of
the transition literature, rely on a conceptual framework almost identical to the one
presented by O’Donnell and Schmitter. It is noteworthy that this framework was
already outlined in a series of notes that O’Donnell wrote between 1977 and 1979 and
that served as one of the basic background documents for the Woodrow Wilson Center
Project that produced the volumes on transitions. Some of those notes appeared in
Argentina (O’Donnell 1979).
15
A frequent disagreement refers to the relative importance of historical-structural
factors (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992) vis-à-vis short run strategic
actions of political elites (Przeworski 1992).
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
Given this conception of political regime, it is not surprising that, to
characterize specific types of regime, O’Donnell and Schmitter relied on
Dahl and Linz’s access-focused concepts of democracy/polyarchy and
authoritarianism.
13
As is well known, O’Donnell and Schmitter’s work,
together with Rustow’s seminal article (1970), had a large impact in
encouraging the adoption of the Dahl/Linz conceptual framework in
subsequent literature on regime change and the transitions from
authoritarianism in particular.
14
From the perspective of this paper, an
important implication of O’Donnell and Schmitter’s influence is that,
despite significant differences among regime analysts in how they explain
the transitions to democracy,
15
these analysts converge in that they
describe these transitions as a process of change in the institutions of
access to political power. No matter how much accounts differ in their
identification of the most important actors promoting or preventing regime
changes, but they invariably ascribe to those actors —whether individual
leaders, political groups, or social classes— opposing preferences about
the prevailing form of access. They thus characterize the process of
regime change as a struggle for opening or blocking the access to power.
By way of recapitulation, Figure 1 provides a summary of the focus on
access to power that has been a common thread through the works of
these several authors.
26 - otoño 2012
108
STUDIA POLITICÆ
II. From Access to Exercise in the Study of Latin American Politics
Though regime analysis has been marked by its efforts on the study of
issues of access to power, a significant departure from this trend
becomes apparent in the mid-1990s, including centrally O’Donnell’s
more recent work. O’Donnell’s recent contributions have encouraged an
important shift in the study of Latin American politics: from a focus on
the transitions to democracy to a focus on the quality of democracy. In
particular, O’Donnell has dealt with two major sets of problems: the
pervasiveness of clientelistic practices and political corruption at the level
of both national and local officials, and the tendency of elected
presidents to circumvent the controls of other branches of government.
Although this latter issue in part involves legislative-executive relations,
O’Donnell’s concern has increasingly focused on the judiciary.
16
16
This shift of focus becomes evident when his first text on the quality of democracy
(1995/1999b) is compared with the most recent ones (1999b; 1999c). This shift is in
Figure 1. Focus of Definitions of Democracy and Authoritarianism
“Classical
Theory”
criticized by
Schumpeter
Schumpeter
Dahl
Linz – Aut/
Dem
Linz – Aut/Tot
Collier
O’Donnell and
Schmitter
Procedures
Access
“Mechanisms of acquiring
the power to decide”
“Competition [for power]
and participation [in
government]”
“Limited vs. unlimited
pluralism”
“Limited pluralism vs.
monism”
“Method of selection of the
government”
“Patterns of access to
government”
Exercise
These definitions
make no
reference to the
procedures
related to the
exercise of
power
Extra-procedural
dimensions
Correspondence
between political
outcomes and
social preferences
“Mobilization vs.
demobilization”
“Mentalities vs.
Ideology”
<
<
109
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
part due to a change in O’Donnell’s personal interests. But it is also due to the diminis-
hing incidence of the “rule by decree” that characterized Argentina and Brazil in the early
1990s, which was the major problem of accountability in the sphere of executive-legisla-
tive relations.
17
The distinctions between “delegative democracy” and “representative democracy”
(1995/1999a) and between “brown areas” and “blue areas” (1994/1995a) are also
important in O’Donnell’s program. Regarding the notion of “delegative democracy”
—which certainly commanded a lot of attention from students of new democracies in
Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia— it is important to note that O’Donnell built it
on the basis of the distinction between horizontal accountability and vertical
accountability. Delegative democracy is a regime with effective vertical accountability
and weak horizontal accountability, so the analysis of these different forms of
accountability really will cover the meaning of “delegative democracy.” Besides, for
reasons that will be analyzed below, in subsequent works O’Donnell replaced the notion
of “delegative democracy” with the notion of “informally institutionalized democracy.”
In relation to the notion of “brown areas,” it is a metaphor that O’Donnell subsequently
refined by introducing the notion of “informal institutions.” Although his text on
“delegative democracy” (1995/1999a) was published after the article that introduced the
distinction between democratic regime and democratic state (1994/1999a), O’Donnell
wrote it in 1992, before all his other contributions analyzed here. That is why I take the
distinction between vertical accountability and horizontal accountability as the starting
point of my summary.
In order to conceptualize these two sets of problems, and to provide
the building blocks for what he visualizes as a broader theory of
democratization, O’Donnell has advanced three distinctions: 1) horizontal
accountability vs. vertical accountability, 2) formal institutionalization vs.
informal institutionalization, and 3) democratic regime vs. democratic
state.
17
O’Donnell and the Study of Democratic Politics after the Transitions
1. Horizontal Accountability vs. Vertical Accountability. O’Donnell
distinguishes two basic institutional forms for monitoring the actions of
political authorities. The key mechanism of “vertical accountability”
is the electoral process, and its effectiveness depends upon the
enforcement of the civil and political rights that are required for elections
to be free and competitive. The main agent of control in this form of
accountability is, thus, the electorate, which can punish governments by
choosing candidates of the opposition. By contrast, “horizontal
accountability” refers to the control exerted by different branches of the
government on one another, which includes the expectation that relevant
agencies of these branches will “call into question, and eventually
26 - otoño 2012
110
STUDIA POLITICÆ
punish, improper ways of discharging the responsibilities of a given
office” (O’Donnell 1995/1999a: 165; see also 1999b: 38). Thus,
whereas vertical accountability describes a relation between the state and
citizens, horizontal accountability involves relationships within the state.
O’Donnell’s new contributions highlight the failure of horizontal
accountability. In particular, O’Donnell calls attention to the weakness of
the judicial systems in Argentina and Brazil in scrutinizing and
sanctioning fraudulent actions of public officials. Another central
concern has been the tendency of the executive to rule by decree and
implement policy without significant participation of the congress, a
practice that was particularly prominent in Argentina under Menem and
Brazil under Collor. These problems, of course, are not new, as
O’Donnell explicitly notes.
18
What, according to O’Donnell, is definitely
new is the specific combination of weak horizontal accountability and
effective vertical accountability in several countries that were part of the
recent global trend of democratization (1995/1999a: 159). In light of the
standard conceptual framework of regime analysis summarized in the
previous section, O’Donnell underscores the fact that because vertical
accountability is effective in these countries, they do qualify as
democratic regimes (1994/1999a: 133; 1996/1999a: 175-177). Hence, he
is concerned with problems of horizontal accountability in countries that
are democracies.
To the extent that many of the controls that the congress and the
judiciary are expected to exert on the executive are established by the
constitution, O’Donnell argues that the failure of horizontal
accountability in newly democratized countries raises a crucial
question. Does the lack of horizontal accountability mean that these
unconstitutional relations among governmental branches are not
institutionalized, or is it possible to think about alternative patterns of
institutionalization?
2. Formal Institutionalization vs. Informal Institutionalization. To
address the question about the existence of alternative institutional
patterns, and further specify his characterization of new democracies,
O’Donnell relies on the distinction that organizational theorists
18
The topic of horizontal accountability directly echoes the classical discussion of
“checks and balances” by Montesquieu and Madison. O’Donnell explicitly quotes the
Federalists (1999b: 48, fn. 22).
111
conventionally make between formal institutions and informal
institutions. However, O’Donnell uses this distinction not only to refer to
a contrast between the rules officially sanctioned by the state and the
rules that officials and citizens actually follow. Informal institutions, in
O’Donnell’s framework, centrally involve particularistic criteria of
administering public resources, particularly, public funds and
appointments. In concrete terms, this means that, under informal rules,
the allocation of public resources is not governed by impersonal criteria,
such as efficiency, fairness or merit, but by personal ties. Accordingly,
state officials regularly use their positions to favor relatives, friends, and
partners in private economic affairs. These practices are certainly found
in any political system, but O’Donnell’s point is that they are especially
prevalent in Latin America (1996/1999a: 181).
O’Donnell argues that because public officials do not observe the formal
rules of horizontal accountability established by law, this does not mean
that the behavior of those officials is not institutionalized (1996/1999a: 180-
181, 189, fn. 14). The crucial point is that “new polyarchies actually have
two extremely important institutions. One is highly formalized, but
intermittent: elections [i.e., vertical accountability]. The other is informal,
permanent, and pervasive: particularism (or clientelism, broadly defined),
which encompasses various sorts of non-universalistic relationships,
ranging from hierarchical particularistic exchanges, patronage, nepotism,
and favors to actions that, under the formal rules of the institutional
package of polyarchy, would be considered corrupt” (O’Donnell 1996/
1999a: 176).
On the basis of this observation, O’Donnell describes countries like
Argentina and Brazil as “informally institutionalized democracies,” a
characterization that stresses that they have institutionalized both the
mechanisms of polyarchy for the selection of top political authorities and a
wide set of particularistic arrangements for the regulation of other political
spheres such as the allocation of public funds and the recruitment of
lower-ranking state officials.
Two points about O’Donnell’s argument must be underscored. First, by
stating that informal practices are “institutions,” O’Donnell calls attention
to the fact that problems such as corruption and nepotism are not isolated
episodes in specific governments, but a long-standing and stable feature of
several new democracies. According to O’Donnell, those practices are a
recurrent and generally accepted pattern of policy-making (1995/1999a:
166; 1996/1999a: 180-182). Second, O’Donnell advances what he calls a
“positive description” of new democracies, i.e., a description that not only
points to the absence of an attribute —in this case, horizontal
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
26 - otoño 2012
112
STUDIA POLITICÆ
accountability; but also specifies the attribute that replaces it— i.e.,
particularistic/informal institutions.
19
3. Democratic Regime vs. Democratic State. To locate the issue of
informal institutions within a broader conceptual framework, O’Donnell
advances the distinction between democratic regime and democratic state.
A good point of entry to this distinction is to enumerate the set of
citizenship rights that, according to O’Donnell, are relevant to each
concept. The rights relevant to a democratic regime are those included in
Dahl’s notion of polyarchy, ranging from freedom of expression and
association to the right to vote and run for office in open elections.
O’Donnell makes clear that the informal institutions discussed in the
previous section do not undermine polyarchic rights.
20
Although O’Donnell
has not offered yet a systematic inventory of the rights that would define a
democratic state, he forcefully argues that informal/particularistic
institutions cancel some citizenship rights that mainstream definitions of
democratic regime have failed to recognize. Broadly speaking, O’Donnell is
concerned with the rights of citizens to a fair treatment by public agencies,
including centrally the courts, police departments, hospitals, and schools.
He pays special attention to the right not to be subjected to illegal violence
and other forms of mistreatment by the police, the right to the fair
enforcement of property law, and the provisions that may serve to protect
the economic and social position of the underprivileged —especially of
peasants vis-à-vis landowners— but that are routinely not enforced.
21
This
19
It must also be noted how O’Donnell’s argument stands in relation to other
approaches that do acknowledge the importance of informal institutions in Latin
American politics, especially those stemming from the cultural tradition. In contrast to
these approaches, O’Donnell is quick to point that informal institutions are not the entire
story, because the specific subset of institutions related to the selection of political
authorities does work according to formal prescriptions.
20
The point simply is that O’Donnell is not interested in the cases where the specific
rights of polyarchy are at risk, and, following regime analysis’ framework, he considers
that those cases are perfectly described by the conventional concept of authoritarian
regime.
21
These rights, as O’Donnell carefully notes, are not the economic or social rights
associated to the Welfare State. They are just rights included in the civil law of most
countries, which parallel the provisions that Marshall called “civil citizenship,” as
distinct both from political citizenship (which overlap with the rights of polyarchy or a
democratic regime) and social citizenship (the rights provided by the Welfare State). See
Marshall (1992). This distinction is crucial for O’Donnell’s argument that his concept of
democratic state does not include features of the economy and the society.
113
latter set of rights is obviously important but, according to O’Donnell, the
failure of the state to protect it does not affect the capacity of citizens to
participate freely and openly in the process of elections.
Thus, O’Donnell argues that the expansion of the rights associated to a
democratic regime that most countries of Latin America experienced in the
1980s and 1990s was not accompanied by the strengthening of a broader
set of citizenship rights. It is precisely to convey this duality that O’Donnell
advances the distinction between democratic regime and democratic state:
he argues that “informally institutionalized democracies” have a democratic
regime but have not developed a democratic state. When dealing with
concrete cases, this distinction allows O’Donnell to affirm, for instance,
that even though Argentina and Brazil qualify as democratic regimes
(which sets them apart from countries where elections are not fully
competitive, such as Mexico and Peru), their states are authoritarian,
calling attention to the contrast with advanced societies that presumably
have reduced substantially the incidence of particularistic institutions
(O’Donnell 1996/1999a: 141-143).
22
Restructuring O’Donnell’s Concepts: From Access to Exercise
In this section I will analyze O’Donnell’s contributions in light of the
distinction between access to power and exercise of power. I will argue
that this distinction not only clarifies O’Donnell’s research program but
also shows that his departure from classical regime analysis is even more
drastic than he suggests. I will first focus on his distinction between state
and regime, and then I will make some observations about different types
of failure of horizontal accountability. In the course of the analysis of both
topics, I will make clear that the informal institutions identified by
O’Donnell are primarily institutions of exercise of power.
1. State and Regime. The distinction between state and regime has a long
and fruitful trajectory in the study of Latin American politics (Collier 1979:
370, 402-403). This section offers a refinement to this tradition by
showing that the analytical relation between regime and state is one of a
22
Collier and Levistky (1997: 447-448) describe this conceptual strategy as a “way of
making a more differentiated assessment of what is deemed to be an incomplete case of
democracy, specifically by establishing a higher and lower standard for democracy
[democratic state versus democratic regime, respectively] and declaring that these
countries meet only the lower standard.”
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
26 - otoño 2012
114
STUDIA POLITICÆ
part-whole relation. This clarification will bring to the surface the
conceptual framework in which those notions are implicitly embedded.
23
If the concept of state advanced by O’Donnell is adopted, according to
which the state is both the organization that controls the means of coercion
within the territoriy defined by its boundaries and the legal order enforced
by that organization (O’Donnell 1995/1999a: 134-137), then the regime
may be seen as an aspect, or part, of the state. The political regime is a set
of procedures— for instance, the entire electoral process —that is
organized and regulated by the state.
24
If the regime is an aspect of the
state, then to argue that one set of rights is associated with the regime,
whereas another set is associated with the state does not present the
distinction as sharply as it can be drawn. Put differently, by claiming that
informal/particularistic institutions involve the state, whereas the fairness
of elections is an issue of the regime, as if it were not related to the state,
O’Donnell tends to overlook the analytical relation between state and
regime. More important, as students of regime change have also been
concerned with state institutions (since the regime is a part of the state),
O’Donnell obscures how important and radical his shift of focus really is.
The crucial point to understand O’Donnell’s departure from regime
analysis is, then, to identify which specific aspect of the state is analyzed
in each case. The distinction between access to power and exercise of
power is the key in this respect. Whereas, as noted above, the phenomena
studied by regime analysts, such as the breakdown of democracy and the
transition from authoritarianism, involve a change in the form of access to
state power, the informal/particularistic practices analyzed by O’Donnell
can be seen as a form of exercise of state power. They are a mode by
which public officials administer state resources.
It is important to insist that both the form of access and the form of
exercise are procedural aspects of the political process. Particularistic
practices of exercise —very much like free and fair elections— constitute
“institutions” as O’Donnell noted, and are not a matter of isolated decisions
or particular governments. Hence, O’Donnell is not promoting a return to
23
For interesting examples about the negative consequences of isolating the concepts
from their broader semantical context, transforming them into “gross concepts,” see Sha-
piro 1989: 51-60.
24
O’Donnell declares that the broader set of rights he is concerned with is a
component of the state precisely because it forms part of the state’s legal system
(O’Donnell 1994/1999a: 135-136). Thus, the argument that the regime is part of the
state is based on the same criterion employed by O’Donnell.
115
the “classical theory” of democracy criticized by Schumpeter, which
focused on substantive policy outcomes. On the other hand, he is not
introducing features of the economy or the society within his definition of
democracy: he emphasizes that the institutions he focuses on are eminently
political. These observations help to restate, with greater precision, the
importance of the access/exercise distinction for pinpointing how exactly
O’Donnell’s contributions stand in relation to regime analysis. Both
O’Donnell and regime analysts focus on political/state institutions. Yet,
whereas regime analysts focus on institutions of access, O’Donnell
focuses on institutions of exercise.
2. The Failure of Horizontal Accountability as a Problem of Exercise.
The access/exercise distinction can also shed new light on O’Donnell’s
discussion of horizontal accountability. My general argument is that the
access/exercise distinction cuts across the horizontal accountability/vertical
accountability distinction, and, more important, that it contributes to
identifying with greater precision the problems of intrastate relations and
informal institutionalization with which O’Donnell is concerned.
2.a. The Judicial Branch. A key instance of horizontal accountability
overseen by the judiciary is central to the access to power, namely, the
commissions of electoral justice, which supervise the fairness of the
electoral process. In fact, electoral justice works reasonably well in the
countries of Latin America, except for the cases of Mexico pre-2000,
Paraguay, and Peru, which for that and related reasons do not qualify as
democracies. This observation highlights how the distinction between
access and exercise may be more precise for mapping the “problematic”
features of Latin American politics than the distinction between horizontal
accountability and vertical accountability. The crucial point is that the
agencies within the judicial branch that are weak are those in charge of
monitoring how authorities exercise political power, whereas those related
to the access, including centrally the commissions of electoral justice, work
relatively close to the formal prescriptions.
2.b. The Legislature. The basic point about the legislatures as an instance
of horizontal accountability is that their failure to control the executive may
reflect two different types of problems. The first type of failure takes place
when the president, resorting to violence or the threat of it, de facto
deprives the legislators of their constitutional powers. In the second type of
failure the legislators are relatively powerful actors within the political
process, but instead of monitoring the activities of the other branches of
government, tend to use their positions to collude with the executive and
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
26 - otoño 2012
116
STUDIA POLITICÆ
other state officials in the expansion of the informal institutions analyzed by
O’Donnell. In this case, legislators give up their surveillance responsibilities
in exchange for public resources for their clienteles.
If we take into account that, in contrast to all other agents of horizontal
accountability, legislators are elected authorities, then it becomes clear
that the crucial problem in the first case is that the form of access to
power moved in an authoritarian direction. By contrast, the second
situation does not entail any change in the form of access to power.
Rather, the lack of horizontal accountability in this case is a problem of
exercise of power.
Although O’Donnell does not differentiate the failures of horizontal
accountability in this way, two recurring observations in his work
indicate that he is interested in the contexts where the lack of horizontal
accountability is more related to problems of exercise than to problems
of access. First, O’Donnell explicitly declares that Peru under Fujimori
was not a democratic regime and, as a consequence, he excludes it from
the subset of informally institutionalized democracies he is interested in,
beginning with Argentina and Brazil. Although most judgements about the
relative power of the legislatures vis-à-vis the president in Argentina and
Brazil must wait until better measures are available, the differences
between these cases and Peru after Fujimori closed the congress seem
clear enough to reject any mechanical claim the sense that the Argentine
and Brazilian legislatures were deprived of political authority. In fact, if
O’Donnell considered that they do not have a significant degree of
political influence, he would have also excluded Argentina and Brazil from
the set of democratic regimes. Second, O’Donnell is concerned with the
members of the congress in Argentina and Brazil who are almost
exclusively dedicated to the “exchange of ‘favors’ with the executive and
various state bureaucracies.” Of course, “brown legislators,” as
O’Donnell’s characterizes them, require regular access to public
resources (1993/1999a: 140).
Thus, O’Donnell does not focus on whether the members of the congress
in Argentina and Brazil have effective power or not. He almost takes for
granted that they do have power, and as they obtained it by means of free
elections, the access dimension in these countries remains unaltered. The
really crucial issue, which reveals the importance of the access/exercise
distinction, is how members of the congress exercise the power that free
elections have assigned to them.
To recapitulate, I have suggested that O’Donnell has helped to open a
new discussion on the quality of democracy in Latin America, and that
117
major parts of his analysis can be conceptualized more sharply if they
are understood as involving the exercise of political power. In fact, it is
the focus on the exercise of power that ultimately distinguishes
O’Donnell’s contributions from the literature on regime change, which,
as shown in the first part of the paper, centered on the issues of access
to power. In the remainder of the paper I will push the discussion a
step further and ask whether these issues of exercise of power are, in
fact, most usefully understood as involving questions of democracy and
democratization.
III. Democratization or Bureaucratization?
When the topics of exercise are the central research problem —as it
seems to be increasingly the case in the study of Latin American
politics— a promising conceptual strategy is to make use of the
distinction between patrimonialism and bureaucracy advanced by Weber
(1978: chaps. 10-13). In the same way that the access dimension is
most usefully conceptualized as raising issues of democracy/
authoritarianism, the issues of exercise can productively be analyzed in
terms of patrimonialism/bureaucracy.
According to Weber, “the genuinely patrimonial office differs from the
bureaucratic one” in that the former “lacks the bureaucratic separation of
the ‘private’ and the ‘official’ sphere.” In more concrete, organizational
terms, the lack of separation between public resources and private
property means that under patrimonialism “office is treated as a benefice,
as a purely personal affair of the ruler, and political power can be exploited
by means of contributions and fees” (1978: 1028). The concomitant
proliferation of “favors, promises and personal privileges” is, of course, the
common element of the whole array of “informal institutions” mentioned
by O’Donnell, from clientelism to the most blatant episodes of corruption
(Weber 1978: 1041).
Likewise, from the standpoint of Weber’s typology, the failure of the state
to provide basic public goods —as well as to enforce the specific set of
citizen rights that O’Donnell is concerned with— is a direct consequence
of patrimonialism. Given that, in a patrimonial administration, political
authorities use appointments to lower ranking positions as a source of
patronage, officials in charge of public services normally lack the
“technical training and occupational specialization” that characterize a
bureaucratic administration (Weber 1978: 220; 1028-29). Since most part
of state resources is consumed in particularistic exchanges with powerful
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
26 - otoño 2012
118
STUDIA POLITICÆ
actors in the society, patrimonial administration is antagonistic to a fair
provision of public goods.
Hence, according to this conceptualization, transformations in the mode of
exercise of political power, in particular the struggles for eradicating
patrimonial practices, are a matter of bureaucratization, rather than of
democratization. In this way, the problems related to the “quality” of the
institutions of exercise that contemporary literature on Latin American
politics is concerned with are placed in a new, although classical,
theoretical framework —they are moved from Dahl’s domain to Weber’s
domain.
25
Characterizing Countries in Terms of the Dimensions of
Democratization and Bureaucratization
The distinction between access and exercise may help to bring into shar-
per focus the different configurations of political structures in Latin
America. For instance, in countries like Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay
the perils of a reversion to a previous form of access to state power
have been significantly dissipated since the late 1980s. Free and fair elec-
tions have replaced military insurrections as the main form of gaining
access to political power in these three countries, which places them
close to Costa Rica, the case with the longest tradition of democratic ac-
cess in the region. Chile displays the first contrast along the access di-
mension. In this country democratically elected authorities must share
their political power with some legislators that have not gained access to
their positions by means of an electoral competition. Indeed, they were
designated by the preceding military government, and the fact that they
have not been removed from their positions is conventionally viewed as
evidence that the threat of a military coup is still an important feature of
Chilean politics. In Paraguay, the threat of a military coup (and not ne-
cessarily an actual insurrection) is increasingly a way of influencing poli-
cy decisions. In Peru and Mexico pre-2000, despite all their differences,
25
Two observations about Weber’s distinction between patrimonialism and bureaucra-
cy are in order. First, Weber understood patrimonalism and bureaucracy as polar forms
of administration, a distinction that is independent from his typology of legitimate domi-
nation or authority (Roth 1968: 194-97). Whereas the latter emphasizes subjective moti-
vations, and relies on an interpretive approach, the former is purely institutional and
only focuses on procedural aspects that are empirically observable.
119
the access to political power was far from being as competitive as it is
in Argentina or Uruguay.
When the cases are sorted in relation to the forms of exercise of political
power, a different picture emerges. For instance, political power in Chile
is exercised in a bureaucratic fashion. The transparency in the
administration of public finances, the professional training of state
officials, and the effectiveness of the checks on the behavior of political
authorities, are features that distinguish Chile from its neighbors, with the
exception of Uruguay. Thus, whereas the access to power in Chile is less
democratic than in Argentina or Brazil, the exercise is much more
bureaucratic. In turn, the pervasiveness of patrimonial practices of
exercise places Argentina and Brazil close to cases like Paraguay, and
Mexico and Peru pre-2000, irrespective of the differences between both
groups of cases in terms of the access dimension. Thus, only Uruguay
and Costa Rica seem to combine a democratic access with a bureaucratic
exercise.
Figure 2 shows how the access/exercise distinction may help to identify
different combinations of political arrangements. To further illustrate the
potential usefulness of the access/exercise distinction, the figure includes
familiar cases outside Latin America as comparative yardsticks
—contemporary Norway, Italy from the return to democracy to the late
1980s, and Brandemburg-Prussia. As each of these cases displays a
different combination of rather extreme values along the dimensions of
comparison, they provide good evidence supporting the argument that
the institutions of exercise may vary independently from those of
access. Norway has reached unparalleled levels of democratization and
bureaucratization, Prussia was highly bureaucratic and authoritarian, and
Italy, at least up to the early 1990s, has been one of the most prominent
cases of patrimonialism among advanced democracies (Shefter 1977/
1994: 30-38).
Explaining Transformations of Access versus Exercise
The most important reason for carefully distinguishing the issues of
democratization and bureaucratization is that the changes in the form of
access to power and the changes in the form of exercise of power have
different explanations —i.e., they are the outcome of divergent causal
processes. The experience of Modern Europe is very clear regarding the
divergence of the processes of bureaucratization and democratization. The
timing, actors, and causes involved in each process were significantly
different.
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
26 - otoño 2012
120
STUDIA POLITICÆ
Figure 2. Access to Power versus Exercise of Power
• Norway
• Costa Rica
• Uruguay
• Chile
• Prussia
2
• Italy
1
• Argentina
• Brazil
• Paraguay
• México
ACCESS
Authoritarian
Democratic
1
Before the “mani pulite” process of the late 1980s.
2
17
th
and 18
th
centuries.
Patrimonial
Bureaucratic
Administration
Administration
EXERCISE
121
Broadly speaking, two sociological traditions can be invoked —the society-
centered perspective and the state-centered one— to explain the emergence
of bureaucratic administration in Europe. Despite their huge differences,
both perspectives stress that the process of bureaucratization preceded
democratization, and are unequivocal about the fact that each process were
set in motion by different causes.
According to the society-centered perspective, stemming from the works
of Marx and Marshall, the causes of the transformation of the exercise of
political power —the elimination of patrimonial practices and the
expansion of bureaucratization— must be traced to a particular stage of
economic modernization, namely, to the rise of the capitalist enterprise,
which requires the predictability of state activities in order to maximize
its profits (Jessop 1977). On the other hand, the state-centered approach,
associated to the works of Hintze (1970) and Tilly (1975), explains
bureaucratization as the result of geopolitical competition. In order to
avoid the costs of being surpassed by the military capacities of their
neighbors, the European states eliminated traditional practices of
extracting resources from the society and recruiting their administrative
staff, and replace those practices with other, more modern and efficient
ones.
Therefore, no matter which perspective is adopted in order to account for
the bureaucratization of the European states, its timing, causes, and leading
actors were different from those of democratization. Democratization, in
the most premature case, began two centuries later and it was associated
to the political organization and activation of the middle-classes and
industrial workers through mass political parties. The demands of these
parties focused on the opening of the access to the resources of the state
and the incorporation of their constituencies into the political process
—claims that had little to do with those advanced by capitalists and military
bureaucracies in previous times.
To sum up, the bureaucratization of the state differs from the expansion of
opportunities of access to political power. The reason for this difference is
that the actors interested in the bureaucratization of the state are not the
same as those who are willing to fight for democracy. Likewise, the actors
negatively affected by patrimonial practices are not necessarily the same as
those excluded by authoritarian regimes. Every change in the institutions
regulating state-society relations, either in the access dimension or in the
exercise dimension, entails a clash of interests. Those changes only take
place if there are actors interested in bringing them about and, equally
important, if they are powerful enough to achieve their objectives.
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
26 - otoño 2012
122
STUDIA POLITICÆ
This reasoning leads to a simple observation regarding Latin American
politics: in most countries of the region actors appeared who were
interested in democratization, and, in different junctures, they acquired the
power to force a reform in the intended direction. By contrast, why were
patrimonial powers so strong —or their antagonists so weak— in
Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico? What happened in Chile, Costa Rica, and
Uruguay, where patrimonial powers were defeated? It is quite clear that
countries can be bureaucratic and democratic at the same time if
bureaucratization precedes democratization. This is a central lesson to be
drawn from the European experience. But we know little about the
development of the countries that have democratized the access to power
in a context where patrimonialism is the prevailing form of exercise. Can
these countries become bureaucratic? What is the weight of the
trajectories and the sequencing of the processes of democratization and
bureaucratization? This is perhaps the central question posed by the Latin
American experience.
The strategy of restricting the focus of the authoritarianism/democracy
distinction to the topics of access, and employing the patrmoniamlism/
bureaucracy to deal conceptually with the institutions of exercise, also
helps to transform intuitive concerns of current literature on Latin
American politics into a series of more precise research questions. To
begin with, how do the problems of exercise of power affect the form
of access? Under what conditions does democratization favor
bureaucratization? Conversely, in which cases do patrimonial practices
of exercise threaten the stability of democracy? Is it possible that
patrimonialism, far from stimulating an authoritarian regression, actually
increases democracy’s life expectancy by incorporating into the
democratic process actors that would become disloyal to democracy as
a form of access if they were deprived of the benefits derived from
clientelistic practices of exercise? How can we explain that some of the
most powerful political leaders and parties in the continent —actors
who resolutely encouraged the transition to democracy in the 1980s, and
who certainly are the best positioned to defend it against an authoritarian
regression— have strong vested interests in the reproduction of patrimonial
forms of exercising power?
IV. Conclusion
This paper introduced the distinction between access to power and
exercise of power as a way to clarify some significant trends in the
literature on regimes. It showed, first, that the literature on regimes has
123
traditionally focused on issues of access to power, reflecting the
consensus that developed around a Schumpeterian understanding of
democracy. Second, it argued that recent departures in the analysis of
Latin American politics, in which the work of O’Donnell has played a
central role, can best be understood as focusing on the distinct issue of
exercise of power.
Overall, the exercise of power is a topic that, in comparison with the study
of issues of access to power, has been relatively neglected. Drawing upon
O’Donnell’s work, this paper stressed the importance of the problems of
exercise. Indeed, it may be argued that the study of the exercise of power
is one of the greatest challenges faced by students of comparative politics.
This paper has explored the Weberian distinction between patrimonialism
and bureaucracy as an analytical tool that may prove useful in helping to
meet this challenge.
References
ALVAREZ, Michael; José Antonio CHEIBUB; Fernando LIMONGI and Adam PRZEWORSKI
(1996). “Classifying Political Regimes.” Studies in Comparative International Deve-
lopment, 31, 2, pp. 3-36.
ALMOND, Gabriel (1956). “Comparative Political Systems.” In HANS, Eulau, ed., Politi-
cal Behavior, Glencoe, IL: Free Press, pp. 35-42.
COLLIER, David, ed. (1979). The New Authoritarianism in Latin America. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
COLLIER, David and Steven LEVITSKY (1997). “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual
Innovation in Comparative Research.” World Politics, 49, April, pp. 430-451.
COLLIER, Ruth (2000). “Democratic Transition.” In Paul Barry CLARK y Joe FOWE-
RAKER, eds., Encyclopedia of Democratic Thought, London: Routledge (forthco-
ming).
DAHL, Robert (1956). A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago, IL: University of Chi-
cago Press.
DAHL, Robert (1971). Polyarchy. New Haven, CO: Yale University Press.
——— (1979). “Procedural Democracy.” In Peter LASLETT and James FISHKIN, eds.,
Philosophy, Politics, and Society. New Haven, CO: Yale University Press, pp.
97-133.
——— (1989). Democracy and its Critics. New Haven, CO: Yale University Press.
DIAMOND, Larry Jay; Juan J. LINZ and Seymour Martin LIPSET (1990). Politics in Deve-
loping Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy. Boulder, CO: L. Rienner
Publishers.
DI PALMA, Giuseppe (1990). To Craft Democracies. Berkeley, CA: University of Cali-
fornia Press.
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
26 - otoño 2012
124
STUDIA POLITICÆ
FREEDEN, Michael (1996). Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
GALLIE, W. B. (1956). “Essentially Contested Concepts.” Proceedings of the Aristote-
lian Society, 56. London: Harrison & Sons: pp. 167-198.
HELD, David (1987). Models of Democracy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
HINTZE, O. (1970). Staat und Verfassung: Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Algemeinen
Verfassungsgeschichte. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
HUNTINGTON, Samuel (1989). “The Modest Meaning of Democracy.” In Robert PASTOR,
ed., Democracy in the Americas: Stopping the Pendulum. New York, NY: Holmes &
Meier, pp. 11-28.
——— (1991). The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press.
JESSOP, B. (1977). “Recent developments in Marxist theories of the capitalist state.”
Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1, pp. 353-373.
KARL, Terry (1990). “Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America.” Comparative
Politics, 23.
LINZ, Juan (1964). “An Authoritarian Regime: Spain.” In Erik ALLARDT and Yrjö LITTU-
NEN, eds., Cleavages, Ideologies, and Party Systems. Helsinki: The Academic Books-
tore, pp. 291-341.
——— (1975). “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes.” In Fred GREENSTEIN and Nel-
son POLSBY, eds., Handbook of Political Science, 3. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley,
pp. 175-411.
——— (1978). The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown and Reequi-
libration, volume 1 of Juan LINZ and Alfred STEPAN, eds., The Breakdown of Demo-
cratic Regimes, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
LIPSET, Seymour M. (1959). “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Develo-
pment and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review, 53, March, pp.
69-105.
——— (1963). Political Man, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.
MARSHALL, T. H. (1992). Citizenship and Social Class. London: Pluto Press.
MUNCK, Gerardo (1994). “Democratic Transitions in Comparative Perspective.” Com-
parative Politics, 26, 3, pp. 355-375.
O’DONNELL, Guillermo (1973). Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism. Ber-
keley: University of California Press.
——— (1979). “Notas para el Estudio de Procesos de Democratización a partir del Es-
tado Burocrático-Autoritario.” Estudios CEDES, 2, 5, Buenos Aires.
——— (1993/1999a). “On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems:
A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist Countries,” World De-
velopment, 21, 8, pp. 1355–1369.
——— (1994/1999a).”Delegative Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, 5, 1, pp. 55-69.
——— (1996/1999a). “Illusions about Consolidation,” Journal of Democracy, 7, 2, pp.
34-51.
125
O’DONNELL, Guillermo (1999a). Counterpoints. Selected Essays on Authoritarianism
and Democratization. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
——— (1999b). “Horizontal Accountability and New Polyarchies.” In Andreas SCHE-
DLER; Larry DIAMOND, and Mark PLATTNER, eds., The Self-Restraining State:
Power and Accountability in New Democracies. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, pp.
29-52.
——— (1999c). “Polyarchies and the (Un)Rule of Law in Latin America.” In Juan MÉN-
DEZ; Guillermo O’DONNELL, and Paulo Segio PINHEIRO, eds., The (Un)Rule of Law
and the Underprivileged in Latin America. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press.
O’DONNELL, Guillermo and Philippe SCHMITTER (1986). Tentative Conclusions about
Uncertain Democracies, volume 4 of Guillermo O’DONNELL, Philippe SCHMITTER
and Laurence WHITEHEAD, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. Baltimore: The
John Hopkins University Press.
PRIDHAM, Geoffrey (1995). Transitions to Democracy. Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth Pu-
blishing Company.
PRZEWORSKI, Adamv (1991). Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Refor-
ms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
RUESCHEMEYER, Dietrich; Evelyn Huber STEPHENS, and John D. STEPHENS (1992). Ca-
pitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
RUSTOW, Dankwart (1970). “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model.”
Comparative Politics, 3, pp. 337-363.
SARTORI, Giovanni (1987). The Theory of Democracy Revisited. Chatham, NJ: Chatham
House Publishers.
SCHUMPETER, Joseph A. (1947). Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: NY:
Harper & Row Publishers.
SHAPIRO, Ian. (1989). “Gross Concepts in Political Argument.” Political Theory, 17, 1,
pp. 51-71.
SHEFTER, M. (1977). “Party and patronage: Germany, England, and Italy.” Politics and
Society, 7, pp. 403-451.
SIN, Don Chull. “On The Third Wave of Democratization.” World Politics, 47, pp.
135-170.
TILLY, Charles (1975). “Reflections on the History of European State-Making.” In Char-
les TILLY, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
WEBER, Max (1978). Economy and Society. Berkeley, CA: University of Califor-
9nia Press.
SEBASTIÁN MAZZUCA
Fecha de recepción: 15/08/12
Fecha de aceptación: 25/09/12
