Democracy and Its Alternatives

Abstract

Richard Rose took a long view of regime evolution. He understood the development and replacement of regimes as a process of continuous interaction between rulers and ruled. In his model, the populace holds demands and expectations of government. Citizens compare the current regime with the past regime and an anticipated future regime, as well as potential alternative regime types. People have expectations about how they are likely to fare in the future based on their experience with the old regime and the regime currently in place, and their levels of support are continuously shaped by their personal experiences with it. Since even an authoritarian government requires some level of acceptance on the part of the populace, those attitudes and expectations affect the quality of the government the rulers provide. In his work on the transformation of the post-communist countries, Rose builds on the classic political culture research program initiated by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, the World Values Study launched by Ronald Inglehart, and the later literature on regime transitions. He builds on Samuel Huntington’s model of waves of democratization followed by reversions to autocracy, as well as Robert Dahl’s conception of the dimensions of evolution of democracy, participation, and contestation (Huntington 1991; Dahl 1971).