The Political Economy of the Transition from Authoritarianism

The last two decades have seen many societies attempt the move from authoritarianism to democracy. Some of these transitions have been successful, while others remain tentative, and some have been reversed with either a relapse into full dictatorship or with the trappings of democracy used to cloak semi-authoritarianism. Some transitions have involved ending long and bloody civil wars, while others have been made with few lives lost. In some societies, long civil wars continue after periodic, but failed, attempts at peace and are spreading themselves across borders to become larger regional conflicts. Transition is a highly complex phenomenon. One dimension is transitional justice, defined as “efforts during post-conflict and post-authoritarian transitions to address the legacies of massive atrocities and human rights abuses.”2 Violence is often used to create distributive injustice (the expropriation of land from indigenous people, for example) and to perpetuate it (including the exploitative economic relations that underpin high social inequality). The fiscal cost of the military and security apparatus left by authoritarianism can be a significant burden to new democracies, and the economic involvement of the military and other powerful elites left over from authoritarianism can continue to impose a heavy economic price well beyond the end of authoritarian rule. If authoritarianism created a distorted economy and high inequality, democrats may find this difficult to change. Democracy’s prospects will then be endangered since expectations of social justice will be high but frustrated. Consequently, transition is unlikely to succeed unless its economic dimensions are adequately addressed.