Democracy and human rights in developing countries

The 1980s saw a wave of democratisation sweeping the globe. Similar transformations were evident in the early 1950s, when modernisation theorists were optimistic about the future of democracy in newly emerging states; these new democracies, however, failed to maintain stability and vacillated between democratic and authoritarian regimes. Through a synthesis of the theories of modernization, dependency and bureaucratic authoritarianism, Arat explains this instability in terms of the imbalance between two groups of human rights: civil-political and socioeconomic. Arguing against those who believe that socioeconomic rights are group rights that can be maintained only at the expense of individual civil-political rights - and that a trade-off between liberty and equality is inevitable - Arat demonstrates that the stability of democracy requires a balance between the two groups of human rights. A historic review, an empirical analysis of more than 150 countries, and case studies of Costa Rica, India and Turkey support her thesis that developing countries that recognise civil-political rights and establish democratic systems fail to maintain them if they neglect socioeconomic rights.