Comparing “From Above” to “From Below” Democratization

In the article, “The Demise of Mexico’s One-Party Dominant Regime”, the idea of democratization working it’s way down from the place of elites to the people is discussed. This is contrasted in the article, “An Insurgent Path to Democracy Popular Mobilization, Economic Interests, and Regime Transition in South Africa and El Salvador”, which takes the point of view from a couple of different countries but in particular the Latin American Country of El Salvador and it’s version of democratization which is: from the people to the elites and government from the ground up. “From above” and “from below” democratization are commonly considered separate from one another, but many processes of democratization and revolutions take parts from both tactics and use them to either mobilize the public or the government.

Mexico could not classify itself as a democracy until 2000 when one of the definitions of democracy was finally met a “democracy is a system in which parties lose elections”. The major party in Mexico, the PRI or Institutional Revolutionary Party, was in power continuously for over seventy years. Just because Mexico was holding apparently free and fair elections, the same party was staying in power and new and different parties could not be formed. The difference between Mexico’s one-party-dominant autocracy and a democracy is that elections must be competitive such that there is a real possibility that the incumbent might lose, although in the case of Mexico for the majority of the 20th century that is not an accurate description of their autocracy. Politicians under this system choose to compete because it was how a politician could obtain office easily even if they didn’t agree with how the government was being ran and the party offered those politicians who could reach political office or who attained a bureaucratic position significant opportunities to further their own private economic goals (including corruption) while in office, thus making even short political careers attractive to most politicians. The public wasn’t involved in the affairs of the government, not through guerilla warfare or mass outcry, but between 1994 and 1996 there were electoral reforms in which the PRI relinquished its control of the Federal Electoral Institute which controlled the electoral fraud in the county. By reform, it was a strategic move to make the public feel more secure and and the controlling autocracy did not believe that any other party could ever take control even with a free and fair electoral commision. This is a “from above” democratization process but with modernization theory at play, there could have been a tipping point of wealth in the country from the lower and middle classes that allowed for the government to be transitioned to a democracy not just the impact of elites on the changing of the policies of the PRI.

El Salvador is an example of democratization from below because “sustained mobilization by poor and working-class people transformed key interests of economic elites, leading to pressure on the state to compromise with the insurgents, thereby strengthening regime moderates over hard-liners with the result that negotiated transitions to democracy followed.” While political and economic struggles did motivate some of Mexico’s elites to seek reform, the people were not the main component in the protest, but in El Salvador brutal repression caused widespread mobilization. Democratization from below is more organic and El Salvador was an oligarchic society which according to the article is labor repressive. The major differences between the two kinds of processes are the reasons in which they are done, whether it be to get rid of an autocracy or overthrow an oligarchy.