Essay: APPROACHES TO DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION: THE CONCEPT OF WAVE

CHAPTER ONE
APPROACHES TO DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION: THE CONCEPT OF WAVE
Democracy is among the most challenging concepts in the field, it is highly interrelated to the societal practices thus it witnessed several alterations and adjustments till it reached the current application which assumes authority for the government, procedures for forming the government and the purposes served by government. Modern Scholars like Huntington defined democracy as mechanisms for constituting the government. While Dahl introduced a procedural definition which bases democracy on the electoral process, however, such definition is minimal. Broadly, democracy is a collection of a responsible government, rational and informed deliberation, equal participation, power for all groups and effective control of policies governing citizens.
By the end of the 20thcentury, different countries were governed by democratic institutions. They emerged as a result to the democratic practices and revolutions that constituted a democratic wave; such wave took the form of widespread movements from authoritarian to democratic rule, often occurring against a backdrop of severe economic crises, adoption of market-oriented reforms or even undergoing some political liberation.
In the mid-1970s with the bereavement of Franco in Spain and the stepping down of the Salazar despotism in Portugal, one strict government following another began to give way to self-governing orders. By the 1990s, this wave of democratization had overwhelm even those countries that had almost no past of self-governing rule as was mainly the case in the Colored Revolutions countries in Eastern Europe, the spread of these coincidences raised long-standing questions about the democratic diffusion.
The spread of the spirit of democracy in that period led to challenges on the executive held powers and other social, economic and political institutions, which resulted in the emergence of new agents of change such as; civil resistance, non-violent movements, utilizing creative peaceful resistance tools such as comic slogans and graffiti, external support, as well as a variety of forms of vote monitoring and similar vote counts to overcome electoral frauds. On the other hand there was external support through the efforts of the international networks, NGOs, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) among other associations, as well as from experts in peaceful regime change, such as Gene Sharp books; all these are accredited with inspiring transitions in countries, even if they didn’t have enough prerequisites for democratization and where the autocrats regimes were firmly controlling the countries.
To study the notion of wave, its formulation and its dissemination this chapter provides a theoretically-grounded overview on the concept focusing on its development and its main elements. Moving from theory to practice, the chapter analyses some of the most important mechanisms of wave diffusion and the conducive environments for its continuity. Followed by analysis to the different phases of a wave with especial emphasis on the late responses or the complementary phases. It concludes by drawing on the implications of globalization on the process of democratic transition, that led to the emergence of new agents of change.
I. The Concept of Democratic Wave
Democratization is not instantaneous; it is a long term process. Correspondingly the history of democracy is not a slow steady advance but a succession of waves that have advanced, receded, then rolled in and crested again.
1. Development of the concept
The Wave is a natural phenomenon; it has been studied in the branch of physics. The term wave – in physics- means a disturbance or oscillation that travels through space and matter, accompanied by a transfer of energy. It was not until 1678 that wave theory came to the forefront. The theory witnessed several developments till it was introduced to the social sciences at the hands of Ralph Nelson Elliott who discovered its underlying social principles and developed its analytical tools in the 1930s.
In political science, the notion of democratic waves – which is the subject matter of this thesis- appeared at the hands of Samuel P. Huntington, in his 1991 article “Democracy\’s Third Wave”; Further expounded in his book published in the same year “The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century”. He wrote the third wave, partly as response to Fukuyama, defining a global democratization trend in the world post World War II. Huntington argued that between 1974 and 1990, at least 30 countries made transitions to democracy, just about doubling the number of democratic governments in the world. He mentioned that such era of democratic transitions constitute the third wave of democratization in the history of the modern world, his thesis articulates milestone primarily on the nature of the democratic waves, he identified five variables that led to the eruption of this wave the most important among them, for the purpose of this research, is the “snowballing” or “demonstration effects” which is a product of the new global communication.
In our context, Huntington\’s definition to the democratic wave will be utilized stating “the wave of democratization” as “a group of transitions from nondemocratic to democratic regimes that occur within a specified period of time and that significantly outnumber transitions in the opposite direction during that period”.
For a wave to occur it is usually connected to political phenomena inside the country and to similar events that happen simultaneously in different countries. The existence of waves meant the trend of democratization was global and therefore global factors were at work. Significantly, each wave ended with a “reverse wave” of democratic breakdowns; Huntington defined the reverse wave as “the return of post-authoritarian regimes that started the democratization transit back to the non-democratic practices”. ,
The democratic wave follows a certain pattern in its movement; according to Elliot the wave patterns link to form five and three-wave structures which themselves underlie self-similar wave structures of increasing size or higher degree. In the first small five-wave sequence, waves 1, 3 and 5 are motive, while waves 2 and 4 are corrective. Huntington used a similar pattern; He proposes the “two-steps forward, one-step back” dynamics where any wave witness dominant phases and corrective phases.
Some scholars built upon Huntington\’s concept of wave and used it in explaining the different waves, among these scholars were Robert Roswell Palmer, Crane Brinton and Hannah Arendt who used the concept of “democratic revolutionary wave” to explain the spread of the democratic revolutions across different regions. Others stated that revolutions not only come in waves across the diverse societies but also they witnessed growth in the proportion of the revolutionary waves in the last two centuries. These revolutionary waves are similar to the democratic ones as the causation of the modern revolutionary wave is regarded to the transnational factors; as the collapse of the Soviet Union in the Colored Revolutions case and the global economic meltdown beginning in 2008. Moreover they developed in dominant and corrective phases\’ pattern.
2. Elements of the concept
The Democratic wave reaches its dominant phases through diffusion that occurs both in temporal waves and in spatial clusters at unequal rates through different media, across different barriers and in the presence of different agents adding to the contagion processes of democratization.
a. Diffusion
The origin of the word diffusion is the Latin “diffundere” which means “to spread out”. It refers to a process whereby \’events of a given type in a given polity are conditioned by the occurrence of similar events in other polities at prior points in time. The concept became part of main stream of social sciences at the hands of Everett Rogers, in his 1962 book titled “Diffusion of Innovations”, later it was widely used by the political science scholars in different branches – to the researcher\’s knowledge- it acquired prominence when Huntington used it in “The third wave of democratization”. Furthermore, diffusion was used to illustrate the different mechanisms of the democratic transitions and it was proven to be parsimonious as it explained the role of the most recent actors in the transition process. As a result to its extensive use several methods were developed to study its different perspectives such as; Survival through Clustering, Demonstration Effect, Domino Theory and the Snowballing. Each of these methods may add to our understanding of democratic wave diffusion.
The diffusion of the democratic wave takes place through five stages;
Diffusion begins when an influential country starts the democratic transition, then the knowledge spread to the different countries whereby the awareness of activists starts formulating about the success of a certain model. The adopters collect information, study the techniques of transition, weigh the advantages and disadvantages and decide whether or not to adopt it. They take their decision regarding inaugurating the change or no, the activists work on mobilizing to achieve their goal and start the implementation process. Confirmation is the final stage; either the model succeeds and reaches the consolidation phase or it fails by returning to a different form of authoritarianism.
And for this to be done the actors follow a certain pattern which was identified by Rogers who categorized the adopters of the diffusion into five categories, “innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards” in the democratic wave diffusion there should be a country that initiates the democratic transition, followed by early adopters from other countries and the waves reaches its dominant phases when the early and late majority starts the transition, followed by the laggards who resemble the complementary phase or the late response to these dominant phases.
b. Parameters
To acknowledge the existence of a wave there has to be several simultaneous and/or consecutive incidences occurring in different countries at the same time calling for democratic change and actually achieving, at least, regime change. Second, the numbers of the newly democratic countries have to outnumber the non-democratic ones. Third, noticeable regional or global transition events have to occur almost at the same time or in consecutive times, according to the contribution of Sally Isaac the most important fundamental characteristic of the revolution waves – if successful – to change the shape of the entire geographic regions, with noticeable political, strategic and economic alterations in the existing international context. Fourth, the countries have to have some common feature that signifies the influence of the core country on the others, for instance there have to be similar actors, slogans or tools.
The strength of a democratic wave can be measured in terms of magnitude, number of countries involved, duration, and length of the wave without serious setbacks. Finally, the end of the wave will be marked by the existence of a reverse wave which denotes the failure of the regimes to maintain the democratic status or their inability to fully transit – to consolidate. Hence such reverse wave denotes the end of the democratization wave. In this respect this thesis will differentiate between the first stages of the wave where it is characterized by strength and the late stages that are away from the first stages with considerable time which are considered as complementary phase or the late response to the dominant phase, yet not a beginning of a new wave.
II. Factors Affecting The Wave
If diffusion is to have at least some effect, it will probably require an effective originator of the wave to empower the process of spreading the ideas to different countries over a long period of time. To get the ball rolling the wave has to be originated by a powerful country that enjoys a considerable weight among the dominant powers. This is required to ensure having an influence upon other countries and having the strength and support to fight the status quo. Nevertheless, such calls for change have to be in favor of the dominant powers on the regional and global levels. The second factor is the nature of the change; usually the democratic wave requires a degree of dramatization to be able to mobilize the masses and to gain their sympathy. The first and second waves were characterized by high degree of violence, bloodshed and victimization. Meanwhile, since the beginning of the third wave, peacefulness was the main feature either for mobilizing the people or for gaining recognition from the international community, however, a certain degree of minimal violence was always required to motivate the action. Briefly the country of origin and the nature of the events play a major role not only in the inauguration of the wave but also in its destiny.
The interactions among countries constantly seem to grow which necessitates simultaneously including exogenous as well as endogenous factors in explaining democratic wave diffusion; as stated below there are three levels of wave determinants, relevant explanations could be noticed at every level.
1. Conducive Domestic Environment
Several arguments were introduced on the factors affecting the wave diffusion; scholars like Rustow; O’Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead shed light on the primacy of the internal factors as the most important ones. The existence of a conducive domestic environment that would accept the change and enhance it is the first step to spread democratization; if the internal conditions in the country are not in favor of the change the wave won’t take effect, hence the readiness of the country is the most significant prerequisite.
Many influences contribute to this readiness such as; the decline of existing authoritarian regime, such decline is caused by; the inability of the regime to fulfill the increased popular demands or cope up with their expectations, an electoral fraud, military defeat and/or poor economic performance. In some cases this will be accompanied by the emergence of a coherent opposition movement, on one hand it mobilizes against the existing authoritarian regime and on the other it stimulates the internal environment to accept the democratic diffusion. Also the role of elites inside the country is very influential, the network of elites with their orientations and agendas influence the diffusion of the wave. If the elites are in favor of the change they will promote the democratic values, spread the awareness and prepare the masses to accept it, if not they might be a real hurdle hindering the transition. Even though all these are domestic factors the interconnections among countries, economies, or governing elites could influence the wave at the national level.
2. Conducive Regional Environment
Moving up the scale the second factor affecting the democratic wave is the existence of a conducive regional environment. Scholars like O’Loughlin found that even after the growth of democracies during the third wave, they are geographically clustered. Such argument was enhanced by scholars like Ray, Starr, and later Starr and Lindborg who emphasized on the spatial effect in the spread of democracy, the results of their studies give support to the idea that the level of a country’s democracy can be externally influenced by the regional and neighboring context. Gleditsch and Ward argued that a high proportion of democratic neighbors decrease the likelihood that an authoritative country will endure. Similar studies using both longitudinal and hierarchical data strengthen the earlier results. Moreover, the existence of a super power or a successful model in a certain region influences the path of the wave in the whole region .
The geographical proximity facilitates the diffusion due to the existence of similar legacies and traditions such as culture, history, imperial heritage, civic development, language, common history or even similar economic activities. Diffusion occurs within the geographically clustered countries, neighboring countries tend to imitate each other, and it can be externally influenced by the global, regional, and neighboring context. A concrete example of this is the fact that states undergoing democratization in general are surrounded by, compared to the average, more democratic states, the opposite is found for countries becoming less democratic. Huntington emphasizes that geographical and cultural similarities are the best prerequisites for diffusion of a wave.
Furthermore, the existence of a successful model that would act as a role model for the rest of the countries in starting the transition process highly influences the wave diffusion. This is referred to as the Domino effect and it stipulates that the democratization of one state in a region will influence the surrounding countries, thus, the increase or decrease in democracy in one country spread and “infect” neighboring countries, increasing or decreasing their democracy in turn.
3. Conducive Global Environment
The last set of factor affecting the wave diffusion is the existence of a conducive global environment. There is a special emphasis on this factor due to the expansion of the globalization repercussions that made the world a small country, it enabled penetrating the physical boarders and facilitated altering the domestic environment. Several other factors contribute to the existence of a conducive global environment such as the preferences of powerful countries or international institutions – or the former working through the latter- that create the change in other countries because of their structural positions in the international system. Also the rapid development in modern technologies and mass communication made it more difficult for authoritarian regimes to isolate their citizens from outside influences, and made it easier to circulate knowledge and spread awareness among wider population base; the following illustrates how the conducive global environment affects the wave diffusion.
The existence of an external “single cause” result in the diffusion of a wave, assuming that, the democratic transition occurred in all the wave countries from a single cause, B, this cause could be a rise of modern superpower, or any other major change in distributing power internationally. Huntington describes this global change as the reason of other important events that would influence the transition. According to the available evidence, the democratic developments were considerably a response to a single cause, that is, the outcome of victory of the World War II.
In the Third Wave this single cause is very obvious as the international arena witnessed the rise of new external actors with new polices and major shifts in power. The emergence of these actors was associated with democratic promotion. For instance, the European Union required having a democratic system a condition for joining the union; this promoted democratization on one hand and prevented regression to authoritarianism on the other. The collapse of the Soviet Union created the environment for the United States to spread democracy as the victorious ideal.
Another aspect is the parallel development, this refers to the development of a certain cause inside one country, simultaneously the same cause occurs in another country in a different level, despite the differences in the level, the existence of the cause will result in the occurrence of a wave. Plausibly, the democratic transition occurred in different countries was caused by the same developments within the same independent variables (V1, V2, etc.) establishing themselves at the same time within all the countries. According to Huntington, the progress of democracy in each country is a result of a common causal problem particular to the country in question, but similar causal problems may be working more or less at the same time in other countries with the same results . In brief, the existence of the same cause in different countries stimulates the diffusion of a wave.
Two parallel developments spread across the third wave; first, the deepening legitimacy problems of authoritarian regimes. Post World War II the authoritarian regimes witnessed significant decline in their legitimacy, due to the dominant democratic “ethos” that developed and became widely accepted. The lack of procedural legitimacy and self-renewal mechanisms in the authoritarian regimes led them to use democratic rhetoric to justify their legitimacy. The second is the effect of economic crisis; there is a definite relation between wealth, GDP, industrialization and the democratic transition, the economic welfare shapes the societal values, furthermore, the rapid economic growth can destabilize authoritarian regimes if combined with short-term economic crisis or failure. These factors paved the way for eruption of the democratic wave.
Moreover, the possibility that instantaneous causes of a certain event may be significantly different yet trigger common responses and affect the wave; this is referred to as the Prevailing Nostrum . This happens if the opposition and ruling elites have a common belief in the effectiveness of those responses, which has a remedy called the nostrum, or the zeitgeist prevailing remedy. Briefly, despite the different trends in different countries, they all adopt similar response that reflects prevailing views. Similarly, the wave countries may still take part in similar regime transitions to respond to the different sets of the causal problems. For instance, a deepening economic recession in country 1, electoral fraud in country 2, military defeat in country 3, and so on. In such a case, the particular individual causes (V1, V2, etc.) are different however it leads to political changes.
These three factors are neither mutually exclusive, nor contradictory, on the contrary they take place simultaneously proving that they overlap in instigating a democratic wave. On one hand the wave won\’t start or diffuse if the domestic environment is not in favor of it, and on the other hand if the external environment – regional and global- in favor of this democratic wave it will support the diffusion, if not it can act as a barrier. However, it should be stated that the most powerful waves occur when significant factors from all three levels integrate, plausibly shaping the most suitable conditions for democracy. Isolated, the factors from each level will be only crucial for high levels of democracy yet not for wave diffusion.
IV. Late Response and Agents of Change
As mentioned previously, the democratic wave have a distinctive structure, it passes by dominance and corrective phases. The following uses illustrative examples from the third wave to explain the differences between the primary and late phases.
The Third wave began with the burst of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974. The democratic surge was so strong that it spread to different regions including Latin America in the 1980s, Asia Pacific countries; Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan from 1986 to 1988. It wasn\’t until 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of newly 15 independent states when the diffusion reached that region and the wave spread in Eastern Europe as well, the transition in this region brought a lot of debates, as these countries went in two different paths;
Some witnessed emergence of quasi democracy, where the systems were able to survive and correct itself; they never witnessed an uprising or any popular movements. While others witnessed a new rounds of uprisings or revolutionary actions this is represented by the Colored Revolutions in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, as will be explained in chapter two, these countries witnessed uprisings to correct the course of the democratic transition. From the perspective of the wave theory these events can be called counter response or late phase. It refers to the corrective actions undertook by the masses to correct the path of democracy in the country. However, the outburst of these movements impacted other regions and resulted in the diffusion of these popular movements forming a complementary wave in a new region, the Arab region, in response to the contagious nature of democracy, the burst of the complementary wave impacted some of the originating countries and caused another round of popular uprisings in the 2011. These incidents indicates the contagious nature of democracy and affirms that democratic diffusion occurs in the form of wave with dominant, corrective and late phases. The following will illustrate these cases based on the third wave of democratization.
1. Primary Phase
The primary phase refers to the first phase in the wave it witness the democratic surge and spread of democratization across different countries, it signals the wave\’s strength and that the movement of the wave is upward. In the democratic wave diffusion there should be a country that initiates the democratic transition, followed by early adopters from other countries and the waves reaches its dominant phases when the early and late majority starts the transition.
In practice, during the third wave, this phase occurred in the period between March 1989 and October 1991, these 24 months witnessed the dispersion of the wave among 25 countries, this period is sometimes called the Autumn of Nations. it took place in Poland in 1989, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, the fall of the Berlin Wall, which served as the symbolic gateway to German reunification in 1990. The Soviet Union was dissolved by the end of 1991, resulting in 14 countries; Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia,Georgia,Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan declaring their independence from the Soviet Union in the course of the years 1990–91 and the bulk of the country being succeeded by Russia in December 1991.
From this cases we can infer that the democratic diffusion was so strong and were able to penetrate different regions across the world. It confirms on the strong nature of the diffusion process that are at work during this prominent wave. The late phase is illustrated below.
2. Late Phase
The secondary phase or complementary wave, refers to the laggards or the late adopters of the wave. The countries in this phase are one of two groups; either joining the late phase as corrective action to the democratic practices in their countries, the corrective actions usually take place in countries who already took some steps in the path of democratization, while the late adopters or laggards are usually countries inaugurating democratic transition yet they are following the same path of the previous wave in terms of motives, strategies and techniques. They should share some features with the original wave and should be following its same path. In practice the cases of the colored revolutions that occurred between 2000 – 2005 in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan are examples of the corrective actions while the cases of the Arab uprising that occurred between 2011-2012 are considered a complementary phase, and both of them are late phases in the third wave. based on this distinction between the prominence and secondary phase the focus of this thesis is on the secondary phase of the wave, it will be illustrated by explaining the impact of the colored revolutions on the Egyptian one.
3. Agents of Change
The increasing numbers of countries in transition that coupled with the globalization impact on the modern societies led to the emergence of new actors affecting the diffusion process, these are, youth, mass mobilization and new media as explained below.
a. Youth
A social movement, as the name suggests is a conglomeration of people with a common interest to pursue a common goal. For the purpose of clarity, it is important to recognize that a social movement is neither a political movement nor an interest group. Unlike parties with political interests, social movements do not receive the backing of political elites. Also they are informal entities that follow an informal “membership” process; the members are more of supporters than members because they do not register legally as followers of a social movement. Despite their lack of political interests or formal organization, social movements usually have well defined goals or purpose, the supporters often have an immediate goal around which they structure their movement and plan upon it their activities.
As any other phenomena in the political science, the social movements witnessed developments responding to the global changes, this resulted in the emergence of the “New Social Movements” which is a collective term refers to the movements that sprung in the 60s to advocate for social changes. The new social movements shifted the focus from the economic needs to the social ones, the abrupt change in ideology behind these movements led to the name “New Social Movements.” These movements were made up of youth supporters who were tired of the old world order. Having been educated in a more liberal environment with developed communication and wide flow of information, the youth felt they were entitled to voice their concerns freely, instead of calling for legislative and political support; these movements encouraged the development of a parallel way of life that would meet the unfulfilled needs of the members . Thus, instead of being reformative like the other traditional movements, new social movements were alternative movements.
The changes in the international balance of power was among the reasons behind the rise of these new movements; yet, other than the political genesis, the new social movements were formed as a result to the peoples\’ increasing knowledge of their governance systems. Besides, the emerging global culture drew people together to form such movements; the people became aware of the events that happen in other parts of the world. The globalization took this a step forward; the communication technologies enabled the people to compare their society to others. The ability to access information beyond their sphere made the people more aware of their rights and thus began demanding it. In Addition, the widespread and ease of access of the internet that opened new communication channels, bypassed all the geographic and time boundaries and brought people together into a common public sphere. In response to these changes emerged a new tool, solidarity protests, through which individuals were able to support like-minded campaigns happening in other parts of the world. This “global mentality” led to the emergence, and consequent strengthening, of new social movements. By the 90s, the new social movements changed their tune as they began condemning illicit government practices, although initially detached from politics. This was a desperate attempt for change, as previous calls for change had either failed or succeeded partially.
Although the social movement theories are abstractly stated they are still grounded in empirical cases, the societal changes resulted in a great deal of academic studies focusing on the role of protest movements and its relation to authoritarian and post authoritarian regimes conditions. Research provided a detailed comparative investigation that identified ways in which certain conditions in authoritarian state shaped the democratization process in the country. It is evident that social and protest movements played an integral role in any social turmoil that faced the different countries in the Third Wave, more precisely the year 1998 marked the emergence of the role of youth in the political change. Actually the youth were the main actor in the democratic wave that spread in Eastern Europe; they were able to topple down the semi-authoritarian leaders. The colored revolutions the Egyptian Revolution are epitomizing evidence of such argument.
b. Mass Mobilization and Collective Action
The growing protest movements broadened the reworking political theories; the masses attitude have been studied massively, motivating the people to defend a certain cause is not an easy job, and it is usually accompanied by the collective action problem. Mass mobilization is defined as a process of engaging wide range of people from different classes to participate in the political action at the local and national levels, it usually starts by raising awareness of and demand for a particular development objective through face-to-face dialogue. Different advocates work in cooperation with each other in a coordinated way to reach specific groups of people for dialogue with planned messages. In other words, social mobilization seeks to facilitate change through a range of players engaged in interrelated and complementary efforts.
Mass mobilization is often used by grassroots-based social movements, including revolutionary movements, but can also become a tool of elites and the state itself. The process usually takes the form of large public gatherings such as mass meetings, marches, parades, processions and demonstrations. Those gatherings usually are part of a protest action. Participating in the mass mobilization acts is usually accompanied by the rise of the collective action problem, were individuals weigh the costs of the participation as well as the rewards that are being sought, part of the mobilization process is to convince each and every individual that their participation will make a difference in the end result, they should be convinced to pay a particular cost as the bigger group is going to gain from their action.
The theory of mobilization witnessed a lot of developments; the first-generation theories characterized by the natural history reliant on the standard mobilizations elements. The latter replaced by the post-World War II all-inclusive social psychological models for the mobilization of the players to affect the revolution. The third-generation theories had their core focus on the structure of the revolutions via analyzing the breakdown that the administrative strain generates as well as the elite schisms. This structure was replaced by the cultural turn in the social sciences, placing the core attention on the ideology, as well as the culture. Additionally the attention by the new structure is placed in the judgments, individual perceptions as well as agency coupled issues to do with identity, marginalization and solidarity of the masses. This was obvious in the course of the modern revolutions were the protesters shared common techniques and strategies in mobilizing the masses, utilized similar logos, slogans and peaceful resistance techniques. In both the Colored Revolutions and the Arab uprisings the protests shared techniques of mostly civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches, rallies, as well as the use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship. Following similar paths is an evidence of the diffusion effect in these models, the precept of both collective and mass mobilization follows the experiences from other successful models is another evidence on the impact of the Colored Revolutions on the Arab uprisings as will be discussed later.
c. New Media
New Media is comprised of most technologies that are easy to manipulate, compressible, interactive, dense and networkable. These include computer multimedia, websites, and internet among other forms of media. In the modern societies the new media has a growing role in making politics and society visible, in providing information, analysis, forums for debate and a shared civic culture, due to its expanding role in creating the awareness the new media, especially the social media, have been called “consciousness industry”.
The new media gained its prominence by creating a new public sphere that bypassed the traditional censorship, its effect appears to be universal and continuing to expand. Certainly the media contributed in globalizing the normative vision of democracy. The effect of new media became inevitable in creating “an active and informed citizen” especially through the social networking, previously used only for socializing, yet they are now an important source in creating awareness, disseminating information and above all a mobilization tool.
Both social and traditional media played a major role in the course of the modern revolutions. They acted as an outlet that empowered citizens in these countries by the provision of information together with the expression platform. The diffusion and interchange of awareness among groups that are involved in the revolutions were very crucial for the success of their movements. It informed them about the resistance tools, tips and tricks for facing the security, this knowledge exchange also aids in the avoidance of errors, it was a channel transferring the successful experiences from the previous models and enabling he activists in these struggles to use the most efficient tools and strategies in applying their own model. Moreover, the new media was the most influential tool in reflecting the revolutions\’ incidents to the external world, in turn, it aided in gaining the international recognition and support. Thus, cyberspace was a vital link and meeting ground for a civically engaged and politically mobilized stratum of the polity that fostered the emergence of multiple mini-public spheres.
The cases of the Colored Revolutions relied more on the traditional media, but for the case of Ukraine, who could be considered the first model using the social media in its revolution, the same techniques were adopted in the succeeding revolutions, as will be shown in the following chapters, in brief, owing to the emergence of new media, and the enormous available information, with the ease of access and the ease to escape the censorship it became so difficult to control the flow of information, its direction or even its content.
To recap, this chapter discussed in details the concept of democratic wave; starting with a brief discussion to the different democratic transition approaches to provide an analytical framework for the comparative study of regimes\’ transition across the different regions of study, such approaches exposed the diffusion effect.
Furthermore, the analysis showed the wave diffusion is the outcome of the interaction among the local, regional and global conducive environments. These three factors are neither mutually exclusive, nor contradictory, on the contrary they take place simultaneously to inaugurate a democratic wave. Moreover, the wave is related to the dynamics of diffusion, which results in its complex structure that includes different dominant, recession, late and reverse phases.
With the outburst of the third wave of democratization and the unprecedented increase in the number of democracies the concept of wave gained more prominence, that enriched the field of study and raised a lot of questions on the nature of the phenomenon and its limits. As per the main focus of this thesis is on the secondary phase or the complementary waves, thus it will utilize the models of the colored revolutions and the Egyptian revolution, to test the impact of the diffusion mechanisms also to determine how far the main actors of the Egyptian revolution were aware and influenced by the models of the colored revolutions. This will be done by comparing and contrasting the three most influential variables which are; the role of youth, the mass mobilization tools and techniques and the use of new media as will be shown in the following chapters.