[MUSIC] Let's look now at some of the lessons from the scenarios of democratic transitions that have happened around the world. Because it's one thing to have developed the necessary preconditions for the transition, but it's really another thing to make that transition to a more democratic system. And the theory of democratic transitions, many of those theories actually come out Latin America and the study of Latin American politics. Where what we saw was within the ruling elite, often the military or a military and a political class that dominated the system, there'd be a split. And then you'd get a softer, a moderate faction would come out within that leadership that would challenge the hardliners. And that soft faction would then often link up with society, which was engaged in civil unrest against this authoritarian government. And here the middle class may play a role, and sometimes it could develop its own political party. Critical to all of this is really what the Latin American literature calls the pact, and the pact really is an agreement. Before you get the military to step down, there's an agreement that they will not be investigated, so that even after the democratization process occurs they don't have to be looking over their shoulders. And that's really important. Another format that this transition could happen was in the Hungarian case where a Communist Party developed three factions within it. This was called the Hungarian Working People's Party, and it developed three factions with three different viewpoints. A more conservative viewpoint, a middle viewpoint, and a still radical communist viewpoint. And then those evolved into three political parties. Going back to the pact though, it's really interesting when you look at the South Korean case of democratization in 1988. One of the things that didn't happen was that the military leaders who were forced to step down, or agreed to step down. They were never charged with murder despite the fact that they killed a lot of students when they suppressed the Kwanju uprising. Another important aspect, another important component of the transition towards democracy can come in from the outside world. Influences from the outside world that will embolden people within these non-democratic societies to try and make the transition, or will affect the economy, the politics of these societies. We saw this very much in the case of Tiananmen in 1989 where the student activists were immensely affected. And we saw the writings that they did, asking questions about, I mean if Taiwan could democratize in 1986, 89 Chinese society, why couldn't China? If South Korea could have its democracy In 1988, an authoritarian Confucian state, why couldn't China? And in Gorbachev's case we saw political reforms beginning in 1986, 87. If a socialist communist state could reform, why couldn't China? So, the students were really emboldened by these external events. We saw the Asia financial crisis in 1997 creating serious economic pressures in the countries of East Asia. And it lead to the overthrow of the military dictatorship in Indonesia, and a new constitution for Thailand. In the case of the military dictatorship in Argentina, when the Argentinian military first took over these Falkland-Malvinas islands off the coast of Argentina. The British then attacked. The Argentinian military did very poorly, and then it was forced to step down, and we've had a democracy in Argentina ever since. The Korean case that I mentioned, a big factor in that was the American support was withdrawn in 1987, 88 and that forced the military to sit down and negotiate with the students and with society. And we've seen this as well in some case in China. One could argue that the global financial crisis since 2008 has really made it harder for the CCP to deliver a higher standard of living to the people in the short term. If workers can't lose jobs, if students lose jobs, then this kind of international event could have an important impact on China's process of democratization or at least political reform. Now the only time that we've seen really in China where it came close to making a serious democratic transition really happen in 1987. And this was a period when the Hungarian model almost occurred, of the parties within the Party at the 13th Party Congress. For the first time, it became very clear that the split within the leadership with Zhao Ziyang and the more hardline faction in '87. They thought about, maybe they thought about, but it was an opportunity for splitting the Conservatives and the Reformers into two separate groupings. And if they had formalized that, then that might have happened. But then we saw that didn't happen, but by the time of Tiananmen in 1989 Zhao Ziyang has already become a soft liner. So here we go back to the soft liner, hard liner scenario. Zhao had become the soft liner and was not willing to crack down on the students. But unlike in the Latin American case Deng and the leadership of the party did not negotiate with Zhao. They, in fact, arrested him and sent in the troops, and cracked down. Now there was some support, a lot of support for the students from urbanites, particularly in Beijing. But there was no middle-class movement or party that emerged as there was in Latin America. And as I said Deng really forced the military to suppress these demands that were pushing for a more open and a kind of democratic system.
