Democracy First or State First? An Historical Perspective on the Sequencing Debate

The so-called “sequencing debate” has pitted those favouring a ‘democracy first’ and those favouring a ‘state first’ perspective. However, both camps agree that the historical frame of reference for the debate – the original European sequence – was one where state-building preceded democratization by centuries. In this paper, I argue that this is a misrepresentation of the Western sequence. Strong representative institutions existed and were an integrated part of the political regime form when large-scale state-building began following the 16th century military revolution. European state-builders were therefore checked by countervailing political power when building modern bureaucracies and modern political institutions. Tellingly, even where the early modern state building killed off the representative institutions, constitutional legacies and ‘intermediary institutions’ survived. It was on this basis that modern democracy emerged and took root in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This point is empirically illustrated by contrasting Western and Central European cases where representative institutions either remained or were removed with the one major European country which never knew representative institutions: Russia. On this basis, I argue that if anything can be inferred from the European sequence, it is that power needs to be checked to create effective state institutions and pave the way for genuine democratization.