"Gray Zone" Democracies Are Not True Democracies

In Thomas Carothers’ article “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” he challenges the idea that many governments currently being labeled as transitioning to democracy are not really in transition, and instead are stuck somewhere in the “gray zone” between a dictatorship and democracy. He asserts that these governments are plagued by one of two perversions of democracy. “Feckless pluralism” in which democratic government is carried out, but the government is very corrupt and ineffective, and the society in general is not involved in the political process. The other gray zone perversion is a “dominant-power” democracy in which the government appears democratic but in reality is unfairly dominated by one ruling group.
Carothers’ argument can be substantiated by the definitions given in “What a Democracy Is… and Is Not” by Schmitter and Karl. They would agree that these gray zone “democracies” that are supposedly transitioning are not in fact democratic just because they hold elections and give the appearance of democracy, because these governments lack many of the elements that are central to the definition of democracy. These types of governments probably even seem stable, but Schmitter and Karl explicitly identify stability as a quality that is not necessary, and might even be unnatural, to a democratic system.
Although feckless pluralist systems “have significant amounts of political freedom, regular elections, and alternation of power between genuinely different political groupings,” the government itself is corrupt and does not have effective representatives (Carothers). The civil society is weak and therefore does not influence politics to provide interest aggregation and representation of the wills of the people. One of the characteristics that Schmitter and Karl assert is necessary to democracy is the ability for change to occur. Although in a feckless plurality groups switch in and out of power with frequency, they either block the other party from making change or they do not bring about true change at all.
If a feckless pluralist system is not a true democracy, then a dominant-power system definitely does not fall into this category either. Schmitter and Karl identify free and fair elections in which practically all are allowed to vote as a necessary characteristic of a democracy. In a power-dominant system, the elections are manipulated enough so that the dominant group may remain in power, which in turn makes change virtually impossible, violating another of Schmitter and Karl’s defining characteristics of democracy. Furthermore, by prohibiting other groups to come to power, they are not engaging in cooperation and accepting the true results of elections, which is a necessary component to the feasibility of a true democratic system.