Bringing the Global Political Economy Back In: Neoliberalism, Globalization, and Democratic Consolidation

How do we consolidate developing democratic regimes in the Global South so that the life expectancies of these regimes are considerably sustainable? What have been the key epistemological and normative shortcomings of the mainstream scholarship of democratization? How can we overcome these limitations? Is it necessary to consider the global political economy as a fertile source for deducing some explanatory variables that will help us understand the sources of democratic instability at the national-domestic spheres of political governance? In view of these questions, I contend that there are fundamental limitations in the mainstream scholarship on democratization that we have to overcome. In this essay, I critically appraise the nature of the democratization debate by positing that existing material inequities and injustices in new electoral democracies in the developing world are constitutive of global hegemonic interests that function as the critical determinants of democratic stability. Second, I propose some corrective suggestions that will perhaps inspire a new research agenda about democratization that should overcome the limitations of the current mainstream social science scholarship on democratization. Finally, I articulate some concluding substantive remarks on why we need to bring the global political economy back into our scholarly analyses of democratic consolidation.