Business Community Support for New Democracies

这项研究考察了民主化的“浪潮”，根据初步研究，企业界放弃了对民主的支持，同时对经济和文化威胁表示相对较少的担忧。该项目的目标是：1)理解商界为何放弃对新兴民主国家的支持；2)检验这样一种假设，即这种转变反映了在与新兴的现代知识分子“阶级”竞争中，即使在企业的经济地位和文化价值没有受到威胁的情况下，企业对国家的控制受到挑战；3)考察没有被非殖民化和冷战复杂化的最后一次完成的“民主化浪潮”，即1905-1912年的宪政革命。定性比较历史研究将在墨西哥、葡萄牙和土耳其三个案例中完成，使用三种语言的原始资料。案例研究将包括系统检查：1)商业组织的出版物；2)商业领袖及其同时代人的回忆录；3)同期期刊；4)监控反民主活动的政府部门档案；（五）公开和未公开的外交文件记载的外国外交人员的意见。将分析原始材料，以获取以下信息：1)商界对民主的支持，并关注这种支持随着时间的推移可能发生的变化；2)这种支持的经济、文化和政治背景。这个项目在理论范围上是有限的。它的目的是研究商界对新兴民主国家的支持，但它没有解决民主生存和崩溃的其他可能原因，而这是本项目制定的长期研究议程所考虑的。本项目也不会探讨其研究结果对20世纪末新兴民主国家命运的影响。

SES-9911267Charles KurzmanThe study examines a "wave" of democratizations in which, according to preliminary research, the business community abandoned support of democracy while expressing relatively little concern over economic and cultural threats. The goals of the project are 1) to understand why business communities abandon support of new democracies; 2) to test the hypothesis that this turn reflects challenges to the business community's control of the state, in competition with the emerging "class" of modern intellectuals, even where business's economic position and cultural values are not threatened; and 3) to investigate the last completed "wave of democratization" not complicated by decolonization and the Cold War, namely the constitutional revolutions of 1905-1912.Qualitative comparative-historical research will be completed on three cases, Mexico, Portugal and Turkey using primary source materials in three languages. The case studies will consist of a systematic examination of: 1) publications of business organizations; 2) memoirs of business leaders and their contemporaries; 3) contemporaneous periodicals; 4) the archives of government ministries monitoring anti-democratic activity; and 5) the observations of foreign diplomats as recorded in published and unpublished diplomatic documents. Source materials will be analyzed for information regarding 1) the business community's support for democracy, with attention to possible shifts in this support over time; and 2) the economic, cultural and political context of this support.This project is limited in theoretical scope. It is designed to study business community support for new democracies, but it does not address other possible causes of democratic survival and collapse, which are considered in the longer-term research agenda from which this project is drawn. This project will also not explore the implications of its findings for the fate of new democracies at the end o the 20th century.