Dankwart Rustow
Encyclopedia
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
and sociology. He is perhaps best known as the 'father of transitology
Transitology
In political science, international and comparative law and economics, transitology is the name for the study of the process of change from one political regime to another, mainly from authoritarian regimes to democratic ones....
,' a school of thought in the field of democratization
Democratization
Democratization is the transition to a more democratic political regime. It may be the transition from an authoritarian regime to a full democracy, a transition from an authoritarian political system to a semi-democracy or transition from a semi-authoritarian political system to a democratic...
studies. In his seminal 1970 article 'Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,' Rustow broke from the prevailing schools of thought on how countries became democratic. Disagreeing with the heavy focus on necessary social and economic pre-conditions for democracy, he argued that only national unity was a necessary precondition for democracy. Beyond that, the most important thing for a transition from authoritarian rule to democracy was consensus between elites on the new rules of the game.
Major contributions
Dankwart argued that the modernizationists, such as Lipset, asked a functional question: what can enhance or preserve the health of a democracyDemocracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
? Rustow thought the question of transition from authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
was a much more interesting one: how does a democracy come into being in the first place?
Using Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
and Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
as his case studies, he sketched a general route through which countries travel during democratization. This had four phases:
- National unity: The formation of an uncontested sense of nationhood, what later was called ‘stateness,’ was a necessary precondition. Before people could decide how to rule, there must be clarity on who 'the people' are.
- A prolonged and inconclusive political struggle: This occurs differently in all countries, but is typically centered around the emerging power of a new social force (i.e. a manufacturing elite). Democracy is eventually born of this conflict. It is thus not a ‘rosy love-in,’ but can be violent and bloody. This struggle can be so intense as to lead to the dominance of one group and the closing of doors to democratization. When this political struggle reaches stalemate, a window of opportunity opens up for democratization.
- Decision phase: When the conflicting parties realise that they are at a point of stalemate in their inconclusive political struggle they decide to compromise and adopt democratic forms of rule. For Rustow, there is always a conscious decision on the part of elites to adopt democratic rules.
- Habituation phase: Gradually the rules of democracy become a habit.
His work laid the conceptual foundations for the later work of scholars known as 'transitologists.' Studying the decline in authoritarianism in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
and Southern Europe
Southern Europe
The term Southern Europe, at its most general definition, is used to mean "all countries in the south of Europe". However, the concept, at different times, has had different meanings, providing additional political, linguistic and cultural context to the definition in addition to the typical...
in the 1970s and 1980s, scholars such as Larry Diamond
Larry Diamond
Larry Diamond is a leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies. He is presently a professor of Sociology and Political Science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative policy think tank...
, Lawrence Whitehead, and Philip Schmitter explained transitions from authoritarianism not in terms of socio-economic or structural changes, but rather in terms of consensus and pacts between elites. The impetus for change comes not from international or socio-economic changes, but from splits within a ruling regime. Rustow is widely cited as the intellectual father of 'transitology
Transitology
In political science, international and comparative law and economics, transitology is the name for the study of the process of change from one political regime to another, mainly from authoritarian regimes to democratic ones....
.'
Life and career
Rustow was born in 1925 in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.In 1933 til 1939 he was student at the Odenwaldschule
Odenwaldschule
Odenwaldschule, is a German school located in Heppenheim in the Odenwald. Founded in 1910, it is Germany's oldest landschulheim, a private boarding school located in a rural setting. Edith and Paul Geheeb established it using their concept of progressive education, which integrated the work of the...
in Heppenheim
Heppenheim
Heppenheim is the seat of Bergstraße district in Hesse, Germany, lying on the Bergstraße on the edge of the Odenwald.- Location :...
, Germany and grew up partly in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
/Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, where his father Alexander Rüstow
Alexander Rüstow
Alexander Rüstow was a German sociologist and economist. He originated the term neoliberalism meant as a synonym for Ordoliberalism but the term has undergone a change of meaning. He was one of the fathers of the "Social Market Economy" that shaped the economy of West-Germany after World War II...
emigrated in 1933. He graduated from Queens College and received a Phd in political science in 1951 from Yale. He taught in the City University of New York's Graduate Center for 25 years after teaching at Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
and Columbia
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. He retired in June 1995 as distinguished professor of political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
and sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
. He was a visiting professor at Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and other institutions, a vice president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
.
He died in the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
in August 1996. The cause was non-Hodgkins lymphoma
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma
The non-Hodgkin lymphomas are a diverse group of blood cancers that include any kind of lymphoma except Hodgkin's lymphomas. Types of NHL vary significantly in their severity, from indolent to very aggressive....
. He was 71 and lived on the Upper West Side.
His marriages to Rachel Aubrey Rustow, a daughter of Adolph Lowe
Adolph Lowe
Adolph Lowe born Adolf Löwe was a German sociologist and economist.- Major publications of Adolph Lowe :*Arbeitslosigkeit und Kriminalität, 1914....
, and Tamar Gottlieb Rustow ended in divorce. In addition to his son Timothy of Manhattan, he is survived by his wife of 18 years, Dr. Margrit Wreschner, a psychoanalyst; another son, Stephen of Manhattan; two daughters, Janet of Cambridge, Mass., and Marina of Manhattan; three grandchildren; two sisters, Maria Funk, and Friedburg Lorenz (died in 2007); a half-brother, Helmut - all of them of Heppenheim
Heppenheim
Heppenheim is the seat of Bergstraße district in Hesse, Germany, lying on the Bergstraße on the edge of the Odenwald.- Location :...
, Germany; and his stepmother, Lorena (died in 1999) of Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
, Germany.
Works
- American foreign policy in international perspective. 1971.
- Comparative political dynamics : global research perspectives / edited by Dankwart A. Rustow, Kenneth Paul Erickson. 1991.
- Euro-American system : economic and political relations between North America and Western Europe / edited by Ernst-Otto Czempiel and Dankwart A. Rustow. 1971.
- Freedom and Domination: A Historical Critique of Civilization. 1971
- Mediterranean challenge. no.5, Turkey and the Community / Dankwort Rustow and Trevor Penrose. 1981.
- Middle Eastern political systems. 1971.
- Military in Middle Eastern Society and politics. 1963
- Oil and turmoil : America faces OPEC and the Middle East / Dankwart A. Rustow. 1982.
- OPEC, success and prospects / by Dankwart A. Rustow and John F. Mugno. 1977.
- Philosophers and Kings : Studies in leadership / edited by Dankwart A. Rustow. 1970.
- Political development : the vanishing dream of stability. 1962.
- Political modernaization in Japan and Turkey / edited by Robert E.Ward & Dankwart A.Rustow. 1964.
- Politics of compromise : a study of parties and cabinet government in Sweden. 1969.
- Transitions to democracy: Toward a dynamic model. 1970.
- Turkey, America's forgotten ally. 1987.
- World of nations. 1967.