Explaining the Undemocratic Results of Democratic Revolutions: The Necessity and Rationality of Democratic Slogans

Why democratic revolutions do not always result in democratization? Existing research suggest a “semblance” of democratic revolution leads to a stagnant democratization: since the participants of the revolution are not committed to democratic values in the first place, there are no advances in democratization after the revolution. However, these works have significant shortcomings. First, the question of why the slogan of democracy is adopted although democratic values are not sought out has not been clarified. Second, post-revolution analysis of how it will affect politics thereafter has been overlooked. To fill these gaps, we point out three strategic rationalities and necessities behind the semblance: (1) organizing large scale dissident movements in a country; (2) attracting international support; and (3) imitating successful examples from the past. Further, we focus on the phenomenon whereby fraudulent elections in the post-revolution period are tolerated by citizens, even though they protested against the fraudulence at the time of the revolution. The results will hamper a shift in the source of legitimacy from a revolution to democracy, thereby lead to a stagnated democratization. Evidence from the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia supports this theory.