Thomas Carothers in an article “the end of the transition paradigm” published in the Journal of Democracy argues how we should stop using the transition paradigm to think about the evolution of political systems in states that are not a full democracy.

He argues how the transition paradigm inhibits our thinking and has long stopped being productive. The transition paradigm suffers from several flaws. First, a move away from authoritarianism does not equal to a transition to democracy. Any changes in the political system are only measured in terms of going nearer or further away from democracy, no alternatives exist.
Second, elections become predetermined and almost sacred, yet a lot of countries have held elections but have known little democratization. Third, the path-depedent paradigm insists that the transition is started by opening up, then breakthrough, followed by consolidation; several countries have contrasted this path, including Taiwan. The transition paradigm also marginalizes the social, economic and cultural context and subjugates state-building to ‘democracy’-building.

Thinking in such a linear path has led to the creation of a vast gray zone between authoritarianism and democracy – complexity rules in this space, we don’t know how to make sense of this.

Carothers offers us several notions to re-think this gray area: some countries resemble feckless pluralism, other dominant-power politics. Feckless pluralism is a situation where multiple parties shuffle power back and forth, while dominant-power politics is a situation where one party is almost equated to a state, but where ‘real’ political space exists. (what Carothers understand as ‘real’ political space, I don’t know). These two are not a station to the end destination democracy, but alternative destinations in themselves.

A lesson to be drawn is that political development should not be equated with freedom. Analogous to Sen’s lesson in Development As Freedom, freedom should be both the end and the means for political development, instead of being equated with it.