KEEPING POLITICAL TIME - THE RHYTHMS OF DEMOCRACY

Politicians often say ''the time is not right'' for certain innovation s, without explaining why. Here I explore several possible explanation s: coalition building, the ''mood'' of publics or other elites (at hom e or abroad), framing effects, sequential strategic manoeuvring, herd and copycat politics, and turn-taking. Saying ''the time is not right' ' implies that there are external, immutable, objective obstacles to t he innovation in question. In many of those cases, that implication is untrue-as becomes transparent in the course of ''democratic breakthro ughs,'' which remove many of those constraining conditions and expand people's sense of the possible. ''Democratic consolidation,'' when it reaches premature closure, can sometimes allow those constraining cond itions and blocking coalitions to regain ascendancy, as arrangements w hich were only ever intended as transitional get frozen in place, rema ining ''too long.''