Suchergebnisse

Examines constraints to the transition to democracy, including structural adjustment programs that marginalize people, ethnic parochialism, proliferation of political parties, corruption, and scarce economic resources.

Describes a Northwestern U course that centers on class discussions in three areas: 1) Democratization/democratization processes; 2) The development of governance in various contexts, including Third World countries & failed democracies; & 3) Alternative forms of governance like totalitarianism & authoritarianism. Student are required to produce an original & an empirical term paper of approximately 20 typed pages on some aspect of institutional building, & to present the class with an outline of their research. Adapted from the source document.

The authors show that economic development increases the probability that a country will undergo a transition to democracy. These results contradict the finding of Przeworski and his associates, that development causes democracy to last but not to come into existence in the first place. By dealing adequately with problems of sample selection and model specification, the authors discover that economic growth does cause nondemocracies to democratize. They show that the effect of economic development on the probability of a transition to democracy in the hundred years between the mid-nineteenth century and World War II was substantial, indeed, even stronger than its effect on democratic stability. They also show that, in more recent decades, some countries that developed but remained dictatorships would, because of their development, be expected to democratize in as few as three years after achieving a per capita income of $12,000 per capita.

The article of record may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2014.1000529 ; This article examines the impact of civil war on democratization, particu- larly focusing on whether civil war provides an opportunity for institu- tional reform. We investigate the impact of war termination in general, along with prolonged violence, rebel victory and international interven- tion on democratization. Using an unbalanced panel data set of 96 coun- tries covering a 34-year period, our analysis suggests that civil war lowers democratization in the succeeding period. Our findings also suggest that United Nations intervention increases democratization, as do wars ending in stalemates. However, wars ending in rebel victories seem to reduce democratization. These findings appear robust to conditioning, different instrument sets, modelling techniques and the measurement of democracy.