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The idea that democracy is contagious, that democracy diffuses across the world map, is now well established among policy makers and political scientists alike. The few theoretical explanations of this phenomenon focus exclusively on political elites. This article presents a theoretical model and accompanying computer simulation that explains the diffusion of democracy based on the dynamics of public opinion and mass revolutions. On the basis of the literature on preference falsification, cascading revolutions, and the social judgment theory, an agent-based simulation is developed and analyzed. The results demonstrate that the diffusion of attitudes, in combination with a cascading model of revolutions, is indeed a possible theoretical explanation of the spatial clustering of democracy.

On the basis of the relatively new and growing literature on the presence of spatial clustering and temporal waves of the spread of democracy in the world, this thesis sets out to make an inventory of the various theoretical explanations that are available to account for these phenomena and to investigate the extent to which a model based on the diffusion of individual attitudes, in combination with a cascading model of revolution, can be a potential explanation of these global and longterm patterns. Almost all existing explanations are entirely based on elite-level explanations of democratization. There is nevertheless no clear a priori reason to assume that the geographic clustering we observe cannot have been caused by mass-level attitudes and behavior. The argument is made that even if most transitions to democracy are in the end crucially dependent on decisions and actions by members of the elite, the role of public opinion cannot be ignored. Often elite members make decisions exactly because they are concerned with their popularity among the general population and at other times members of the elite actually lose their political position due to popular elections - increasingly common given the prevalence of 'electoral dictatorships', whereby the power-holders attempt to demonstrate their power to competitors through ; TARA (Trinity?s Access to Research Archive) has a robust takedown policy. Please contact us if you have any concerns: rssadmin@tcd.ie

The New Kremlinology is the first in-depth examination of the development of regime personalization in Russia. In the post-Cold War period, many previously democratizing countries experienced authoritarian reversals whereby incumbent leaders took over and gravitated towards personalist rule. Scholars have predominantly focused on the authoritarian turn, as opposed to the type of authoritarian rule emerging from it. In a departure from accounts centred on the failure of democratization in Russia, this book's argument begins from the assumption that the political regime of Vladimir Putin is a personalist regime in the making. Focusing on the politics within the Russian ruling coalition since 1999, The New Kremlinology describes the process of regime personalization, that is, the acquisition of personal power by a leader. Drawing from comparative evidence and theories of personalist rule, the investigation is based on four components of regime personalization: patronage networks, deinstitutionalization, media personalization, and establishing permanency in office. The fact that Russia has gradually acquired many, but not all of, the characteristics associated with a personalist regime, underscores the complexity of political change and the need to unpack the concept of personalism. The lessons of the book extend beyond Russia and illuminate how other personalist and personalizing regimes emerge and develop. Furthermore, the title of the book, The New Kremlinology, is chosen to emphasize not only the subject matter, the what, but also the how the battery of innovative methods employed to study the black box of non-democratic politics.

AbstractHow can one assess which countries select more experienced leaders for the highest office? There is wide variation in prior career paths of national leaders within, and even more so between, regime types. It is therefore challenging to obtain a truly comparative measure of political experience; empirical studies have to rely on proxies instead. This article proposes PolEx, a measure of political experience that abstracts away from the details of career paths and generalizes based on the duration, quality and breadth of an individual's experience in politics. The analysis draws on a novel data set of around 2,000 leaders from 1950 to 2017 and uses a Bayesian latent variable model to estimate PolEx. The article illustrates how the new measure can be used comparatively to assess whether democracies select more experienced leaders. The authors find that while on average they do, the difference with non-democracies has declined dramatically since the early 2000s. Future research may leverage PolEx to investigate the role of prior political experience in, for example, policy making and crisis management.

How can we assess which countries select more experienced leaders for the highest oce? There is a wide variation in prior career paths of national leaders within, and even more so between, regime types. Obtaining a truly comparative measure of political experience is therefore a challenge and empirical studies have to rely on proxies instead. We propose PolEx, a measure of political experience that abstracts away from the details of the career paths and generalises based on duration of experience in politics, its quality, and its breadth. We draw on a novel data set of around 2,000 leaders from 1950 to 2017 and use a Bayesian latent variable model to estimate PolEx. We illustrate how the new measure can be used comparatively by addressing the question whether democracies select more experienced leaders. We find that while on average they do, this century the dierence with non-democracies has declined dramatically. Future research may leverage PolEx to investigate the role of prior political experience in, for example, policy-making and crisis management.

Political actors derive influence both from their official position and from their own personal standing. However, political science has proven to be better equipped to study formal powers and institutions. The study of informal arrangements, where actors rely on personal connections and authority, is more challenging. This has arguably led to the predominance of an institutional focus in research. We argue for the study of informal sources of power as an equally important area of research. Drawing from historical and contemporary examples, we reintroduce the concepts of auctoritas and potestas to underline the difference between individual and institutional sources of influence. We discuss the various obstacles to measurement and outline attempts proposed to date in the literature.

Many comparative scholars classify personalist regimes as a distinct category of nondemocratic rule. To measure the process of regime personalization, and to distinguish such a process from overall authoritarian reversal, is difficult in comparative context. Using the Russian political regime in 1999 – 2014 as a case study, we examine the dynamics of regime personalization over time. Relying on original data on patron –client networks and expert surveys assessing the policy influence of the key members of the ruling coalition, we argue that having more clients, or clients who are more powerful, increases the power of patrons – and that where the patron is the ruler, the resulting measure is an indication of the level of personalization of the regime. We trace regime personalization from the changes in political influence of the president's associates in his patron –client network versus that of other elite patron –client networks. We find that as early as 2004, the Russian regime can be regarded as personalist, and is strongly so from 2006 onward