In short, he challenges the existence of a relationship between oil wealth and regime type.
Democratization
In , Seymour Martin Lipset argued that modernization caused democracy. He supported his claim with what was then a state-of-the-art quantitative test, a table showing a relationship between various measures of development and democracy in a cross-section of countries. In succeeding decades, analytic techniques have become much more sophisticated, more data have become available, and scholars have developed more nuanced measures of democracy.
In ever more sophisticated ways, analysts have confirmed the existence of a correlation between democracy and development Bollen and Jackman ; Burkhart and Lewis-Beck ; Gasiorowrski ; Barro ; Przeworski et al. In trying to understand democratization, we have traditionally relied on descriptions of transitions in individual countries and small groups of countries or large-N statistical studies.
The case studies have been very useful in providing information about particular transitions.
Large-N studies typically include all countries for which information about proposed causes is available. These studies have built the current accumulation of knowledge about the relationship between development and democracy. The authors of the large-N studies have suggested various processes through p. A correlation between education, especially primary education, and democracy is well established Barro Some studies have found a relationship between the income share of the middle class and democracy Barro The results on urbanization are mixed, with some showing a negative effect on democracy.
These studies have not actually modeled the process of democratization via these avenues, however. They all seem to assume that if citizens want democracy and have the required skills, they can achieve it. Given the quality and amount of effort expended on understanding democratization, it is frustrating to understand so little.
Scholars have responded by pushing the research frontier in two intriguing directions. Thus development of such a theory is a priority for future research S Several scholars have proposed plausible deductive arguments that identify underlying causes of democratization, most of which are correlated with development, and that therefore explain the correlation. The next section discusses recent models of the process of democratization and the evidence supporting them. A different direction has been taken by other analysts, who claim that international factors have played a much larger role in explaining democratization than earlier observers had realized.
If international forces have a major effect on democratization, and especially if there is an interaction between international and domestic factors, their exclusion from statistical tests may explain some of the limited and contradictory results obtained in these tests. International influences have barely figured in the historical literature on democratization, but studies including them have produced interesting results in the last few years.
The second section below summarizes recent findings about international effects on transitions to democracy. In response to the mix of success and failure to which the study of democratization has led, I suggest that the reason results have been somewhat limited so far is that the phenomenon we label democratization actually includes several different causal processes. If the large-N studies have lumped multiple causal processes into the same statistical models, it is not surprising that only the most basic relationships have emerged.
Similarly, if the models that have been proposed fit democratization in some contexts but not others, then it is also not surprising that empirical support for the models has been modest. A different approach to understanding democratization would begin by disaggregating into several distinct processes or subgroups and then theorizing different transition processes separately.
In the third section I discuss some different ways to think about theoretically useful disaggregations of the process of democratization. In a very influential book and article, Przeworski and co-authors , have argued that there is no relationship between levels of economic development and transitions to democracy. They note that transitions can occur for many reasons, not all of which are systematic.
They claim that the apparent relationship results from the political stability of rich democracies. Although poor democracies sometimes collapse and return to dictatorship, rich democracies never do, which over time leads to a high proportion of rich countries among democracies. Other analysts, however, have been unpersuaded by Przeworski et al. In a very careful reanalysis that extends the time period back to , Boix and Stokes show that development does contribute to democratic transitions, though the average effect for the whole period is small relative to the effect of development on maintaining democracy.
In fact, they note that a careful reading of Democracy and Development shows that even Przeworski et al. Boix and Stokes show that when the dataset is divided by time periods, economic development is an extremely important predictor of transition prior to , but has only a small though statistically significant effect in the post period.
They show that results are changed by using a trichotomous measure of democracy rather than a dichotomous one, as Przeworski et al. They find that development has strong predictive power for transitions into and out of the category they call partial democracy, but less effect on transitions from full autocracy to full democracy. Economic development is correlated with many other trends, and one or more of those may be the causal mechanism that accounts for the apparent relationship p.
Lipset and other modernization theorists suggested that increasing education, equality, urbanization, experience of working in factories, and the weakening of traditional loyalties to tribe and village—all correlates of economic development—would result in citizens with more tolerant and participatory attitudes who would demand a say in government Lipset ; Inkeles and Smith These arguments stressed the experiences and values of ordinary citizens as the bases for democracy without specifying the process through which transitions might occur or giving much attention to the possible reluctance of elites to give up power.
Scholars influenced by Marx expect the middle class—which tends to grow as the economy develops—to be the carrier of the demand for democracy: Boix , Acemoglu and Robinson , , and Zak and Feng argue that democratization is more likely when the income distribution—which tends to even out as countries reach high levels of development—is more equal. Elites, according to Acemoglu and Robinson , are willing to cede some power rather than risk the costs of revolution when they expect democracy not to lead to extremely redistributive taxation.
Boix expects a linear relationship between equality and the likelihood of democratization. An empirical challenge to these arguments is that evidence of more equal income distributions in democracies is at best mixed Bollen and Jackman There is little evidence that the current set of recalcitrant dictatorships is made up of countries with especially unequal income distributions.
In the post-Second World War period, longer-lived dictatorships excluding monarchies have more equal income distributions than brief ones. Boix and Rogowski argue that capital mobility, which also tends to rise with development, also contributes to democratization.
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When capital is mobile, it can flee in response to high taxes. Knowing that, democratic governments are expected to refrain from taxing heavily; so elites need not fear democracy. Where capital mobility is low, as in countries with predominantly agricultural economies, and income unequal, however, elites should be unwilling to negotiate democratization. Models of the interactions between ruling elites and others that may lead to democratization can be divided into two categories depending on their basic assumptions about who the relevant actors are and what their goals are.
They also assume, as do many economic models of authoritarian politics, that the key policy decision that determines the level of redistribution is the level of taxation on domestic capital. It is assumed that the median voter, who is poor, prefers high taxes in order to redistribute wealth. The more unequal the income distribution, the poorer the median voter and thus the more confiscatory the tax rate can be expected to be in a democracy.
In these models politicians are perfect agents of societal interests, and political leaders do not maximize their own revenue distinct from the revenue of the elite group they represent. An alternative conception of autocracy assumes that the most important division in society is between the rulers sometimes simplified to a single dictator and the ruled. They assume that rulers maximize their own income from tax revenue at the expense of both rich and poor ruled. Rulers thus set taxes at the highest rate that does not deter economic effort by citizens.
In these models, rulers offer increments of democracy when doing so can increase the credibility of their promises to provide public goods and other policies that will increase economic growth and thus benefit both rulers and ruled North and Weingast ; Weingast ; Escriba Folch Alternatively, democratic institutions may be offered as a means of directly increasing revenues Levi ; Bates and Lien ; Rogowski Bueno de Mesquita et al. In all these models, the ruled care about growth and the share of their own production they are allowed to keep.
Taxation is not seen as a means of redistribution in favor of the poor, but rather as a means of enriching rulers. Rulers become rich by ruling; they do not rule because they were rich before achieving power. They cling to power in order to continue collecting revenue from the productive population under their control, not to protect themselves from redistributive taxation. Both of these approaches offer some insights into the process of democratization.
These models, like large-N studies of democratization to date, have implicitly assumed that a single model will explain democratization in all times and all circumstances. As noted above, Boix argues that income equality and capital mobility reduce elite fears of democracy, the first because it reduces expected redistribution by popular governments and the second because it provides capital holders with an exit option if taxes become confiscatory. This is a seminal contribution to the literature on democratization because it provides plausible microfoundations for the observed correlation between development and democracy.
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Other laudable aspects of the research include a serious effort to test the argument and the inclusion of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century democratizations in the analysis. Virtually all other quantitative studies of democratization have looked only at the post-Second World War period because of data limitations. Boix has made a huge effort to overcome those limitations. The Boix study has not resolved all debates, however, in part because the empirical support for the argument is somewhat ambiguous. On the positive side, income inequality has a substantial effect on the likelihood of democratization in a dataset that covers —90 and thus excludes most African democrati-zations.
We do not know if the result would change if a number of transitions in poor African countries were added. The percentage of family farms, used as a proxy for inequality in the historical tests, has a negative effect on the probability of transition, contrary to expectations. One of the measures of capital mobility, average share of agriculture as a percentage of GDP, fails to produce expected results.
Other indicators used to measure capital mobility have strong effects but ambiguous interpretations. The ratio of fuel exports to total exports, for example, is a plausible indicator of capital mobility. Average years of schooling is used as a measure of human capital, which is more mobile than physical capital, and Boix finds a positive relationship between education and democratization. Many other analysts have found this relationship, however, and attributed it to the propensity of more-educated citizens to demand democracy.
The argument fits well with the stylized facts of West European democratization, however, and redistributive changes followed democratization in Western Europe as this argument would predict Lindert Further tests of this argument deserve to be important items on the research agenda of students of democratization. Its predictions are complicated, however, by limiting the threat of revolution to periods of recession.
In this argument, when the rich are threatened by revolution which only occurs during recession , they can grant redistribution without changing the political system, grant democracy as a way of making the commitment to redistribution credible, or repress. Redistribution without regime change is not credible to the poor because they know that they cannot maintain the threat of revolution after the recession is over.
According to Acemoglu and Robinson, democratization is a more credible commitment to maintaining redistribution over a longer time period. Why the poor should accept democratization as credible when even the model allows the rich to stage coups if they are dissatisfied by the later tax rate is not clear. The introduction of recessions, which vary in both intensity and frequency, substantially complicates making predictions about the effects of inequality on elite behavior.
Equality makes democratization less threatening to elites, but how they react to inequality depends on the seriousness of the threat of revolution and the cost of repression. Frequent recessions, however, increase the likelihood that the elite can credibly offer redistribution without democratization because frequent recessions allow the poor to threaten revolution often, thus enforcing the bargain. So intense recessions destabilize dictatorships leading to democratization, revolution, or repression, but frequent recessions lead paradoxically to stable authoritarianism with redistribution.
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In contrast to the Boix argument, Acemoglu and Robinson expect income inequality to lead to unstable regime changes, not continued authoritarianism. The model seems to be a plausible simplification of events in much of Latin America and in a few other developing countries. It does not fit most of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, or Asia, where fear of redistributive taxation is not a plausible reason for resistance to democratization since substantial portions of productive assets were state or foreign owned for much of the late twentieth century.
State elites who control a large portion of productive assets may certainly fear loss of power since it will dispossess them, but they will not suffer less dispossession because the income distribution is more equal. Acemoglu and Robinson do not offer systematic empirical tests of their arguments so we cannot assess their fit with the real world. Models linking democratization to inequality seem highly plausible initially, but the empirical investigation of the relationship between regime type and income inequality does not offer strong support for their basic assumptions.
Nor does empirical investigation of the relationship between democracy and redistribution. If these arguments were correct, we would expect to find the remaining dictatorships in the world more unequal on average than democracies, but Bollen and Jackman find no relationship between democracy and inequality. They find a stronger relationship between inequality in democracies and democratic breakdown, which might explain any relationship that exists between democracy and equality if one does exist , but does not support the idea that equality makes democratization more likely.
The models also assume that the main reason elites fear democracy and ordinary citizens want it is that they expect it to lead to redistribution. LIndert has shown that the expected redistribution occurred in Western Europe after the first steps toward democratization were taken, but Mulligan, Sala-i-Martin, and Gil show that contemporary democracies do not on average distribute more than dictatorships.
Income distribution varied greatly among late twentieth-century dictatorships. Many, both communist and noncommunist, expropriated traditional elites and redistributed income and opportunities through land reform, much increased public education, and industrialization policies that led to the movement of large numbers of people out of agriculture and into factories.
It is hard to imagine that elites in these kinds of authoritarian regimes would be motivated by a fear of greater redistribution.
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They would fear loss of their own power and wealth, but not via redistributive taxation. Income equality would not reassure them. This approach to the study of democratization, which owes much to seminal articles by North and Weingast and Olson , sees rulers as maximizing their own individual revenue via taxation and citizens as sharing a desire for productivityenhancing policies and public goods, regardless of whether they are rich or poor.
In this image of politics, taxes redistribute wealth from citizens to rulers, not from rich to poor. Rulers may want revenue in order to pursue wars, to buy support in order to stay in power, or for personal consumption; their reason does not affect the logic of the argument. Rulers are motivated by their desire for revenue to offer public goods and a tax rate that does not reduce investment or effort.
Consequently, they are the ones most likely to be accommodated when the ruler offers an institutionalized form of participation in return for their cooperation. As in the Boix argument, democratization becomes more likely as capital becomes more mobile, but the reason for the relationship changes. The more mobile capital, according to Bates and Lien , the harder it is to tax without contingent consent and thus the more likely the ruler will offer representative institutions.
Their model, to reiterate, includes: In democracies, the selectorate is the enfranchised population, and the winning coalition is made up of those who voted for the winning party or coalition, that is, roughly 50 percent of the selectorate. In single-party authoritarian regimes, the winning coalition is the small group of actual rulers, and the selectorate is made up of all members of the ruling party. In military regimes, the winning coalition is the junta and the selectorate is the officer corps.
They do not discuss reasons for different authoritarian institutional choices. If enough members of the ruling coalition defect because they are dissatisfied with their share, the ruler is overthrown. Citizens outside the winning coalition benefit only from the public goods provided when the winning coalition is too large to be maintained by private goods alone. Residents and sometimes members of the selectorate may hold demonstrations or join rebellions to challenge rulers who tax them too heavily or provide insufficient public goods, but rulers in this model always respond with repression.
If revolutionary challengers win despite repression, the new rulers face the same incentives that other rulers do to narrow the winning coalition and keep resources for themselves. In other words, revolutions and popular uprisings in this model do not threaten redistribution or lead to democracy. Instead they lead to a seizure of power by a new leader and winning coalition who maximize their own wealth at the expense of those they exclude. One of the most useful and empirically realistic points made by Bueno de Mesquita et al.
Thus democracy cannot arise as a response to popular uprising in this model.
What Causes Democratization
Instead, it arises when the members of the winning coalition can benefit themselves by expanding its size. Members of winning coalitions are cross-pressured when it comes to the size of coalition they prefer to be part of. Their individual share of private goods is larger when the coalition is smaller, but the ruler keeps less for himself and provides more public and total private goods when the coalition is larger.
In the model, the winning coalition has a tipping point at the size at which it prefers to increase further. Once that happens, democracy will eventually follow. This model, like those described above, portrays democratization as elite led. In the Bueno de Mesquita et al. They are not responding either to a challenge from the excluded or to the threat of capital strike. Models that emphasize conflict between revenue-maximizing rulers and politically powerless citizens capture elements of reality in many recent transitions in developing countries.
Once the changes in the international economy provoked by the debt crisis had rendered state interventionist development strategies unsustainable, many authoritarian governments were forced to begin liberalizing their economies. In order to attract private investment to replace state investment that could not be sustained without foreign inflows, governments had to offer more predictable policies and certain public goods conducive to private investment Roberts As noted by North and Weingast , Acemoglu and Robinson , Escriba Folch , and others, policy promises made by dictators inherently lack credibility.
Dictators can increase the credibility of these promises by creating institutions p. Democratic institutions such as legislatures and multiparty electoral competition can create those constraints if the commitment to the institutional change is itself considered credible. If the institutions benefit both the ruler, by increasing revenues, and the ruled, by increasing productivity or welfare, then the institutional bargain is self-enforcing and thus credible. These models, in other words, provide a reason for expecting institutional bargains to be more credible than offers to provide desired policies in the absence of institutional change, which the Acemoglu and Robinson model does not.
These models thus suggest intuitions about why democratization and economic liberalization tended to vary together in the late twentieth century Hellman Prior to the debt crisis of the s, governments had a choice between relying primarily on state investment or private investment. Since the s, the state investment strategy has become unworkable except possibly in countries reliant on the export of oil or other high-priced natural resources. The emphasis on the interest differences between rulers and ruled and on redistribution in favor of rulers as a central fact of dictatorship fits well with what we know about many of the dictatorships referred to as personalistic, sultanistic, or patrimonial by different authors.
These models do not accommodate the role that popular uprisings have played in many late twentieth-century democratizations, however. Moreover, most of these models are very abstract, and most tests of them have been narrowly focused or open to multiple interpretations. Some features of late twentieth-century democratization have not found their way into models, though they have been included in large-N statistical studies. The correlation between reliance on oil exports and authoritarianism, for example, has been found repeatedly.
In developing countries, oil is usually state owned or owned by foreign multinationals and taxed heavily. Whether it is state owned or not, the government draws its revenues largely from natural resource production, not from taxation on domestic wealth holders. A large mostly descriptive literature on the effects of oil on politics exists Karl ; Chaudhry ; Anderson ; Crystal Yet, I know of no model that has grappled seriously with state ownership of productive resources and its effect on the struggle over democratization.
All models assume a capitalist economy with private domestic investors as important actors. During the third wave of democratization, however, most transitions affected authoritarian regimes in which state investment was high. In many, foreign investment also played a large role, and revenue from foreign aid was more important than revenues from taxation in some.
Many observers have suggested that international forces, such as the diffusion of democratic ideas and pressure from international financial institutions to democratize, have affected transitions, especially since the s. Earlier quantitative studies found it hard to document these influences, but Gasiorowski and Gleditsch and Choun show that the proportion of democratic neighbors increases the likelihood of transitions to democracy in neighboring countries, lending some support to the diffusion argument.
Jon Pevehouse shows that membership in regional international organizations in which most other members are democratic increases the likelihood of democratization. Bueno de Mesquita, Siverson, and Woller ; Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson show that war affects the survival of both political leaders and regimes. Gleditsch and Choun show that wars increase the likelihood of transition from one authoritarian government to another, but neither Gleditsch and Choun nor Pevehouse shows strong evidence that wars in the neighborhood decrease the likelihood of democratization, as some have suggested.
Marinov shows that although sanctions are effective at bringing down democratic leaders, they have little effect on the survival of dictators and therefore we can infer little effect on authoritarian regimes. It may be that the focus on domestic causes is appropriate when explaining democratizations before the Second World War, but that international influences—both economic and political—have become more pronounced over time.
Assuming that there is one explanation of democratization may be the reason that scholars continue to disagree about its causes. Different analysts have deeper knowledge about some sets of cases than others, and naturally their intuitions formalized in models fit the cases they know best better than those they know less well. The findings of large-N studies differ from each other depending on specification, time period included, and cases used, leaving very basic ideas contested. Such varying results should be expected if single statistical models are being imposed on a set of p.
Two context differences that might influence the democratization process are the historical period in which it takes place and the type of regime that democracy replaces. Early democratizations took place in capitalist economies in which the rich usually held political power.
Later democratizations have also occurred in countries with high levels of state ownership of productive assets, especially natural resources. State ownership makes possible both the accumulation of wealth by political leaders and also the distribution of benefits to supporters, and in some cases citizens, without the need for high taxation of private wealth holders. Rulers who have acquired wealth through access to state resources, in contrast to those who hold political power because they own private wealth, have to fear losing most of their assets if they are deposed, regardless of the income distribution or other factors that might affect future taxation.
Most transitions before the Second World War were transitions from some form of oligarchic government; many were gradual transitions from very limited suffrage to nearly universal. Post-Second World War democratizations have occurred in several quite different ways, but nearly all have involved a transition to immediate universal suffrage democracy. These have included the transition from colonial rule to universal suffrage democracy at independence; transitions from universal suffrage authoritarianism to universal suffrage democracy; and redemocratizations in which most of the parties and political institutions of a prior democracy are reinstated at the conclusion of an authoritarian interlude.
Gradual transitions from limited to almost universal suffrage have been rare during the last fifty years cf.
Democratization - Wikipedia
If elite opposition to democracy is motivated by fear of redistributive taxation, gradual increases in suffrage should be easier than rapid ones because the median voter after a limited enfranchisement would be richer and thus demand less redistribution. Such institutional choices are often made during bargaining over the conditions of transition. We might expect authoritarian rulers concerned about redistributive taxation to negotiate incremental enfranchisement, but dictators with different fears might not consider universal suffrage threatening.
Various international influences on democratization have arguably had greater effects since the Second World War and perhaps greater still since the s. Nearly all developing countries initiated development strategies that increased state investment, ownership, and regulation of their economies. The ability to use state resources to expropriate traditional and foreign wealth holders and create new elites beholden to the government may have reduced pressures for democratization during the decades when this strategy remained viable.
A second change in the international economy, beginning around with the debt crisis, brought that period to an end. When foreign lending was no longer available to cover the trade and budget deficits characteristic of the state interventionist development strategy, developing country governments faced intense pressure to adopt policies conducive to attracting investment.
Attracting investments depends on credible policy commitments and secure property rights. If, as various analysts have argued, dictators can use legislatures and other quasi-democratic institutions to make their policy commitments credible, the economic strategy changes brought about by the debt crisis of the s should have created strong incentives toward some degree of democratization.
In the post period, we see an increase in both democratizations and also the adoption of quasi-democratic institutions by authoritarian regimes Levitsky and Way The end of the Cold War has also changed the process of democratization. Before , authoritarian regimes were supported with extensive aid and other help from both superpowers. Since , Levitsky and Way show that those authoritarian regimes with the closest linkages to the USA and Western Europe are the most likely to have democratic-looking institutions such as multiparty elections in which some real competition is allowed.
Such regimes may be easier to dislodge since opposition is usually less risky and costly in them. The reduction in foreign support for dictatorships since the end of the Cold War also contributed to the increase in democratizations in the late twentieth century. Thus, for both domestic and international reasons, we might think that a model of the early process of democratization would be different from a model of the later process. The finding by Boix and Stokes that economic development and income distribution have much stronger effects on the likelihood of democratization before than after lends support to the idea that modeling separate processes for the two time periods would be fruitful.
These cross-time differences in the causes of democratization may be caused in part by differences in the kinds of regimes from which democracies emerge. Pre-Second World War democratizations, which occurred primarily in Europe and Latin America, generally replaced governments controlled by the rich, whether these were p. In most of these non-democratic regimes, legislatures existed, elite parties or proto-parties competed for office, and struggles by legislatures to limit the power of monarchs or executives had played an important role in determining the shape of political institutions.
Democratization tended to occur through the extension of suffrage to new groups without other large institutional changes. More citizens voted, sometimes new parties formed to attract the votes of the newly enfranchised, and elections became fairer, but parliamentary systems in Europe and separation of powers systems in Latin America accommodated the inclusion of new voters and parties.
We cannot make the same kinds of generalizations about late twentieth-century transitions. The authoritarian regimes from which late twentieth-century democratizations emerged differed from the stylized portrait in the paragraph above. Few of their rulers were born to wealthy families. The second wave began after World War II , but lost steam between and the mids.
The latest wave began in and is still ongoing. Democratization of Latin America and the former Eastern Bloc is part of this third wave.
A very good example of a region which passed through all the three waves of democratization is the Middle East. During the 15th century it was a part of the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, "when the empire finally collapsed [ However, what Posusney and Angrist argue is that, "the ethnic divisions [ This raises interesting questions about the role of combined foreign and domestic factors in the process of democratization. In addition, Edward Said labels as 'orientalist' the predominantly Western perception of "intrinsic incompatibility between democratic values and Islam".
Moreover, he states that "the Middle East and North Africa lack the prerequisites of democratization". Fareed Zakaria has examined the security interests benefited from democracy promotion , pointing out the link between levels of democracy in a country and of terrorist activity.
Zakaria has suggested that the society in which Al-Qaeda terrorists lived provided easy money, and therefore there existed little incentive to modernize economically or politically. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its violent expression on September 11, illustrates an inherent need to express oneself politically, and a democratic government or one with democratic aspects such as political openness is quite necessary to provide a forum for political expression.
Larry Pardy observed that governments are motivated by political power, which is generated by two factors: The legitimacy of a democratic government is achieved through the consent of the population through fair and open elections while its financial means are derived from a healthy tax base generated by a vibrant economy. Economic success is based on a free market economy with the following elements: The core elements that support economic freedom convey the same basic rights onto individuals.
Conversely, there can be no rule of law for investors when governments crack down on political opponents and no property rights for industry when personal wealth can be arbitrarily seized. Hirschman 's exit, voice, and loyalty model is that if individuals have plausible exit options, then a government may be more likely to democratize. Scott argues that governments may find it difficult to claim a sovereignty over a population when that population is in motion. These responses can include planting crops that are more difficult for states to count, or tending livestock that are more mobile.
In fact, the entire political arrangement of a state is a result of individuals adapting to the environment, and making a choice as to whether or not to stay in a territory. A sustainable democracy has to involve far more than fair and open elections. It rests on a solid foundation of economic and political freedom that, for Western nations, had to be pried from governments over centuries.
It goes back at least to when King John accepted limits on his powers and conceded certain rights in the Magna Carta. Then, as now, governments will be motivated to support rights and freedoms only when it directly impacts the government's ability to maintain and exercise political power.
It does not arise with idealistic notions of democracy and freedom, implied fiscal contracts with citizens, exhortations from donor states or pronouncements from international agencies. Fukyama was essentially correct with his assertion regarding the end of history — that Western liberal democracy represents the endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution.
It represents a mechanism whereby our free market system efficiently allocates resources in our economy while co-existing in a symbiotic relationship with our democratic system of government. Our governments are incentivized to protect the economy while the foundations for that economy create the conditions for democracy. According to a study by political scientist Daniel Treisman, influential theories of democratization posit that autocrats "deliberately choose to share or surrender power.
They do so to prevent revolution, motivate citizens to fight wars, incentivize governments to provide public goods , outbid elite rivals, or limit factional violence. Examining the history of all democratizations since , I show that such deliberate choice arguments may help explain up to one third of cases. In about two thirds, democratization occurred not because incumbent elites chose it but because, in trying to prevent it, they made mistakes that weakened their hold on power.
These mistakes reflect well-known cognitive biases such as overconfidence and the illusion of control. Although democratization is most often thought of in the context of national or regional politics, the term can also be applied to:. The concept of democratization can also be applied in corporations where the traditional power structure was top-down direction and the boss-knows-best even a " Pointy-Haired Boss " ; This is quite different from consultation, empowerment of lower levels and a diffusion of decision making power throughout the firm, as advocated by workplace democracy movements.
The loose anarchistic structure of the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet itself have inspired some groups to call for more democratization of how domain names are held, upheld, and lost. They note that the Domain Name System under ICANN is the least democratic and most centralized part of the Internet, using a simple model of first-come-first-served to the names of things. Ralph Nader called this "corporatization of the dictionary. The democratization of knowledge is the spread of knowledge among common people, in contrast to knowledge being controlled by elite groups.
The trend that products from well-known designers are becoming cheaper and more available to masses of consumers. Also, the trend of companies sourcing design decisions from end users. The dictionary definition of democratization at Wiktionary. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Globalization portal Politics portal. Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, Sorting Out the Causal Connections".
American Journal of Political Science. Pushing beyond the borders of logic to explain a strong correlation? British Journal of Political Science. University of Michigan and Pennsylvania State University. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Western-educated Leaders and Regime Transitions". Journal of Conflict Resolution. Leadership Transitions in and out of Dictatorships". Democracy in Latin America. American Political Science Review. Does Urbanization Promote Democratic Change?
Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes. Origins, Features and Significance. International Organizations and Democratization". Capital and suffrage cover title ". Hidden Functions of the War on Terror. The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation. Warlike and Peaceful Societies: The Interaction of Genes and Culture. Magna Carta in the 17th century". Retrieved ; "Magna Carta: Magna Carta in the 17th Century". The Society of Antiquaries of London. Retrieved 7 April