PLSC Wk 5- "Transitions to and from Democracy"

3 waves of democratization

-First wave: late 19th/ early 20th century.

-Second: most of Europe after WWII.

-Third: Spain, Portugal, Greece, LA and post-communist

Europe

most transitions in 3rd waves were

pacted (ex. Chile)

autocrat prefers

transition w amnesty over the status quo

pacted transitions unlikely for

personalistic dictatorships

when are pacted transitions possible for party-based regimes?

when regime has infiltrated opposition

bottom-up transitions

raises the question of how people solve the problem of collective action that arises in revolutions

collective action

the pursuit of some objective (usually a common good) by groups of individuals

size of group affects

the likelihood that you see yourself as critical to collective action

which kind of groups find it harder to overcome collective action problems?

larger groups

Timur Kuran tipping model

Citizens public preferences for regime change are conditional

on the their beliefs concerning other citizens’ support for the

regime. = reveal their conditional preferences → regime

sometimes tips from autocracy to democracy almost

overnight

preference falsification

ppl who oppose the regime often falsify their preferences in public

revolutionary threshold

the size of protest at which an individual is willing to participate.

revolutionary cascade

when one person’s participation triggers the participation of another, which triggers the participation of another and so on

Are revolutions possible to predict??

No - kuran- “predictability of unpredictability”

Waylen pt

we should pay attention to social movements in “elite-driven” transitions

modernization theory

all societies pass through the same historical stages of economic and political development.

as countries develop economically

more likely to become democratic and more likely to remain democratic (modernization theory")

exogenous democratization

democracy is established independently from economic development

Boix and Stokes diagram

Additional income appears to increase both the emergence and survival of democracy.

przeworski

No democracy has ever fell in a country with a per capita income higher than $6,055