This book explains the diverging competitive authoritarian regime paths during the post–Cold War period. As noted in Chapter 1, we divide post–Cold War (1990–2008) regime trajectories into three categories: (1) democratization, in which autocrats fell and their successors governed democratically; (2) stable authoritarianism, in which autocratic governments or chosen successors remained in power through at least three terms; and (3) unstable authoritarianism, in which autocrats fell from power but their successors did not govern democratically. Our central question, therefore, is why some competitive authoritarian regimes democratized after 1990, while others remained stable and authoritarian and still others experienced one or more transitions without democratization.

Our explanation combines a domestic structuralist approach to regime change with insights from recent work on the international dimension of democratization. Whereas earlier studies of regime change – ranging from the structuralist theories of the 1960s and 1970s to the agency-centered literature of the 1980s – focused overwhelmingly on domestic variables, widespread democratization after the Cold War compelled scholars to take seriously the international environment. The spatial and temporal clustering of third- and fourth-wave transitions convinced even leading proponents of domestic-centered approaches that it was “time to reconsider the impact of the international context upon regime change.” The debate thus turned from whether international factors matter to how much they matter. Some scholars posited the primacy of external factors, arguing that international effects outweigh those of domestic variables.