When this study began, my purpose was to execute a review of theories and empirical studies concerning the requisites of democracy in the Third World. My ambitions were to present the different explanatory hypotheses which had been put forward, and report the extent to which these had been confirmed by the extensive empirical research done on the subject. In other words, by utilizing the available research literature, I intended to produce both an interpretation and an evaluation of the current theories.

Working along these lines I soon realized, however, that I would not be satisfied with the outcome. For several reasons, it was in many cases difficult to draw any distinct conclusions from the empirical research at hand. In certain interesting fields no studies had in reality been executed; at least not on a broader, comparative scale. And in other cases, where investigations of such a kind existed, the empirical indicators used as measurements of the potentially explanatory factor sometimes seemed doubtful. In addition, there was a significant variation with respect to the selection of countries – both in terms of the size of the sample and its geographical profile. What is more, the treatment of the issue to be explained – democracy – involved many problems. First of all, the general indicators of democracy that have been used by different researchers vary to a considerable extent. Furthermore, the information on the actual circumstances in the countries at issue is in many studies taken directly from available data catalogues which, when examined, convey – at least for this purpose – a most unreliable impression.