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Page 1 of 3

Why Democracies Develop and Decline
  • Edited by Michael Coppedge, Amanda B. Edgell, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg
  • Published online:
    28 June 2022
    Print publication:
    23 June 2022
  • The Varieties of Democracy project (V-Dem) pioneered new ways to conceptualize and measure democracy, producing a multidimensional and disaggregated data set on democracy around the world that is now widely used by researchers, activists, and governments. Why Democracies Develop and Decline draws on this data to present a comprehensive overview and rigorous empirical tests of the factors that contribute to democratization and democratic decline, looking at economic, social, institutional, geographic, and international factors. It is the most authoritative and encompassing empirical analysis of the causes of democratization and reversals. The volume also proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework and presents an up-to-date description of global democratic developments from the French Revolution to the present. Each chapter leverages the specialized expertise of its authors, yet their sustained collaboration lends the book an unusually unified approach and a coherent theory and narrative.

  • 8 - Causal Sequences in Long-Term Democratic Development and Decline

  • Edited by Michael Coppedge, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, Amanda B. Edgell, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Universitetet i Oslo, Staffan I. Lindberg, Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden
  • Book:
    Why Democracies Develop and Decline
    Published online:
    28 June 2022
    Print publication:
    23 June 2022, pp 215-261

  • Summary

    This chapter summarizes the explanations developed in preceding chapters, fits them into a more comprehensive theoretical framework, and tests them using path analysis, which helps researchers understand causal sequences. Democratization is characterized by punctuated equilibrium. Distant historical factors such as geography and demographic characteristics, together with incrementally changing aspects of social and economic development, affect a country’s level of democracy, but only roughly. Institutions and organizations such as a healthy civil society, the rule of law, and institutionalized political parties, tend to reinforce one another and keep each country’s level of electoral democracy close to an equilibrium or set point. However, short-term economic performance, anti-system movements, and opposition campaigns can sometimes disturb the equilibrium, making significant upturns and downturns possible.

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