Why democracies fail

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 19, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 57-68

  Kapstein, Ethan B ^a   Converse, Nathan ^a  

^a INSEAD   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 56049098804     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. Our definition of democracy is based on the Polity IV data set, which is available at www.systematipeace.org/polity/polity4.htm.
2. Briefly, Polity IV assigns countries scores ranging from -10 to +10 based upon their electoral systems, methods of executive recruitment, and constraints on the executive branch. For a complete discussion of our methodology and data set, see Ethan B. Kapstein and Nathan Converse, The Fate of Young Democracies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). We consider a 6-point increase in the Polity score to constitute a case of democratization and a 6-point fall to constitute a reversal. Thus, the term " democratizers" rather than "democracies" might be a more precise description of the countries in our data set. This methodology identified 123 democratizations, with several countries undergoing multiple democratizations in the 45year period of our study. For example, both Thailand and Pakistan went from authoritarian to democratic rule on four separate occasions between 1960 and 2004.
3. The data set may be found at www.ethankapstein.com.
4. For the regression analyses, see www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/ gratis/KapsteinGraphics-19-4.pdf.
5. Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995);
6. Milan Svolik, "Authoritarian Reversals and Democratic Consolidation," unpublished working paper, University of Illinois, 2007.
7. For a similar line of analysis, see Larry Diamond, "The Democratic Rollback: The Resurgence of the Predatory State," Foreign Affairs 87 (March-April 2008): 36-48.
8. Adam Przeworski and his coauthors were unable to include post-Soviet democracies in their well-known data set, which covered cases only through 1990. See Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and 'Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
9. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 258;
10. Philip Keefer, "Democratization and Clientelism: Why Are Young Democracies Badly Governed?" World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 3594 (2005).
11. John Gerring et al., "Democracy and Economic Growth: An Historical Perspective," World Politics 57 (April 2005): 323-64;
12. Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, "Democratic Capital: The Nexus of Political and Economic Change," NBER Working Paper No. 12175 (2006).
13. Adi Brender and Allan Drazen, for example, find that the economic swings associated with the political budget cycle are found only in young democracies. See Brender and Drazen, "Political Budget Cycles in New versus Established Economies," NBER Working Paper No. 10539 (2004).
14. Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff, "Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development Among New World Economies," NBER Working Paper W92S9 (2002);
15. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Economic Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
16. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 85.
17. This difference in reversal rates is statistically significant at the 10 percent level, with a p-value of 0.073. Studies of ethnic conflict have found evidence that, as fractionalization reaches very high levels, the likelihood of violent conflict falls. See for example James Fearon and David Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review 97 (February 2003): 75-90. In contrast, our data suggest that the risk of democratic breakdown continues to rise even as ethnic fragmentation reaches very high levels.
18. A useful review of the arguments is found in Ko Maeda and Misa Nishikawa, "Duration of Party Control in Parliamentary and Presidential Governments: A Study of 65 Democracies, 1950 to 1998," Comparative Political Studies 39 (April 2006): 352-74.
19. On regimes' ability to endure crises, see Michael Bernhard, Christopher Reenock, and Timothy Nordstrom, "Economic Performance, Institutional Intermediation, and Democratic Survival," Journal of Politics 63 (August 2001): 775-803.
20. No data regarding the remaining fifteen cases were available. Democratic regimes were classified as either presidential or parliamentary based on data from Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development, and from the World Bank Database of Political Institutions (DPI). As the Przeworski data end in 1990, democratizations in later years, including all postcommunist cases, were categorized according to the DPI.
21. Research by Steven Fish and colleagues, using detailed assessments of legislative power, also reaches this conclusion. M. Steven Fish, "Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies," Journal of Democracy 17 (January 2006): 5-20.
22. Mitchell A. Seligson et al., "Trends in Democracy Assistance: What has the United States Been Doing?" Journal of Democracy 19 (April 2008): 150-59.