Is There a Pattern?

Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics

Volumn 25, Issue 2-3, 2009, Pages 396-412

  White, Stephen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77649121101     PISSN: 13523279     EISSN: 17439116     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13523270903096030     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), pp.21-5.
2. See, for instance, Michael McFaul, 'The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World', World Politics, Vol.54, No.2 (2002), pp.212-44;
3. Lincoln A. Mitchell, Uncertain Democracy: U.S. Foreign Policy and Georgia's Rose Revolution (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p.2.
4. Another suggestion was a wave of 'democratic revolutions' dating from the overthrow of President Marcos in the Philippines in 1986: see Mark R. Thompson, Democratic Revolutions: Asia and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 2004), p.2.
5. Andrew Wilson, Ukraine's Orange Revolution (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2005), pp.72-3.
6. For a representative discussion see, for instance, Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell Jr., Comparative Politics: System, Process and Policy, 2nd edn (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), pp.68-76, which identifies Durkheim, Tönnies and Weber as the intellectual architects of this developmental perspective.
7. See Seymour Martin Lipset, 'Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy', American Political Science Review, Vol.53, No.1 (1959), pp.69-105 (p.75).
8. The larger account is Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (London: Heinemann, 1960; enlarged edn, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).
9. Lipset, 'Some Social Requisites', pp.94-103.
10. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1971), p.77.
11. Ibid., pp.64-5, 76-9, 218.
12. See, for instance, Lucian Pye, 'Political Science and the Crisis of Authoritarianism', American Political Science Review, Vol.84, No.1 (1990), pp.3-19 (p.6).
13. Here and elsewhere data have generally been drawn from the World Development Indicators database (see );
14. similar data are available in printed and electronic form in the annual World Development Reports, archived at . On GDP comparators, see particularly Alexander J. Groth, Comparative Politics: A Distributive Approach (New York: Macmillan, 1971), and later work. This is an opportunity to acknowledge the debt I owe to Professor Groth for identifying the potential of this approach and for the discussion of its application in which we have engaged over many years.
15. The term used in Thompson, Democratic Revolutions, p.89.
16. Aristotle, for instance, wrote that 'when there is no middle class, and the poor are excessive in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end': see Stephen Everson (ed.), Aristotle: The Politics and The Constitution of Athens (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.109. My thanks to Andrew Lockyer for helping to locate this quotation.
17. The most comprehensive treatment is Hal Draper's Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, 4 vols in 5 (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1977-90).
18. Marx's is 'the most influential theory of revolution in the past hundred years', in the view of A.S. Cohan, Theories of Revolution: An Introduction (London: Nelson, 1975), p.68.
19. David McLellan, The Thought of Karl Marx, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1980), p.178.
20. Human Development Report 2002, pp.149-52.
21. Mitchell, Uncertain Democracy, pp.25-6;
22. see also p.74.
23. On Serbia, see note 11 above;
24. on Kyrgyzstan, see, for instance, John Heathershaw's contribution to this collection, and G.O. Pavlovsky (ed.), Kirgizskii perevorot: mart-aprel' 2005 [The Kyrgyz upheaval: March-April 2005] (Moscow: Yevropa, 2005)
25. On Otopr, see, for instance, Vladimir Marković, 'Otpor (Resistance) in the Struggle Against the Serbia-Yugoslav Regime', The South Slav Journal, Vol.21 (2000), pp.107-10.
26. Mitchell, Uncertain Democracy, p.54.
27. Wilson, Ukraine's Orange Revolution, pp.73-5;
28. see also more generally Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, 'Youth and Electoral Revolutions in Slovakia, Serbia, and Georgia', SAIS Journal, Vol.26, No.2 (2006), pp.55-65.
29. Figures derived from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics Data Centre, at , accessed 4 June 2009.
30. Human Development Report 2002, pp.186-90.
31. Mitchell, Uncertain Democracy, p.54;
32. Wilson, Ukraine's Orange Revolution, pp.75, 186-7.
33. See, which archives the annual reports to date. The reports also exist in published form: see, for instance, Global Corruption Report 2008: Corruption in the Water Sector (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
34. Larger methodological issues of this kind are considered in Johann Lambsdorff, The Institutional Economics of Corruption and Reform: Theory, Policy and Evidence (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
35. This measure is drawn from the Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators, archived at, last accessed 3 June 2009. The figures currently cover 212 countries from 1996 to the present; see,http://www.govindicators.org.