This book provides the most extensive comparative survey of the state and conditions of democracy ever made. It focuses on 172 contemporary states, with historical data on the measures of democracy and on explanatory variables extending back to the 1850s. It presents a comprehensive exploration of democratization, its successes and failures, making predictions on the prospects for democracy for single countries and for seven regions of the world.As well as presenting empirical analyses of democratization on the basis of Vanhanens's resource distribution theory of democratization and making predictions on the prospects, the book includes contributions from five commentators, Mitchell A. Seligson on Latin America, Samuel Decalo and John W. Forje on Africa, John Henderson on Oceania and Ilter Turan on why some of the countires that pass Vanhanen's democratic threshold cannot in fact be seen as democracies. The volume also includes an introductory chapter which examines and compares other theoretical interpretations of democratization.Prospects for Democracy will be essential reading for all serious students of comparative politics and democracy.
Author(s): Tatu Vanhanen
Edition: 1
Year: 1997
Language: English
Pages: 392
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
List of figures......Page 8
List of tables......Page 9
List of contributors......Page 11
Preface......Page 13
List of abbreviations......Page 15
Introduction......Page 19
Theoretical interpretations of democratization......Page 26
An evolutionary theory of democratization......Page 37
Research design......Page 43
Resource distribution......Page 58
Period and units of comparison......Page 76
Methods of analysis......Page 78
Empirical analysis of democratization: 1850 1993......Page 83
Cross-sectional correlations......Page 86
GNP per capita and human development index (HDI)......Page 91
Regression analysis......Page 95
Predictions for single countries by regions......Page 115
Regional comparisons......Page 116
Europe and North America......Page 120
Latin America and the Caribbean......Page 128
North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia......Page 133
Sub-Saharan Africa......Page 143
South Asia......Page 157
East Asia and Southeast Asia......Page 161
Oceania......Page 167
Conclusions: Regularities since the 1850s......Page 171
Unexplained variation......Page 173
The persistence of deviating cases......Page 178
Prospects of democracy by regional groups......Page 182
Strategies of democratization......Page 185
Incalculable factors......Page 190
Appendices......Page 192
Appendix 2......Page 224
Appendix 3......Page 231
Appendix 4......Page 249
Appendix 5......Page 267
Tatu Vanhanen thesis and the prospects of democracy in Latin America......Page 293
Conclusions......Page 299
The democratic anomalies: why some countries that have passed Vanhanen's democratic threshold are not democracies......Page 300
Some methodological considerations......Page 301
The anomalous bunch......Page 303
The lack of political community as an impediment to democracy......Page 305
The role of external factors in democratic evolution......Page 308
The political economy of democratic evolution......Page 312
Conclusions......Page 315
On statistical correlates of democratization and prospects of democratization in Africa: some issues of construction, inference and prediction......Page 317
References......Page 329
Some observations on prospects of democracy in the contemporary world: Africa's transition to a democratic governance system......Page 331
Criteria for evaluating Africa's democratic transition process......Page 333
Reinstating the missing dimension......Page 337
Representation......Page 338
Accountability......Page 340
Participation......Page 342
Conclusions......Page 345
References......Page 348
Prospects of democracy in Oceania......Page 350
The region of Oceania......Page 352
What is different in Oceania?......Page 353
References......Page 359
Bibliography......Page 361
Index......Page 377
